Roman Crazy (25 page)

Everything was against a backdrop of green, a green so deep and gentle it was almost blue, like an old glass bottle.

As always, I felt my fingers take on an imaginary brush, a piece of pastel, even a colored pencil, itching to sketch a landscape as pure as this was.

Vaguely I was aware of Marcello and the cabbie chatting in rapid Italian, my ear getting more attuned at picking up entire phrases now. Restaurant recommendations, which gardens to tour. I might not be able to answer back yet, but I was picking up more than I'd thought in just a short amount of time.

Driving up along a high ridge, we turned down an almost hidden driveway surrounded by wrought-iron fencing and fat palm trees. And there was the villa.

“You're kidding,” I said, my jaw hanging open.

“Kidding?” Marcello asked, curious as he held my door open. I scrambled out of the cab, eyes wide as I gazed at the home that would be ours for the weekend.

“This just doesn't even seem real anymore,” I muttered to
myself, my senses overwhelmed at the beauty that completely surrounded me. The home was cream colored, flanked by tall cypress trees and pure magic. Marcello paid the cabbie, took my hand, and led me through an outer door made of intricately woven copper, tarnished green with an ageless patina. While I marveled at the mosaic-tiled floor, he worried the key into a lock set into a massive mahogany door, which creaked open, affording me the first peek into old-school Italian luxury.

I saw miles and miles of travertine floor, intersected with black veined marble. I saw room after room of beautiful furniture, priceless antiques mixed with modern comfort. I saw a kitchen that any chef would have given their eyeteeth to get to cook in once, just once. But what I couldn't really take my eyes off was the water.

The house opened up onto terrace after terrace, built into the hillside and situated perfectly to highlight the main reason this region had been famous for centuries, the beautiful lake. I walked to the edge of the main terrace, just off the dining room, and headed straight for the white stone railing, warmed by the late-afternoon sun and exactly the right width for sitting. I flung both legs over the side and perched right on the edge, laughing as the wind kicked up my curls and made me 1,000 percent glad I'd decided to take Daisy up on her offer to get my ass to Rome.

“This just doesn't seem real,” I repeated as Marcello's footsteps across the terrace behind me reminded me that yes, this was real and yes, this really was my life and yes, I deserved this gentle happiness that was creeping into every corner of my life.

That gentle happiness was compounded only seconds later when he wrapped his arms around me from behind, rested his chin on the top of my head, and together we watched the sun begin to set.

I
HEARD THAT HE AND
the wife live here most of the year. Is that true?” I asked, flipping through an Italian gossip magazine that I'd made Marcello buy me when we stopped for groceries.

He laughed, pulling it from my hands and tossing it onto the counter. “I don't know. I don't care.”

“Sure you do, she's hot. He's hot. They're stiflingly hot together. They could be here right now. Maybe next door. We can borrow sugar from them,” I teased, stepping over to the wide kitchen window to peer outside.

The house was literally on the lake. Or LAKE, as I was calling it in my head. Everything about Lake Como was amplified. Italy by default was gorgeous, but Lake Como was Italy 5.0 and that wasn't just because we may or may not run into (become best friends with) George Clooney.

It was something magical. Something out of a fairy tale with stone villas blanketed in flowers and the shimmering water surrounding you. The crisp air ignited every sense in my body and commanded attention.

I was lost in my daydream about potential Hollywood
neighbors when Marcello came up behind me at the counter. His arms reached around mine to turn on the faucet. With his lips on my neck, he washed his hands before drying them on a tea towel on the side.

It was such a domestic thing to do. Cuddled up against each other to do something mundane, but there was nothing simple about it. It felt like more. More comfort, more openness. More like a couple.

But I was still legally a part of a couple with Daniel and the comfort melted away, allowing sadness to creep in.

“What happened just then? Your warmth, it faded,” Marcello said, rubbing his hands along my arms.

I turned and rested my head to his chest. I'd wondered when this topic would come up. Frankly, I was surprised I'd avoided it as long as I did. But as patient as Marcello had been while I got my mental Daniel ducks in order, the conversation was
beyond
overdue.

“Take me out to dinner tonight, okay?” I asked, reaching up on my tiptoes to kiss his chin. My lips moved down, chin to Adam's apple, to the little hollow at the base of his throat that made him shiver.

“Then I will ravage you under the stars with the lake air as our blanket.”

Now see, an Italian can get away with saying something like that . . .

THERE WASN'T EVER GOING TO
be a right time for this conversation, but it was time to bring it all out in the open.

And it was here, at a lovely lakeside restaurant, that I finally felt ready to share my life, such as it had been, with him. Sitting
across from me, his eyes liquid chocolate in the warm glow from the candlelight, I realized that this could have been my life. Had I made other choices. Had I listened to my heart and not my head. Had I—

“You have murdered your breadstick.”

“Hmm?” I asked, snapped out of my reverie by Marcello's voice. He gestured to the pile of crumbs that had once been a crispy breadstick before my nervous hands got ahold of it and reduced it to so many crackery crumbs. “Oh, whoops.”

He inclined his head in question. “Tell me what is going through that gorgeous head of yours, before you make a bigger mess.”

Funny he should mention a mess . . .

I took a deep breath. “You haven't asked me much about what's going on at home.”

“In Rome?” he asked, and it thrilled me to no end that even for a second I could consider, that we would consider, Rome as home.

“No,
home
home. Boston home.”

