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.”