I hung up. Business should have been booming right now as people bought new spring clothes. We had even increased our ad spend over the last two weeks. But if business was still slow…
We’ll be okay, I told myself. Mom always said the shop would be fine, even when things looked grim. I just needed to adopt her positive attitude.
Easier said than done while I was trapped in a hotel room on the other side of the world.
I read the text messages I had been swapping with Donovan. After a few days alone, it was socomfortingto communicate with someone going through the same experience as me. I was picturing him as someone my own age. Maybe a blond with piercing blue eyes. But I hadn’t met him, and I had no idea what he looked like.
I wrote a few draft messages, deleted them, and re-wrote them. Finally I hit send.
Molly: Do you think it’s safe to have dinner on our balconies tonight?
Donovan: As long as we’re six feet apart, I think so. Everyone seems to agree outdoors is safer than indoors. Meet you out there at six?
Molly: I’ll bring the wine!
I dressed up like I was going out for a night on the town. A comfortable summer dress, with my good bra. The one that made my boobs look extra perky. I straightened my hair and spent half an hour putting makeup on in front of the mirror.
That’s when I realized what this felt like: a date. I was dressing up like I was going out with someone. But I didn’t know much about Donovan. For all I knew, he could be in his seventies. He did say he was between jobs. Maybe that was code forretired.
I put on heels, examined myself in the mirror, then kicked them off. Heels would be too much. We were eating on the hotel balcony, not the balcony of a fancy restaurant.
At five minutes to six, I carried a bottle of wine and two glasses outside. Our two balconies were separated by a three-foot gap, but it looked like we could pass food and wine back and forth. Plenty of space, and no mask required. I leaned over the balcony toward his side. His curtains were open, but I couldn’t see deep into his room because of the glare from the sun.
I rested my elbows on the railing and gazed out at the city. The plaza below us was still deserted. A stray newspaper blew across the cobblestones, disappearing down an alley next to a chocolate shop that was closed. Above that building was the top rim of the Colosseum, with the sun beginning to set behind it.
The door slid open on the balcony next to mine.
Donovan wasn’t in his seventies. He was about my age, with olive skin and dark features. He was tall, with broad shoulders beneath a polo shirt that accentuated his V-shaped torso and tapered waist. He had big hands, big enough to hold two bowls of pasta in one while he used the free hand to close the door behind him. He was wearing a blue medical mask, but above it his steel-grey eyes were sharp. I couldn’t see his mouth, but his eyes tightened in a smile.
Donovan is an absolute snack. We should have eaten outside before now. My heart fluttered at the sight of him.
Thanks to the mask, it took me a moment to recognize him.
When I did, my heart skipped a beat for a totally different reason.
Oh no,I thought.It’s him.
6
Donovan
The Day I Scared Her Off
It’s her, I thought with a chuckle.Of course it’s her.
I should have known. It’s not like there were a lot of people in our hotel right now. The chaos from the lockdowns had made me forget all about her tirade in the lobby the other day.
It was just the other day, wasn’t it? It felt like much longer than that. Like the entire world had changed in the past forty-eight hours. Getting mistakenly yelled at seemed soquaintcompared to the problems we were all dealing with now. It was actually kind of funny.
But Molly, the girl I’d been texting with for the past day, looked mortified. Her mouth hung open, and she blinked rapidly like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
So I decided to break the ice with a joke. “If I give you food, do you promise not to yell at me again?”
The joke had the opposite effect. All the color drained from her oval face. “I… I was…”
She looked at the door like she wanted to flee back inside. She took a step in that direction while staring at me like I reallywasHannibal Lecter.
“I think I’m going to go…”