Ordinary World (17 page)

            This time David shook his head. “You make it sound like it was all about
you
. Like you wanted the glory. Besides, it’s not going to make up for the moment you lost. It’s not going to make up for the fact that he abandoned you. Isn’t that what you’re really trying to control?”

            I took a sip of my cappuccino, feeling irked. “You channeling my shrink or something?”

He didn’t respond.

“You know, I just thought of something. Why didn’t you deliver the eulogy at your father’s funeral?” I asked.

            “No one asked me to.”

            “Would you have if they did?”

            “In a New York minute.”

            I paused for a beat. “Why didn’t you offer?”

            “Are you forgetting what it was like for me back then? Most of my family wasn’t speaking to me. My dad and I had spent a lifetime not speaking to each another. What could I have said at that point? How receptive would they have been?”

            “I don’t think you would’ve done it if they had asked. I think you would’ve said no. I think you’re feeling the same as me—that if given the chance
now
, you would do it.”

            He finished his cappuccino. “Well, it’s not gonna happen, so why dwell on it?”

            “Why not write one now?”

            “I wrote something when I was doing a column for the
Boston Leisure Weekly
. In fact, I revised the memoir I had written under your tutelage and added to it, and published it near the anniversary of his death. So in a way, I suppose I got my chance.”

            “Well, good for you.”

            He looked taken aback. “What’s with the attitude all of a sudden?” 

            I stood up and left the café. It had grown cloudy—the first cloudy day since I’d been there. He followed me.

            “Man, I hate when you do this,” he said, trying to catch up.

            “Do what?”

            “The minute something or someone pushes one of your insecurity buttons, you take it out on everyone around you.”

            “Better than what you do,” I said, increasing my pace. “You rationalize it away and smooth it over. Why can’t you just admit that you’re not perfect?”

            He stopped in his tracks. “
Me?
You’re
the perfectionist! You don’t try a single thing that is beyond your comfort zone. And for you, ‘comfort’ is synonymous with ‘familiar.’ If you don’t know what it is, you avoid it like the plague, and then you have a panic attack that someone is going to find out what you don’t know.”

            I stopped walking too. “Look, I’m not the one who refused to have sex with women for money and claimed it was for their benefit. I’m not the one who fucked a former client to get a book deal—no, wait…sorry—you fucked her in gratitude of the book deal. I’m not the one who waited until my father was on his deathbed before I made peace with him. Don’t tell me about being evasive.”

            He looked wounded. Dammit, how did we always get to this place, even seven years later?

A gust of wind blew in our path. Suddenly tired, I walked over to a bench and sat on it, putting my head into my hands. Moments later, David joined me. I picked my head up. We stared out ahead and didn’t look at each other.

            “I’m sorry, Dev.”
David
, I thought.

            “Me too.”

            “Why do we do this to one another? Why do we hurt each other like this?”

            “Because we know each other so well.”

           
Do we?
I wanted to ask.

            “I don’t mean to do it, you know,” I said.

            “I know you don’t. Neither do I.”

            “I guess I just hate it because you’re right all the time. Even back then you were.”

            “So are you,” he said. “At least when it comes to me.”

We watched a boy and girl playing together in the distance.

“Was Sam always right?” he asked.

            “Not always. Thing is, when Sam was wrong, he was so sweet about admitting it that you couldn’t feel good about being right.”

            “No gloating, huh.”

            “Never.” I smiled. For the first time, the memory didn’t feel quite as cutting as usual. “That was okay, though. We had such good makeup sex that it didn’t matter who was right or wrong in the end.”

            “Makeup sex rocks,” he said. At that point, we looked at each other and laughed. And for a moment, I could tell we were both contemplating it for ourselves. But our faces softened, and instead David took my hand and held it. We sat on that bench for at least an hour, silent, holding hands, watching the little boy and girl playing together.

***

            I moved into David’s hotel room for the remainder of my stay in Rome. We spent it walking around the city, going to galleries and shops and trattorias, and taking a drive along the countryside. I was definitely going to miss the scenery and scents and siestas. David was right about Italy being life-affirming. I finally understood what he meant about finding my soul here. The Italians celebrated life and all its pleasures in such a way that one’s own life and spirit and passions could not be help but be validated and awakened.

On our last night in Rome, I stood on the balcony of the hotel room in an oversized terrycloth robe and looked out at the city stretched out before me. David, in an identical robe, came out and put his arms around me from behind, and I let myself fall back into the safety of his body.

            “Bellisima,” I said, feeling a chill from the breeze. He must have felt it too, and gave me a squeeze. “I don’t want to leave here.”

