Page 20 of Better Than Gelato
“Solid choice.”
By the time Sofia comes into the kitchen, we’ve answered three more questions and put away all the dishes.
“Tesoro, Daddy is on the phone and wants to talk to you. Do you want to talk to him?”
Isa pretends she doesn’t hear her mom.
“He misses you so much,Topino. I know he’d love to talk to you.”
I pretend I’m not overhearing this conversation, which is comical because the kitchen is about eight square feet. I get a washcloth and wipe the table. I don’t look at Isa, but out of the corner of my eye, I see her look over at me.
“Okay,” she says with a martyred sigh. “I’ll talk to him.”
Sofia hands Isa the phone and leads her into the living room.
I head to my room and see a text from Maggie.
Great friends?! Are you kidding me?! I had such high hopes for Paolo! Well, I suppose you know best. But sheesh! What a letdown.
* * *
I show up twenty minutes early for my date with Jake. We’re meeting at Piazza Duomo, and I’ve been dying to take some pictures of this place. It’s an overcast day, which makes photographing much easier. But still, it’s hard to capture the scale of everything. I take shots of the main square, but you can’t tell it's the size of a football field. I do close-ups of some of the ornate stonework and statues on the cathedral itself, but I can’t manage to get the whole building. I take a step back. Then another. Then another, and I bump into someone behind me. I shriek and jump a foot in the air.
“Hey, Juliet, it’s just me. Sorry.” Jake puts a hand on my arm and smiles.
“No, not your fault,” I say. “It’s me, I just lost track of…other people. When did you get here?”
“Few minutes ago,” he says. “I didn’t want to interrupt. It looked like you were in the zone.” He wipes his hands on his jeans, and I wonder if he gets sweaty hands too.
He holds out a white pastry bag. “I discovered this bakery by my apartment, and I can’t get enough of their croissants. I thought you might like one.”
Starting a date with a gift of food. That’s a solid move.
“Thank you,” I say, and take a bite. It’s warm and flaky and melts in my mouth. “Wow. I need the name of this bakery and their hours of operation please.”
Jake smiles at my enthusiasm and his dimples come out. I have the irrational impulse to touch one.
“That’s a serious camera you have there.” He points at the camera in my hand.
“Yeah, I’m having trouble capturing how awesome everything is. But also I can’t stop trying. It’s just so beautiful.”
“Well, if you like beautiful old buildings, you’re going to love this castle.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Absolutely. For a while, it was the largest castle in Europe. It’s more than 600 years old, but it’s in really good shape. The walls are twenty feet thick. And its turrets are almost completely intact.”
Jake’s eyes sparkle and his words come out faster.
This guy is kind of adorable.
The castle is a short walk from the Piazza Duomo, and even with Jake’s description, I'm blown away by how big it is. It looks medieval, but so well preserved I imagine a whole royal family still living there, oblivious to the crazy city built up around them. I leave the path and go right up to the castle wall and put my hands on the cold stone blocks. It feels 600 years old. I can tell this is going to be one of my favorite places in Milan.
I take my camera out and adjust the settings. I take closeups of the fresh green ivy crawling up the old brown walls. I zoom out and get some shots of the turrets, with the Milan skyline barely visible in the background.
We go back to the path and stroll around the outside of the castle. There’s a silence between us, but it’s a nice one.
“Do you want to hear some great news?” Jake asks after a minute.
