Archive of Our Own ^omega

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

— e.e. cummings, "[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]"

It had started out like this: on the phone, Trish had thought for a moment and then said, “Prosecco.” 

Narancia had gotten squashed against the wall right then, because whatever genius had designed the restaurant kitchen had put the payphone right by the swinging doors, so he always gets squashed when he uses the payphone. 

“Prosecco?” he’d repeated with a wrinkled nose, partially from getting squashed and partially from dread at the prospect of having to know anything about prosecco. “What do you need prosecco for?” 

“I mean, all I have’s pear juice,” Trish muttered, sounding a little embarrassed. “And we’re celebrating, aren’t we?” 

Narancia hummed in thought, looking at the ceiling. The door banged into his head again as someone rushed past with some plates. 

“Ow. What kind?”

“I don’t know,” Trish said. “Something nice. Not too nice, though.” 

Nice, but not too nice. Narancia finished his shift and then spent twenty minutes at the convenience store staring at the stuff in the liquor aisle, trying to work out which of the fifty bottles that all looked the same was nice but not too nice. 

Finally he squatted down to the bottom shelf and saw a bottle for twelve euros—euros, he thought with some displeasure, and shook his head—and that wasn’t too bad. It had some of that pink-gold shit on the neck and the logo looked like a fancy painting, so Narancia figured that it was nice enough. Plus it was about twice the size of the other bottles, which seemed pretty generous.

He’d walked the rest of the way to Trish’s house, first to the water, then six blocks past the harbor, and by the time he’d gotten up the hill it had started to rain. It had been warm rain—May rain—so he hadn’t really cared, but Trish had given him a real look when he’d shown up half-soaked. She’d taken the bottle out of his hand and glanced at the label and said, deadpan, “Wow.” 

She’d been wearing an apron. Really plain. Narancia had stood there in the doorway, dripping rainwater, staring at Trish’s apron for like one entire minute, until she’d given him a towel. 

When he’d come out of the bathroom, drying his hair, Trish had been setting a plate of spaghetti alla vongole on her kitchen table, and when she’d met Narancia’s eyes she’d been quiet for a second, with her hands tangled at her stomach.

“Um,” she finally said, mumbled really, “happy birthday.” 

And now he’s drunk on Trish’s floor. 

Trish is also drunk on Trish’s floor, so he feels less bad about it. It helps that, all things considered, Trish’s floor is a nice place to be drunk; the rug is soft, and all the lights are off, and the crown of Trish’s head is nearly touching his. The bottle of prosecco hadn’t lasted very long, although in Narancia’s expert opinion it had tasted like complete garbage.

“That stuff was complete garbage,” Trish says, and then bursts out laughing. 

Narancia tries clumsily to shush her, but he doesn’t do a very good job on account of the fact that he’s laughing, too. Trish shushes him back for about three seconds and then dissolves into a fit of giggles. 

“Seriously,” she manages to get out. “How much was that?” 

Narancia smugly holds up some combination of fingers. 

“Do you think Stands…” Trish says very thoughtfully. “Like, can Stands—” She huffs. “Do they feel like this?”

Narancia shakes his head. His hair makes a swishing sound on the carpet. “I’m not drunk driving Aerosmith.” 

“Spice Girl says she won’t come out,” Trish whines. She pounds a fist on the floor, tantrum-like. “She says she’s tired. It’s not even late!” 

“Yeah!” Narancia agrees vehemently. He has no idea what time it is. 

Trish has lived in this house for just under four years now. Narancia knows that it used to belong to Bucciarati, but it feels like it’s always been hers. The summer that she’d moved in, he and Mista and Giorno had painted the walls yellow for her; she has paintings on them now, and fashion ads, and shelves with books and vases. The shag rug in the living room is yellow, too. The ocean underneath the cliffs of Posillipo is audible in every room. 

Narancia likes this house. During the day, the light comes in, and during the night, the dark is softer. It’s good for reading in and cooking in and napping in. He likes this house because Trish is in it.

“The food was really good,” Narancia says, or sighs, or something in between. “It was really really good.” 

Trish tilts her head until it brushes into his. Narancia feels the contact all the way to his wrists.

“Really?” she asks. The smile in her voice is obvious, tugging gently at the word. Narancia wants to roll over and look at it. 

He nods deeply. “Really.”

Trish lets out a soft, contented breath. A feeling jabs deeply at Narancia’s stomach, where everything is warm and heavy. It fills him up until his throat is tight. 

He closes his eyes and repeats, “Really.” 

“Okay, okay,” Trish says, trying and failing to sound exasperated. “It was just spaghetti. You don’t have to cry about it.”

Narancia is distracted from the crying part—which he realizes belatedly is, in fact, happening—because the word spaghetti in Trish’s lazy voice is suddenly the most hilarious thing he’s heard in his entire life.

“What?” Trish asks when he starts cracking up, laughing it out into three syllables. 

Narancia wipes the tears off of his face with the back of one hand, clutching at his stomach with the other. 

“I don’t know,” he answers, slow and happy, and he lets his arm drop onto the floor. “It’s just—spaghetti. I don’t know.”

Trish repeats it—spaghetti—like she’s giving it a lot of thought.

Narancia doesn't think that he's ever felt it more than he does right then, laughing stupidly on the floor of Trish's house with all the lights off, so while he's laughing he lets himself feel it until he says it: “I love you, Trish.”

Trish stops laughing. Maybe she hadn't heard him. He says it again, just in case, just because. 

“Trish, I love you,” he mumbles, slinging an arm across his face and smiling into it, so wide and helpless that it might hurt a little. “I love you.”

Because it’s true, he thinks; it’s true. He loves it when Trish yells at people and he loves it when Trish drinks sparkling water through a straw and he loves the way Trish looks in black. He loves it when she sings, especially when it’s just for him, and he loves it when she tells him that he’s smart. He loves it when she’s just been in a fight and won and her eyes are all bright and different, stars as he understands them, lit by something burning and exploding out in space. He loves it when she tests out lipstick colors on his hand because she doesn’t want to get the stains on hers; he loves it when she lightly sets her thumb on a crimson streak and murmurs, decisively, with her eyelashes low, This one. 

He loves it when she puts her chin on the heel of her palm, and looks at him across a table or a room, and in some corner of a sentence says his name, like it’s foundational, like without it the rest of the words would be meaningless. He loves the way she says his name. Narancia. 

“Narancia,” she says now, right now. Narancia loves that. 

“Mm?” He rolls his head back, sleepily grinning at her upside-down. All he can see is pink. The pink smells like flowers.

