When?
Oh, God.
It felt like my chest was being crushed, and I bent at the waist, trying to breathe deeply as another searing image of them together knocked the breath from my lungs.
When I finally straightened, my feet flew across the cobblestones toward his home, my disbelief becoming a chant that matched my footsteps. Click click, click click, how long, how long?
I needed to talk to him, to find out what really happened, and if Simone was lying. Was she a disgruntled woman who would say anything to hurt someone who left her? Or a hurt woman whose heart had been broken by the man who had given me his?
Finally reaching his apartment, I flew up the stairs, my feet pounding out my confusion and insistence that it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be true.
I tried working out the timeline to see what fit. Maybe things fit if I were to believe her claims. That awful crawly feeling was back, making me doubt, making me wonder.
At his door I considered knocking, but he’d told me never to knock, just to enter. Because only strangers knock, he’d told me, then slipped a hand under my shirt to caress my belly while kissing me stupid.
Had Simone been granted the same privilege?
I opened the door, finding Marcello seated at his drafting desk, a pencil behind his ear and an enormous smile on his face when he saw me. Crossing to me with heavily lidded eyes and sinful lips he was already licking in anticipation of my kiss, he was so incredibly beautiful that only my clenched fists reminded me of what had happened earlier today.
“Tesoro, you’re back so late?” he murmured. “I was beginning to wonder what was keeping you.” He dipped his head to place a kiss along my jawline, his weekend stubble brushing my skin as I pulled away.
I looked up into those warm brown eyes. “Simone.”
His hands stilled on me, his entire body stiffened, his features carved in stone. He cleared his throat.
“Simone? What about her?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
His question lit something deep within me.
“She told me.”
“Told you what?” When his eyes changed, I knew everything she’d implied was true.
My breath hitched. “That you were with her,” I said, my voice sounding strange in my ears. High pitched, a little crazy.
“Yes, you knew that. You saw me with her at the dinner. She was someone I dated for a time. So?”
“So? She stopped me on the street today and told me how long you were together. For a time.”
“Yes, for a time, so?”
I went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Were you fucking us both?”
“It was never serious.” He kept talking, missing what I said. Purposefully missing what I said?
I felt my heart bottom out. “She told me you were fucking us both at the same time, Marcello. Explain to me how that couldn’t possibly be true, that she can’t possibly be right about this.”
“I dated Simone. Casually. Occasionally. I don’t know what she told you, if she was more serious about me than I was about her, but it was not like that for me.”
“It’s funny that you never mentioned her to me after we started . . . after we started.”
“What would I tell you? I didn’t know if you were staying, or for how long. Why would I say anything when we”—he waved between us—“were not together.”
“Were you with us both, Marcello?”
“What are you asking me?”
I laughed, hoarse and hollow. “It’s a simple question: Did you fuck her after you fucked me?”
He reared back as if I struck him. “Now wait a minute, wait just a minute,” he protested, digging his hands into my skin.
I pushed angrily at his hands, tugging free of his grasp.
He let me go, frustrated. “You and I, we weren’t even together,” he insisted. “And what was going on with Simone and me, it was not serious.”
“Well, she sure thought it was!” I pushed him, hard enough that he stumbled back. If I was shocked, he was stunned. “How long after we slept together did you go to her?” My voice was barely audible over my shuddery breathing. To think that he’d been with someone else while we’d started sleeping together . . . I felt sick.
“Tesoro,” he began, laying his hand on my shoulder.
I shook him off. “Don’t call me that! Did you call her that, too?”
I moved as far away from him as I could in the small room.
He stood in the heart of the room looking lost.
“Just tell me the truth, Mar—” I choked on a sob. Hearing her call him Cello was another slap in the face. Even though he’d said he wasn’t serious, it clearly was. They had a shorthand. She was invested.
I was invested, too.
“What does it matter?” he said, stepping back to lean against his desk. His head was in his hands while he spoke. “I don’t remember. I don’t care. There was no you and I then.”
“While I was falling in love with you all over again, you were fucking someone else who loved you.”
I looked up, expecting to see more of the detached response. But wait a minute—he had the nerve to look angry?
“Yes, and that should be very familiar to you,” he said, anger thickening his accent. “In Barcelona, how long for you?”
My head snapped back, startled.
He was pacing now, his hands in his hair, eyes wild, hurt and filled with pain. “How many times did you call Daniel from Spain while I was in your bed, Avery?”
“What? What are you talking about?” I was struck cold.
“When we were in Barcelona, you would leave your bed—our bed, Avery—in the middle of the night to call your boyfriend back in the States. You think I did not know? You didn’t say anything about him, but I knew. You didn’t tell me about him; I didn’t mention Simone. How is this different?”
My cheeks burned, my face flooding with anger. “It’s different because we were kids! I was—” Oh, God. Everything he was saying about Barcelona, about Daniel, was all true.
