Burning the Map Read Free Page A

people hung around the table chanting and cheering with each drink. Sin was one of them, but she stood slightly apart, her arms clamped over her chest, her face tense, eyes staring.
    â€œDon’t,” she said to Kat when another shot was poured, but Kat waved her away with a lazy arm that seemed to float.
    I watched this for a minute. I don’t know why Sin didn’t speak up more, tell her to fucking knock it off, but that’s how it is between those two. It’s as if Sin can’t comprehend Kat’s behavior, or maybe she wishes she could be more like her.Either way, at Kat’s craziest moments, Sin seems to lose her usual strength and drop into the background.
    I didn’t know the whole pattern that night. I just saw one friend about to pass out on her face and another about to combust. So I leaned over Kat, poured a huge triple shot in the plastic cup she was using, and chugged it.
    â€œThere,” I said, trying not to gag. “She won.”
    The guys protested, but the crowd around us burst into applause. I pulled Kat from the chair and out the door into a chilly Michigan night.
    She slung her arms around my neck in a stumbling hug. “You’re all right,” she said, her words a little slurry.
    â€œThanks,” Sin said, when she came out with our coats. She squeezed my hand and shot me an open, relieved kind of smile I’d never seen on her before.
    I hadn’t done much, at least I didn’t think so at the time. But I had earned my role in our little group that night. I’d found my place.
    Â 
    The piazza surrounding the Pantheon is aglow in a warm, gold light that shines from the fountain in the middle. Francesco knows the owner of the bar and is able to get us a table just to the right of the fountain. Kat, Lindsey and I order Moretti beers, while Poster Boy orders cappuccinos for his crew.
    Once we sit, Poster Boy places his arm around Kat in a way that strikes me as proprietary rather than friendly, but she doesn’t seem bothered. She keeps touching him—her fingers grazing his hand, her head resting briefly on his shoulder—and even the way she gazes at him when he’s talking seems more a stroke than a look. She’s always been a flirt, but this is fast. Maybe it’s the change of scenery, being on the other side of the pond for the first time.
    I keep glancing at Sin to see if she’s noticing this, but she seems more loosened up than usual, too. She asks the guysquestions about living in Italy and kids them about their need to tie sweaters around their shoulders.
    Meanwhile, Francesco pays little direct attention to me, which is slightly insulting, but just fine, since I’m not looking to hook up. I let the conversation swirl around me while I stare at the Pantheon, a huge circular temple made of stone and cement. The interior design classes I took in college taught me that it’s an engineering marvel because of the massive domed ceiling that lets light onto the marble floors, but what really baffles me is that it was originally built in 27 B.C . Ironic, because it’s now surrounded by cars and cell phones and platform sandals.
    As a History Channel junkie, John would have loved it here if only he could have ripped himself away from the office for a few weeks. Lately, I’ve wondered if he enjoys his work more than he enjoys me. As I sip my beer, I start to review the moments we’ve spent together during the past few months, then going back further, to come up with the last time we’d had fun together, real fun, not just the getting-dressed-up-to-go-to-a-cousin’s-wedding-and-drinking-bad-table-wine kind of fun. I want to remember the belly laughs, the accidental fun, the spontaneous good times at the end of an otherwise crappy day. We’d had those times at the beginning—the pub crawl we arranged with John’s neighbors during a blizzard; the time John surprised me with a weekend trip to