“You—” She sucks in a breath like she’s just stepped on something sharp. “I—um—I’m going to bed.” 

“Huh?” Narancia blinks until the smile drops. “Are you tired?” 

“Yeah,” Trish answers, sounding wide awake. Narancia hears her stand up, bumping hard into the coffee table as she goes. “Super tired. If you need to stay here tonight, you can. I mean—well, you should.” 

Narancia blinks some more, waiting for the ceiling to come into focus. It doesn’t, so he pushes himself up on his elbows. The room tilts like a ship in a storm. When he twists around, craning his neck, he has to wait a second for his vision to clear. Through the dark, he makes out Trish at the head of the hallway with her back to him. She runs both of her hands over her face, and then links them at the nape of her neck. 

“Take the couch,” she says, and in the sudden silence of the house it sounds hoarse, wrung out. “Or whatever.” 

So Narancia takes the couch. He lies there with three cushions under his head and two of Trish’s many throw blankets strewn across his torso, listening to the clatter of the rain until he falls asleep.

Maybe if Narancia’s being honest, it had really started out like this: in the turtle’s impossible room, with bits of mold still dying on his hands and no feeling in his legs, Trish had pulled a chair up to the couch and said, “Give me your arm.” 

The arrangement of emotions on her face had been difficult to name. It had felt in that moment like every single one of them was made of stone, chiseled down to some essential plane or edge. Narancia had only stared back at her, wounded and tired and alive all over, aware of nothing but his heart beating defiant inside his ribs, and of Trish, letting out a shallow, unsteady breath—Trish, carved into something impossible and brave, reaching for his hand. 

“I’m going to change your bandages,” she’d said, all at once stronger and softer than he knew a voice could be. “Tell me if it hurts.”

“Oh,” Fugo says, with so much comprehension that Narancia is already annoyed. 

“‘Oh’ what?” he snaps, brandishing the neck of his bottle of Chinotto across the table. “‘Oh’ fucking what, Fugo?” 

Rather than explaining himself, Fugo just lifts the rim of his glass to his mouth and looks loftily away. In the chair next to him, Mista reaches for a breadstick without even looking up from the issue of Casabella that he’s been reading since they all sat down half an hour ago. It’s a warm, bright day, and every now and then the last of the spring’s breeze will pass through every open window in Libeccio, fluttering the curtains. 

“Three times,” Fugo muses, staring out the window with some distant astonishment. “You said it three times.” 

“Who cares how many times I said it?!” Narancia snaps, banging his fist on the table until the cutlery rattles. “Tell me what I should do!” 

Fugo pulls a face. “Why do you think I know?” 

“You know fucking—” Narancia gestures furiously. “Calculus! Come on.” His voice pitches to a whine when he collapses onto the table, stretching his arms out in front of him. “Why’s Trish ignoring me, Fugo?” 

“You’re thinking about it too hard,” Mista drawls. “Trish ignores me all the time.” 

Fugo sets his glass back down, propping an elbow on the table and gesticulating with one hand like he’s explaining neuroscience. 

“Narancia, listen. What makes you think she’s deliberately ignoring you, anyway? She has a lot of work to do for her new album, doesn’t she?” 

“Yeah,” Narancia says doubtfully, sticking out his lower lip. He braces one foot against the pedestal of the table and pushes until his chair tilts back. “But…” 

“But what?” Fugo presses him, impatient.

“But Trish always lets him hang around even when she is busy,” Mista answers, flicking to the next page with his thumb. “And calls him every night. At eleven o’clock. When some of us, not naming any names, are trying to sleep.” 

Narancia throws his hands in the air in exasperation. “I told you, just shut your door!” 

Finally Mista tears his eyes away from the magazine, slamming the pages facedown on the table and jabbing an emphatic finger at Narancia’s face. “And I told you, I get claustrophobic!” 

“You get everythingphobic! All the time!” 

“Move out, then!” 

“Maybe I will! Better than having to listen to you cry in the bathtub whenever Giorno goes on a trip for five minutes!” 

“Hey, hey, hey, hey—”

“I swear to God if you don’t shut up right now I am killing you both,” Fugo says. 

Narancia wants to snap just try it, asshole, but all that he can really think about is the sight of Trish’s back in the doorway three nights ago, and it makes any adamant word shrivel up and die inside of him. He slumps back in his chair in defeat, scrubbing a hand miserably over his face.

“Aw, buddy,” Mista says with a sudden surge of sympathy that makes Narancia wonder how he must look right then, thinking about Trish’s back in the doorway. “Uh… listen.” 

When Narancia peers out from between his fingers, Miata’s rubbing thoughtfully at his chin, his brow tense with concentration. Finally he nods decisively to himself and levels his fork across the table at Narancia. 

“You know Trish better than anybody,” he says, “right?”

Narancia doesn’t want to brag or anything, but he really doesn’t think anybody else knows Trish better than he does. Except maybe Bucciarati, but Trish probably wouldn’t want Narancia to say that Bucciarati knows her at all.

“I guess,” he says slowly, lowering his hand. 

Mista beams and spreads his arms wide like this has solved everything.

“There you go!” he says. “So you’ve got the answer already, right? What’s Trish mad about?” 

Narancia thinks about it really hard. “I don’t know?”

Mista shakes his head. “Come on, man, at least try!” 

“He is trying,” Fugo interjects. “You’re just not making any sense, as usual.”

“You’re right. I’m so sorry. I should have listened to you, Fugo, since you know so much about love.” 

“Who—” Fugo goes a little red. “Who said it was love?”

“Narancia did,” Mista answers plainly. “Three times.” 

Narancia lets himself go limp in the chair until his head lolls over the back. The ceiling looks especially white and empty. He kind of wishes that Giorno was here—Giorno knows how things are fixed and what things mean—but Giorno’s in Sicily with Polnareff, and will be for another week. Maybe Bucciarati would have some good advice, but then again Narancia isn’t sure he wants Bucciarati to know that he’s done something to upset Trish in the first place. And Abbacchio… 

“You’re serious?” Fugo asks.

Whoops. They were still talking. When Narancia comes back to himself, Fugo’s giving him a look of total astonishment, leaning raptly forward with both hands on the edge of the table.

“Huh?” Narancia replies, lifting his head until his neck is sore. “Serious about what?” 

“About… you know.” Fugo’s voice kind of cracks, and he clears his throat. “That. Trish. You know.”

Narancia doesn’t know. He glances urgently at Mista for help. Mista raises his eyebrows and makes a heart shape with his hands.

