“I can’t believe you never told anyone.”
“I sort of did. At least I did without actually saying anything. Remember how I went dark? No emails, no texts, calls, I think maybe I sent a postcard or two.”
“Wait, he was why no one ever heard from you? When you got home, you said the courses were tough.”
“That wasn’t a lie. They were tough. Because I was skipping a lot of them. My grades suffered. His weren’t so hot, either.” I suddenly heard myself, and laughed out loud. “I can’t believe I’m sitting here, in Rome no less, I’m about to get a divorce, and I’m chatting it up with you about my grades nine years ago! What is happening?” I laughed again, and even to my own ears I sounded a bit delirious. “And now Marcello is suddenly back in the picture and—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, just hold on a minute here.” She held up her hands. “Back in the picture? Just because you’re both here doesn’t mean you’re going to fall back into bed with him. Does it?”
Did it? “No, of course not,” I responded weakly.
THE LAST TIME I was in europe, I survived on almost no sleep. It was easy, I was young and excited to be on my own for the first time. I wasn’t going to miss a thing. My life back then, at least in the beginning, was all about the art, the energy of Barcelona—full immersion. Any and every medium imaginable was used to create what I thought were masterpieces—sleep just got in the way.
Of course it was different this time around. I was weary and heartbroken and more than a little bit embarrassed, which led to a lot of anger. As if those weren’t enough feelings jockeying for position in my head, I just faced someone whose life I disappeared from without a trace.
Last night after Daisy fell asleep curled up on the chair, I covered her up with a throw blanket and headed back to the guest room. Exhausted, I stretched out, propped myself up on pillows, and stared at the veined plaster ceiling trying to memorize every detail from the dinner.
Marcello.
I fell asleep thinking of him, something I hadn’t done in years.
* * *
I WOKE UP THE NEXT morning to church bells pealing like crazy, telling me, and everyone else nearby, that it was time to wake up and start the day.
I’d start the day, but that didn’t mean I had to get out of bed. Pulling the pillows over my head, I burrowed down into the mattress, praying for the bells to stop. They didn’t. Admittedly, they sounded lovely. I just wish they weren’t so damn loud.
Ding, dong, ding. I flung the pillow at the window and nearly cried when it hit the wooden slatted shades, opening them up. Sunlight poured into the room, warming it in its beautiful Italian glow.
“Damn it,” I muttered to myself, hiding my head under the blankets. Checking my watch, I calculated the time difference between Rome and Boston. A pang struck deep in my belly at the thought that Daniel would be finishing up his Sunday golf game and heading home, where we would have carried on with our routine pleasantries.
Yet here I was lying in a bed that wasn’t mine, in a city that I was a stranger in when my life as I knew it was carrying on without me in Boston. I felt a subtle itch to call Daniel. To ask him when he’d be home so that I made sure everything was just so. Straightening artwork that I didn’t paint and setting the dining room table with china that wasn’t mine—these were all parts of a whole.
Or, a hole as it were, because there was a gaping one in our marriage and it took me going to another country to accept just how far apart we had grown.
Daisy knocked and poked her arm through the open door and jiggled a bag filled with something that smelled outrageously good. And fattening. Mmm, trans fat and cholesterol.
I burrowed further into the blankets.
“No more snoring, cupcake. Time to get up and kick the rest of the jet lag in the ass. Oh, and finish filling in the blanks, please,” she said, laughing and sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’d prefer not to pry it out of you.” She rolled her neck and grimaced. “I have a crick in my neck from sleeping in that chair all night.”
“I did cover you with a blanket,” I pointed out, reaching for the bag of pastries.
“You did; it’s nice to have someone tucking me in for a change. I’ve been swamped with this job, not sleeping too much. Still, I know better than to sleep in that damn chair; I shouldn’t have gotten comfortable. Henry Cavill could’ve been doing a striptease for me and I’d still probably have fallen asleep.”
“Oh please, there’s no way in hell you would have slept through that.”
“Well, that’s true,” she replied with a faraway look in her eye. No doubt thinking of a dancing Henry.
“What’s this job, anyway?” I asked, sitting up and pulling a pillow onto my lap. I smoothed my blond hair back, feeling how knotted up the back had gotten while I slept. Plucking a tie from the side table, I pulled it up, wrapping it into a loose bun.
Sitting on the bed and chatting felt like we were back in college. Daisy looked the same, save for the hair. She was still tall and lean, probably from all the walking she did here, and her green eyes sparkled when she talked about work.
“It’s this old bank we’ve been working on for months. It’s almost done, but we hit a snag. One of the volunteers found out she was pregnant and she can’t be in the studio or around the chemicals anymore. Even though we’re environmentally friendly, it’s a lot of funk when your senses are on overdrive.”
“That’s too bad. Is that going to mess up the schedule?”