Roman Crazy (36 page)

What had I done?

Whatever it was, I'd done it twice.

Wordless, panicked, ashamed, I backed out of the apartment and headed into the streets.

I
FELT EXPOSED, RAW, AND
gutted as I stood in the chaotic Piazza Venezia.

Cars, Vespas, and buses zipped by, narrowly missing one another around the frenzied circle. Numerous roads fed into the piazza, much like a roundabout at home, with each car jockeying for position and making it a maddening sight. People milled about taking photos of Il Vittoriano, the beautifully lit white building that loomed in front of me.

My phone buzzed again in my purse.

“I assumed you would have chosen me,”
he had said, and a sob ripped up from my chest, startling a few couples sitting on the wall.

“
Scusi
,” I mumbled.

Looking back, maybe it was easier for me to compartmentalize, to rationalize my time in Spain because I knew that I was in the wrong then. Daniel and I weren't in a great place when I took off for Barcelona, but we were very much still a couple. Much as I didn't want to admit it, I was wrong. I'd willfully pursued
Marcello, knowing that Daniel was at home waiting for me. I'd been unfaithful.

I stopped and dug out my phone, then ducked into an alley to call Daisy.

“Hey, I was trying to get ahold of you. Do you guys want to meet us?” she answered, and I could hear voices in the background shouting. “Hang on, I'm down the street at that little café.” She paused, and it sounded like she stepped outside. “Okay, sorry. Grab your man and come have a drink. I'm out with some of our friends from work.”

“Can you head home? I'll meet you there?” I checked the signs around me and calculated. “In about fifteen? I know you're out and busy but I need an ear. Probably both. I just have to flag down a cab.”

“Are you okay?”

“Just meet me at home and I'll explain.”

SHE WAS ON THE STOOP
when I got there, looking a bit worse for the wear. “Are you pickled?”

She held up two fingers. “Lil' bit. I locked myself out.”

When I stepped under the glare of the lamplight, she gasped at my mascara-messed face. “What the hell happened—”

“Simone,” I interrupted, not wanting to say her name anymore. Digging out my key, I fumbled with the lock before letting us inside, a confused and drunk Daisy on my heels.

“Simone? Simone who? What's going on?”

“The girl. The girl with Marcello, the first night I was here?”

“The pretty one?”

“Yes! Jesus, yes, the pretty one.”

“What about her?”

“He slept with her,” I said, sniffling.

“What?” she howled, loud enough that I held my hands over my ears.

“Okay, we both can't be yelling.”

“Avery, I'm so sorry. I can't fucking believe he'd do this. You guys seemed so solid. I'll rip his fucking balls off! Did you
see
them? Good God, tell me you didn't catch
another
man in the act, did you?”

“No, no, it's not like that.” I angrily scrubbed the residual tears and makeup from my face. I carried on undeterred. I wanted her to be on my side for this. To see why I was angry. “They're not together
now
. When I got here they were.”

“Well, yeah. We saw them.”

“That's not the point! The point is, dammit, they definitely slept together.”

“Okay. Just hold on, I'm trying to figure this out. He's been seeing you both at once? Or this wasn't since you two got back together? Or it was? I'm so confused. You knew he was with her when you got here, right? I mean you saw them at dinner. Did I drink too much tonight?”

“Yes, they were together then and for a bit once Marcello and I started to . . . well, whatever we were doing, they were still spending time together,” I explained, waiting for her to get as pissed and hurt as I was.

“He was sleeping with her after he slept with you?”

“Maybe. Possibly. I don't know. I think so? I didn't really let him answer.”

As I heard the words coming out of my mouth, I began to see things a little differently. The more I thought about the timeline
of the relationship and when we got together, the clearer a picture I got. It didn't make the truth any less painful, but I was at least seeing his side.

And how poorly I'd reacted to it.

Daisy was silent, which was entirely unusual.

“Say it,” I said.

“You're being a jackass.”

“Don't sugarcoat it or anything.” I sighed, sitting on the chair with my head in my hands.

“Honey, that
was
sugarcoated. The version in my head had a lot more
fucks
strewn throughout my very poignant speech, but I'm drunk, and jackass seemed quicker.”

“I
am
a jackass.”

“You are. I love you, but you are.” She wiggled beside me on the chair, throwing her arm around my shoulder. “Lemme ask you something.”

I nodded, resting my head on her shoulder.

“Is this it for you?” she asked.

“Is
what
it for me?”

“Marcello—is
he
it for you? Seriously, can you look beyond what happened with them, and likely when it happened? Or are you ready to walk away?”

She asked it without judgment, and I knew that she'd support whatever I decided.

“I love him,” I said, without question or hesitation.

“Enough to overlook it? To move beyond it?”

“There's nothing to overlook. Jesus, isn't that funny?”

“What, what's funny? What did I miss?” She was drunker than I thought.

“I didn't even really consider the idea of forgiving Daniel, because I didn't want to. I didn't even want to hear his side of the
story. But with Marcello . . .” I wiped away the tears that were falling. “I gotta go.”