“Oh,” Narancia says, his voice a little higher than he expects it to be. “Yeah. I think so. I mean… I’m pretty sure.”

Mista lets out a low whistle. “Good for you, man.”

But Fugo, rather than reacting with any enthusiasm at all, drops his head slowly into one trembling hand. 

“I can’t believe it,” he says, pale with shock. “I had no idea.”

“Not knowing things must be really hard for you, Fugo,” Mista says, with genuine sympathy. “Cheer up. It happens.”

“Did you know?”

Mista blinks, links his hands behind his head, and tilts back in the chair.

“Well,” he says, “yeah. It’s obvious.” 

Narancia doesn’t think it’s that obvious—it hadn’t even been obvious to him, really, until he’d thought about it—but he doesn’t feel like arguing. 

“How long?” Fugo demands, whirling on Narancia accusingly. 

“Uh,” Narancia says. 

“Man, come on, since forever.” Mista cuffs Fugo on the shoulder. “Since Venice.” 

Since Venice? The notion jolts into Narancia. Most of what he remembers from Venice is the water, the cold shock of it when he’d stumbled in; most of what he remembers is how sore his arms had been after, how it had been hard to lift them when he’d woken up the next morning. Most of what he remembers is Trish’s wrist, the bone a little off-kilter, the drop of blood clouding in the water. 

The choice he’d made had seemed so obvious then. In a different way—but also, Narancia thinks now, with a strange, arresting clarity, maybe in the same way. 

“Anyway,” Mista says with a sigh, stretching his arms over his head until he makes a satisfied noise, “you’re going to that party with her tomorrow night, right? You can just talk to her about it then.” 

“Party?” Narancia repeats cluelessly, and then remembers. He lunges out of his chair so fast that it almost topples over. “Oh, shit! I gotta go!” 

“Wh—hey!” he hears Fugo scream after him, but he’s already out the front door. “Pay your bill!”

Or maybe it had started out like this: when he’d woken up at the Colosseum, it had been dark. The moon was half-full. The stars were out. His heart was beating. 

He could really feel it. He could hear it, too, pulsing dimly in both ears until his jaw ached. When he moved his hand, he felt a dead vine under it, and another wrapped around his ankle, and another in the crook of his elbow. The night was warm and fragrant, and in the distance there were cars, a steady traveling hum through the sleeping city. 

He pushed himself up, aware of every ligament, until he was sitting. It made him dizzy—he lurched for a second, and his head throbbed with an angry, bewildered pain that made him clutch at it with one hand. When it subsided, he lowered his arm, and stared hazily at the plane of his palm in the dark, and haltingly closed it into a fist. 

He wandered to a pay phone, rummaged in his back pocket, and found enough small change among the lint for two phone calls. He called Bucciarati, who picked up on the seventh ring, and asked him for the air fare back to Naples and for Trish’s number.

It was not quite dawn when Trish picked up. After a long, long moment, she said his name. Just his name, brittle and perfect in the distance between them—like it was a lost city. 

He’d understood a lot of things right then, one by one. The sky was real. His heartbeat was real. Somewhere across the country, Trish had woken up in the dark to the sound of the phone ringing, and in the spring of this year she had come to know the name that his mother gave him—three syllables, for her favorite tree—and that was real, too. He never went back to Rome. 

It’s a twenty-minute walk to the harbor from work on a good day, but that doesn’t really matter because Narancia is running. Although summer hasn’t come to Naples just yet, there are humid omens of it on the wind already, and the days are getting longer. The sun hasn’t even gone all the way down by the time he reaches via Acton, and the city burns orange in the sunset behind him. 

He’d worked a double shift between lunch with Mista and Fugo the day before and now, and Aerosmith starts getting antsy the minute the bay comes into view, so Narancia sucks in a breath and lets it fly. The sunlight glints off of the fuselage when it barrel-rolls excitedly out to soar along at his shoulder. 

“Hey, buddy,” Narancia says, panting, and nimbly springs aside to keep from crashing into a guy with a briefcase. “Sorry. I know you were bored.” 

Aerosmith speeds ahead of him and then u-turns, and the sharp wind in its wake tousles his hair as if in annoyance. Narancia rolls his eyes. 

“Look, I’ve got a lot on my mind!” he exclaims, but this doesn’t seem good enough for Aerosmith, because it revs its engine angrily. 

Once Narancia knows he’s only a couple of blocks from the harbor, he slows to a walk. His breath burns in his chest even though he hadn’t run that far. Aerosmith flies beyond him and spins into an ascent, as high as it can go while staying within range. Narancia’s body twinges with the stiff familiar feeling of reaching for something with a sprained shoulder. It fades when Aerosmith comes back down, hovering a foot or so in front of his face. 

Narancia stops walking and grumbles, “What?” 

Aerosmith doesn’t give him any hints, but it doesn’t move out of the way, either. Narancia rubs a hand over his face. 

“Will you quit looking at me like that?” he snaps, ignoring how weird he must be for saying that to a plane. “Look, I’m gonna fix it, okay?” 

Aerosmith rises and falls a little in a way that seems to ask, How? 

Narancia wishes that he knew. It’s not like he can just pretend that nothing happened, and he’s not sure he’d want to even if he could. He’s never lied to Trish and he isn’t about to start now—unless she wants him to. And maybe she wants him to. 

He puts his hand on his face again. 

“I’m an idiot,” he says to the sky through his fingers. 

Aerosmith rises and falls again. How? 

“I just am,” Narancia says sharply. “Why did I say that, huh? Why did I have to go and say it?” 

Aerosmith flies in a thoughtful circle around his head, engine humming. Because it was true. Is true. 

“That’s not her problem.” 

Aerosmith’s propellor judders with displeasure at the word problem, but Narancia doesn’t know what else to call it.

“Look, when you—when you like somebody,” he mutters, “that much, I mean—what are you supposed to do, anyway?” 

Aerosmith is distracted by a passing seagull and gives chase, soaring out over the rocks and water. The gull continues toward Mount Vesuvius, and Aerosmith follows for as far as it can. 

Say it or don’t say it. 

Narancia is so frustrated that he groans through his teeth and furiously scratches at his head with both hands until he can’t anymore. It doesn’t make him feel that much better. Just kind of stings. 

“I already said it!” he shouts to Aerosmith’s rudder. “That’s the problem!” 

The gull has flown far now, nothing more than a white speck retreating into the dusk. Aerosmith is watching it go, wistful. Wait or don’t wait. 

