Roman Crazy (6 page)

With the wine cork between his teeth, he had painted my naked skin in homemade Chianti. Dragging the slick red liquid over every inch of me, dipping into the peaks and valleys while he watched . . . burned.

“Water?” I chirped, using the napkin to blot my fevered skin. “Agua? Aqua? How the hell do you say water?” I gulped the wine instead.

“Maybe ease up on the booze there, Jet Lag,” Daisy suggested, moving the glass away from me.

Marcello harrumphed and casually draped an arm over the back of the chair where his date sat. His body turned completely away from me. A brush-off is a brush-off in any country.

Someone at the other end of the table shouted to him and he smiled. While he was pulled into a conversation, I was left
with a perfect view of his jaw. His profile that made my belly flip and my heart
 . . .

The second I didn't seem preoccupied by ghosts of my secret past, Daisy's coworkers were there to fill the void. Like Daisy warned, Tommaso was a seasoned flirt. He was handsome, sure. Boyish good looks and that accent, oh boy. I knew about accents.

Had my life not been in total disarray, maybe I'd consider him and an Italian affair, but now . . . I was faced, quite literally, with my last Italian affair. God, that sounded so Lifetime made-for-TV movie. There had to be a better way to describe it. Dalliance? Indiscretion? That summer I spent all that time on my back, side, front, sweet holy Christ,
all of it . . .

It took everything I had left in my energy reserve to act normally. To not let on to the entire restaurant that we knew each other.
Intimately.

With a light hand on my shoulder, the waiter slid the plate of appetizers in front of me. Everyone was preoccupied discussing different projects. Restoration work over by the Lateran church, some stabilization nightmare at a building near the Forum. With a mouthful of the freshest tomato I'd ever eaten, I listened, watched, and absorbed it all.

With ears on the conversations, my eyes darted to check out Marcello. At first I tried to ignore the pull, the deeply hidden urge to study him. The more I tried to smother it, the more I looked over. It didn't help that he was across from me looking wickedly sexy. Marcello was only in his early thirties, and had aged
very well.

His dark brown hair was slightly longer than I remembered, curling around his ears ever so slightly, making the waves more prominent. Any lingering softness in his features had melted
away, giving way to a strong, chiseled face. His nose, which had always been his best feature, had a new bump on the ridge. Another soccer injury, I wagered. The earring he once wore was gone. A chain with a small silver medal now lay on his chest, visible through the small opening of his white shirt. As he spoke, I relished the richness of his voice and how his phrases jumped from English to Italian.

With warm soup filling my nervous stomach, I studied his hands. Long tanned fingers were speckled with scars—no wedding ring, I noted. Hardworking hands that I didn't doubt were still rough, and so very strong. I choked on said soup—a lovely roasted summer asparagus—when I fantasized about those hands on my skin.

Even seated, I could tell that his already muscular strong build had changed so much. His chest was broader, more filled out. His perpetual tan made his olive skin glow in the flickering candlelight and his angular features appeared more prominent. I wanted to get closer and yet farther away to fight the temptation to lean over and smell his skin. Would he still smell the same even though so much of him had changed?

In the end, it all came back to his eyes. That youthful sparkle was still there, even though they were older, wiser, yet still unchanging. Except when he looked at me. There was a vacancy that I never saw before.

When you think of a reunion, you tend to focus on the good parts. The warm embraces, catching up, and the sheer joy of seeing someone again. Marcello was anything but happy to see me. Though, to be fair, I didn't blame him.

I couldn't help but feel like he was actively avoiding looking at me. His body was angled to face his stunning date.

When I moaned over the gnocchi, it marked the only time that he willingly glanced my way.

“Damn, those are good.”

Marcello turned and studied the fork as it entered my mouth on the next bite. He was focused on my lips until the woman next to him drew his eyes away by taking his hand and bringing him into a conversation.

It was all too much. Too much wine, too much pasta, too many pretty twinkle sparkle lights overhead, too much ambience, too many gorgeous, talented thirty-somethings with their whole fun and whimsical yet carefully laid out lives in front of them, too much tension, and most certainly, too much past smacking me upside my jet-lagged and convinced-the-world-had-stopped-spinning pretty little head.

