Chapter Nine
NINE
CHARLIE
“Where’s Chiara?” Charlie asks when he makes it to his shared room in the villa. After so much chocolate, he is in desperate need of that riposo.
Ansel whirls around like a tornado, tidying up. Stray socks and underwear fly into his bag.
He straightens and shushes Charlie. “She’s in there,” he tilts his head toward the shut bathroom door. “Can you hang on to this for me?”
Charlie accepts whatever small object is on offer. When he uncurls his hand, he holds what looks like a gold wedding band. “Are you married?”
Ansel shushes him again. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing,” Charlie says, rolling the ring around in his palm. It looks expensive, and has a bit of heft to it. “Just…didn’t the contest rules say you had to be single?”
“Did it? I barely read it,” he says. “I saw ‘free Italian vacation’ and had my assistant write something up to enter me.”
“Your assistant wrote your entry?” Charlie asks, a bit peeved by this. He worked hard on the illustration he ultimately submitted. It took him all night to get it right and then transfer the images to clean paper, which he scanned at the local library to submit electronically the next day.
“I am a busy man. A busy man who needed a vacation from both his business and his family,” he says in a sharp, low whisper.
“This stays between us.” He shoves Charlie to the door so fast that Charlie nearly drops the ring.
Before slamming the door in Charlie’s face, Ansel hangs one of his argyle socks on the doorknob and says, “See you at dinner.”
So much for a midday rest.
Like everyone in his family, Charlie never went to college, but somehow he’s having the formative experience of being sexiled, except in a foreign country in a lavish villa. Life is weird sometimes.
He bumbles down the stairs in search of a salty snack after all that sweet chocolate.
Would they be doing aperitivos again? The enticing smells of homemade cooking waft out of the brickwork kitchen.
Charlie expects only to find Paola, but Dario is in there too, wearing an undershirt and an apron, turning the pasta crank with surprisingly muscular biceps alongside the short woman.
The distinct sound of squeaking bedsprings and muffled moans come from above. They exchange a curious look, and then speak in hushed Italian.
“Non penso che funzionerà,” Dario says.
Charlie lives in tight quarters with his entire family, so conversations are expected to be overheard. He stops and listens in since he doesn’t understand what they’re saying anyway. The melodic cadence is novel and exciting to his ears.
“Basta!” Paola smacks the back of Dario’s hand with a wooden spoon. “Abbi fede.”
Their banter warms Charlie’s heart. The domestic scene only adds to Dario’s charm. Charlie could see himself with flour-coated hands kneading dough on Sunday afternoons in this kitchen alongside these two.
“Qualcuno ha attirato la tua attenzione?” Paola asks.
“Mi piace l’americano di nome Charlie,” Dario says.
Charlie perks up at the sound of his own name. Without even thinking, he launches one of the translator apps on his phone and presses the speech-to-text button.
“Perché allora sei pessimista?” Paola asks. Why then are you pessimistic?
“Non è il tipo di ragazzo che sposi.” He’s not the kind of guy you marry.
Charlie’s heart plummets into his stomach. He thought they had connected today. Is it his looks? His manners? His upbringing?
He reads the translation again, wondering if he misread it, but accidentally hits the text-to-speech button. A robotic male voice starts to speak, threatening to give away his eavesdropping. Paola bangs a pot on the way to the stove, inadvertently saving the day.
Charlie rushes out into the yard and sits on one of the loungers beside the pool. The soft moans of pleasure emanating from the cracked upstairs window only worsen the situation.
From his pocket, Charlie fishes out Ansel’s wedding ring. It must have cost a pretty penny. Even his mom’s wedding ring, which was an heirloom passed down through many generations, isn’t anywhere near this shiny, nor holds a stone as big.
Just because he doesn’t see marriage as the be-all and end-all of romance doesn’t mean he wants to be preemptively excluded from it. Blue hair and tattoos and a lower-class upbringing shouldn’t be markers that he isn’t husband material.
Out of sheer curiosity, he slips Ansel’s wedding ring on his left hand’s fourth finger.
It is a squeeze, but it slides all the way to the base with a bit of a pinch.
He could be biased, but it looks and feels like it belongs there.
Commitment, for better or worse, in sickness and in health… he might want that.
He needs that, if he has any hope of saving the house on Cemetery Street and caring for his parents and grandparents.
