I swallowed and tried to smile. She patted my shoulder sympathetically and left me alone.
The coffee was very good: rich and strong and just the shot in the arm that I needed. I drank almost the whole pot, then managed to eat a small plate of fette biscottate with salted butter. And I did feel better. And angry. Really fucking angry. How dare he talk me into this road trip, then drop me in the middle of nowhere the minute it suited him!
Or maybe this was his plan all along: maximum humiliation. Screw him!
I marched back to my room, scooped up the overnight bag and went to find the owner.
“Ah, signorina,” he said, worriedly.
“Please accept my apologies for last night’s disturbances,” I said, with polite formality. “How much do I owe you for the room?”
He twisted his fingers unhappily. I could tell he felt bad about charging me, but I was determined to pay my debts. I pulled out my wallet expectantly.
He sighed. “Forty Euros, signorina.”
“Thank you, signore. You have a very pleasant establishment.”
“Grazie, signorina.” He bit his lip and tried to smile.
“Can I book a cab to pick me up and take me to the airport?”
“Ah, regretfully, signorina, taxis do not like driving up my narrow road, but if you walk two kilometers towards Quinto Al Mare, you will find a taxi office.”
I thanked him, hefted the bag over my shoulder, and strode out into the beautiful Spring morning.
I’d got as far as the main road when I heard Sebastian’s bike roaring up behind me.
My stomach lurched, twisting with anxiety. When I heard him cut the engine, I put my head down and walked as quickly as I could.
“Caro, wait!”
He jogged up behind me and grabbed the handles of the bag, forcing me to stop.
“Caro, I’m sorry. Okay? Are you going to talk to me?”
“I think you’ve said enough – for both of us.”
“Fuck, Caro! It was the alcohol talking, that’s all.”
“It was more than that and you know it, Sebastian.”
“Can’t you take a fucking apology?”
“I don’t know: can you make one?”
We stood staring at each other; both hurt, both angry.
He ran his hand over his hair and scowled. “Can we just go somewhere and talk? Or are you going to walk back to Geneva?”
I folded my arms and glared at him. “Yes, frankly. I was going to get a cab to drive me to the airport. I’m sure I’d have no trouble getting a flight.”
“Don’t leave like this, Caro,” he said, in a slightly less aggressive tone. “Let’s just talk and if we can’t… fix this, I’ll take you to the airport myself.”
Damn him!
I nodded coldly and let him carry the bag. Silently he passed me my helmet, and stowed our solitary piece of luggage in the saddlebag.
He climbed on the bike and held out his hand to help me, but I preferred to scramble on by myself. And, instead of fastening my hands around his waist, I held on to the small grab-bar at the rear of my seat. It was uncomfortable and I didn’t feel very safe, but it was preferable to touching him.
He swung the bike around in a slow U-turn and headed southeast, away from the airport, following the coast road. After a few miles, he pulled into a parking lot next to a beach café in the small town of Bogliasco.
“Do you want a coffee?” he said, stiffly.
“An espresso and a glass of water, please.”
He placed the orders with a bemused waiter, who clearly hadn’t been expecting any customers so early. In fact, I suspected that we’d interrupted his morning gossip with his cronies, a group of grizzled old men who eyed us curiously, but relaxed when they heard Sebastian speaking in Italian. The waiter ambled away with reasonably good grace.
I stared across at Sebastian’s beautiful sullen face, wondering why we were even bothering. I realized his eyes looked rather red: obviously he’d chosen to dive straight into a bottle of whiskey last night, or grappa, perhaps. He stared out at the water, refusing to look at me or to speak. Not a great start to ‘talking’.
Our coffees arrived along with a basket of rolls, and I wondered who was going to break the silence first.
He pushed the basket towards me.
“No, thank you. I’ve already eaten.”
“Did you check out of that place?”
“Yes.”
“Did you pack up my stuff?”
I blinked at him. “Of course!”
“Okay, thanks. What do I owe you for the room?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“Just tell me what I owe you, Caro.”
“Seeing as you didn’t stay in it, I don’t see why you should pay.”
“Is this how you’re going to be?”
“How would you like me to be, Sebastian? Because, honestly, I just don’t know.”
He grabbed a roll and started tearing it into pieces.
“Look, maybe we should just cut our losses,” I said. “I’ll get a cab to the airport and you can… do whatever you want, Sebastian.”
For a moment I thought he was going to agree, but then he looked down at the crumbs on his plate.
“I don’t want you to go,” he muttered.
