Chapter Fifteen
FIFTEEN
DARIO
Villa Meraviglia is a host of unfamiliar noises when they return from the bike ride.
For once, Dario does not begrudge the theft of his solitude and silence. The warmth and life crackling inside are welcome, especially after the glorious day he spent with Charlie, who hightails it outside and up the stairs to catch a shower.
The final glimpse of Charlie’s pert ass in his shiny athletic shorts is enough to send Dario chasing after him, but he reins in that impulse.
It’s one thing to kiss Charlie out on the beach while they’re alone.
It’s another to fuck Charlie silly while his other guests sit downstairs. Nothing in this villa is soundproof.
From another room, laughs and clanking glasses emanate.
Dario’s knees are gelatinous from the exertion and the ooey-gooey emotions jiggling inside him, so it takes him some time to find the source.
In the living room, Michelle—slathered in colorful lotion—watches The Luxurious Ladies of Provence.
He stops for a moment as the scene on the TV plays out.
Three women sit around a glass table on an outside terrace speaking in French.
Their nails and hair are long and glossy.
Their outfits and voices are loud. The tensions are high.
“You are back!” Michelle says, pausing the show.
Dario nods. “What have you been up to?”
Defying all logic, her face grows redder. “This. Just this.”
“Sounds like a relaxing afternoon,” he says. “Is Selina back yet?”
“She arrived about an hour ago asking for dinner. I think she is in the kitchen with Paola,” she says.
Dario thanks her and leaves Michelle to her ladies. He wonders how he would feel about the rescripting of his life by some producer in an editing bay. His skin crawls. Cameras of any kind would never be welcome in his space.
In the kitchen, a feminine robot speaks in broken Italian. When Dario pokes his head in, Selina—wearing what looks suspiciously like one of Dario’s suits, except tailored to her figure—has Paola cornered by the pasta crank. She holds up the speaker side of her phone where the voice crackles out.
“I’m sure I can double whatever Dario pays you,” Selina says. On the island behind her, a plate sits scraped clean of food. Red sauce clings to the edges. After a few seconds, the robot voice echoes her sentiment in Italian.
Paola’s face is a crumpled ball of confusion. “Ma perché?”
The keyboard on Selina’s phone makes loud, obnoxious clacks. Anger flows hot through Dario’s veins, but he holds himself back before jumping to conclusions and announcing himself. Maybe he has the wrong impression. He doesn’t want a repeat of what happened with Ansel.
Selina’s phone spits out garbled words that make no sense. With a groan, she slaps it face down on the counter. “You—” she points “—come work for me—” she points the other way “—in Mexico when this is all over.”
Now, that was impossible to misconstrue. He enters the room, footsteps echoing like thunderclaps. “What’s going on here?”
Selina whirls around. Paola appears rattled. Fury burns hot on Dario’s cheeks.
“Paola and I were just discussing her culinary training,” says Selina in the boldest of fashions. Paola swirls her fingers around her temples as if to suggest Selina is out of her mind. Dario feels out of his mind too, except with rage that practically turns his vision red.
“I heard what you were discussing, and how dare you,” he bellows.
The sounds of the TV cut out in the background.
The pitter-patter of the shower running stops, too.
An audience is about to amass as his diatribe mounts behind his lips.
“Paola is my family, and you’re trying to hire her out from under me. Why?”
Selina rolls her eyes, clearly caught red-handed. “Because she’s the best, and I want the best.”
Flashes of yesterday in the ruins flood his head. Did that mean nothing to her? Did that mean— “What about me?”
She tilts her head and widens her eyes. “Please tell me you don’t think there’s anything romantic between us.”
His eyes skip to Paola’s, thankful for once that she isn’t fluent in English, so she doesn’t judge what he’s about to say. “That kiss yesterday, it was… I thought it was nice.”
She clucks. “You don’t build a life on nice, Dario. You’re Italian, dios mio. Drama, you have covered, but passion? You’re missing it.”
Dario breathes in sharply. “I have passion,” he rebuts, though it comes out watery, weak.
“For chocolate making, maybe, but not for love. Not for life. I tried to pull you out of your shell today, and you crawled right back in. I want adventure, late nights, wind-in-my-hair kind of love. I’ve known you—what?
—five days, and I can already tell you live by the book.
You can’t give me that,” she says before stepping closer and gesturing between them.
“I want heat and all I feel here is warmth at best.”
As she moves closer, the sharp angles of her face and her impeccable makeup come into focus. So too do the crisp lines and perfect seams of her menswear. “Did Gabriele make that suit for you?”
“I may have paid him a visit today,” she says.
“You never went to Solomeo?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “I never made it.” His upset must be caked across his face, because she adds, “We would have never made it either.”
Dario senses Charlie and Michelle at his back. Their presence only magnifies his mortification.
“This has been fun and you are as sweet as can be, but I have friends waiting on me in Florence, so I think it is time like Beau I make my exit,” she says.
To add insult to injury, she whips a business card from her breast pocket and hands it to a still-quaking Paola.
“If circumstances change.” She struts from the room, head held high.
The fashions of love have clearly changed since Dario last walked its treacherous catwalk, because she wanted his life, but she didn’t want him.
The flat-out rejection infiltrates his nerves.
Powers off his fight response. Flight kicks in as soon as he turns to face the other two still standing.
The other two who certainly have a lesser view of him now that he’s been chewed up and spit out by Selina Velasco, one of the hottest queer models in the whole wide world.
