Meg shrugs. “I was just craving Veselka.”

  “Totally pregnant,” Rufus says, passing out spoons.

  “Shut up,” Meg says.

  “So,” BD says, “have we gotten to the part yet where Lanie is a free agent in southern Italy? Because those men . . . mamma mia! And we all know how she feels about chest hair. Lanie, honey, the Italian word for morning-after pill is pillola del giorno dopo. Say it with me—”

  I bury my face in my couch pillow.

  “You have two days in Italy all to yourself before the launch,” Meg says. “I recommend a shit ton of room service. And maybe Pornhub.”

  “And journaling,” Rufus says.

  “And a big, fat—”

  “No, BD!” we all shout.

  “Swim!” my grandmother says. “There’s a secret beach in Positano, a few coves south of the pier. I don’t know if you know this, Rufus, Meg—but Lanie’s grandfather and I stumbled upon it once, when we were young. Magic happened there.”

  “Maybe you should drop Lanie a pin so she can retrace your, uh . . . steps?” Meg says.

  “Or thrusts?” Rufus says, snickering.

  “Because if anyone could use some magic . . .” Meg says.

  “Some secrets can’t be told,” BD says and winks at me. “Besides, Lanie’s got to twirl her own linguine. Have a wonderful trip, my dear. Wear sunscreen. Drink a Campari on the rocks for me. And please, do us all a favor and don’t come back without having at least one irresponsible Italian tryst!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I fell in love with motorcycles on the back of my ex-fiancé’s bike,” I say to Piero, my new friend from the Neapolitan motorcycle rental agency, when we meet outside of customs. “For years, I meant to get my own license, but life got in the way. Then my ex-fiancé sold his bike, which led to our breaking up, which led to me being like: What am I waiting for?”

  It’s eight a.m. in Italy, two a.m. back home. I had three cups of coffee as the plane was landing, and I fear it’s beginning to show.

  “I’m here to give this speech in Positano. But I’m also taking a few days to myself. To work through some other stuff. And I figure—what better way to do that than on a motorcycle on the Amalfi Coast?”

  I pause and take a breath. Piero nods like he’s only catching one out of every ten words, which is possibly why I’m finding it so easy to talk to him. He leads me out of the terminal, along the airport entrance’s sunny circular drive. I pause to take my first gulp of Italian air.

  It doesn’t not smell like the arrivals drop-off at Newark, but it’s also deliciously exotic. This moment marks the beginning of a long weekend of warm sunshine and winding roads, of panoramic sea views and unhealthy amounts of mozzarella. I turn my phone to Do Not Disturb so I can fully soak it up.

  Piero hadn’t waited while I paused to appreciate the moment. He’s speed walked three lanes of traffic ahead, so I hurry to catch up. I weave between gridlocked Alfa Romeos and Vespas, around chic Italian women wielding chic Italian roller-bags. Soon I see the parking lot where my bike awaits.

  “I don’t have tons of riding experience,” I call to Piero, “but Bernadette—she was my teacher—she said never look down at where you are. She said to keep your eyes on where you’ll be. Don’t you think that’s good advice, metaphorically speaking?”

  “May I please check the box for our most comprehensive insurance policy?” Piero asks, eyeing me over the top of his forms.

  “That’s a good idea.”

  He leads me to a carbon red Ducati Diavel. It’s just what I wanted: a sleek and shiny 1260, with a hundred and sixty horsepower, ninety-five elegant pounds of torque, zero to sixty in two seconds—plus a Bluetooth sound system soon to be playing many hours of Prince’s greatest hits.

  “She’s beautiful,” I say.

  “And all yours for the next three days,” he says, handing me the keys. “Do you need directions? Where are you staying?”

  “Il Bacio in Positano,” I say and flash the portable GPS Meg slipped into my carry-on as a going-away present.

  “Ah.” Piero grins. “My girlfriend says that is the most beautiful hotel in all of Italy. A place for lovers.”

  “And self-lovers!” I clarify, mostly for myself. When he smirks at me, I add, “I didn’t mean it like that. Not entirely, anyway.”

