Page 27 of The Roman Holiday Rule

“Flattered, but this is urgent,” a gravelly, amused male voice says.

I pull the phone away from my ear and scowl at the number. Mark. I don’t even try to stop the “ugh” that comes out of my mouth, because that tiny flutter in my stomach at his voice is super inconvenient, misplaced, and confusing. “I thought you were my best friend.”

“I get that a lot.”

I snort, then grit my teeth. He’snotfunny. I only semi-laughed because of the delirium of jet lag.

“Are you at your hotel?”

“No, I’m headed to a restaurant. Why?” I turn down the nextstreet and gasp. Massive, ancient columns line the front of a building. From my research I remember it’s Hadrian’s Temple, but I didn’t expect it to be so ... imposing. This is on the schedule in a few days, so I keep walking.

“The airline dropped a suitcase off at my place while I wasn’t there, except it’s yours.”

“What? You have my luggage?”

He chuckles. “Well,Idon’t have twenty pairs of shoes.”

I stop. If he were here, I’d slay him with eye daggers. “You went through my suitcase?” Apparently for Mark, three backup pairs of shoes, including sandals, is an uncountably high number. And here I thought architects were math-y.

“No, that was a joke.” He growls, and I can visualize him pinching the bridge of his nose like he did on the airplane. “Please tell me you have mine so we don’t have to wait for the airline to fix this.”

I’m caught on the fact Mark made another joke. He has an odd sense of enemy behavior.

“I won’t be at the hotel until after dinner.”

“Okay, call me when you’re there.”

I hang up before I say something I regret, like how annoying it is that in a city this size, I can’t get any peace from him or that for some inexplicable reason, it was nice to hear his voice.

It’s not until my bowl of pasta on the red plaid oilcloth is half eaten that I can spare a thought for anything but this meal. The freshly made pasta and homemade sauce with chunks of bacon-like meat they callguancialeis heaven. The recipe is a family secret—I asked.

I may already have the answer to the bet. This meal could be the heart of Italy. It’s definitely the heart of my mouth.

At this early hour, there’s not a soul but me in the dining room, so I prop my phone against my glass and video call Julie.

She opens with, “It’s about time!” and pops a potato chip into her mouth. She’s on a busy New York City street, and with her brightorange glasses and a matching chunky necklace not many people could pull off with success, she looks right at home. “You’ve been on the ground for a full day. What part of ‘let me know when you get in’ was confusing?”

I laugh. “Like you weren’t tracking my flights.”

She points a chip at the camera. “Touché. So what’s this message about the reception program? It didn’t make any sense.”

“Did you switch the design graphics on the reception program?”

Julie screws up her face and checks both ways at a crosswalk. “No. Why would I do that? I loved what we came up with.”

“That cityscape isn’t what got printed. Look.” I pull out the program and my mom’s Trevi Fountain envelope, holding them both up in front of the camera. She’s pored over those unopened envelopes with me for the past year, so her reaction is as strong as mine was.

She stops and squints at her phone screen, eyes darting between the two papers. Someone honks, and she starts moving again. “Whoa. That’s uncanny.”

“Strange, right? And then this morning, a hawker tried to sell me this exact arrangement.” I point at the watercolor bouquet on the seat of the boat below the hot air balloons.

She shivers, eyes wide. “You just blew my mind for a second. But I’m sure there’s an explanation. That combination of flowers isn’t unusual, so it’s not wild that more than one person thought to arrange it like that. Freaky, but not impossible. Ask Gia.”

She’s right. It’s bizarre, but it’s not like something fantastical is going on.

“So how’d you spend your first day? What’s the big plan this evening?”

I panorama the phone around the out-of-the-way, family-owned pasta joint with four items on the menu. The walls are cluttered with mismatched knickknacks on shelves and tiny framed photos of family.