He swirled his wine in the glass, lifting it to his lips, his eyes on mine over the rim. Just before he sipped, he said, “You haven't wanted to tell me much. I can respect that.”

“You don't want to know?”

He considered. “Of course I want to know, but I want to know what you want me to know. When you want me to know it.”

I sipped my own wine. “I see.”

He leaned across the table and covered my hand with his own. “Do not mistake my lack of asking as a lack of interest. I want to know what's going on in Boston, I want to know everything.”

“You want to know
everything
?” I asked.

“I do, you think you can tell me something that—”

“I'm married, Marcello,” I blurted out.

Remember when I said there was nothing like being the reason that someone's entire face changes? When I'd thought that, I'd just made him happy. I'd never thought about the opposite effect.

He stared at me expressionless. He was still, unmoving, like a statue. Except for his jaw, which clenched repeatedly.

Tell him the rest!

“But I'm getting divorced. I'm, well, I'm separated I guess is what you'd call it.”

“Which is it?” he asked, jaw unclenching.

“Both, I suppose. I
am
separated. I
am
getting a divorce. I'm in the process now, it's complicated. Although I suppose all divorces are, aren't they?”

“I don't know, I've never been divorced,” he said, his voice tinged with a touch of reproach.

I sighed. “I certainly didn't plan on getting divorced. Really, who walks down the aisle thinking, hey, I can always get out of this later on?”

“I'd never want my wife to feel that way.”

“Your wife would never feel that way,” I whispered, feeling my eyes spark with tears. “Who would ever want a way out if they were married to you?”

We both sat silently, eyes locked, asking each other questions without words. Finally, he spoke. “So, you are getting divorced.”

“Yes.” I paused to take a sip of wine.

“Why?”

“He was cheating.”

He cursed quietly in Italian. “If he wasn't cheating, you would still be married? Not getting divorced?”

“I don't know. I'd like to say that I still would've left him for a host of other reasons. But the fact is, if I hadn't caught him balls deep in his secretary, then I wouldn't be here on this lovely lake, eating this lovely meal, about to go home to a lovely villa with a lovely man, and have wicked, wild, lovely sex.”

He smiled at that, just a little bit, but enough that the left corner of his mouth tilted up. “What is balls deep?”

I rolled my eyes. “You'll figure it out. I had plans, promises, mistakes made that I let dictate how I lived. But I can't say with a hundred percent certainty that I would have demanded more from my life one day.”

It was easy here, a world away, to convince myself that I could have more, could be more. But back home, buried in garden parties and country club dinners, it was so easy to quietly slip away from myself. A concrete cardigan as it were, sucking me down into that bored-out-of-my-mind hell.

“I had friends who'd sought refuge with the pool man. And friends whose chardonnay or two at five o'clock became three or four glasses at lunchtime. I didn't cheat, didn't drink or fill my life with another vice. Instead I became what I thought I wanted to be and gave up what I really loved.

“I so wanted to think that one day I would have woken up, packed a bag, and gone out into the world to find my own way. To sketch and paint again. To walk into a museum and not feel that sense of longing from missing it so much. It took coming here to get those things.

“The thing is, while I can't say I was happy with Daniel, I can't say I was unhappy, either. I was a whole lot of nothing. And that wasn't great.”

“It sounds very not great.”

Hearing my words repeated back to me in an Italian accent made me even more aware how different we were.

I smiled sadly at him. “There's more, Marcello.”

“More?”

“Yes. Daniel was my boyfriend in college. We, Daniel and I, we were dating when I studied abroad. When I was in Barcelona.” I looked down at my napkin. “When I was with you.”

“Avery,” he sighed, sitting back in his chair and looking as though the entire world was heavy on his shoulders.

“When I came to Barcelona, it was the first time I was ever alone, on my own, and I went a little crazy. I went a lot crazy with you.” I thought of that first time I saw him, on that hill when I was sketching. “You were so great, and so much fun, and I thought what the hell, I'll have a little fling. I gave myself permission to have some fun, but then you turned out to be so damn great, Marcello; you weren't supposed to be so great!” I surprised us both then by laughing. “You were so amazing and wonderful and you made me fucking fall in love with you for God's sake.”

His eyes burned into mine as he watched me come undone, reliving it, feeling everything again because he was feeling it, too. He knew what I went through because he felt it all right there with me.

“When I went home, Marcello, I had every intention of coming back, to you, once I had my career on track and I could apply for something near you, whatever it was, I was coming back. But things change and things happen and—” My voice cracked then, and my body gave me away because I could never talk about this, ever, without going through it all over again. “Once I was home, I slipped too easily back into my old life. And
after a while, I ended up sleeping with Daniel. And then I got pregnant. And then I got married. And then we lost Hannah when she was only three months old and—” My eyes blurred, tears spilling over. “And then I got lost, too.”

He was up from the table, this blurry beautiful man whom I could barely see because of my tears, and taking me into his arms and tucking me into his side and hurrying me out onto the balcony and away from prying eyes and curious looks and concerned glances. Away to a quiet corner against the railing where strong Italian arms wrapped around shaking American shoulders and words were whispered in a quiet language that couldn't possibly be understood but they were. They were because it was Marcello speaking to his Avery, to me, and he worried and fussed over me like a child, wiping my tears and kissing my forehead and telling me that it was okay, that I was okay, that
we
were okay, and when he wrapped his hands around my face and kissed me gently, so gently, I knew that this man would be the only man kissing me for the rest of my life.