Racing the Sun

  “Oh, it wasn’t a big deal,” I repeat. “Not to you. What about to me? I haven’t seen you for a fucking week and you get too drunk on the night you’re supposed to come here? To spend time with me?” Suddenly, all the anger is pooling into tears. I don’t like it. I like it better when I’m a raging beast, not a sappy girl on the verge of a meltdown. I try to blink them back and control the wavering in my voice. “You had time to go to a bar with your friend, who you’ve been with all this time, instead of catching an earlier ferry home. Why didn’t you come home? You knew I was waiting for you. Didn’t you want to see me? Or your brother and sister, for that matter?”

  He swallows hard and looks away, his shoulders slouching, and he doesn’t look so massive anymore. Instead, he looks as defeated as I feel. “I just want to have some fun,” he says quietly.

  “Well, that’s all fucking great for you!” I say, too loud for my own good. “But what about me? I want to have fun, too. Instead I’m stuck here with the kids while you’re out there living your dream and getting drunk with friends and having fun without me.”

  “But this is your job,” he says to me, and I feel the color drain out of my face. “You are paid to be here to take care of them. You do your job and I do mine.”

  My eyes burn like fire while moisture floods my mouth. I swallow. “So that’s what this is?” I say quietly. “It comes down to my job? You do what you do and I do what I’m supposed to do?”

  “That’s why you’re here, is it not?” he asks, and I’m stunned he even thinks to say this out loud.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m here because of you.”

  He sighs and runs his hand through his hair. “Well, if you are here because of me then you must take the bad with the good. You don’t understand, Amber. I have been tied to this house, to them, to this island, for over a year. I have given up everything and I have finally gotten it back. Now you want me to give it up all over again?”

  “That is not what I’m saying!” I tell him angrily. “I’m not asking you to give up anything. I’m asking you to cut me some slack. To help me out. To fucking come home when you say you’re going to come home. I mean, it’s been a week, Derio. A week. Didn’t you want to see me? Didn’t you miss me?”

  He nods, looking away. “I did. I do. But I was going to see you in Rome. I don’t see the big deal. I knew you would be fine here with the children.”

  “But I’m not fine!” I yell. “I am not fine. I haven’t been fine for a long time now. Derio, I am fucking miserable being stuck in this goddamn empty house for weeks on end. I am only here because of you. Not the money, not even the twins, even though I love them dearly. I’m here because of you. I have given up everything to make sure you can do what you love, and meanwhile I’ve lost the thing that I love the most: you.”

  He stares at me. “You haven’t lost me.”

  “Then you’ve lost me,” I say. “Either way, it’s gone.”

  He frowns in disbelief. “What are you saying?”

  I breathe out slowly, in disbelief at what I’m about to say. “I’m saying that I can’t do this anymore. This was never the role I wanted but I stuck by it to be with you. Now you’re barely here and I have to do it all by myself. It’s not worth it, Derio. I’m not cut out for this kind of job. The twins are too much responsibility and I just can’t handle it. I was never meant to be the nanny. I’m not the right person.”

  “Look,” he says quickly, stepping closer to me. There’s a wildness in his eyes. “Just because you lost them one time—”

  “That one time was enough!” I snap. “It made me realize that my parents were right. That I can’t handle it, and I’m not cut out for anything like this. I’m useless, helpless. I’m not their mother and I’m reminded of that every day. I can’t handle their activities or anything to do with school, I don’t speak the language, and I’m not from here.”

  “You can learn,” he suggests. “You know so much already.”

  “I don’t want to be their nanny!” I tell him. “That’s what it comes down to. I don’t want to do it anymore. I want them in my life and I want to be with you, but this just isn’t working.”

  He’s silent, his eyes roving all over the kitchen as if searching for something, and I am desperate for him to understand, to put himself in my shoes.

  “So the twins aren’t good enough for you?” he finally says. “You don’t care what happens to them? You’re just going to abandon them, like our parents did?”