Narancia yells wordlessly at the sky, but that doesn’t make him feel better, either. He remembers waking up at Trish’s house a little past noon with a headache so bad that all he’d wanted was to fall asleep again for a decade. He remembers that Trish had not been there, and that she’d left the front door key on the coffee table, without a note. 

Maybe Trish doesn’t love him back. That’s fine—she’s allowed, and Narancia would rather be her friend than be nothing—but the notion of it hurts all the same, and it does it deeply, from one side of him clean through to the other. It makes him want to run until he can’t anymore, until he’s in some city he doesn’t recognize—with different streets, and different smells, and a different house on a different cliff, where he might have learned to keep his stupid mouth shut. 

When Aerosmith flies back to him, it skims low over the bay, sending a faint spray in its wake. Narancia watches its perfect red shape, smiling when it dips a wing into the water. He feels it, too, a reckless and joyful freedom that tingles up his arm. 

“Sorry,” he says sadly. “I’m thinking too much.” 

Aerosmith comes to circle his head again, whirring reassuringly. Thinking is good.

“Like you’d know,” Narancia retorts, batting a hand after it. When it darts out of reach, he sighs and lifts his arms. “C’mon. You wanna come back or stay out?”

Aerosmith climbs skyward. I never want to come back.

That, Narancia’s used to. 

Trish’s dress is black, with sequins. It doesn’t have any straps, but there are puffy tulle sleeves that hang off the shoulders, and the neckline looks like a heart. Threads of drop-shaped rhinestones dangle from the back of it and swing around when she walks. 

Narancia can’t stop looking at it, which is good in its way, because it’s giving him something to do in the crushing silence of the car. Trish has barely said a word to him since she’d come to Santa Lucia to pick him up. She has her head turned away, toward the window, and Narancia can’t see her face. When the car goes over a bump, she sways with it, unresisting; the traffic lights catch in her earrings and send fleeting silver refractions through the backseat. 

Narancia’s days in Passione had gotten him accustomed to having his conversations subject to the company of a driver, but it throws him off to have one here now, even though he’s been in the car with Trish’s driver plenty of times and talked about whatever. He settles for fiddling with his bowtie. 

Trish had told him back in April, when she’d gotten the invitation, that this party would be formal, and she’d said formal in a pointed way, like she was daring him to underestimate it, so he’d consulted Abbacchio and Bucciarati for help. Bucciarati had loaned him one of his old tuxes. Abbacchio had combed and gelled his hair. Narancia thinks he looks like a total asshole, but by the time Abbacchio had finished, it had been too late to fix it. 

Trish’s face had done a funny thing when she’d seen him in the doorway. Narancia hadn’t been sure if it was good or bad. Good, he hopes. Because he really doesn’t want to think about what his face had done when he’d seen her. 

The party is for some celebrity Trish knows, and it’s at a villa in Marechiaro. The house is gigantic, with a pool and a garden and a balcony overlooking the gulf. It takes them half an hour to get there, and there’s a very good statistical likelihood that it’s the longest half-hour of Narancia’s life. 

When he gets out of the car, he stares in amazement at one of the hedges, which is shaped like a horse, but before he can comment on it Trish has come around to steer him to the front door. 

The inside of the house is huge! That’s true of a lot of villas, Narancia guesses, but this one feels even huger than most. Trish leads him through a hallway flanked by ostentatious tropical plants, weaving in between the people in fancy clothes who are talking loudly about somebody named Valentino and whether or not iTunes is going to destroy the music industry, until they emerge into what looks like the main room. 

Most of the walls are mirrors, and there are two big glittery chandeliers and a disco ball along the ceiling. Everything seems to shine more under them, from the guests to the glassware. Even the sequins on Trish’s dress glint like an array of restless stars. The music has a bass line that throbs through the floor. 

There are so many famous people standing around eating charcuterie that Narancia doesn’t even know which ones to recognize first. The ones who aren’t eating charcuterie are in the middle of the massive room, dancing. 

“Here,” Trish says, and shoves a champagne flute into Narancia’s hand that’s so fancy he’s stressed out just holding it. “I think it’s Dom Pérignon.” 

This might be the first full sentence she’s spoken to him all night, so Narancia is elated. He doesn’t think to withhold it from his face when he turns to her and beams, but maybe this was the wrong choice, because when his eyes lock with Trish’s, she sucks in a breath and bites her lip, like he hurts to look at. 

After a second, she half-lifts her glass and mutters, “Salute.” 

She’s looking unreadably down when she does, so maybe she’s really giving a toast to the floor, but Narancia’s going to take what he can get. He nudges the rim of his glass into hers.

“Salute,” he answers, more softly than he plans. 

Trish’s eyes do meet his then, and maybe Narancia’s reading into it too much—maybe it’s the light—but there’s a kind of longing in them, and it makes something warm twinge in his stomach. She opens her mouth, closes it, and then looks swiftly away and drinks. 

Narancia does the same. Most champagne tastes the same to him, but this one’s nice. Sweet, kind of. It’s like drinking air.

Maybe it’s the nerves and maybe it’s the music, but he wants to dance. He isn’t sure Trish does, though. Somebody walks by with a tray of champagne glasses, and Trish swaps the empty one in Narancia’s hand for a full one before he can even blink. He drinks some more air and looks at the shape of Trish’s face in profile and drinks some more air, which is starting to taste sweeter, like apples. 

“This is pretty good,” Trish says, loftily tilting the glass until the champagne swirls a little. “Way better than that stuff you bought.” 

Narancia laughs, elated all over again that she’s still talking. “Totally!” 

Trish glances at him over the bridge of her nose and raises her eyebrows. Her mouth twists softly, like she’s trying not to smile. 

“Dance with me,” she says decisively. 

Narancia blinks. “Why?” he asks, like a genius. 

Trish stiffens a little. Narancia could punch himself. She drains the last of the champagne from the flute and sets it on a side table. 

“Because people will try to talk to me if I don’t,” she replies.

Narancia knows how much Trish hates it when people talk to her, so he sets his glass aside too and offers her his hand, palm-up. Trish looks at it for a second like she’s trying to work out whether or not it has an ulterior motive, and then carefully clasps it in her own. 

Warmth possesses Narancia’s arm until he’s not even sure where his hand ends and Trish’s starts. It’s a nice feeling. He’s grinning at her before he can help it. 

He almost says it all over again, for a second. All three times. Maybe more. 