I mentioned too much wine, right?

Feeling him—him with the eyes and the hands and the lips and the mouth and the everything—with nothing but a few planks of ancient Roman wood between us was simply too much. I needed to move, walk, run, flee, or—

“Excuse me; I need to use the ladies' room. Come with me?” I asked Daisy with an eyebrow arch that said she was required to accompany me.

“Sure.
Scusi,
” she said as Marcello stood to let her pass. He stood for her, but his eyes never left mine. Burning, questioning, wondering.

I could feel my pulse racing, my heart fluttering in my chest. It was screaming to flee, flee now, before words that I wouldn't be able to control came flying out of my mouth. Words like,
Dear God, it's you
, and
You're still the most beautiful man in the world,
and
I'm so sorry for everything.

A nervous giggle spilled out as I followed Daisy out of the room, on the verge of . . . what?

A breakdown?

Confession?

Another crazy giggle escaped my lips.

“What in the world has gotten into you?” she whisper-shouted at me as we entered the empty bathroom. “Really, Avery, what the hell?”

“Oh my God!” I shouted, pacing in a tight circle. The bathrooms in Italy were tiny. “Oh my God, Daisy! He's
here
!”

“Who exactly is
he
?

“Avery! Who the hell is
he
?” Daisy repeated.

I breathed in, then breathed out. I took one more breath, then spilled the biggest secret I'd ever kept.

“Remember when I spent that summer in Barcelona?”

“Yes.”

“And I came home and said I'd had the time of my life?”

“Yes.”

“And I almost stayed another few months after the semester was over?”

“Yes.”

“I almost stayed another few months because I didn't want to leave.”

“Okaaaay?”

“Marcello.”

“Marcello who?”

“I didn't want to leave Marcello.”

“Leave Marcello what?”

“Christ, Daisy, keep up! I slept with your friend Marcello in Barcelona when I was in college!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“And you never told me?”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“I know!” I shouted, both of us flapping our hands and waving them about and pointing and
oh my God he's here
!

“But of course he's here,” I continued. “It makes sense, when you think about how much time has passed and his field of study. Of course he'd be living in Rome, it's so close to his hometown! Oh my God, he's here, and he looks so good—epically better than good, and oh my God he's here, he's actually
here,
and I'm
here,
and he's totally still pissed at me and what does this mean, and—”

I spun around, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and was horrified at what I saw. Travel weary, face pale in some spots, splotchy in others, makeup smudgy in that dried-out, dehydrated-plane-air way it gets for anyone not blessed with supermodel looks, and yet . . .

My eyes were sparkling.

A smile crossed my face, a smile I hadn't seen in years, racing across my cheeks and splitting it ear to ear.

“Let me get this straight,” Daisy said, walking up behind me, her gaze meeting mine in the mirror. “You slept with my friend Marcello.”

My grin got impossibly bigger. “Well, technically, he was
my
friend first.”

She looked at me in disbelief. “You're sure it's him? Not just another knee-bucklingly superhot Italian man?”

“You don't forget a man like him,” I said honestly. “I can't forget him.”

Daisy sighed, but before the long-overdue explanation could begin, the door swung open and Simone, the woman who had been seated next to Marcello and seemed to know him a bit more intimately than the rest, came inside, nodding before disappearing into a stall.

I mouthed the word
later
to Daisy, who immediately mouthed back
you bet your ass.

I took another deep cleansing breath, smoothed back my greasy hair into its still-tight bun, and went back to the table. Where the only man to ever bring me to multiple orgasms in one sitting—or standing for that matter—was waiting.

THE PARTY WAS OVER,
the guests were leaving, there were only a few still on the patio now, lingering under the fairy lights and sharing a few last glasses of grappa.

