Flirting in Italian by Lauren Henderson Read Free Book Online Page B

looming up before us is one of the major holiday hurdles that any group of girls has to face: the first time they all decide to go swimming together.
    I
hate
this bit. It’s the Swimsuit Beauty Parade.

Swimsuit Beauty Parade
     
    The parade is brutal, but it’s over relatively quickly. There’s a flurry of movement as we spread out our towels, settle on the loungers, dart quick looks around us to see if anyone else is watching, and peel off our outer layers. Paige has effortlessly won the Best Pool Outfit competition; her white lace cover-up is gorgeous, and I totally covet it. These American girls are much chicer than me and Kelly: like all my friends, I just wear a strappy top and a little pareo-thingy over my swimming things when I go to the beach or the pool, while Kelly doesn’t even have that—she’s just pulled the T-shirt and mini she was wearing before over her swimsuit.
    But these girls have actual pool-lounging outfits. Paige’s pink bikini is coordinated to her pink diamante-studdedflip-flops, and her cowboy hat looks really cool with the white lace of the cover-up. You could laugh at her, call her too matchy-matchy, or say she’s trying too hard, but to be honest, I think both Kelly and I envy how smart she looks. Kendra has tossed off her own yellow wrap and dived in to swim lengths, her slim, dark shape cutting through the water like a pair of designer scissors, arms and legs long and lean. Kelly and I join Paige in a chorus of oohs and aahs about how beautiful the pool is.
    “I mean, I saw it in the photos online,” Paige is saying, picking up one in a long series of suncreams, double-checking it’s the right factor, and then applying it to her shoulders. “And it looked stunning. But in real life, it’s, like,
amazing
. I’m gonna take a ton of photos and make everyone back home jealous.”
    The pool’s at the side of Villa Barbiano, set in a wide green lawn bordered with fragrant lavender and rosemary bushes: the swimming pool comes right up to the border of the lawn, and that side drops away with the slope of the hill with what I think is called an infinity edge. It means that when you’re actually in the water, you can float and look at the landscape with nothing to obstruct the view. I find myself wondering what a painting would look like if you did it as if you were in the pool: glittering water below, distant hills in the center, blue skies above, the concrete surround of the pool just visible at the far edges of the frame.
    And then I shake my head in confusion.
Tuscany definitely does something weird to me. I’ve never had this impulse to paint everything I see before.…
    I fold my top and pareo and put them on the little darkgreen table next to my lounger. Then I start applying sunscreen. Kelly’s doing the same thing, and we’re glancing over at each other, checking out what I really don’t want to think of as competition, but it’s so hard not to. With the film posters and ads showing pictures of perfect bikini bodies, the magazines that pick apart celebrities, rating their good and bad bits, it’s almost impossible not to do the same. I wish I didn’t, but I do. I feel really mean to be relieved that Paige, though not at all fat, is bigger than me, taller and wider, with solid thighs and arms, while Kelly is pale, plump, and clearly miserable in a green one-piece that makes her white skin look almost putrid. I’m very grateful that I’ve been fake tanning for a couple of months; my naturally sallow skin looks nicely pale brown, and my black polka-dot bikini, with little frills around the legs and bosom, is structured enough that it makes the most of my shape.
    Or rather, it does when I look at myself in the mirror, tummy sucked in. Sitting up, walking around—those are very different activities, and I know I’d loathe seeing a photo of myself snapped at those moments.
    Whereas Kendra, rising from the swimming pool, pulling herself up to stand on the side with one