He’s danced with Trish plenty of times—in her kitchen, or on the deck of Bucciarati’s boat, or walking home in the dark; with or without music—but this is different. The light is different, and maybe Trish is a little different, too. She dances fast and willful, like she’s the only one there—but her eyes keep coming back to him. More than once, Narancia forgets to keep moving. 

When the fast song ends, a slow one takes its place. A bunch of people around them shift closer to each other, but Narancia stays where he is. Trish’s face is effort-flushed, and some of her hair has curled up and darkened at her right temple with sweat. 

“Do you…” she says—breathless for a moment, and Narancia’s throat all but closes up—and then she clears her throat, back to normal. “Do you mind?” 

“Huh? No!” Narancia says very loudly. 

Trish moves closer with some hesitation. She lowers her hands onto his shoulders with little weight at first. Narancia’s frozen for a second before he remembers to set his on her waist. Trish tenses by a fraction at the contact, then relaxes. 

“You lead,” she murmurs, and he tries to remember how. 

It comes back soon enough. Matching Trish has never been hard. He hasn’t seen her eyes in days, but now she’s gazing at him so intently that his lungs feel too small to breathe with. He swears, just for a second, that he feels two of her fingers comb faintly, absently, through the hair against the nape of his neck, and it sends a jolt of feeling all the way to his heels. 

“You, um,” he says, rummaging around in his brain for the right thing to say. “You look… really nice.” 

“Thanks,” says Trish. 

“Really.” 

He thinks he catches a smile flit featherlike across her face. 

“Thanks,” she murmurs, almost shy, and comes a little closer. 

He can feel Aerosmith in some notch behind his heart, as impetuous as ever—but Trish’s eyes, steady and blue, compel him to move slowly, breathe slowly, feel slowly. He can smell her perfume this close. He doesn’t know the name, but it’s his favorite.

“Your hair,” she says, and seems to lose track of the rest. She lets go of his neck and makes a short swooping gesture over the crown of her head. 

“Oh—yeah, Abbacchio did it,” Narancia says with a grimace. “Does it look bad?”

“No,” Trish says what seems like very fast. “Just—it’s different.”

“Oh.” It comes out so faint that Narancia isn’t even sure it’s his.  

“Not bad different,” Trish emphasizes, but she sounds a little dazed. She looks a little dazed, too. “Just—your face.” 

“Oh,” Narancia says again, even though he doesn’t think he means to that time. 

He and Trish both go still at the same time, staring at each other. Trish’s lips are just slightly open. And red. Her favorite red. 

“I…” she says, and blinks, hard. “I—do you want to go outside? I need some air.” 

“Huh? Oh, sure,” Narancia stammers back, letting go of her so swiftly that it feels like it stings his hands. “Sure, yeah.” 

The loggia has a view of the whole of the Bay of Naples, and they’re far enough away from the lights of the city that Narancia can make out more stars than usual. There aren’t as many people outside as inside, and most of them are standing around the pool, or sitting on the edge with their feet in it. 

Aerosmith is idling vigilantly at his spine. Neither it nor Narancia have ever been able to relax in crowds, and not even leaving Passione had helped much with that. Old habits, he guesses. His neck feels too hot, so he undoes the bowtie and the first button on his shirt. 

Trish wanders to the edge of the loggia, far from the other guests, and Narancia comes to stand next to her with his hands in his pockets. She sets a hand on the balustrade. 

“I should’ve called you,” she mumbles, twisting a lock of hair around her finger. “I just—I had to record on Tuesday, and I was… thinking. Anyway. I should’ve called.”

“That’s okay,” Narancia tells her. “I mean, I’m fine.”

Trish looks at him doubtfully. “Oh.”

“I mean, not fine,” Narancia adds, and chokes on nothing. “Well—I mean, not not-fine… uh…” 

The rest trails off, disintegrates. Trish lets out a long sigh through her nose, then bends forward, setting her folded arms on the stone railing. The way her hair moves in the wind is mesmerizing. She looks out over the bay with a familiar love and longing. Narancia doesn’t notice that he’s staring until she does. 

“What?” she asks. 

“Nothing,” Narancia replies, in whatever windless remnant of a voice he has left. “I just…” 

There have to be words for this, he thinks; there has to be some way to say it. There has to be a way to tell her about the lipstick on his hand, and the color that she chooses every time. 

Trish’s eyes linger on him for a moment longer, and then drift away again, pulled still to the sea. She lifts one hand, cradling her cheek with it, her eyelids sinking low. 

“What you said,” she murmurs, “at my place. Did you mean it?”

Narancia lets the question settle in the space between their elbows, until he can memorize the body of it. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard Trish’s voice with this exact cadence before; hopeful, in its way, but still braced against some unseen blow.

“Because, just—if you didn’t mean it,” she says, fidgeting with her bracelet, “if you were just saying it, like, for fun, or something… then I—I’d rather pretend you didn’t. Say it, I mean.”

Narancia scuffs the heel of his shoe against the ground, and puts together some courage, piece by piece. 

“What if… what if I did mean it?”

He doesn’t hear Trish breathe, but he sees it—he sees her shoulders rise a little, and sees her body tense by an increment to hold it in, with a quiet desperation. She doesn’t look away from the water, but she doesn’t blink, either. 

“Did you?” she asks, all at once cautious and hopeful.  

Narancia lets his eyes fall to her hand, the one still lying flat along the balustrade, and haltingly unfurls his fingers until his middle finger grazes her knuckle. This, Trish looks at. She takes her chin out of her palm when she does, as if in surprise, and she doesn’t draw away. The moonlight catches on one side of her dress, scattering light all the way down.

Her eyes linger on their hands for a moment, and then rise to his face. Narancia’s heart stutters inside him. She seems closer than she had been a second ago—close enough that he can see it when the night breeze brushes some hair across her forehead, and close enough that he catches the subtle movement of her throat when she swallows. 

Her hand starts to turn expectantly beneath his, and a bolt of certainty courses through him when the tip of her finger grazes his palm. The blue-green glow from the pool washes across her face, casting shadows in places where he hadn’t known shadows could be, rendering her all at once familiar and new. 

“Trish,” he murmurs, dimly surprised by the waver in his voice. He doesn’t think he’s ever wanted to hold that face as much as he does right then. 

Trish’s eyelids flicker. Her breath hitches. For an instant—just an instant—she looks at his mouth.

“Yeah?” she whispers.  

Narancia, possessed of the same languid warmth that he’d felt on her floor five days ago, starts to tilt his head a little closer, unthinking. 

“Trish…” he breathes, and Trish breathes out, too, “you’re—”

Suddenly Trish whirls sharply around, her hand slipping away from his. “Did you hear that?” 

