They were rowdy, so electric in their chattering that they didn’t even realize we approached. As a way to announce our presence, Daisy plucked a glass of red wine from someone’s hand. She drained it in a few gulps and laughed.
The table roared along with her. I hung back a bit while she was enveloped in hugs and pecks on the cheek from her friends. These were people she worked with every day and yet they cheered and loved up on her as if they hadn’t seen her in years. The last dinner that I went to at the club, we had air kisses and handshakes. I couldn’t remember the last time I hugged a friend in Boston.
“This is Tommaso,” she said, pulling me by the hand to a raven-haired man about my height, “and this is my friend Avery.”
“He’s a massive flirt,” Daisy explained, pinching his cheek. “He’ll be half in love with you by the end of dinner.”
He nodded in agreement.
“This is Sandeep, Iris, and Lewa. Architect, architect, engineer. Wicked smart, all of them.” I loved that her Boston accent still poked through even in the heart of Italy. “They’re working on a project with me since, gosh, what, January?”
She bounced through each person at the table with a cheeky anecdote for each. These two are horizontally involved, this one is dealing with a very long-distance relationship with an astrophysicist in Alaska. It was a veritable United Nations, each the top of the fields from all over the world. My mind was spinning trying to remember each person, where they were from originally, how long they’d be in Rome before winging off to another job site. An image flashed through me in that instant, an image of me sitting at this table, but not as a guest. As a part of whatever fabulous global life these people were living, full of excitement and opportunity and ability to go anywhere, do anything that they’d worked their asses off to get. If my life hadn’t veered off course, could I have a seat at this table? Or some other equally awesome table? Where would I be? Maybe London? Maybe Paris? Even if it was still Boston, I would have done something.
We circled the table and each person stood, introducing themselves and welcoming me to Rome. I listened intently, focusing on each of their names, their jobs, answering their questions as best I could about how long I’d be in town, what I planned to do while I was here. Head spinning, I let Daisy pull me toward the end of the table.
“Come on, we’re down here,” she said, gesturing to the empty seats near a couple at the end, wrapped around each other and totally oblivious to anything else.
I draped my purse on the back of my chair and Daisy sat next to the guy, poking him playfully in the ribs.
“Hey, mind coming up for air a sec?” She laughed, hitching a thumb at the couple.
Pulling out the chair, I began to sit when the man turned.
It was one of those slow-motion movie moments.
“Marcello,” I gasped, eyes locked with his, realization dawning on his face as I sank down onto the chair.
And totally missed.
MILESTONE EVENTS IN YOUR LIFE are linked with certain emotions. Some are so strong and powerful that you’re almost transported back to that particular period in time.
Glee: my first art lesson at four. Even at such a young age, I got a rush of giddy anticipation when I picked up that beautifully sharpened pencil.
Embarrassment: at my ballet recital when I was eight, I grand jeté’d right into the piano. I can’t hear the “Waltz of the Snowflakes” without breaking out in hives.
Uncertainty: the moment I took that first step onto Boston College campus as a freshman, the beginning of the semiadult part of my life.
Lust, hope, elation . . . love: my senior year at BC when I studied in Barcelona, Spain, and met Marcello Bianchi, architectural master’s candidate and beautiful Italian man. He was also studying abroad and I was immediately smitten. We had a very clandestine, very lust-hope-elation-filled affair that no one else ever knew about.
I hadn’t seen him since I was twenty-one. There was always the tiniest nugget of hope that maybe someday, somehow, we’d cross paths. And in my optimistic daydreams, I never imagined that our unexpected reunion included me being on my ass on the floor in the middle of a dinner party.
Twenty pairs of eyes were looking down at me.
As I gazed up into those twenty pairs of eyes, some of their owners were stifling laughter; others were wondering how to help me up.
I looked down. My dress had hiked up to midthigh and the thin strap at my shoulder slid down. I should’ve moved. Rolled over. Covered up with the checkered linen napkin. Anything to lessen the embarrassment that I should be feeling.
