Roman Crazy (35 page)

“Simone,” I blurted, wishing I could pull the words back in, but the shock of running into her rankled me.

She stepped in front of me, blocking the path, her Dior shopping bag draped over her bent arm. There was no misjudging her anger. She would have looked like any of the other chic women moving about the fashionable district, were it not for the undiluted hatred pouring off her. I skirted around her, wanting to avoid the confrontation, but she wasn't having it and managed to side-step me again. Did she know about us? That he was with me now, that I was the girl who—

“Fucked my Italian” she growled with so much disdain.

Oh yes. She knew.

She followed, her eyes laser locked on me, the girl who—

“Fucked my Italian,” she hissed.

Dammit! I had to stop setting her up in my head like that!

“If you'll excuse me,” I said, taking a step back, bumping into a gaggle of tourists. The crowd moved around us like water around a couple of boulders, enjoying the beautiful day, unaware that a Wild West showdown had begun on the poshest street in town.

“I will not. We have to talk, you and I. Woman to woman,” she shouted, drawing the judging eyes from the couples walking past us.

Looking for a way to placate her, I edged over to the side between two palm trees. This all felt very
Real Housewives of Rome
with the crowd of tourists getting ready to climb the Spanish Steps, or the unassuming families stopping for gelato. The last thing I wanted was unwanted attention from the peanut gallery. “Simone, this really isn't the place—”

“Don't you dare say my name after you took him away from me,” she said, her accent thicker than I remembered.

French, maybe? I couldn't quite place it. Although to be fair, there wasn't much I was paying attention to other than Marcello and his beautiful face. And as a matter of fact, now that I think about it, were they even together that night? Her demeanor had seemed possessive, but who wouldn't be around someone as good looking as Marcello, especially if she'd been trying to land him? Ha! This boulder stood a bit taller.

“I don't know what you think happened, but I can assure you that—”

“You will be quiet. I have heard enough about you, from Cello. I knew something was going on that night. He acted so odd when you showed up out of nowhere, stupid American falling out of her chair—you looked ridiculous. I couldn't figure out why he wouldn't stop staring at you!”

“Marcello and I have known each other a long time. There's a lot of history there,” I replied, keeping my tone even and cool, though my heart was pounding in my throat. And the fact that we shared a history made it more concrete. Real. I was his
tesoro
, his
treasure.
And this French bitch
girl
wasn't going to take that away.

“
I
had history with Marcello,” she asserted, her voice beginning to crack, hurt showing through. “We were something before you—” She broke off.

A prickly cold feeling was creeping up my spine. What was she talking about?

“I didn't notice it at first. A missed dinner here, a canceled concert there. He was
always
busy, especially when he was bringing a project in, but he always made the time for me. For my needs. When he said he was too busy to bring me to the opening
party for the new bank? I thought maybe . . . but he came back. He could not stay away for long.”

I could feel the blood drain from my face. She must have noticed, too, because she was suddenly very pleased with herself, standing a bit taller, her chest pushed out a bit farther. She'd struck a raw nerve and she knew it.

“Wait. Just wait a minute,” I said, shaking my head, trying to understand. “You and Marcello were together? Like,
together
together?”

She looked confused. “Why do you say it twice?”

“Just answer my question.”

Color crept into her cheeks. “Yes, of course we were. We were together for months before you showed up. I convinced him that this was not permanent—you being here. Why end things with me in the hopes that you would stay?”

“I meant
after
I showed up. You were together? In all the ways?” I asked, knowing the answer, but not being able to stop myself from asking anyway.

“Of course in all the ways,” she scoffed, but her tone shifted. She went from disdain to lethal. “Ah,” she sneered, beginning to circle me. “You are wondering if we fucked? It bothers you not knowing what we did. Did you think he would drop everything for you?”

“I . . .” I wanted to say yes, that it was bothering me. Yes, I thought because we didn't discuss her that she was a nonentity, but I also didn't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing how much her words were tearing me apart.

She huffed in response, but didn't walk away.

“When was the last time you . . .”

“Oh!” She laughed. “When did he end things with me?” she asked, raising her chin a bit.

“You want to know the last time he fucked me, no?”

I nodded.

“Was it after he fucked you? Does that bother you? Wondering if he left you, not satisfied, and had to seek me out?” Her gaze was calculating, assessing. She looked at me long enough that I reflexively began to wonder if I had something on my shirt. Finally, she smiled. My heart sank. “You ask him.”

I reeled back, the pavement seeming to move beneath my feet. The edges of the world went haywire and out of focus, as though the earth had tilted on its axis and I could fall off a great cliff, with nothing to hold on to.

She leaned close, murmuring, “You be sure to tell him you ran into me, no?”

Oh, I'd be sure.

WHEN I'D LEFT TO GO
shopping, Marcello was at home engrossed in his work. Needing quiet, he opted to skip the office craziness to do some research for a new bid he'd been putting hours and hours of work into. The job was massive in scale and would be an enormous undertaking should his team's proposal win.

When?

Oh, God.

It felt like my chest was being crushed, and I bent at the waist, trying to breathe deeply as another searing image of them together knocked the breath from my lungs.

When I finally straightened, my feet flew across the cobblestones toward his home, my disbelief becoming a chant that matched my footsteps.
Click click, click click,
how long, how long
?

I needed to talk to him, to find out what really happened, and if Simone was lying. Was she a disgruntled woman who
would say anything to hurt someone who left her? Or a hurt woman whose heart had been broken by the man who had given me his?

Finally reaching his apartment, I flew up the stairs, my feet pounding out my confusion and insistence that it wasn't true, that it couldn't be true.

