AllFreeNovel
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“Sorry,” I say as we get out of the shop, looking up at the evening sky. The clouds have cleared, and someone in the distance is burning leaves. The smell of smoke drifts over. “Not that I don’t think camping is one of the Vermont bucket list things, but this shoot put me in a cinematic mood.”
“Is that a thing?” Marco raises an eyebrow.
“It should be,” I smile. “I was thinking of Audrey Hepburn.”
“Who?”
I groan. “You don’t know her, of course you don’t. Well, have you heard ofRoman Holiday? It’s an old movie about a European princess who runs away in Rome…” He is staring at me blankly. At the word ‘princess’ he bites his lip. “Well, she and Gregory Peck,” I explain quickly, “they end up running away from the palace people and end up spending a normal day together. They do these things… Like, she rides a vespa and he teaches her…”
“There will be no touching of the Ducati,” he interrupts me.
“It was worth a shot,” I say sweetly.
“No.” His eyes are laughing, but his tone is serious.
“Right, fine, fine, no one is touching your precious Ducati.”
There is silence for a minute. He laughs.
“What else do they do?” he asks finally. “Greg and whats-her-name.”
“It’s Gregory. And Audrey. Well, she gets a haircut. A makeover, really.”
He looks me up and down. “Is that what you want?”
“Are you implying I need one?” I immediately go on the defensive.
His face goes closed-up, scared. I have never seen a guy being so careful about what he is going to say next. Not that Marco is careful in general. But he is now. He looks terrified to death.
“Do… you… want one?” he asks slowly.
I look at him strangely, narrowing my eyes, and I swear, the guy stops breathing. I can’t help myself, I burst out laughing.
“You are terrified right now,” I say.
He laughs too, smacks my arm softly, so that it doesn’t hurt. “Always,” he says. “I’m always terrified of you, you evil little thing.” Then he sobers up abruptly. “Of course I am terrified. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and make you feel like you… like you need to change anything. You’re perfect.”
My laughter stops. “Don’t,” I say.
“What? Like you don’t know you are?”
“I know it for a fact that I’m not. You know how?” I grab a strand of my straight hair. My braid got destroyed at some point last night in the woods, and I haven’t bothered to make it again. “This.”
“What about it?”
“It’s not me, it’s not real. They changed me. My own hair… It’s different. I had to be like this for PR. They thought it would look more… ‘European’ straight.” His eyes travel all over my face, searching me, as if he needs to decide for himself if I’m telling the truth or testing him or whatever.
Then, he grabs my hand, his long fingers wrapped around my wrist. “Right,” he says. “We’re going to do it.” He’s already leading me to the bike.
“Do what?”
“That Audrey stuff.” He whips out his phone and types something furiously into the search bar. “There’s a hair salon a ten-minute ride from here,” he says. “It’s open. Let’s do it.”
“Wait.” My hand slips from his, and he turns around to face me. There’s something strange going on in his face. Something intense. He raises his eyebrows in question, waiting. “I want to go back,” I say. “To how I was before they made me into this… this princess. I don’t want a makeover. I want to be me, I want to be who I was before I began wanting to please everybody else. I want a make-back.”
“Ok,” he says slowly, swinging a long leg across the Ducati. He sits still, waiting for me to climb behind him. “A make-back it is.”
/Marco/