  I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face. Holy hell, I did not see this coming.

  “What are you talking about? No.”

  “Do you know what this is going to do to them?” he cries out, his features strained by pure agony. “This will kill them. You can’t leave them! You can’t possibly be that selfish!”

  I jerk my head back, the words cutting deep. “I’m not selfish,” I manage to choke out.

  “You are,” he says. “And you’re leaving me. After everything, you’re leaving me.”

  I stare at him and my soul feels bereft. I shake my head, tears spilling down my face. “I never said I was leaving you, Derio. I never said that’s what I wanted to do.” I take in a deep breath. It hurts. “But I’m leaving you now.”

  “What?” he asks breathlessly.

  I brush past him out of the kitchen, trying to keep it together before I start bawling, but he grabs my arm and stops me.

  “You aren’t leaving,” he says, his voice breaking. “What I said, I didn’t mean it.”

  “But you did,” I say. “And I do, too. This is for the best.”

  “For you!” he suddenly yells. “This is the best for you! What about me?”

  “This is the best for everyone in the end,” I tell him. “This never would have worked, not with me. Felisa knew what she was doing.”

  “Felisa is gone!” he yells, his face red, his eyes pained. “And I love you. I love you.”

  “Even if that’s true,” I tell him, trying to gather what little strength I have to make it up the stairs, “sometimes love is not enough.”

  “Mia leonessa,” he says in a broken whisper as I go up the stairs. But that’s all he says. He doesn’t come after me. I pack my bags as quickly as I can, trying my hardest not to cry. I can’t lose it here, not in this house. I have to get off this island, get away and clear my head. I know I have enough money saved now in my makeshift piggy bank—a hollowed-out book—to buy a ticket home at a travel agency. Derio still owes me a bit more but he can keep it. It’s not worth it. It would only remind me of why I was here to begin with—as the hired help. A job that, somewhere along the way, turned into something more, something messy, something heart-wrenching.

  I close my bag and zip it shut and take a moment to breathe before swinging it over my shoulders. I haven’t carried it in months, and the weight of it feels so foreign. It was such a big part of me for so long, a part of my life, and now it feels like a hug from an old friend. But even my backpack can’t comfort me. It just reminds me of the person I was before. I’m not sure I like her much either.

  I look around our room—Derio’s room—knowing I’m probably leaving half of my stuff behind, but I don’t care. These things can be replaced; the memories can’t.

  I ready myself before I step out into the hall and am relieved to feel that sense of numbness come over me like a cloak. I rely on it to get me down the stairs and to the front door. I don’t want to see Derio if I can help it.

  But, of course, he steps out of his office, his eyes red and wet, and calls out to me.

  “Don’t go,” he says quietly. “Please.”

  He is breaking and I am broken. I can hear it, I can feel it. But even though I know he means for me to stay, wants me to stay, I can’t. Not anymore. Call it stubbornness or doing the right thing, but the voices deep inside of me are telling me to get out of here. That the situation is too messy to navigate. That we won’t be able to work through it. That our love, our beautiful, passi
onate love, won’t be enough to sustain us through the hard times. This moment is already proving that, after all.

  I’m packed, with one foot out the door.

  I have been pushed off the tightrope.

  Now the fall begins.

  “Goodbye,” I whisper to him as I turn the door handle. “Tell the twins I’m sorry.”

  And then I steal out past the sad lemon trees, all which seem to weep yellow tears for me, and walk down the Via Tragara for the last time, heading for the ferry, for the mainland, for freedom. For home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I’m curled up in the fetal position in a hotel in Naples, letting the pain pass through me in sharp, thorny ribbons. It hurts. It really fucking hurts. Heartache is so physically real that it needs to be recognized as a sickness, an ailment, a cancer of love. A broken heart is a sad, angry, powerful thing that shakes you by the collar and demands your respect, and it’s pummeling me into the mattress, shattering me to pieces. It’s as real as the actual heart in my chest.