“What? You were not serious with him? You never said that we were then, and you didn’t say so this time,” he stated, thumping his chest, enraged. His eyes were so cold it felt strange to look at him, to see that coldness directed toward me. “You could have left at any moment. I had no idea if you were going to stay in Rome, to stay with me. I’d been sure that you would stay with me in Barcelona. Or that we would figure out a way to make it work when you left. That maybe you would come with me back to Italy or that I would come to America. So yes, I was still with her. I didn’t know that you wouldn’t leave again.”
“So, you did this to what, hurt me? To get back at me for what I did? Jesus Christ, Marcello, we’re adults. You should have known this was different,” I sputtered. “Running into you again after all of these years, how could that have happened unless we were supposed to be together—don’t you see? This was our second chance!”
“I am not a mind reader!” he thundered, leaning back against the wall, scrubbing at his face with his hands. “I ended things with Simone because of you when I knew you were staying. You didn’t do the same for me. You cheated on your boyfriend with me, and now you stand here and accuse me of doing the same thing?”
Oh, God. He was right. All those years ago, I’d cheated on Daniel. And I’d tried to keep him a secret from Marcello, but he’d known all along.
“But why didn’t you ever say anything about it?”
“Because I assumed you would choose me,” he choked out bitterly. My hand flew to my mouth.
What had I done?
Whatever it was, I’d done it twice.
Wordless, panicked, ashamed, I backed out of the apartment and headed into the streets.
I FELT EXPOSED, RAW, AND gutted as I stood in the chaotic Piazza Venezia.
Cars, Vespas, and buses zipped by, narrowly missing one another around the frenzied circle. Numerous roads fed into the piazza, much like a roundabout at home, with each car j
ockeying for position and making it a maddening sight. People milled about taking photos of Il Vittoriano, the beautifully lit white building that loomed in front of me.
My phone buzzed again in my purse.
“I assumed you would have chosen me,” he had said, and a sob ripped up from my chest, startling a few couples sitting on the wall.
“Scusi,” I mumbled.
Looking back, maybe it was easier for me to compartmentalize, to rationalize my time in Spain because I knew that I was in the wrong then. Daniel and I weren’t in a great place when I took off for Barcelona, but we were very much still a couple. Much as I didn’t want to admit it, I was wrong. I’d willfully pursued Marcello, knowing that Daniel was at home waiting for me. I’d been unfaithful.
I stopped and dug out my phone, then ducked into an alley to call Daisy.
“Hey, I was trying to get ahold of you. Do you guys want to meet us?” she answered, and I could hear voices in the background shouting. “Hang on, I’m down the street at that little café.” She paused, and it sounded like she stepped outside. “Okay, sorry. Grab your man and come have a drink. I’m out with some of our friends from work.”
“Can you head home? I’ll meet you there?” I checked the signs around me and calculated. “In about fifteen? I know you’re out and busy but I need an ear. Probably both. I just have to flag down a cab.”
“Are you okay?”
“Just meet me at home and I’ll explain.”
* * *
SHE WAS ON THE STOOP when I got there, looking a bit worse for the wear. “Are you pickled?”
She held up two fingers. “Lil’ bit. I locked myself out.”
When I stepped under the glare of the lamplight, she gasped at my mascara-messed face. “What the hell happened—”
“Simone,” I interrupted, not wanting to say her name anymore. Digging out my key, I fumbled with the lock before letting us inside, a confused and drunk Daisy on my heels.
“Simone? Simone who? What’s going on?”
“The girl. The girl with Marcello, the first night I was here?”
“The pretty one?”
“Yes! Jesus, yes, the pretty one.”
“What about her?”
“He slept with her,” I said, sniffling.
“What?” she howled, loud enough that I held my hands over my ears.
“Okay, we both can’t be yelling.”
“Avery, I’m so sorry. I can’t fucking believe he’d do this. You guys seemed so solid. I’ll rip his fucking balls off! Did you see them? Good God, tell me you didn’t catch another man in the act, did you?”
“No, no, it’s not like that.” I angrily scrubbed the residual tears and makeup from my face. I carried on undeterred. I wanted her to be on my side for this. To see why I was angry. “They’re not together now. When I got here they were.”
“Well, yeah. We saw them.”
“That’s not the point! The point is, dammit, they definitely slept together.”
“Okay. Just hold on, I’m trying to figure this out. He’s been seeing you both at once? Or this wasn’t since you two got back together? Or it was? I’m so confused. You knew he was with her when you got here, right? I mean you saw them at dinner. Did I drink too much tonight?”
“Yes, they were together then and for a bit once Marcello and I started to . . . well, whatever we were doing, they were still spending time together,” I explained, waiting for her to get as pissed and hurt as I was.
“He was sleeping with her after he slept with you?”
“Maybe. Possibly. I don’t know. I think so? I didn’t really let him answer.”
As I heard the words coming out of my mouth, I began to see things a little differently. The more I thought about the timeline of the relationship and when we got together, the clearer a picture I got. It didn’t make the truth any less painful, but I was at least seeing his side.
And how poorly I’d reacted to it.
Daisy was silent, which was entirely unusual.
“Say it,” I said.
“You’re being a jackass.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it or anything.” I sighed, sitting on the chair with my head in my hands.
