Page 72 of The Moon & His Tides
“Your eyes are almost purple,” I whispered, a little transfixed by them.
Her smile was a soft, almost shy thing. “Miranda always says they’re my saving grace.”
My brows slammed together at the force of my sudden anger with this silly woman who would say something so scarring to her own daughter. Without thinking, I pinched Linnea’s chin gently in my fingers and gave her a little shake.
“No, no,trottalina. Do you know the painter Modigliani? He once said, ‘When I know your soul, I will paint your eyes.’ The eyes are the door to the heart of a person. If yours are so lovely, it is becauseyouare lovely inside.”
“You don’t even know me,” she whispered, but there was no timidity in that fierce violet gaze as it roamed my face.
“I will if you let me.”
She hesitated, a physical pause she held in her body, and released on a small exhale, a tiny grin curling her wide mouth. “Okay, then. I’d like to know someone who quotes Modigliani.”
I laughed, pulling away now that the moment had passed and, with it, the shadow in her gaze. “My older sister is an artist, remember?”
“And so are you,” she rejoined. “Acting is an art form.”
“So it is,” I agreed, handing her the cashmere. “Get changed, and I’ll look at what’s playing at the cinema.”
Linnea stood, her wet hair splattering water all over the ground. She bit her lip and looked up at me through her spiky lashes. “How long do you have?”
Something about her shy yearning tugged at my heart. I recognized the loneliness in the gesture as something I felt myself. Even living with Adam and Savannah, it was impossible to feel totally included, especially on a night like tonight.
“As long as you want me,” I promised with a wink.
That turnedout to be the entire night.
First, we went to The Garden Cinema to watch a showing ofRoman Holiday. It was a gorgeous art deco building with red velvet chairs and retro finishing. We ordered popcorn that Linnea drenched in honey packets she pulled from her purse, and we ate it with sticky fingers the whole film. Shockingly, she was well-versed on movie knowledge, even with a movie made before her time, and she had me laughing under my breath as she told me old gossip about Carey Grant and Katherine Hepburn.
“You know,” she whispered at one point when the actors were riding through Rome on a Vespa. “It’s an open secret that Carey Grant was also into men.”
A shiver crawled slowly down my spine, rattling my shoulders. “Oh?”
She nodded, plucking one of the last honey-soaked kernels of popcorn from the container. “Yeah, but I mean, c’mon. It’s Hollywood. I know only a few actors actually ‘come out,’ but sexuality is totally a spectrum, and the industry is filled with beautiful people and lots of partying. I’m sure practically everyone has dabbled here and there.”
I swallowed my laughter at her guilelessness. “That doesn’t seem to bother your sensibilities.”
She scoffed. “Why would it? It’s the twenty-first century, and I’m a modern woman.” Her gaze slid sideways appraisingly. “I hope you’re a modern man, Sebastian. We’re millennials, you know? We should be above old prejudices.”
One corner of my mouth escaped the lockdown I’d imposed on my grin. “Certo, I’m as modern as they come.”
She nodded firmly, like she’d known all along, but the way she tipped her head to tap her cheek against my shoulder was its own kind of validation.
After the movie, we washed our hands of honey residue and went on Linnea’s self-directed film tour of the city. She had one of those fancy watches that tracked our steps, and in the four hours we wandered between the Shard’s observation deck, King’s Cross Station, Millennial Bridge, and other iconic-shooting locations, we’d walked over eighteen thousand steps. We ducked into a curry shop for supper and dared each other to eat the spiciest things on the menu.Madonna santa, they had milk on the menu because we both drank about a gallon each to quench the fire.
Linnea ended up winning by a landslide, given that Italian food wasn’t all that spicy. She laughed until she cried when sweat started to roll down my forehead and soak the collar of my sweater.
I had fun.
Fun like I hadn’t had since I was back in Napoli with Cosima. It felt like Linnea and I had been friends for years, the kind of easy enjoyment that could only happen organically or not at all. She was funny in an irreverent, witty way that reminded me a bit of Elena’s cutting sense of humour, but there was a dreaminess to her when she spoke about her love of fashion and cinema that reminded me of Giselle.
When it came time to go home to retrieve the car and collect Savannah and Adam from their after-party, I found I was a little reluctant to say goodbye. I walked her into Westminster from our last stop at Big Ben, listening to her talk about her mother’s promises to get her an internship after graduation at the St Aubyn fashion house.
She had two loves, fashion and cinema, which was almost as good a pairing as writing and acting.
“Have you ever considered going into acting like your mother?” I asked as we walked down the dark, relatively empty streets of the posh neighborhood.
“I’ve thought about it,” she admitted almost reluctantly and then shot me a little look as if she sensed my curiosity. “I don’t particularly want to be anything like Miranda, if you haven’t noticed how much I dislike her.”