I waited for more: an explanation for his behavior, perhaps. But he was silent.
And then realization hit me with the force of a Sherman tank, why he was struggling to find the words: he’d never done this before. Ever. He hadn’t had a girlfriend in any real sense of the word since he was 17, and that relationship had ended abruptly without any desire for reconciliation on his part. From there, he’d plunged straight into a turbulent affair with me, which hadn’t exactly honed his relationship skills either. By his own admission, he’d fucked Stacey’s best friend as his version of solving their problems. He had no clue how to cope with the complex emotions of an adult relationship. Last night, his first reaction had been to run and hide in a bottle. No wonder he was finding this so difficult. As far as relationships went, he was on virgin territory.
I considered the fact that he actually wanted to talk to me was a step forward.
I’d been married for 11 years, and although that had ended in dismal failure, at least I had some vague idea of how relationships worked, or should work. And I’d dated two guys since Sebastian. Sort of. Sure, those hadn’t panned out either, but for quite mundane reasons. Bob had moved to Cincinnati with his job; and Eric had traded up to a younger, wealthier model; I didn’t count the one night stand with Allessandro, a reporter I’d met in Mexico. We were still in touch, occasionally.
“Sebastian, you’re going to have to tell me why on earth you’d want me to stay,” I said, gently. “Last night you said some pretty unpleasant things: and I’m not going to accept your explanation about having drunk too much. It’s pretty clear that you’ve been hanging on to a lot of anger – towards me. And I don’t know what I can do about that.”
He slouched down in his chair, looking for all the world like a sulky teenager. He seemed to be waging some sort of internal battle, but eventually he straightened up and looked me in the eye.
“Caro, did you really try and find me when I turned 21?”
And here we were again.
“I’ll tell you exactly what I told you before: I wrote to Shirley, and I wrote to Donna. But no, I didn’t try and find you directly, because I simply wanted to know that you were okay. When both letters were returned unopened, I suppose I took it as an omen that it wasn’t to be. I didn’t feel I had the right to interrupt your life and risk doing further damage. I felt a great deal of guilt at the devastation I left behind me: I didn’t want to remind you of all that, or make you feel any obligation towards me. It never occurred to me that you… that you’d be waiting for me.”
He leaned forward, his eyes intense and angry. “But I said I’d wait for you. I promised I’d wait. Hell, Caro, it was the last thing I got to say to you. And you… you sa
id…” he bit his lip, hesitating.
I’d promised to love him forever.
An ugly wave of guilt rushed through me, and finally I could see how it had looked from his point of view: I hadn’t tried hard enough – I’d let him down.
“Oh, Sebastian… I’m so very sorry.”
What could I say that would wash away so many years of hurt?
His voice dropped to a whisper. “Did you mean it, Caro? Did you mean it when you said you loved me?”
“Yes, tesoro, I did. I loved you very much. But you’re not the person I knew ten years ago. The Sebastian I knew was sweet and gentle and loving, but you… you can be like that, but your anger scares me. The hatred I saw in your face and heard in your words – that was hard for me. I can see that you think I let you down badly ten years ago, or seven years ago… and I can’t tell you how sorry I am for that, but I can’t fix it either – I can’t change the past.”
He turned away, staring out at the sea.
“I’m confused about what you want from me, Sebastian. One minute you say we’ve been given a second chance and that we should try again, and the next minute you’re blaming me for every bad decision you’ve taken in the last ten years. If you hate me that much, if you resent me that much, why am I here?”
“I don’t hate you, Caro,” he murmured.
“Sebastian, you called me a liar; you said you could never trust me.”
He winced, but I was determined to see this out.
“You asked me to come with you on this trip, and then the first time something goes wrong, you fling the past in my face. If you really believe I did what I did because I didn’t care, then I don’t see how we’re going to get past that.”
I hoped he’d offer something, some insight as to what he was thinking, but his lips remained pressed together.
“Look. I wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t met you – that’s the truth. I’d probably still be locked in a loveless marriage. But that’s only half the story.”
Finally he looked at me.
“It was really tough for me when I got to New York. I had almost no money, no contacts, nowhere to live, no job. Do you want to know how I survived? I cleaned people’s houses; I scrubbed their toilets. For three years. Until eventually I earned enough from my writing.”
“I didn’t know,” he said, softly.
“No, because you didn’t give me the chance to answer you last night.”
I wondered if he could see how cruelly he’d behaved, but his next question took a different turn.
“You said you dated a couple of times.”