Certainly he can turn Dario’s impression around. He has a whole week to prove that he’s the kind of man who can make a house a home and can shoot the shit with the best of them.
He lies back and closes his eyes beneath the late afternoon sun. If he rests for a minute or two, perhaps the hurt and angry feelings throbbing in his chest will subside. The caressing breeze sweeps him into sleep.
Seconds or hours later, the clatter of plates stirs Charlie awake.
The catering staff is setting up an outdoor table on the veranda beside the sitting room connected to the main house. Their loud work has replaced the sex sounds spewing from upstairs. For a second, Charlie forgets all about Dario’s slighting words.
Blinking against the last of the daylight, Charlie lets rip a loud yawn and rubs his eyes. The cold smoothness of Ansel’s wedding band swipes across his left eyelid.
He goes to remove it—he was supposed to be keeping it safe, not playing make-believe with it to prove something to himself—but it won’t give.
That pinch earlier must have been more of a struggle than he realized, so lost in his head and his emotions.
The gold band won’t budge an inch. The Italian heat must have caused his finger to swell, and now he is super screwed.
His mind rushes through a list of possible solutions, but not fast enough, because Paola appears on the veranda in her apron ringing an antique cowbell. “è ora di cenare!”
DARIO
Betrayal burns hot down Dario’s throat like a limoncello shot.
Charlie is married. He lied on his contest entry.
When Dario spotted him lounged out all alone beside the pool through the small, circular window in the kitchen, he decided he could step away from dinner preparations with Paola to keep his guest some company, only to find Charlie fast asleep. Wearing a wedding band.
The gold ring glinted off his ring finger, plain as day.
Dario kicks himself for getting caught up in this ridiculous scheme. The only one of the five persons gathered here he truly connected with today concealed the truth from him, then flaunted it out in his yard for everyone to see. He refuses to be made a romantic fool again.
Still exuding that post-sex glow, Ansel and Chiara scarf down their dinners.
Paola was none too happy about having to fix an extra plate, and Dario was equally irked about one of his potential spouses sleeping with one of his employees under his own roof.
He’s never considered himself the jealous type and he told his guests to have fun while they were here, but still, it seems like bad manners given the circumstances.
They at least could’ve been quieter about it.
Violetta joins them again. Seated at Dario’s right hand, just off the head of the table. He called her earlier in a frenzy. He felt it prudent to have a professional on hand should legal threats start to fly when he confronts Charlie about his deceit.
Michelle, clearly still upset with Selina over her comment about her skin earlier, shoots pointed glances her way as she picks at her food. Completely uncaring, Selina raves about Paola’s cooking.
Charlie, who has chosen a seat far away from Dario and sits suspiciously on his left hand, attempts small talk with Beau who is still looking green and faded from his cocoa-smeared defeat this afternoon.
Dario hates to sour Paola’s potato tortellini, one of his favorite dishes from childhood, with pointed confrontation, but he barely picks up his fork, too nauseated with this new information.
Eventually, he stands, fury flickering millimeters from the surface of his skin.
He taps his knife to his glass. “I have an announcement to make.”
A hush falls over them like a torrential downpour. Even the music cuts out.
“I know you all wondered why Amorina was hosting this contest to meet me in the first place. I take the business and my duty to it very seriously. In the spirit of transparency, I need to tell you all that my inheritance is staked on me marrying before my next birthday as per my grandfather’s will,” he says, slapped anew by the clause that has caused this emotional chaos and unburied a romantic wound he thought he had entombed well enough.
“My grandfather felt that the world of modern dating was overstuffed with choice—given apps and what have you—and concocted this to bring together a small selection of sensible matches for me under one roof. I am taking this experience with you all seriously, but it has come to my attention that not all of you feel the same. One of you is a liar. One of you is already married.”
Questioning heads snap around in all directions before a fist slams the table.
Ansel’s face transforms from a glowy flush to a ruddy red. “You told?” His harsh eyes are trained on Charlie, whose shoulders are sloped over his plate.
“I didn’t!” Charlie holds up his hands. “I swear, I didn’t!”
“Che cosa?” Chiara says, a hand rising to her sauce-slicked mouth, green eyes wide with shock.
“Wait, Ansel and Charlie are married?” asks Michelle.
Selina rolls her eyes. “On what planet?”