  Piero gives me a sidelong glance. He looks at my duffel bag and reaches into the pocket of his jeans. He pulls out a bungee cord. “Take this—”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “I brought one.”

  “You need two,” he says.

  It takes me fifteen minutes after Piero leaves to attach the GPS to the windshield, ten more to secure my duffel bag to the luggage rack with the bungee cords, and another ten to capture a cute selfie to send BD and Meg and Rufus when I feel like coming back on the grid.

  After that, it takes me ten more minutes of sitting astride the Ducati to work up the nerve to start the engine.

  I tell myself that once I get on the road, I’ll be fine. But when I look past the parking lot, to the sunny street leading out of the airport, I see all of Naples zipping along at a pace that puts my heart in my throat. Bernadette said never to cry on a motorcycle, but anxious tears prick my eyes.

  When I said yes to Italy, I thought that by now all my problems would be solved. The manuscript is in, minus one forthcoming chapter. My promotion is official. Why do I still feel like something’s missing?

  I think of what Noah told me in his office the night we found the idea for Two Thousand Picnics. He’d said that coming here might change my life. He’d been teasing—I think—and I’d dismissed him, but don’t I want it to be true? Isn’t that why I’m here?

  I want to touch my mother’s origins. I want to feel the roots of my grandparents’ love. And now I’ve traveled all this way, and I’m scared I won’t find what I’m looking for. I’m scared I’ll go home knowing nothing more about my mother or myself.

  In Noa Callaway books, heroes always find their stories’ meanings. But how do they actually do it? What would a Noa Callaway heroine do in my motorcycle boots today?

  What would Noah Ross do?

  I wish I could talk to him. I wish he hadn’t been so inscrutable at his apartment the other night.

  I wish that he were here.

  Lanie, I tell myself, channeling Meg and Rufus, you’re in a parking lot at the threshold of the Amalfi Coast. You’re scared. It’s natural. Take it one step at a time.

  I put the key in the ignition. I close my eyes and think of BD. I think of my mother. I think of Elizabeth from Two Thousand Picnics in Central Park.

  I start the engine.

  The Ducati hums beneath me. I ease off the clutch and gently roll the throttle. The bike and I glide forward. There aren’t many cars around, so I take my time getting acclimated, letting my heart rate slow. I make a few loops, learning how the bike responds. When I feel ready, I exit the lot—and feel a warm slap of sun on my skin.

  I whoop as I merge with the traffic, keeping my eyes on the stretch of road where I want to be. I remind myself to breathe, to keep my chin up for balance, to release the tension in my shoulders. The bike wobbles as I come to my first stop in traffic. I will not drop this bike, I vow through clinched teeth as traffic moves again and I wobble back into motion.

  I’m on a highway outside Naples. The road is long and straight. The wind is calm, the sky deep blue. I can take it easy. I don’t have to be anywhere until the launch tomorrow night.

  Twenty minutes in, I’m jubilant. The traffic has thinned, the Ducati corners beautifully, and I’m riding south on a winding sun-drenched road threading through some of Italy’s most picturesque towns.

  The air grows fragrant with springtime scents—lemon and honeysuckle, and every now and then a salty blast of sea. The hills become steep, with only an occasional guardrail. Ahead on my left, the sleeping giant Mount Vesuvius comes into view. I hadn’t planned on any stops on the hour-long drive between the airport and Il Bacio. I thought I might be jet-lagged or struggling with the bike. But when I see the sign for the turnoff to the famous archeological site, I take it. I’ve never been one to let a good sign pass me by.

  I park the bike in a dusty lot filled with white tour buses. I pay the entrance fee, grab a brochure, and wander through a maze of ancient streets.

  I stand in the center of Pompeii’s forum, invisible columns rising around me. I touch the stones and get goose bumps, imagining a future visitor to New York City, wandering an excavated Central Park. Could she put her hand on a remnant of the Gapstow Bridge, reach back through time, and touch my life? Could she feel what that site meant to me?