Narancia blinks and starts to turn, too—but before he can make it all the way, he hears a pop, and then two more, and some screaming—there’s movement from inside. Several people run out through the French doors, covering their heads. 

“Spice Girl!” Trish cries at the same time Narancia shouts, “Aerosmith!” 

Aerosmith’s radar pulses with too many hits to count, all scattering in different directions, a cluster of panic. Lower, Narancia thinks until the radar adjusts.

“What is it?” Trish asks, and he can sense Spice Girl hovering watchfully behind them both. 

“Don’t know yet,” Narancia says. The radar sweeps past a pulse that’s smaller than the rest, stationary, somewhere in the middle of the drawing room. “I’m gonna go in! Be right back!”

“What?!” Trish yells, but Narancia’s already taken off, running against the flow of the fleeing crowd. 

Inside, the table with all of the food has been knocked over, and one of the chandeliers is out. Broken champagne glasses are scattered across the floor. Narancia can’t see much else over the surges of people trying to get out. 

As he passes two girls in pantsuits, he hears one of them say frantically to the other, “Who the hell is Diavolo?” 

He whirls around and starts to shout after them, but Aerosmith’s engine jumps between his ribs—danger. Shit, he can’t fire the guns in here—the room’s emptying out, but there’s too many people. Someone crashes into him at the shoulder, stumbling for the exit. 

He can hear Trish directing people a few paces behind, near the doors. Her voice rings clear and sharp against the mirrored walls. As Aerosmith’s radar sweeps through the room again, the signals grow dimmer, moving out of range.

He turns halfway around. The sight of her in the doorway, illuminated in the gold light, with her Stand behind her and her hands clenched into fists, yelling out commands to the last of the civilians, is amazing. Trish is amazing—every part of her. Too many parts of her for him to count, but it’s not like he’d mind trying. 

Adrenaline roars in Narancia’s chest, filling him up until he beams. Now’s as good a time as any to say it, right? Why not now? 

“Trish,” he calls excitedly, “you know something? I—”

“Daughter of Diavolo!” a voice shouts, and Narancia whips his head to the side to see a guy in a suit—he looks familiar, actually—halfway across the room, holding a Beretta. “You disgrace your father’s name! You disgrace Passione! Die!”

“Narancia, get down!” Trish shouts, but Narancia does not get down. 

When the guy’s arm swerves toward Trish, Narancia feels like he’s about to spit up his heart. His vision narrows to a pinprick, and he takes one surging step forward. The guy’s thumb cocks the hammer, but Aerosmith’s already descended, emptying a clip or a hundred into him. The mirror behind him shatters. Blood mists in the air before he collapses in a smoking, unrecognizable heap on the marble floor. 

“Fucker!” Narancia snarls, and swings back a leg to kick the body for good measure. 

A molten stab of pain between his ribs arrests him mid-movement. He glances down, annoyed, to see a tiny hole in his shirt, and crimson blooming rapidly around it. 

Weird. Wait. Oh. He unconsciously lifts his hand to the wound, but it spasms halfway.

“Fucker,” he mutters again. The room tilts sideways. 

It doesn’t really hurt when he hits the floor. He lands on his shoulder. Some glass crunches into it. That does hurt, a little, but not in any way that matters. Mostly he’s just pissed about getting this much blood on Bucciarati’s tux. He’ll have to apologize. He’ll have to—

“NARANCIA!” 

Oh. Trish is saying his name. He still loves that. She sounds sad, though. And scared. He thinks he’s heard it like this before, somewhere—but he can’t quite remember… he can’t really—

“Narancia.” There it is again, much closer. “Narancia, no, come on—please—” And then someone’s hands, touching his face and his shoulder and his stomach and his face again, shaking, cold at the fingertips.

He tries to get his eyes open and manages one. Instead of a sky or ceiling, there’s Trish, breathing so fast that he thinks it must hurt. Her face comes into focus—desperate, and ashen, and faintly freckled with blood—and her mouth moves frantically around a word or ten, but all Narancia can make out is some shapeless, muffled echo of it, as if through a glass tank. 

He wants to lift his hand—pat her shoulder, or something—something cool—but his arm is too heavy, and he’s not even sure where her shoulder is. He lets his eye slip closed again; that feels nice. Trish’s voice gets harder to hear, and her hands harder to feel. There’s a chance that what he says next will be the last thing that he says for a while,  or maybe forever, so he has to make it count. 

“Are…” he hears some approximation of his voice get out. “Are you okay?”

The silence stretches to a tearing point. Trish makes a quiet, broken noise, almost a whimper. 

“I’m fine,” she chokes out. And then another noise. She doesn’t sound fine. She says again, as if she hates the words, “I’m fine.”

Narancia doesn’t care about the rest. The dark is cold, and quiet, and a little bit familiar. He lets himself sink into it, and as he goes he’s dimly aware of the shape and weight of a hand in his hand, and a forehead on his forehead, and an arm at his spine, pulling him back, fathom-by-fathom. 

Maybe—maybe—it had started out like this. 

There had been a glass on the carpet when Narancia woke up with a dry mouth and an ache in every joint. The room—the turtle’s Stand—had come into focus in sections, and within a moment or two he realized that it was empty except for Giorno, who was standing by the wardrobe with a solemn look on his face. His neck was craned toward the ceiling. 

Narancia pushed himself up with one hand, letting the other fall limp in his lap, and reached for the glass. It was barely full, and had a straw. 

“Whose water is this?” he asked, surprised at how hoarse his voice was.  

“You’re awake,” Giorno said, as clipped and cool as ever. “How do you feel?”

Narancia grunted noncommittally in response. He definitely wasn’t feeling great, but saying that he felt bad would be complaining. Instead of saying either, he raised the glass, frowning questioningly at Giorno.

Giorno’s eyes landed on it and seemed to stay there for a long time. Narancia only noticed then that his complexion didn’t look quite right. 

“It was Trish’s,” he said at last. “It’s only melted ice.” 

“Ice?” Narancia repeated, tilting the glass until the water moved to one side. The condensation was cold against his fingertips. 

“Yes,” Giorno said, and although he didn’t consider himself especially perceptive to nuance, Narancia felt like there was something that Giorno wasn’t telling him, or was telling him only halfway. “We deduced that the—the effects of the enemy Stand were significantly impeded if one’s body temperature was below a certain threshold.” 

“Oh,” Narancia said, and tried out a smile, even though some haunted shadow in Giorno’s expression told him that it wouldn’t be given in kind. “Guess I’m lucky then, huh? I didn’t even have a cold drink like the rest of you guys!” 