I tried working out the timeline to see what fit.
Maybe
things fit if I were to believe her claims. That awful crawly feeling was back, making me doubt, making me wonder.

At his door I considered knocking, but he'd told me never to knock, just to enter.
Because only strangers knock,
he'd told me, then slipped a hand under my shirt to caress my belly while kissing me stupid.

Had Simone been granted the same privilege?

I opened the door, finding Marcello seated at his drafting desk, a pencil behind his ear and an enormous smile on his face when he saw me. Crossing to me with heavily lidded eyes and sinful lips he was already licking in anticipation of my kiss, he was so incredibly beautiful that only my clenched fists reminded me of what had happened earlier today.

“
Tesoro,
you're back so late?” he murmured. “I was beginning to wonder what was keeping you.” He dipped his head to place a kiss along my jawline, his weekend stubble brushing my skin as I pulled away.

I looked up into those warm brown eyes. “Simone.”

His hands stilled on me, his entire body stiffened, his features carved in stone. He cleared his throat.

“Simone? What about her?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

His question lit something deep within me.

“She told me.”

“Told you what?” When his eyes changed, I knew everything she'd implied was true.

My breath hitched. “That you were with her,” I said, my voice sounding strange in my ears. High pitched, a little crazy.

“Yes, you knew that. You saw me with her at the dinner. She was someone I dated for a time. So?”

“So? She stopped me on the street today and told me how long you were together.
For a time
.”

“Yes, for a time, so?”

I went on as if he hadn't spoken. “Were you fucking us both?”

“It was never serious.” He kept talking, missing what I said. Purposefully missing what I said?

I felt my heart bottom out. “She told me you were fucking us both
at the same time, Marcello
. Explain to me how that couldn't possibly be true, that she can't possibly be right about this.”

“I dated Simone. Casually. Occasionally. I don't know what she told you, if she was more serious about me than I was about her, but it was not like that for me.”

“It's funny that you never mentioned her to me after we started . . . after we started.”

“What would I tell you? I didn't know if you were staying, or for how long. Why would I say anything when we”—he waved between us—“were not together.”

“Were you with us both, Marcello?”

“What are you asking me?”

I laughed, hoarse and hollow. “It's a simple question: Did you fuck her after you fucked me?”

He reared back as if I struck him. “Now wait a minute, wait just a minute,” he protested, digging his hands into my skin.

I pushed angrily at his hands, tugging free of his grasp.

He let me go, frustrated. “You and I, we weren't even together,” he insisted. “And what was going on with Simone and me, it was not serious.”

“Well,
she
sure thought it was!” I pushed him, hard enough that he stumbled back. If I was shocked, he was stunned. “How long after we slept together did you go to her?” My voice was barely audible over my shuddery breathing. To think that he'd been with someone else while we'd started sleeping together . . . I felt sick.

“
Tesoro,
” he began, laying his hand on my shoulder.

I shook him off. “Don't call me that! Did you call
her
that, too?”

I moved as far away from him as I could in the small room.

He stood in the heart of the room looking lost.

“Just tell me the truth, Mar—” I choked on a sob. Hearing her call him Cello was another slap in the face. Even though he'd said he wasn't serious, it clearly was. They had a shorthand. She was invested.

I
was invested, too.

“What does it matter?” he said, stepping back to lean against his desk. His head was in his hands while he spoke. “I don't remember. I don't care. There was no
you and I
then.”

“While I was falling in love with you all over again, you were fucking someone else who loved you.”

I looked up, expecting to see more of the detached response. But wait a minute—he had the nerve to look
angry
?

“Yes, and that should be very familiar to you,” he said, anger thickening his accent. “In Barcelona, how long for
you
?”

My head snapped back, startled.

He was pacing now, his hands in his hair, eyes wild, hurt and
filled with pain. “How many times did you call Daniel from Spain while I was in
your
bed, Avery?”

“What? What are you talking about?” I was struck cold.

“When we were in Barcelona, you would leave your bed—
our
bed, Avery—in the middle of the night to call your boyfriend back in the States. You think I did not know? You didn't say anything about him, but I knew. You didn't tell me about him; I didn't mention Simone. How is this different?”

My cheeks burned, my face flooding with anger. “It's different because we were kids! I was—” Oh, God. Everything he was saying about Barcelona, about Daniel, was all true.

“What? You were not serious with him? You never said that we were then, and you didn't say so this time,” he stated, thumping his chest, enraged. His eyes were so cold it felt strange to look at him, to see that coldness directed toward me. “You could have left at any moment. I had no idea if you were going to stay in Rome, to stay with me. I'd been sure that you would stay with me in Barcelona. Or that we would figure out a way to make it work when you left. That maybe you would come with me back to Italy or that I would come to America. So yes, I was still with her. I didn't know that you wouldn't leave again.”

“So, you did this to what,
hurt
me? To get back at me for what I did? Jesus Christ, Marcello, we're adults. You should have known this was different,” I sputtered. “Running into you again after all of these years, how could that have happened unless we were supposed to be together—don't you see? This was our second chance!”

“I am not a mind reader!” he thundered, leaning back against the wall, scrubbing at his face with his hands. “I ended things with Simone because of you when I knew you were staying. You
didn't do the same for me. You cheated on your boyfriend with me, and now you stand here and accuse me of doing the same thing?”

Oh, God. He was right. All those years ago, I'd cheated on Daniel. And I'd tried to keep him a secret from Marcello, but he'd known all along.

“But why didn't you ever say anything about it?”

“Because I assumed you would choose me,” he choked out bitterly. My hand flew to my mouth.