  In some ways, it’s more real because it flows throughout your whole body, wrapping around your bones and your organs and your blood. It’s in everything you do, every breath you take. I can’t drink, I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I just hurt as my mind turns over and over what I’ve done and what it means. I keep seeing the look on Derio’s face, his heartbreak at my own hands, and I’m suffering all over again.

  And again and again and again.

  I think about everything I’m giving up by walking away and doing the so-called right thing. The twins, the love of my life. Everything changed for me on that island, and a part of me is afraid I’m throwing in the towel too soon.

  But the other part feels wise and in control. It tells me it never would have worked, that this was a long time coming, that it was always going to end this way. A vacation romance, nothing more, nothing less. There was never a need for it to get complicated. But complicated, it is, and like a coward I ran when the going got tough.

  You didn’t run, I tell myself. You chose to go because you had to go. Derio could have come after you but he didn’t.

  Derio also has a brother and sister to deal with now, the day before the race. I wince, knowing I might have screwed up his first race in over a year. I tell myself there will be others, that he will win them, and all will be fine. But I don’t believe it; I just feel guilty.

  Guilt, sorrow, emptiness; they surround me in that tiny room as darkness falls over the city.

  I think about the way he loved me.

  Because he really did love me.

  He really does love me.

  I fall asleep clinging to that thought, like maybe one day it could save me.

  * * *

  I don’t know how I manage to get everything done the next day but I do. I book my ticket home for tomorrow evening, then I call my parents and give them the so-called good news. My father is especially happy, telling me he’s proud of me for knowing when to come home and even recognizing that it must have been hard for me to leave my job. Of course, he said it in a way that made it seem like I was fooling around at a summer camp, but whatever. My heart is too heavy to argue with him.

  I send an e-mail to Shay telling her what’s going on, then realize I have no one else to tell. There’s Angela, but I haven’t spoken to her properly in so long that it feels weird to do so—it’s better if I just call her once I get home.

  Home. The concept seems so weird now. The idea of living in the suburbs, in that cul-de-sac with my parents, where everyone’s green lawns are the same color and the backyard fences all end at the same height and the roofs all have cheap red tile, feels stifling and somehow more claustrophobic than living on a rock in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

  Am I doing the right thing? I ask myself as I pay for my ticket.

  Am I doing the right thing? I ask myself after I hang up the phone with my parents.

  Am I doing the right thing? I ask myself after seeing the one text Derio has sent to me since I left, which I ignore.

  Senza di te, non sono niente. Ti prego torna a me.

  Without you, I am nothing. Please come back to me.

  How am I supposed to respond to that? Thank you for making me cry into my coffee? Because that’s exactly what happens.

  But sometimes you never know if you’re doing the right thing until after you’ve done it. And I know this is definitely one of those times.

  In the afternoon, I decide to drag myself out for some pizza—I can still taste the glorious slice I had when I was here with Derio and the twins, and I start craving it, as if all the feelings of happiness, love, and security are wrapped up in that thin, oven-baked crust.

  While there are a lot of pizzerias in the neighborhood, I’m looking for a place that sells authentic Neapolitan pizza. The government has imposed some quality-control standards regulating what is considered proper Neapolitan pizza, so I need to make damn sure I eat the right thing.

  I finally find one with a vintage, mint-colored sign and go inside.

  Vorrei un pezza de pizza margherita, per favore, I mouth the words to myself as I walk under whirring fans, the smell of garlic and fresh dough hitting my nostrils. I’m not even sure if I’m saying it right, but I’m going to try. My mind feels completely fogged up, like all the Italian I’ve learned has gone out the window, and I can’t think straight.

  I get to the counter of the shop, barely noticing that the handful of patrons are all gathered by a TV in the corner as a sportscaster speaks rapid-fire Italian. The sound of his voice gives me a headache; I’m definitely not going to miss how loudly the Italians speak.