Giorno seemed to struggle with something, then—as much as Giorno ever struggled with anything—though his body language gave none of it away. It was in the eyes only, unguarded for a crucial instant, lingering wearily on Narancia across the room. When he lowered them to the carpet, his golden eyelashes shuttered the rest from view. 

“No,” he finally conceded. “You didn’t.”

Narancia hadn’t had to think about it for very long. His face scrunched up with confusion. 

“Wait,” he muttered. “Wait, that doesn’t—if I was the warmest… then how…” He pointed to himself unconsciously. “How am I still…?” 

Giorno’s jaw tensed. Rather than answering, he let out a quiet breath through his nose and nodded his head to the right. 

Narancia followed the line of the gesture to see Trish curled up on the couch, asleep under a blue blanket. Her hand was barely visible over the hem, tucked against her cheek. Though her breathing was even, there was a stiff and ragged cast to her face, as if she was enduring something even in sleep.

“But that—” Narancia shook his head, which suddenly felt heavy, sore. “That doesn’t make any damn sense. She—” His fingers tightened on the glass. “I don’t even know her.” 

“Do you have to know someone,” Giorno softly asked, “for them to want you to live?”

“That’s not what I’m—” Narancia screwed his eyes shut and slammed the glass down on the floor again. Against the carpet, it made no sound. “It’s just stupid. The boss wants us to keep her safe, right? That’s our mission! Is she trying to screw it up?” 

Giorno’s silence had grown, and grown, until it was a thing with lungs. Narancia had thought about the blue wonder of the afternoon that they’d left Capri, and of the boss’ daughter at the prow of the yacht, carefully leveling one finger at the bandage on his left cheek and murmuring, Sorry. It wasn’t supposed to go that deep. 

“I don’t get it,” he said, and then, without knowing why, with an unnameable ache in his chest, he slumped against the wall and muttered, “That pisses me off. I don’t get it.” 

Giorno had not told him this halfway: “Sometimes people choose us, for better or worse. There’s nothing for you to understand.”

In her sleep, Trish winced, then rolled over. Narancia could no longer see her face, only the shape of her—continuing on beneath the blanket, in and out. She wasn’t making a sound, and for whatever reason, the awareness of this felt like it buried itself to the hilt into his chest, until his body had memorized the pain from every edge. 

“Forget it,” he said to Giorno, leaning back until his head was flush against the wall, tilted to the ceiling. “Just—wake me up when they get back.” 

Giorno said, “All right.” 

In the long and lingering quiet—with nothing alive in it but Trish, still breathing—Narancia didn’t actually go back to sleep, but he did a pretty good job of pretending. 

Narancia hears waves first. The pain comes next, all over, weighing dully on every part of him that’s capable of feeling it. He feels like he got thrown off a roof. Or trampled by a horse. Ten horses. 

He tries to get his eyes open, but he can’t on the first try. He settles for breathing and listening. He knows those waves—knows the ebb and flow of them. He must be at Trish’s house. 

His right hand twitches. Something soft and cool shifts underneath—a quilt, maybe. Then he’s in bed? Trish doesn’t have a guest bed, but… he doesn’t feel like thinking about it. This one’s so comfortable. He goes back to sleep for a while. 

He dreams about a winter street, winding out infinitely in front of him, and his leather shoes crunching through the snow. Someone in the sky says, “Not yet. I will. Bye.” 

He’s still in the bed. Trish’s bed. He curls one set of toes, then the other. He wants to roll over, but something in him decides that he can’t move. 

He gets his eyes open this time. The ceiling overhead is yellow. It’s a little dark, like someone’s closed the curtains. He can still hear the sea. 

Giorno must’ve fixed him. He’s got that familiar feeling, condensed on the left side of his stomach, like there’s a part of him there that the rest of his body’s coming unsurely to know. Something red and living and new. 

A groan comes together in the back of his throat. His eyes drift to the right. A white dresser, a white chair with a sparkly black dress flung over it. Then to the left. An open door, a vanity with a big mirror, a standing lamp, a wicker chair. Trish in the wicker chair. 

The t-shirt she’s wearing is a little too big for her. It looks kind of familiar, but Narancia can’t quite place it. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her wear orange before. Doesn’t she hate orange? She’s holding a phone in her lap with both hands. Her face is kind of wrenched up. 

Narancia tries saying her name. It doesn’t really work, but she looks up sharply, and when her eyes lock with his, she drops the phone. It hits the hardwood floor with a clatter.

“Narancia,” she blurts out, rising from the chair, “you—”

“I did mean it,” Narancia croaks. 

Trish goes completely still, with her hands hovering at her sides. Her face is hard to make out all the way—blurry, all soft at the edges—but it doesn’t matter. He knows it by heart anyway. 

“What?” she asks. 

“What I said,” Narancia says hoarsely, closing his eyes. “Before. I did mean it.”

Trish makes a choked little noise, a scoff and a laugh and a sob all at once. 

“You’re unbelievable,” she says. There must be a dozen emotions stitched into it, inextricable. “You’re just…” Maybe she does laugh, then, with a relief so strong that it’s almost delirious. “You’re just…” 

Narancia barely gets his eyes open again, but he manages. He feels a weight sink onto the foot of the bed and tilts his head down a little to see Trish sitting there, hands gripping the edge of the mattress at either side of her for a second before coming together over her knees. 

She’s quiet for what feels like a long, long time. Narancia can make out the movements of her hands, how the fingers tangle together and separate. She draws in a shaky, shallow breath. 

“I have a Stand too, you know,” she whispers. 

Narancia’s eyes fall to the quilt. “I know.” 

“Spice Girl could’ve protected me.” 

“I know.” 

“You…” She lays both hands over her eyes for a second, and then opens them out to her cheeks. She looks like she hasn’t slept in days. “You really didn’t have to do that.” 

Narancia’s head hurts. He sinks back into the pillow. “Don’t care. I’d do it again.” 

“Please don’t,” Trish says. 

Narancia rolls his head to the side to get a better look at her and almost sits bolt upright. Her eyes are wet. The words had sounded angry, adamant—but her face doesn’t match them at all. Narancia thinks of the bandage, and the dead vine, and the empty glass, and he thinks of the water in Venice. 

He feels kind of stupid after. 

“Sorry,” he murmurs, because he isn’t sure he can really promise her anything, so he might as well apologize in advance for next time, at least. 