“Okay,” she said, flopping back onto the chair, eyes closing.

“And, Daisy?”

“Hmm?”

“You're the best.”

“Tell me something I don't know,” she said with grin. She was snoring by the time I closed the front door.

WHEN I GOT TO MARCELLO'S,
the house was dark, save for the rooftop. There, I could see the garden lights aglow. I knocked this time, pushing the doorbell once. It wasn't that I thought he wouldn't let me back in. It was that I
wanted
him to open the door. I needed to see his face when he welcomed me in.

It took a minute, but he looked over the ledge to see me. Without a word, he disappeared, and a minute later, he opened the door. He exhaled when he saw me. A sense of relief washed over us both. Stepping forward, he scooped me up into his arms and held me tight, his face buried between my shoulder and neck.

He pulled me inside.

I let him.

ONCE INSIDE, HE STEERED ME
toward the couch, disappearing briefly into the kitchen, coming back with a damp towel and a bottle of water. He sat down across from me, handing me the towel. “For your face,” he said.

My makeup, the tear tracks—what a mess I was. “Thanks,” I said, wiping it all away.

He was wired, muscles taut, but his eyes did me in. Regret.

“Marcello, I—I overreacted.” He held my hands, dropping a kiss to each when I let out a shuddery breath.

“Avery, when you showed up here, in Roma, out of nowhere, I had no idea what to do. I wanted to spend time with you, get to know you again, but—”

“You knew there'd be a chance of what happened in Spain, happening
again,
” I finished, sitting up a little straighter. “I get that. I don't like it, but I understand. I realized something very important tonight. I didn't want to forgive Daniel because I didn't love him. Not anymore. And frankly, I never loved him the same way I loved, love, you. But you—oh, God, Marcello,
you
? Just one word from that woman, and I was destroyed. I felt like I was physically being torn apart. It's not whether you were with her or not once you were with me, it's that I love you that much, that it hurt that much—does that even make sense?” I pushed my hair back from my face, not wanting anything between us, not wanting to hide this at all from him, needing him to really hear me. “You're
it
for me.”

And there it was. That was the question I had to ask myself and be so honest about. It came down to what were you willing to forgive, when you were forgiving The One? Seeing Daniel having sex with another woman was powerful, but the truth is, if I'd seen him just
kissing
another woman . . . it would have been enough. I couldn't have forgiven that, because I didn't want to.

But when it's The One? You cry. You scream. You overreact. And then you work it out.
Because
he's The One. And it's worth it.

He smiled, pulling me into the chair with him.

“I love you more than I can possibly say. Can you understand that?”

“I do,
tesoro,
” he said, cradling me to his chest in a Marcello
cocoon. “It's as much as I love you. No more secrets. No more lies. No more running away without us talking first. We cannot do that to each other.”

“We need to be honest,” I agreed, kissing his chin. “Just you and me.”

“Just you and me.”

I
HAD JUST SWIPED MY
paintbrush into a shade of ripe apricot when I was overcome with a sense of melancholy. I took a deep breath, waiting for the feeling to pass. Looking up, I admired the pristine, clear blue, and cloudless sky.

In the two or so weeks since all hell broke loose, I found myself tearing up at random times throughout the day. A man helping an elderly woman across the street? I got teary.

Young kids playing stickball in the courtyard by Daisy's apartment? Tears.

Painting here with my fellow artists in Campo de' Fiori? You guessed it: teary. I didn't have any explanation other than I was crazy and crazy happy all rolled into one.

We were finishing up the final touches on the painting when my instructor stopped at my easel.

“
Belissima
,” she said, touching my shoulder. “I am glad you come back. Beautiful work, you do.”

I smiled, staring at my painting with pride. My visits to this class were therapeutic and invigorating. They fueled that need for me to create.

By the time I reached the apartment, the painting was dry, and I stacked it in the hall closet with the rest of them. Checking the clock, I had just enough time to wash the paint from my face. Honestly, when would I ever
not
look like a finger-painting toddler when I was finished? I needed to be as presentable as possible, because today I was Skyping my parents to tell them my news.

A conversation that I was eager to get over with.

Earlier I had been holed up in Marcello's office, enjoying his very handsy company and trying to fill out the paperwork for my work visa.

“Stop it,” I ordered, slapping away a roving finger. “My handwriting is terrible to begin with, and with your, ah . . . ah. Oh, that's nice . . . Wait!”

An email had just arrived from my mother, asking if everything was okay. Her freaky intuition and a keen knack for timing had me spelling my name wrong, and I had to fill out the damn paperwork all over again.

It was as if she and my father knew something was up. It was time to break it to them.

Pulling up the chair, I opened the laptop and waited for the beeps that they were calling me. I busied myself with opening the envelope from Maria and the board at Museo di Roma in Trastevere. I beamed, clutching it to my chest. Running my hand over the emblem embossed into the letterhead, I sighed.

When Maria had called me into her office, I was nervous. I walked in to find not only her but her boss and her boss's boss, and I panicked. I thought back to my work on the villa I'd just completed and prayed that I hadn't screwed something up.