  In the Garden of the Fugitives, I stop before the figure of a mother cradling her child. Her love glows from the past. When I read on a plaque that these remains were cast from the negative space left behind when the woman and her child decomposed in the volcanic ash, I press my hand against the glass. I know how much can be felt in an absence.

  I pause again before two embracing lovers. The anguish in their limbs is clear. I think it’s not just that they know they’re dying. I think they also grieve that a third thing—their love—will die as well.

  But did it die? Can’t I feel it, here, right now?

  I know life is ephemeral, and we only get to do it once, but some true things—like this embrace, like the best love stories—live on.

  I carry this idea with me as I leave Pompeii, as I mount the Ducati again. The bike climbs along a sloping cypress-lined promenade, past terra-cotta church spires, and a vast, immemorial herb garden whose towering hedges of rosemary scent the air. A mist of fog settles over the road, so I slow down, inhaling clouds. I feel a part of everything. I feel as though the deep, disbanded past is reaching out to me with its wisdom.

  It’s early evening by the time I park in front of cherry red Il Bacio hotel on the gorgeous Amalfi Drive. The jet lag has begun to set in. I peel myself off the bike, give the seat a grateful pat, and exhume my duffel from the tangled bungee cords.

  “Signora Bloom,” the smiling young receptionist says. “We are very happy to host you for the launch of Noa Callaway’s new book. I am a fan!” She flashes the Italian hardcover of Two Hundred and Sixty-Six Vows from the behind the desk. “Everything has been taken care of. I will show you to your room.”

  I follow her through an ivy-lined foyer, up a curved flight of marble steps, then a second, more private flight of stairs, which end at a large wooden door. Using a golden key shaped like a cresting wave, she opens the door to my suite.

  It’s heaven. I step into a living room whose opposite wall is all windows with full ocean views. There are lilies on the coffee table and a plate of plump, deep purple figs. Through a curtain of glass beads is a separate bedroom, also with ocean views, and big enough for a white tufted king bed to sit in the center of the room.

  The receptionist moves around the suite, adjusting shades, turning off lamps, lighting candles, and ensuring that the prosecco, in its bucket of ice by the bed, is properly chilled.

  Though she’s probably accustomed to tips the size of my monthly salary, I give her ten euros and a smile. When the door clicks closed behind her, I let out my breath and pop the prosecco. I carry a glass into the world’s best rain shower, then change into the silky peach hotel robe.

  It’s sunset, and the view out the windows is astonishing—a horizon of full blue ocean and pink-hued, endless sky. I wander out to the terrace. A warm breeze rustles by, carrying the scent of wisteria blossoming in a great urn on the terrace next door.

  Two flights below, a woman in a black bikini swims leisurely laps in the hotel’s infinity pool. Farther down, on the pebble beach, oversize umbrellas make multicolored rows. Bodies glisten on the sand. Sailboats dot the sea.

  It’s the kind of overwhelming beauty that makes me feel a little lonely. I turn on my phone to let BD and Meg and Rufus know that I’ve arrived.

  I laugh at the selfies I’d taken earlier in the airport lot. There’s one I thought was good, my face in the side mirror of the Ducati. But I see now how terrified I was. Half a day in Italy has already done wonders for my complexion, and my mental state. I’m about to snap a better photo of myself on the balcony now when an email appears on my screen.

  To: elainebloom@peonypress.com

  From: noacallaway@protonmail.com

  Date: May 17, 7:06 p.m.

  Subject: Three Things You’ve Been Waiting For

  Dear Lanie,

  I hope this finds you on a balcony at sunset, glass of prosecco in hand.

  Please find herewith three things you’ve been waiting for. The first is an apology.

  (Come on, you know you’ve been waiting for it.)

  I’m sorry I was _______ the other night.

  (I see you on that balcony, rolling your eyes. I spent twenty minutes searching for the most precise descriptor. Was I weird? Distant? Cold? Brusque? (Brusque was my top contender, and one you’d line-edit into oblivion.) Or perhaps, simply, blank? I defer to you.)

  The truth is, when you came by my apartment, I was scared . . . about the other two things you’ve been waiting for from me. They are attached. Once you read them, I think you’ll understand.