Instead of mortification, I was focused on a pair of wide, equally shocked Italian eyes peering over the table. Eyes that I’d recognize anywhere, and they were staring down at me. Forty percent stunned, 10 percent curious, and a whole lotta angry.
He had every right to be angry, considering how we left things after Barcelona.
Even though he was clearly irked, Marcello’s eyes were still the clearest, richest brown. Something akin to cognac—fitting because they always made me feel love drunk. They were usually the kind that glimmered with mischief. You couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking with each twinkle. Spots of black and flecks of gold like a fawn, and his lashes were so long and black that they looked lined in coal.
I’d painted them a hundred, maybe a thousand times while we were together. Our little bubble was my go-to for happy memories over the years since we’d parted. I treated my experiences with him in Spain like a library book. We knew from the beginning that we were on borrowed time, but for those four months I was the real me. He let me fly.
What were the chances that he would be here?
Thinking about it logically, it made sense. Daisy was constantly surrounded by the top in her field. Even then, he—
“Are you okay?” Daisy finally asked, breaking through my shellshock as she threaded her arms under mine, tugging me to my feet.
I blinked, shaking my head and breaking the eye contact with Marcello. I stood, rubbing my sore rear and brushing myself off.
My heart thundered in my ears. A wave of light-headedness mixed with nausea. The entirety of the table fell out of focus, except for him. He was crystal clear. It was my mind’s way of making sure what my heart already knew. That he really was here and, judging by the look on his face, furious.
Time apparently doesn’t heal all wounds when it comes to proud Italian men.
One of Daisy’s friends held the chair and guided me into it—without incident this time. Thanking him, I fidgeted in my seat. I couldn’t look at Marcello, but I couldn’t not look at him, either. If nothing else, I was hoping to see some sliver of the boy I knew. Loved. Not an angry man who was facing the woman who took off, never to be heard from again.
His natural olive tone had paled. He drained his wineglass, his eyes holding mine over the rim of the glass. I watched his throat as he swallowed. The unshaven Adam’s apple bobbed with each gulp.
In rapid-fire Italian he shouted to the server over the chatter of our table. The waiter appeared with a new bottle of red and a glass that he placed in front of me.
“Simone?” He held up the bottle of wine.
Simone. Even her name was pretty. Her hair was wild and black, and full of windswept curls. Gorgeous green eyes peered over her empty glass, completely focused on him. They made a stunning pair.
Marcello loved his wine. I remembered that. Looking to him, I tipped my head to the side in question. Ignoring it, he turned his head back to his beautiful guest.
So it was like that. I nodded as much to myself as to him, still numb, still staring, still unable to tear my eyes away from my ghost.
Marcello gripped the wine bottle. His large hand surrounded the bottle as he lifted it to his mouth. He pulled the cork out with his teeth. Like Eastwood with a cigar, he held it between them and smirked. Just for me. The smirk and all it led to I remembered fondly. My skin heated as I remembered him wanting a reversal of fortune one night.
I had sketched him dozens of times, but that night he wanted to paint me with a bottle of the strongest red wine I’d ever sampled. Three glasses later he had gotten his wish.
With the wine cork between his teeth, he had painted my naked skin in homemade Chianti. Dragging the slick red liquid over every inch of me, dipping into the peaks and valleys while he watched . . . burned.
“Water?” I chirped, using the napkin to blot my fevered skin. “Agua? Aqua? How the hell do you say water?” I gulped the wine instead.
“Maybe ease up on the booze there, Jet Lag,” Daisy suggested, moving the glass away from me.
Marcello harrumphed and casually draped an arm over the back of the chair where his date sat. His body turned completely away from me. A brush-off is a brush-off in any country.
Someone at the other end of the table shouted to him and he smiled. While he was pulled into a conversation, I was left with a perfect view of his jaw. His profile that made my belly flip and my heart . . .