Trish turns her head to face him all the way. No tears have slipped down her cheeks yet, but they’re still there. She digs the heel of her palm into her left eye and holds it there. 

“I—I want you to stick around, okay?” she says, with such conviction that Narancia’s heartbeat stumbles under its weight. “I want—I want you here.” 

Narancia nods, and memorizes the words. He could say, Okay. He could say, Thanks. He could say, I want you here, too. What he says is:

“I was gonna kiss you. At that party. I hope that’s okay.” 

Trish looks at him in shock. 

Her mouth falls open. A faint noise comes out, but not much else. Narancia glances shyly at her wrist, anchoring himself to the bone. 

“Um…” he says, worried. “Is that okay?” 

Trish bows her head, closes her mouth. She doesn’t move for a moment, or maybe a year. A strip of light crawls up the front of her when a breeze moves the curtain. This is it, Narancia thinks. This is the thing to come back down for. 

Trish’s left hand comes down to rest on the comforter, a finger’s length from his. She moves it slowly closer and slips it over his, gently, and keeps it there. Narancia stares at it in wonder. 

“Yeah,” she says, and when Narancia looks up at her, she lets out a wet, bewildered laugh. “Yeah, that’s okay. I was going to let you.” 

“So are you dating now, or what?” 

Narancia stretches up too high to get a glass out of the cabinet and winces when his stomach spasms with pain. Instead of answering Mista’s question, he doubles over and chokes out, “Fuck, ow.” 

Mista sighs, boredly reaches over his head, and plucks the glass off of the top shelf. He drops it so fast that Narancia has to scramble to keep it from shattering on the kitchen floor. 

“None of your business,” he snaps, and sticks out his tongue. 

“It is too my business!” Mista yells, lunging at his head for a noogie, but Narancia zips out of reach. “My own roommate and my own—uh—Trish? I think I’m entitled to know.” 

“Why don’t you ask Trish, then,” Narancia retorts on his way to the sink, because he knows Trish would probably just hang up on Mista if he tried. 

Mista grumbles something back, but Narancia can’t hear it over the tap running. He chugs the water as fast as he can, then washes and dries the glass as fast as he can. 

“What are you in such a hurry for?” Mista slyly asks as Narancia rushes past him to put it back in the cabinet. “You got—just leave it on the counter, man, don’t embarrass yourself—you got plans?” 

“Maybe,” Narancia grunts. He stands on his tiptoes, feels the muscles start to protest again, and thinks the better of it. He sets the glass on the countertop next to Mista’s sunflower spoon rest. 

Mista ambles into the living room and drops himself unecremoniously onto the couch, which makes the floor creak. 

“Fine, don’t tell me, I’ll guess,” he drawls, letting his arms hang across the back. “You’ve got a date.” Narancia’s face prickles with heat. “Bingo. Okay, date for sure. Going out somewhere with,” he waves a hand in the air, “I don’t know, Trish, maybe? Just a random example.” 

Narancia scowls at him. He silently summons Aerosmith as he stomps to the bathroom and he hears Mista yelp in alarm behind him. 

“Hey, hey; no Stands in the house!” 

Mista is so full of it. Narancia can’t count the number of times he’s gone to take a shower and the Pistols have been playing piovra in the soap dish. 

He dubiously inspects himself in the mirror around a rust spot and tries to muss his hair into looking—like something other than what it looks like right now. He’d had it pulled back all day at work, so now there’s a cowlick in the front. He tries to smooth it down with some spit, but it doesn’t work. 

“Narancia, come on, put this thing away, will you?” Mista whines from down the hall. “Or just—just bring it in there? It’s looking at me funny. Or, well, I feel like it’s looking at me funny.” 

“Just give me a minute!” Narancia yells back impatiently. He hopes Mista doesn’t let the Pistols play with Aerosmith again. They always have a great time, but Aerosmith hates it when they climb all over it and play around with the guns. “Just give me—”

The chime of the doorbell cuts off the rest. Narancia’s heard it more times than he can count and it’s still always so loud that he almost jumps out of his skin. He’s pretty sure the landlord got it from a boxing ring. 

Terror descends on him like a piano from a rooftop. He scrambles for the hallway. “Mista, don’t—”

“Well, well! If it isn’t Trish!” 

He does his stupid insinuating voice on her name, drawing out the vowel for so long that he’s practically out of breath by the end of it. Narancia weighs the pros and cons of mowing him down with Aerosmith right then and there. 

“Yeah, if you ever say my name like that ever again I’ll tell Bucciarati to kill you,” Trish says conversationally. “Why are you here?” 

“That’s such a great question, Trish. The cool thing is, I live here, and have lived here this whole time.” 

Narancia finally makes it into the front room again, skidding to a halt behind Mista. Aerosmith zooms back to him and shimmers out of sight. 

“Your pizza’s here,” says Mista. 

Narancia shoves him out of the way. 

He’s seen Trish in the doorway to his apartment plenty of times. This kind of feels like the first time anyway. She turns her head away from the sunlit stairwell to look at him through her cat-eye sunglasses. He can kind of make out her eyes through the lenses, if he concentrates. 

“Hey,” she says, reaching up to grip the strap of her purse. “I know we said my place, but I, um—came to walk you over.” 

“To your own house?” Mista cackles. 

Narancia tries to kick him without having to turn around and, predictably, misses. Trish glares at Mista over his shoulder, pink-faced, and then looks sheepishly back at Narancia. Her outfit’s super cute. A pale yellow t-shirt, and a blue camisole over it, and a long skirt. 

“If you’re not ready, I can—”

“No, I’m ready!” Narancia squawks, even though he’s still in his shirt from work, which has tomato sauce stains all over it. 

Trish folds her lips in until the red disappears. Something bubbles up in Narancia’s chest. Sweet. Like apples. 

“You guys have fun,” Mista smugly calls. “On your not-date.” 

Narancia steps into the hallway and slams the door. 

It’s the first hot day of the summer, and the sky is so blue that it feels like it could swallow the city whole—perfect for flying. Aerosmith turns longingly behind his heart. He glances over at Trish’s legs and tries to match her stride, falling into it without much effort. Every now and then, the back of her hand will brush against his. 

“Wanna pick anything up?” he asks. 

Trish links her hands behind her back and dips her head back to the sky. There’s not a cloud in it. She gives that impossible blue a mild, oblique smile, and Narancia thinks about the sunlight glittering off the water, and the gull gliding to Vesuvius, and the plainness of Trish’s apron in the house that he had painted yellow. 

She thinks for a moment and then says, “Prosecco?”