  Yours,

  Noah

  P.S. Regardless of how things turn out, I hope someday I’ll get to hear about your ride down the Amalfi Coast.

  Regardless of how things turn out?

  Then I read the names of the attachments. The first is titled “Chapter One.” The second—“NYT Op-Ed, run date 5/18.”

  I click on the second attachment.

  BY ANY OTHER NAME

  BY NOAH ROSS

  You don’t know me, but you or someone you love may have read one of my books. For the past ten years, I have been publishing love stories under the pseudonym Noa Callaway.

  A pseudonymous writer never meets their readers. I’ve never had a book signing, nor bantered with a fan on social media. My publisher has managed all publicity on my books’ behalf. Every six months they send me a sack of letters from Noa Callaway fans. I never read them. They’re not for me. They were written to Noa Callaway, and I am only Noa Callaway when I’m writing, never anytime else.

  This distance from the readers of my books has bought me an ignorance, one that I was wrong never to challenge. I thought my stories ended with their final pages; I thought it didn’t matter who I was.

  That changed this year when I met someone who saw through me. Who forced me to see through myself. And when I looked close at what I was doing, I couldn’t sleep at night.

  I am a cis white straight affluent male. My email address is noacallaway@protonmail.com. If you are reading this and you are outraged, I don’t blame you. Feel free to let me know.

  This op-ed and its aftermath may be the end of my career, but I can’t hide behind a name any longer. I want to be honest with my readers, with whom I am finding I have more in common than I ever knew.

  The other day, I sat down and read some of Noa Callaway’s fan mail. I’m sorry for the slow responses, but it’s only now that I know what to say:

  To June: Like you, I also enjoy reading in the tub on rainy days. Thanks for your book recommendations; I’ll check them out. The best thing I’ve read recently is a tie between Julie Otsuka’s Buddha in the Attic and Heather Christle’s The Crying Book.

  To Jennifer: It’s hard to pin down what inspired Ninety-Nine Things. I wrote my first novel out of hope, back before I ever expected to publish, or ever dreamed I’d use a pseudonym. I had never experienced the love I wrote for that character, but I wanted it to be true. I suppose I’ve been trying to write it into existence ever since.

  To MacKenzie: Fifteen publishers rejected my first novel before I found my home at Peony Press. Keep writing. Finish your stories. It only takes one person to say yes.

  To Sharon: I’m so sorry about your husband. My mother suffers from the same disease. It’s heartbreak in slow motion. You’ll be in my thoughts.

  And to Lanie: Your letter to me is a decade old. I’m sorry this took me so long. Wherever you are when you read this, I want you to know that I agree: I think we could become great friends, too.

  With my heart in my throat, I close the email, scroll through my contacts, and press call.

  “Lanie?” The voice on the other end sounds surprised. “How’s Italy?”

  “Meg,” I breathe. “Check your email.”

  I forward her Noah’s op-ed then wait on the phone as she reads it.

  “Ohmigod,” she says. “Ohmigod. OhmiGOD. Lanie, do you know what this means? He likes you back! That last line? That’s . . . wow.”

  “What?” I say. “That’s your takeaway? Meg, put on your publicist sombrero. We need to make plans. ASAP. Besides, he explicitly said he thinks we could be friends. Has there ever been a clearer kiss-off in the history of unrequited romance?”

  “Speaking as your friend,” she says, “I’ll agree to disagree. Speaking as Noa Callaway’s publicist . . .” There’s a long pause on the line. Then a sigh. “Well, as mea culpas go, it’s not the worst. I’m not saying there won’t be hell to pay, but ultimately, my prediction, after I do my job of course, is that there will be no permanent cancellation of Noa Callaway.”

  “Really?”

  “Give me a few hours. Let me see what I can do.”

  “What about Sue? Should I—”

  “You should enjoy the Amalfi Coast,” she says firmly. “There’s nothing more you can do from there. I’ll meet with Sue today. We’ll circle back later. I mean it, Lanie. Hit the pool, sip a cocktail, leave this to me.”