The second I didn’t seem preoccupied by ghosts of my secret past, Daisy’s coworkers were there to fill the void. Like Daisy warned, Tommaso was a seasoned flirt. He was handsome, sure. Boyish good looks and that accent, oh boy. I knew about accents.
Had my life not been in total disarray, maybe I’d consider him and an Italian affair, but now . . . I was faced, quite literally, with my last Italian affair. God, that sounded so Lifetime made-for-TV movie. There had to be a better way to describe it. Dalliance? Indiscretion? That summer I spent all that time on my back, side, front, sweet holy Christ, all of it . . .
It took everything I had left in my energy reserve to act normally. To not let on to the entire restaurant that we knew each other. Intimately.
With a light hand on my shoulder, the waiter slid the plate of appetizers in front of me. Everyone was preoccupied discussing different projects. Restoration work over by the Lateran church, some stabilization nightmare at a building near the Forum. With a mouthful of the freshest tomato I’d ever eaten, I listened, watched, and absorbed it all.
With ears on the conversations, my eyes darted to check out Marcello. At first I tried to ignore the pull, the deeply hidden urge to study him. The more I tried to smother it, the more I looked over. It didn’t help that he was across from me looking wickedly sexy. Marcello was only in his early thirties, and had aged very well.
His dark brown hair was slightly longer than I remembered, curling around his ears ever so slightly, making the waves more prominent. Any lingering softness in his features had melted away, giving way to a strong, chiseled face. His nose, which had always been his best feature, had a new bump on the ridge. Another soccer injury, I wagered. The earring he once wore was gone. A chain with a small silver medal now lay on his chest, visible through the small opening of his white shirt. As he spoke, I relished the richness of his voice and how his phrases jumped from English to Italian.
With warm soup filling my nervous stomach, I studied his hands. Long tanned fingers were speckled with scars—no wedding ring, I noted. Hardworking hands that I didn’t doubt were still rough, and so very strong. I choked on said soup—a lovely roasted summer asparagus—when I fantasized about those hands on my skin.
Even seated, I could tell that his already muscular strong build had changed so much. His chest was broader, more filled out. His perpetual tan made his olive skin glow in the flickering candlelight and his angular features appeared more prominent. I wanted to get closer and yet farther away to fight the temptation to lean over and smell his skin. Would he still smell the same even though so much of him had changed?
In the end, it all came back to his eyes. That youthful sparkle was still there, even though they were older, wiser, yet still unchanging. Except when he looked at me. There was a vacancy that I never saw before.
When you think of a reunion, you tend to focus on the good parts. The warm embraces, catching up, and the sheer joy of seeing someone again. Marcello was anything but happy to see me. Though, to be fair, I didn’t blame him.
I couldn’t help but feel like he was actively avoiding looking at me. His body was angled to face his stunning date.
When I moaned over the gnocchi, it marked the only time that he willingly glanced my way.
“Damn, those are good.”
Marcello turned and studied the fork as it entered my mouth on the next bite. He was focused on my lips until the woman next to him drew his eyes away by taking his hand and bringing him into a conversation.
It was all too much. Too much wine, too much pasta, too many pretty twinkle sparkle lights overhead, too much ambience, too many gorgeous, talented thirty-somethings with their whole fun and whimsical yet carefully laid out lives in front of them, too much tension, and most certainly, too much past smacking me upside my jet-lagged and convinced-the-world-had-stopped-spinning pretty little head.
I mentioned too much wine, right?
Feeling him—him with the eyes and the hands and the lips and the mouth and the everything—with nothing but a few planks of ancient Roman wood between us was simply too much. I needed to move, walk, run, flee, or—
“Excuse me; I need to use the ladies’ room. Come with me?” I asked Daisy with an eyebrow arch that said she was required to accompany me.
“Sure. Scusi,” she said as Marcello stood to let her pass. He stood for her, but his eyes never left mine. Burning, questioning, wondering.