“Excuse me?”
“The first night we talked. I asked you if you were seeing anyone, and you said you’d dated a couple of times.”
“Yes, so?”
“When?”
“What, you want dates?”
“Yes.”
I sighed. “I met Bob on my 35th birthday when I was having drinks with friends. We dated for three months and then he was transferred to an office in Cincinnati. Eric was a couple of years later: we dated for about six weeks before he dumped me for a younger woman.”
“That’s it?”
Oh, what the hell.
“I had a one night stand with a reporter when I was on assignment in Mexico. That’s it. Now you know my entire sexual history. Although I very much doubt you could be as succinct about yours.”
For a moment, he looked angry, then he gave a wry smile. “I deserve that.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back.
“Are you okay?” he said, quietly.
I shook my head slowly. “Not really.”
He sighed. “I am sorry, Caro. I just get fucked up in the head sometimes.”
“You can’t deal with it by lashing out at me. And I can’t deal with it if you keep blaming me for something I can’t change.”
He put his head in his hands. “Don’t give up me, Caro.”
“Last night I thought you’d given up on me.”
A pained expression crossed his face.
“Can we start again, Caro? I promise I’ll try not to fuck up again.”
I took a deep breath.
“Sebastian, it’s not a case of ‘starting again’; it’s about working things through when we have a problem. Funny enough, it was you who taught me that, ten years ago: you made me face up to things. You can’t promise me you won’t fuck up, because you will. And I can’t promise you that I won’t fuck up, because I will. We can deal, and we can move on. Or, we can say it’s been an interesting few days, and go our separate ways.”
He reached over and tentatively took my hand.
“I want to go on. With you.”
I wasn’t even sure why I was agreeing to this. My head was screaming for me to get out now, but my heart had gone in another direction entirely.
I nodded my agreement. “Okay, then. Let’s try.”
“And I promise not to sleep with your best friend, especially if it’s that scary British woman I saw you with in Geneva.”
I could see he was trying to lighten the mood, but I wasn’t quite ready to joke about it.
“Sorry,” he said, quietly. “Another foot-in-mouth moment.”
I tried to smile, but I probably just grimaced at him.
I pulled my hand free, and sat back to sip my lukewarm espresso.
He picked up some of the pieces of his eviscerated roll and chewed solemnly.
“Did they say anything about last night? The people at the villa?”
“Not really. They were mostly embarrassed. I think we’ve managed to ruin it for any other Americans who might want to stay there. But the old lady told me that you’d be back.”
Sebastian looked surprised. “Really?”
“Yes, and I’m pretty certain it was me not you she was applauding last night. She probably thought I should get a medal for putting up with you.”
“Yeah,” said Sebastian, smiling softly, “a Purple Heart.”
“Wounded in action?”
His smile slipped away. “I’m really sorry about what I said.”
“We’re moving on, remember? But, for the record, apology accepted.”
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and ate some of his roll, more for a distraction than anything else, I guessed.
“I got drunk and fell asleep on the beach,” he muttered. “In case you were wondering.”
His voice was so quiet, I could hardly hear him.
“Well, thank you for telling me.”
“I panicked when I woke up: I thought you might have gone. And then I saw you walking along the road. At first I was relieved but then… I just thought you’d walked out on me. That’s why I was…”
“…such an ass?”
His smile was rueful.
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“Well, like I said, thank you for telling me. Now, what’s the big plan for today?”
He smiled his first, genuine, relieved smile of the day.
“I thought we could go to Pisa: take a look at that big, old leaning tower. It’s about two hours away.”
“Sure, that sounds fun.”
I’d always found it hard to fake enthusiasm: something my ex-husband had pointed out on numerous occasions. But I was trying. For Sebastian’s sake: for our sake.
He finished his breakfast, threw some Euros on the table and stood up to go. He held his hand out to me and, a little awkwardly, I took it.
His hand was warm and dry, the skin across the top, soft, while the palms were slightly rough, as if he’d done some manual labor recently. I hadn’t noticed that before. I wondered why I did now.
When we got to the bike, he fiddled with the zipper on his jacket.
“I really want to kiss you,” he said, gazing at me, a mixture of anxiety and need etched on his face.
I hesitated, and it was just long enough to see his expression change to hurt.
“Okay,” I said, quietly.
He rested his hands
lightly on my waist and I raised my face to his. He touched his lips to mine and I felt the familiar tug of desire. I pulled back quickly.
“Caro…”
“Just hold me, Sebastian. Just hold me.”