“Honey, that was sugarcoated. The version in my head had a lot more fucks strewn throughout my very poignant speech, but I’m drunk, and jackass seemed quicker.”
“I am a jackass.”
“You are. I love you, but you are.” She wiggled beside me on the chair, throwing her arm around my shoulder. “Lemme ask you something.”
I nodded, resting my head on her shoulder.
“Is this it for you?” she asked.
“Is what it for me?”
“Marcello—is he it for you? Seriously, can you look beyond what happened with them, and likely when it happened? Or are you ready to walk away?”
She asked it without judgment, and I knew that she’d support whatever I decided.
“I love him,” I said, without question or hesitation.
“Enough to overlook it? To move beyond it?”
“There’s nothing to overlook. Jesus, isn’t that funny?”
“What, what’s funny? What did I miss?” She was drunker than I thought.
“I didn’t even really consider the idea of forgiving Daniel, because I didn’t want to. I didn’t even want to hear his side of the story. But with Marcello . . .” I wiped away the tears that were falling. “I gotta go.”
“Okay,” she said, flopping back onto the chair, eyes closing.
“And, Daisy?”
“Hmm?”
“You’re the best.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she said with grin. She was snoring by the time I closed the front door.
* * *
WHEN I GOT TO MARCELLO’S, the house was dark, save for the rooftop. There, I could see the garden lights aglow. I knocked this time, pushing the doorbell once. It wasn’t that I thought he wouldn’t let me back in. It was that I wanted him to open the door. I needed to see his face when he welcomed me in.
It took a minute, but he looked over the ledge to see me. Without a word, he disappeared, and a minute later, he opened the door. He exhaled when he saw me. A sense of relief washed over us both. Stepping forward, he scooped me up into his arms and held me tight, his face buried between my shoulder and neck.
He pulled me inside.
I let him.
* * *
ONCE INSIDE, HE STEERED ME toward the couch, disappearing briefly into the kitchen, coming back with a damp towel and a bottle of water. He sat down across from me, handing me the towel. “For your face,” he said.
My makeup, the tear tracks—what a mess I was. “Thanks,” I said, wiping it all away.
He was wired, muscles taut, but his eyes did me in. Regret.
“Marcello, I—I overreacted.” He held my hands, dropping a kiss to each when I let out a shuddery breath.
“Avery, when you showed up here, in Roma, out of nowhere, I had no idea what to do. I wanted to spend time with you, get to know you again, but—”
“You knew there’d be a chance of what happened in Spain, happening again,” I finished, sitting up a little straighter. “I get that. I don’t like it, but I understand. I realized something very important tonight. I didn’t want to forgive Daniel because I didn’t love him. Not anymore. And frankly, I never loved him the same way I loved, love, you. But you—oh, God, Marcello, you? Just one word from that woman, and I was destroyed. I felt like I was physically being torn apart. It’s not whether you were with her or not once you were with me, it’s that I love you that much, that it hurt that much—does that even make sense?” I pushed my hair back from my face, not wanting anything between us, not wanting to hide this at all from him, needing him to really hear me. “You’re it for me.”
And there it was. That was the question I had to ask myself and be so honest about. It came down to what were you willing to forgive, when you were forgiving The One? Seeing Daniel having sex wi
th another woman was powerful, but the truth is, if I’d seen him just kissing another woman . . . it would have been enough. I couldn’t have forgiven that, because I didn’t want to.
But when it’s The One? You cry. You scream. You overreact. And then you work it out. Because he’s The One. And it’s worth it.
He smiled, pulling me into the chair with him.
“I love you more than I can possibly say. Can you understand that?”
“I do, tesoro,” he said, cradling me to his chest in a Marcello cocoon. “It’s as much as I love you. No more secrets. No more lies. No more running away without us talking first. We cannot do that to each other.”
“We need to be honest,” I agreed, kissing his chin. “Just you and me.”
“Just you and me.”
I HAD JUST SWIPED MY paintbrush into a shade of ripe apricot when I was overcome with a sense of melancholy. I took a deep breath, waiting for the feeling to pass. Looking up, I admired the pristine, clear blue, and cloudless sky.
In the two or so weeks since all hell broke loose, I found myself tearing up at random times throughout the day. A man helping an elderly woman across the street? I got teary.
Young kids playing stickball in the courtyard by Daisy’s apartment? Tears.
Painting here with my fellow artists in Campo de’ Fiori? You guessed it: teary. I didn’t have any explanation other than I was crazy and crazy happy all rolled into one.
We were finishing up the final touches on the painting when my instructor stopped at my easel.
“Belissima,” she said, touching my shoulder. “I am glad you come back. Beautiful work, you do.”
I smiled, staring at my painting with pride. My visits to this class were therapeutic and invigorating. They fueled that need for me to create.
By the time I reached the apartment, the painting was dry, and I stacked it in the hall closet with the rest of them. Checking the clock, I had just enough time to wash the paint from my face. Honestly, when would I ever not look like a finger-painting toddler when I was finished? I needed to be as presentable as possible, because today I was Skyping my parents to tell them my news.