I could feel my pulse racing, my heart fluttering in my chest. It was screaming to flee, flee now, before words that I wouldn’t be able to control came flying out of my mouth. Words like, Dear God, it’s you, and You’re still the most beautiful man in the world, and I’m so sorry for everything.
A nervous giggle spilled out as I followed Daisy out of the room, on the verge of . . . what?
A breakdown?
Confession?
Another crazy giggle escaped my lips.
“What in the world has gotten into you?” she whisper-shouted at me as we entered the empty bathroom. “Really, Avery, what the hell?”
“Oh my God!” I shouted, pacing in a tight circle. The bathrooms in Italy were tiny. “Oh my God, Daisy! He’s here!”
“Who exactly is he?
“Avery! Who the hell is he?” Daisy repeated.
I breathed in, then breathed out. I took one more breath, then spilled the biggest secret I’d ever kept.
“Remember when I spent that summer in Barcelona?”
“Yes.”
“And I came home and said I’d had the time of my life?”
“Yes.”
“And I almost stayed another few months after the semester was over?”
“Yes.”
“I almost stayed another few months because I didn’t want to leave.”
“Okaaaay?”
“Marcello.”
“Marcello who?”
“I didn’t want to leave Marcello.”
“Leave Marcello what?”
“Christ, Daisy, keep up! I slept with your friend Marcello in Barcelona when I was in college!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“And you never told me?”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“I know!” I shouted, both of us flapping our hands and waving them about and pointing and oh my God he’s here!
“But of course he’s here,” I continued. “It makes sense, when you think about how much time has passed and his field of study. Of course he’d be living in Rome, it’s so close to his hometown! Oh my God, he’s here, and he looks so good—epically better than good, and oh my God he’s here, he’s actually here, and I’m here, and he’s totally still pissed at me and what does this mean, and—”
I spun around, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and was horrified at what I saw. Travel weary, face pale in some spots, splotchy in others, makeup smudgy in that dried-out, dehydrated-plane-air way it gets for anyone not blessed with supermode
l looks, and yet . . .
My eyes were sparkling.
A smile crossed my face, a smile I hadn’t seen in years, racing across my cheeks and splitting it ear to ear.
“Let me get this straight,” Daisy said, walking up behind me, her gaze meeting mine in the mirror. “You slept with my friend Marcello.”
My grin got impossibly bigger. “Well, technically, he was my friend first.”
She looked at me in disbelief. “You’re sure it’s him? Not just another knee-bucklingly superhot Italian man?”
“You don’t forget a man like him,” I said honestly. “I can’t forget him.”
Daisy sighed, but before the long-overdue explanation could begin, the door swung open and Simone, the woman who had been seated next to Marcello and seemed to know him a bit more intimately than the rest, came inside, nodding before disappearing into a stall.
I mouthed the word later to Daisy, who immediately mouthed back you bet your ass.
I took another deep cleansing breath, smoothed back my greasy hair into its still-tight bun, and went back to the table. Where the only man to ever bring me to multiple orgasms in one sitting—or standing for that matter—was waiting.
* * *
THE PARTY WAS OVER, the guests were leaving, there were only a few still on the patio now, lingering under the fairy lights and sharing a few last glasses of grappa.
And he was most certainly lingering. He remained at Simone’s side, involved in their conversation, but his eyes remained solely with me, but not in a good I’m so happy to see you way. And as the number of party guests continued to dwindle, it became more and more difficult to avoid direct conversation, to avoid idle chatter or not so idle real-life words.
He’d step forward and excuse himself through the crowd and I’d see him heading my way and begin to chat with a person next to me. I even went as far as inserting myself into a work conversation about I beams and whether or not steel reinforcement was necessary on this particular project. With each move toward me, I was backing out of the restaurant to try and get to the street. Even though we were already out in the fresh air, I needed to get fresher air. Some much-needed distance.