And he was most certainly lingering. He remained at Simone's side, involved in their conversation, but his eyes remained solely with me, but not in a good
I'm so happy to see you
way. And as the number of party guests continued to dwindle, it became more and more difficult to avoid direct conversation, to avoid idle chatter or not so idle real-life words.

He'd step forward and excuse himself through the crowd and I'd see him heading my way and begin to chat with a person next to me. I even went as far as inserting myself into a work conversation about I beams and whether or not steel reinforcement was necessary on this particular project. With each move toward me, I was backing out of the restaurant to try and get to the street. Even though we were already out in the fresh air, I needed to get fresh
er
air. Some much-needed distance.

Ten feet away from the man against whom I'd measured all
men, including my own husband, and found them all lacking, and I couldn't bring myself to step any closer. His eyes burned into mine, asking silent questions and getting some kind of answers.

What are you doing here?

We need to talk . . .

“Ready to go?” Daisy chirped in my ear, and I could feel my head snap back on its spine. Looking down, I could see my right foot edging closer, not quite ready to take a step but certainly closer to it than I'd been.

I looked at Marcello once more. I studied him as the man he had become, not the boy I knew. In case I never saw him again, I wanted a new memory. Something lasting that wasn't filled with hurt eyes and bottomless anger. It didn't happen. If anything he looked even more agitated than before.

“Yep, let's go home.”

Daisy bundled me into a cab, keeping me occupied with her inane chatter, but before the car sped away, I turned back toward the restaurant, back to where Marcello stood with the last few guests, his arm slung over Simone. The look on his face when he stared down at her spoke volumes.

“Avery Bardot, you tell me every single detail right—”

I held up my hand. “I can't. I mean I will, but gimme a second.”

“Just tell me how? I mean, what? You slept with Marcello?”

I breathed out in a whoosh, letting my head fall against the seat, my body tired but tingly. “I haven't seen Marcello in nine years. I never thought I'd see him again, let alone here and now.”

“And I unknowingly just delivered him on a platter to you.”

“Yup.” I rubbed the ache forming in my chest.

“I had no idea. I can't believe you didn't say anything to me.”

“I never told anyone about us. Obviously because if I had, you'd have been the one to know.” I paused, smiling when she nodded. “After I got back and things went sideways, I erased everything about Barcelona. I didn't keep anything tangible from the trip. I kept everything to myself. And
from
myself if that makes sense. I'm not sure how to say this without sounding crazy.”

“You're doing a pretty good job.”

“When we met, it was
something
at first sight,” I said with a dreamy sigh. “It wasn't love or lust, but something we both recognized as a possibility of something. It was so pure, so uninhibited. You know the way I mean, right? Hormone-driven madness. We just threw ourselves into it. These moments that were little pockets of perfection. It was like nothing else mattered. Just us.” I gazed out the window at the passing streets, the people out and about. Did they know that two universes collided tonight? Could they hear it?

“You remember my internship at BU's art gallery, yeah?”

Daisy nodded, pushing herself up in the seat.

“My professors had suggested that if the Museum of Fine Arts was where I wanted to be, then I had to study abroad—become more well rounded. They suggested Italy, France, and Spain. There really wasn't a bad choice. But there was something about Spain that stood out for me. I couldn't wait to go.”

“It was all you could talk about,” she chimed in, gesturing to the driver to take a left here.

“Exactly.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,
they said. They were only selecting a handful of art majors to study with this professor and I was at the top of the list. Everything I had been working for was finally about to pay off.

“My parents were thrilled.
I
was thrilled. Daniel—well, he
wasn't thrilled. We'd only been together for about a year, and me jetting off to a foreign country for months wasn't his idea of what a girlfriend did. Not his girlfriend, anyway. Looking back on it now, knowing what I know, I wish I'd handled things differently. He wasn't very happy when I left, and I left completely unsure of what I would come home to. I loved Daniel, of course I loved Daniel, but to be honest, I was kind of excited to go off on my own for a while; no boyfriend, no parents, it felt like I had permission to go off and try something new, something different. I could go wherever I wanted and do just about anything. Being independent was something that I wasn't used to and desperately wanted to be.”