            “La Bella Italia—she’ll wait for your return,” he said.

That instant, I turned around.

“Take me back to Fontana Di Trevi!”

He looked at me, surprised. “Now? It’s late.”

“Please? Take me—I need to go there!”

“Okay.”

We hastily dressed and left. Other late-night dwellers strolled around the city and lingered by the fountain. I took out three Euros. Without my asking him to, David left me alone. I looked at the coins, momentarily overwhelmed, not knowing what to wish for. But Sam’s presence was so strong, as if he was standing,
breathing
next to me. And this time, it didn’t leave me aching for him; rather, it made me feel peaceful, not alone. And I even wondered at that moment if Sam had brought me back to Devin—David, or brought David back to me.

I didn’t make a wish, exactly. More like, I left a message.

How I love you, Sam. I love you so much and I’ll never really leave you. I am so grateful that you bought these tickets for us and wanted us to have this adventure
.
That you wanted this for
me.
You gave me this gift.

And then it came to me.

I wish to dare to envision a life without you, Sam. A different life from the one I wanted with you, I mean.

The coins made a faint plink-plunk sound as they hit the water and sunk to the bottom, rippling in darkness. At that instant, a weight lifted itself from my heart. I felt warm inside, as if Sam was whispering, “Okay, Sweetheart. You can go home now.” As if he gave me his blessing.

I walked over to where David was standing. My eyes glistened.

“Ready to go?” he asked. I nodded.

“Let’s go home,” I said. We left the fountain, arm in arm.

Chapter Twenty-three

D
AVID HELD MY HAND DURING MOST OF THE NINE-hour flight home. Although grateful for his company, it did little to ease my anxiety. I could’ve kissed the ground once we got back to LoganAirport.

A car picked us up and drove me back to Northampton. My head was so full that I didn’t even say two words during the drive until David pierced the stillness.

“Euro for your thoughts,” he said, his voice soft and gentle.

I trembled on the inside. “I don’t wanna ask it.”

“The ‘What now’ question?”

“Yeah.”

“Between us, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

“Whattya want?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“Is it that you really don’t know, or is it that you know and it frightens you?”

Damn him.

“It’s that I really don’t know what I’m capable of at this point,” I said.

“Fair enough,” he said. “Look, if you need some space, I understand. You’re home now, where everything is a reminder of Sam. But I’m not going to lie to you. I wanna keep seeing you—as much of you as I can. Things here are different for me, too.”

What did he mean by that? I wondered.

“Where do you live, exactly?” It occurred to me that I had never asked him.

“Cambridge.”

I nodded and resumed my silence. When the car pulled up to the house, I stiffened.

“Nice house,” he said.

“You can’t come in,” I replied, my voice stern. Alarmed, even.

“I’ve seen messy houses before.”

“No,
you can’t come in
.”

He comprehended the second time. This was Sam’s and my house. There was no way I was ready for my lover—or whatever he was—to violate that.

“Okay,” he said.

We looked at each other. What was I supposed to do?

“Well…” I started.

He awkwardly pulled me to him and kissed me.

“Can I call you tomorrow?” he asked.

“Sure.”

The driver opened the passenger door for me, my luggage in tow, ready to walk me to the house. I fumbled in my purse for my key, and before I could even put it in the door, Miranda appeared and exclaimed, “Welcome home!” I hadn’t expected her to be there, but was happy to see her friendly face and embraced her. Once the luggage was in the foyer, the driver went back to the car and I watched as it pulled away. Something about not being able to see David behind the tinted window unsettled me.

After hugging Miranda close a second time, I left the foyer and entered the living room. It had been professionally cleaned, along with the rest of the house. My stomach started churning, and a wave of nausea hit me.

“Are you alright?” she asked. “You just went a little pale.” I nodded, explaining that it was leftover jitters from the flight. “I hope you don’t mind, I had the house cleaned. Consider it an early birthday gift.”

“I’ve been getting a lot of those lately.” I turned to her and thanked her. “It was very nice of you. I’ll bet it was a pig sty, huh. I really let it go.”

“I supervised, so don’t worry—they didn’t touch anything or throw anything away.”

She understands, I thought. Still, something felt wrong, like something was missing.

“So?” she started. “Tell me everything!”

***

David kept long but flexible hours. We didn’t see each other for almost a week after we got home, but he called me regularly. He was busy planning gallery exhibitions, attending meetings with prospective patrons, owners, and artists, and working on the textbook chapter. I drove to his place to meet him for dinner and a movie one night. In addition to his WestVillage loft in Manhattan (that he had sublet to his friend and former escort partner Christian, he told me), he owned a luxury penthouse in Cambridge that overlooked