Florence Henderson Quotes

I’m in public, in a club in Florence, snogging a boy who I met only a couple of hours ago, so madly that I’m weak at the knees…in full view, if they looked over, of his friends and two girls I barely know… My eyes snap open, and I drag my mouth away from Luca’s, gasping for breath. I find my feet under me, pull back from him, and promptly grab the edge of the table to steady myself. My hair’s fallen down again; I can feel it tumbling down my back. My lips are wet. I raise a hand to wipe them dry, aware that my eyes are stretched wide with shock. I literally cannot believe what just happened. I feel like someone just gave me a violent electric shock. Luca looks equally disheveled. His hair’s tumbling forward in straight black lines, his blue eyes wide, his lips redder from kissing me so hard. He looks as amazed as I am. “Ammazzati,” he mutters. I’m still too close to him. I can feel the force field between us. I take another step back, still gripping the table’s edge, because I see his expression change unexpectedly. His blue eyes darken, and his mouth twists cynically. “So,” he says, his tone sarcastic, almost bitter, “you are a success in Italy, Violetta. Congratulazioni. You spend only one day here and already you are kissed by a boy! Your friends will be envious.

We cross a bridge, and all of us girls gasp in unison and crane our necks to the right-hand window of the car, pushing each other to get a sight of Florence by night--the dark velvety river lit up with glittering lights; narrow bridges farther down, the famous one with all the houses on it clustered tight together; a cathedral dome, terra-cotta and white, rising above the marble buildings, illuminated with soft spotlights, exactly like-- “Oh, it’s like a movie!” Paige exclaims in delight. “A Room with a View,” Kendra agrees. “I love that movie.” I do too; I think the bit where Julian Sands goes up to Helena Bonham Carter in the cornfield and kisses her is one of the most romantic scenes I’ve ever seen. I’m just about to agree, when Luca says, “Oh, yes. Italy is very romantic,” so dryly that the words die on my lips. His accent’s light, his English seems very good. “Lots of corruption, lots of bribes. Very romantic.” “Well, he’s a load of fun, isn’t he?” Paige says in my ear.

I miss Evan. We’re friends on Facebook now, of course, and before he left he asked me to swap mobile numbers, at a time when no one else was around. We gave him a lift to the station, and he sat next to me and I felt his arm hovering over my back, sinking slowly, cautiously, faux-casually, to avoid startling me or having any of the other girls notice. But it settled eventually, and for the last twenty minutes Evan’s arm lay along my shoulders, warm and heavy, a secret that we were sharing in plain sight. I liked it. I liked it a lot. It made me feel…secure. Steadied. As we drove through Florence, with all its distractions to look at, he closed his fingers around my shoulder in a gentle clasp that turned the arm around me into something definite and made me shiver a little with pleasure. And when we all said goodbye, hugging him one after the other, I felt his hands tighten around my waist and he kissed me, swiftly but unmistakably, on the side of my head that the other girls couldn’t see. I was the last: he’d already shaken Catia’s hand and said his polite thank-yous to his hostess. So after the kiss, he bent down, picked up his big rucksack with the guitar slung on the back, and strolled off to find the bus terminal and buy a ticket to Arezzo, where he was meeting his friends at a jazz festival. And as I watched him make his way through the crowds, girls’ heads turning to look at the big, tall, handsome blond boy, I felt a spike of jealousy, the last confirmation, if any were needed, that my feelings for Evan had passed from friendship into maybe, just maybe, the possibility of something stronger.

And another thought hits me now like a physical blow as I look at the man who could be my father. Was this all planned? Did he come back from Florence because he heard of my existence? Did he make his wife throw a party so he could get a look at me in the most completely unsuspicious, neutral way possible? I tear my head away swiftly, burying it in Evan’s shoulder. “Hey!” he says above me, sounding understandably surprised. “You okay? What’s up?” “Everyone’s looking--I feel shy,” I manage to say. It’s not completely a lie. He turns me with him, his arm still around my waist, walking away from the lit windows and into the comparative shadow at the back of the terrace. “Complimenti!” a high voice trills, and I look sideways as we pass to see Elisa smiling at us, extremely complacent to see me in another boy’s arms. And beyond her, Luca, not smiling: positively glowering. I can see his eyes now, and they’re burning as blue as if there were a miniature gas flame in each one. I feel scorched by the anger in his stare.

You realize that truly,” Luca says to me very seriously, “truly, this is all yours?” He waves around him, and I know that he doesn’t just mean the room. He means the castello, the land around it, the vineyards, and, extending outward even more, the di Vesperi holdings over Italy; the house in Florence, and probably quite a lot more that I don’t know about. “You are the di Vesperi here,” he points out. “Not me. I am just a bastard di Meglio.” “Hey,” I say, not wanting him to be too gloomy. “I’m a bastard too.” “Bastardi insieme,” he says, hugging me. “We are bastards together.” “Okay, stop with the bastard stuff,” I say. “Enough. You do this sometimes, you get all dark and unnecessary.” I frown up at him. “You have to be more cheerful,” I tell him. “Sometimes I think you think it’s cool to be, you know, gloomy and brooding. You need to tone that down from now on. Smile more.” Luca’s eyes spark bright with amusement. “You are very good for me, Violetta,” he says, taking my hands and kissing them. “You make me happy. You make me smile. You are the only girl that does this for me.