  “Vorrei un pezza,” I say, forgetting the rest. The steely-eyed, Dalí-mustached man at the counter picks out a slice with mushrooms. Not what I wanted, but I’m not going to say anything. It’s still probably delicious and the man looks like he wouldn’t speak English to me, even if he knew how.

  I slide two euros toward him and take the slice, turning around to the condiment station to put on some red pepper flakes, when I hear the sportscaster on the TV yell the name “Desiderio Larosa.”

  I nearly drop my pizza, and as I turn to look at the screen, it hits me that of course he is racing today. It must be televised. It’s a feeling that makes me both happy and sick.

  But when I turn around to look at the screen, the sickness turns to stomach-churning nausea. They’re showing an accident on the racetrack.

  A motorcycle is on fire.

  One racer is trapped beneath the front wheel, the flames licking his legs. He’s not moving.

  Another motorcycle is flipped on its side, its racer thrown a few feet away onto the grass. He’s also not moving.

  People are rushing to the scene, and someone is dragging the body of the man on fire away while another person sprays him down with foam. Others are running to the other man on the track, leaning over him, gesturing wildly.

  And still neither man moves.

  The caption underneath says Desiderio Larosa e Roberto Casadei. Un uomo morto, l’altro ferito gravemente.

  Morto.

  Morto.

  “Someone please!” I suddenly yell across the shop. “What is happening, tell me what is happening!”

  The people in the shop look at each other in shock and I feel the walls start to close in on me. The TV station flashes to a picture of the hospital in Rome and someone being taken out of an ambulance, but I can’t see who it is. This must not be live but it didn’t happen long ago either.

  Morto.

  Dead.

  Not Derio. No.

  “Someone please!” I scream again, and a middle-aged woman comes over to me, babbling in Italian and trying to comfort me.

  “No, no,” I tell her, grabbing onto her shirt. “I don’t speak Italian. Derio, Desiderio Larosa, is he dead? Morto, morto? I know him, he’s my amore. Mio amore!” I thud my fist against my heart. “Is he dead? Morto?”

  She has tears in her eyes and she nods. “Si, si, mi dispi
ace.”

  I look at everyone else in the pizzeria. They all seem solemn, some looking at the screen and shaking their heads, others eyeing me with pity and sorrow.

  This is not happening. They are all wrong. They have to be. I stare back at the screen, blinking, feeling an icy sheet of shock wash over me. The woman beside me pats my shoulder and keeps telling me she’s sorry.

  This can’t be happening.

  I can’t breathe.

  I’m going to vomit.

  Suddenly, I’m curled over, clutching my chest, my stomach, my heart.

  No, no, no.

  Another person comes to my side, a man, but I don’t see him. I don’t feel him as he leads me over to a chair and sits me down. Someone gives me water. The middle-aged woman is crying. The steely-eyed man brings me a fresh slice of pizza.

  When I can finally raise my head, I stare at the screen, trying to read it, interpret it. They keep showing the crash in slow motion. The racer on the outside is passing on a corner and his bike skids out and goes flying into the racer on the inside. He’s ejected into the air and lands in a way that you know he can’t survive. He’s completely limp. His bike crashes into the other bike and the other one bursts into flames, flipping into the air with the other racer until it smashes down on him.

  Seconds later, as the fire starts up the racer’s leg, medics run over. It’s a replay of the scene that had caught my attention.

  Derio always said his weakness was passing on the outside during a turn. That’s how he was injured the last time. Derio always wore red when he was racing before. The man who went flying through the air was wearing red. Derio is taller and more muscular than most Italian racers. The man who landed on his head, motionless, has the same figure.

  The man who went flying is the man who is dead. I can see that now as the sheet is placed over him. I can see the wrist of the man who is taken into the hospital, the man who survived the accident, albeit badly injured, and he’s wearing a silver bracelet, like one of those medical alert ones. Derio doesn’t wear one of those.