Page 75 of Our Chaotic Love Affair

Our guide met us at the entrance, a woman named Francesca with immaculate English. Cash told me he had arranged this VIP tour last minute. I had no idea what VIP meant. Apparently, it meant we got to skip every line and go places the regular tourists didn’t get to go. I was trying very hard not to think about what that had cost. Or what strings he had pulled.

He was a Bancroft. Their world was not something I would ever understand. I had a feeling few people could understand the access their wealth gave them.

Francesca led us through the ground level first, explaining the layout and the engineering. I hung on every word. I took pictures and made Cash stop so I could get a panoramic shot of the arena floor. Despite my earlier joke, I asked Francesca at least six questions that made her warm up to me considerably.

“You’re interested in history?” she asked as we descended a staircase into the lower levels.

“Obsessed,” I admitted. “When I was a kid I had posters of Pompeii and the Pyramids all over my bedroom walls. My friends thought I was weird.”

“You were weird,” Cash said from behind me.

I threw him a look over my shoulder. “Still am weird. It’s part of my charm.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t charming.”

I stumbled on the next step. Francesca caught my elbow, steadying me, and gave me a knowing smile that made my cheeks burn.

We descended into the labyrinth, two levels of tunnels and chambers carved directly into the earth beneath the arena floor. The stone was cool and damp, lit now with modern lights that cast long shadows across the ancient walls. I could see the grooves where cages had been anchored. The channels for the pulley systems. The trapdoors that would have opened onto the sand above.

“They kept animals down here,” Francesca explained, gesturing to a series of small chambers. “Lions. Bears. Exotic beasts brought from across the empire. And the gladiators waited in these rooms.” She pointed to another set of cells. “From here, they could hear the crowd above. The screams of those that had gone before them while they prepared to fight.”

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it. The roar of eighty thousand people. The heat. The fear. The machinery groaning as platforms rose through the floor, delivering death or glory or both. If these walls could talk.

No. I didn’t want them to talk. I didn’t want to feel what those pour souls had experienced. I would have shat myself without a doubt. It was horrible. Terrible. Intriguing, though.

“Being here is incredible,” I breathed.

Francesca smiled. “I’ll leave you here for fifteen minutes to explore on your own. I’ll wait for you at the top of the stairs. Holler if you need me.”

She disappeared up into the dim stairwell, and suddenly it was just Cash and me standing in a two-thousand-year-old piece of history.

It was definitely spooky, and if it wasn’t for the six-foot-something guy with me, no way in hell would I have stayed down here. Gladiator ghosts? Hell no.

“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done,” I said.

Cash was leaning against one of the walls, arms crossed, watching me with an expression he got sometimes. It was one I couldn’t quite read. “You really were obsessed with this stuff.”

“Are you kidding? I wanted to be an archaeologist for like three years.” I ran my hand along the stone. “My mom took me to the natural history museum in New York when I was ten and I saw the Temple of Dendur and I was gone. I checked out every book the library had on ancient Egypt. Drove my parents insane talking about mummification. And I might have treated my cats like sacred animals.”

He grinned and shook his head. “Wait, let’s rewind to the bit about mummification.”

“I was very thorough about my interests.” I wandered deeper into the network of tunnels, Cash following behind me. “I had this whole fantasy that I’d grow up and discover a lost tomb somewhere. Be the next Howard Carter. Find treasure and cursed tablets and become famous.”

“Was that the guy who died from a mummy curse?”

I smiled and nodded, impressed he’d caught the reference. “The ‘curse’ was probably just the mold they inhaled in King Tut’s tomb, but yeah, that’s the guy.”

“Damn. So why didn’t you pursue this? You clearly love it.”

“I got to high school and realized I was terrible at science.” I laughed. “Also, I discovered fashion. And boys. And the fact that being an archaeologist means spending a lot of time in the dirt, which is not really my vibe. And living in a tent in some faraway place without running water, toilets, and internet is definitely not my thing.”

“No?”

“I like my creature comforts.” I turned to face him. “But I still love the history. The idea that all these people lived and loved and fought and died, and we’re walking where they walked. It makes me feel small. In a good way.”

He was quiet for a moment, just looking at me. “You would have made a good archaeologist. Very Lara Croft.”

“You think?”