“Scusi,” he says as if this were his own personal catchphrase.
Angelo greets him at the door of the barn house. His wagging tail and happy yaps do nothing to lift Dario’s spirits. His spirits are crumpled up in the compost bin with the food scraps back in the kitchen.
For the second time this week, he flops down face-first on the bed and screams into the sheets. How had a lovely day spoiled so fast?
Angelo uses his doggie stairs to tramp up onto the bed. Between his teeth is an envelope with Cosimo Sr.’s handwriting on it. It must have fallen from Dario’s pocket as he raced inside, embarrassment hot on his tail.
He tears into the envelope and unfolds the letter.
Caro Tesorino,
Are you ready to give up yet?
My sincerest hope is that your answer is no.
My best guess is that true intentions have been revealed, unfit matches have departed, and feelings have blossomed between you and at least one of your guests. The romance of Italy is hard to fight, and you are a Cotogna man, you carry grace and handsomeness in your DNA.
Dario stops to chuff. Angelo barks in response.
He is not his brother. He does not have a debonair bone in his body. Selina made sure he knew how subpar he was. She must’ve imagined a playboy type, scoring sex left and right. City by city. Conquests on conquests.
His is a quiet, contained life. His heart is a fractured, sheltered thing.
Confidence, like Rome, isn’t built overnight.
He continues reading:
Being a Cotogna also means you have access and assets at your fingertips. Access and assets other people will want to get their hands on. I know you know this because you’ve learned the lesson the hard way.
But learning a hard lesson does not mean you must harden your heart.
In truth, there was a time when I thought to wall off my heart as well.
Before your grandma—which was about as arranged as a marriage got in those days—I fell in love with one of the young girls who worked in my parents’ factory. Her name was Giulia. She had auburn hair, bright green eyes, and a smattering of charming freckles that showed clearest in the summer.
She had not a penny to her name, yet we had so much in common. We both enjoyed pistachio gelato and the films of Fellini. We preferred the country to the city, and bike rides over car rides. She kissed me like she could breathe fresh life into me.
When I told my parents I had met the girl I was going to marry, they were aghast. They remained dead set against it.
They said they would disinherit me if I went through with it.
But like any teenage boy with too much money to burn and too much confidence to spare, I took what little I had of my own and Giulia by the hand with our sights set on Capri.
It wasn’t until I made a stop off at the city hall that the haze of our love lifted.
“Why are we stopping?” she asked.
“To legally marry,” I said, smiling from ear to ear.
She looked confused. “I thought we were to marry in Capri. You said you’d tell your family. I thought we were going to choose a location to wed.”
I shook my head. “I wanted to wait until we got to Capri so as to not spoil our trip. My parents do not want any part of our marriage. They say that if we wed, they’ll disinherit me. I say, I’m too in love to care.” I reached in to hold her. She shirked my advance. “Giulia, what’s wrong?”
She grew cold, arms folded. “Take me home.”
“What? Why?”
There were tears in her eyes. At first, I thought they were tears of sadness over my parents’ disapproval. But then I looked closer at her wild, downturned eyebrows and realized she was upset at me. “I want to go home,” she said again.
“You loved me not even an hour ago. What changed?” I asked, still young and foolish. Still imagining us as the innamorati in the commedia dell’arte, but then she spoke again, and I realized that I was Arlecchino all along.
“An hour ago, you were Cosimo Cotogna, heir to Amorina Chocolates. You could give me a real life, master of the world. Now you are, who? Cosimo Cotogna, heir to nothing, master of none. What can you give me now?” she asked.
Her words were daggers, and I was strapped to a wooden, spinning wheel as she flung them at me.
My hands shook as they reached out to her. “I can give you my love.”
She well and truly turned up her nose. “Take me home.”
I drove her back to Perugia, and I never heard from her again.
As I write this, the tears come again, not because I think Giulia is the one that got away, but because I wish I had shared this story with you sooner. I wish I had told it to your mother.
When your father brought home April—a poor opera singer getting by on a per diem—I warned him against pursuing her. I told him he would regret it. I threatened to disinherit him. My, how we all become our fathers one day!
Your father was older and wiser, though. He knew what he wanted, and he found a life partner in April. That union gave us all many happy years and added two fine young men to our family. April proved me wrong, changed my tune, and exposed my heart again.
My words must not be mistaken. I loved your nonna dearly. Ours was a love that started small and grew over time. Time is what it took for me to let her in. A long time. Too long a time, considering it now.
I held my feelings close. I barely let her know me.
I spoke in riddles and changed my mind a million times about whether we should marry.
I think I drove her wild. I drove everyone wild.
Perhaps if I hadn’t spent so many years steeling my heart, I wouldn’t have had such a hellish time letting down my guard.
Remember there is more bravery in shedding your armor than there is in drawing your weapon.
Con affetto,
Nonno
Dario clutches the letter to his chest as if the words might melt off the page and soak into his skin like tattoo ink. If only he could embody these sentiments. Time and experience have warped him.
Preston was deceitful, Ansel was opportunistic, Beau was adventuresome, and Selina was self-assured. Dario was…
Dario is…
He has no clue.
Dario lost his sense of self, and if he has to marry, he needs a partner that will roll out the map, retrace his steps and help him find it again.
There is a knock at the barn house entrance that stirs him out of his stupor.
Leaving the letter on the bed, he rises with little enthusiasm until he is met with Charlie’s smiling face on the other side of the door, looking a lot like an explorer willing to excavate Dario again.