Chapter 38
Matteo
“WHERE’S ALLEGRA?” MY sister plopped down on the seat next to me. I hadn’t even heard her come in for Sunday dinner at my parents’. She was probably the sixth person to ask that question, even though the crowd this month was only about ten.
“She’s busy.”
She squinted and stared at me for ten long seconds. “You’re lying.”
I could technically be telling the truth. But I wouldn’t know it since I hadn’t spoken to Allegra in a week.
“I’m not in da mood, Luciana.”
“What did you do?”
“Why do you assume I did something?”
“Because you find an excuse to screw it up with every woman you’ve met the last few years.” She sighed. “I loved Isabella, and I know what you two had was special, but it ended, and she’s gone, Matteo.”
I scoffed and threw back the rest of my wine. “What we had wasn’t special. It was a lie. And I was a damn fool.”
Luciana shook her head. “Falling in love doesn’t make you a fool. Isabella’s love for you was pure, but she was a butterfly—her soul was never meant to stay in one place too long.”
I laughed maniacally. “Pure? Yeah, pure fiction.”
My sister’s forehead wrinkled. “What are you talking about?”
I met her eyes. “Izzy was cheating on me. That’s why she left. She didn’t come back when she got sick because she loved me. She came back because she knew I was a sucker who would take care of her.”
“How do you know that?”
I filled my sister in on what I’d discovered last week. Her jaw was hanging open when I finished.
“I can’t believe that. Are you sure it means what you think it does? Maybe the entire collection is a love story she made up. She was really creative.”
I shook my head. “I remember her taking trips around the times the photos were dated—to visit her mother, her brother. To take a two-week-long class when she’d decided she wanted to be a pastry chef.”
“And you never saw the tea set before?”
“Only the one cup I found in an old box of her things after she died. But there was no photo or note like the others had. I thought it was just a landscape she’d painted.”
Luciana crossed her arms. “I don’t want to believe it. But even if all of that is true, what does it have to do with Allegra?”
My heart squeezed just hearing her name. “She got offered a job in New York.”
“And she wants to take it?”
“It doesn’t matter. If I’ve learned one thing about relationships, it’s that you both have to want the same thing.
Izzy never wanted to be tied down. She wanted to pack up and move every six months, like her family did.
I thought I was saving her from that life, but it turned out I was holding her back. ”
“You know what I just heard? I heard that Allegra was going to turn down da job, and you told her to take it and leave because you’re scared.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Allegra is not Isabella, Matteo.”
I looked away. It didn’t stop my sister from talking.
“I saw you with her. She made you feel alive again. You were laughing. Looking at her and smiling when she didn’t even know you were looking at her. Hell, you even went to a club for her.”
I swallowed. “What if she goes back to New York? Her life is there. Her friends, her work, her—everything. Sooner or later, she’s going to realize she doesn’t want to be here.
My simple life won’t be enough for her. I can’t do it again, Luce.
I can’t watch someone I love leave like I’m some damn postcard they picked up on vacation. ”
My sister’s face softened. “You’re right. There’s a chance you’re going to get hurt. And it might hurt more than when Isabella walked out on you. But isn’t it better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all?”
I clenched my jaw. I hated how she always said the things I didn’t want to hear. Being brutally honest was her specialty.
Luciana laid her hand on my arm. “Stop punishing Allegra for someone else’s choices.
And stop punishing yourself for falling in love with da wrong woman the first time around.
You were a boy when you met, fratellino.
Nineteen when you got married.” She squeezed my arm.
“You’ve got a second chance, and not everyone gets that.
Don’t let fear talk you out of what might be the best thing to ever happen to you. ”
Luciana kissed my cheek before walking away, leaving me with her words and a deep ache in my chest.
“Hey.” She turned back. “It’s our birthday next week. I hope you celebrate it with the woman you love. But if you don’t, I’ll come. You’ll aways have me.”
***
A few days later, I went outside to get something from the garage and looked over at Allegra’s house. A truck was backed into the driveway, and two guys were loading boxes into it. My heartbeat screeched to a halt. She’s leaving? Allegra is really leaving?
I stood frozen, watching. She hadn’t even come by to tell me—not that she owed me that anymore. I was the one who’d ended things. I was the one who’d said she’d want to go back to New York and her life eventually. And now here it was, proof that I’d been right.
I watched the movers carry a few more boxes out, and then Allegra appeared, pointing and giving instructions. She went right back into the house, not even looking my way, and something inside my chest cracked. I turned, whistling for Lupo before I had to see her again.
Inside, I set the wrench I’d gone out to get on the kitchen counter, no longer in the mood to fix the slow drip in the hall bathroom.
Instead, I reached for the bottle of wine sitting nearby—the same reserve blend we’d shared last time she was over—and stared at it for a moment.
Deciding it wouldn’t get the job done fast enough, I opened the cabinet where I kept the hard liquor and pulled out a bottle of bourbon with a thin layer of dust on it.
I didn’t bother with a glass.
The first swig burned, and I welcomed the pain. Anything was worth dulling the ache I felt behind my ribs. I wasn’t sure what hurt more—that she was moving or that I’d been right to set her free.
We wanted different things. That hadn’t changed. But Jesus, it hurt anyway.
I took the bottle with me to the living room and sat down on the couch, knocking back another long pull.
I tried not to picture her driving by my house on that purple Vespa, her giant smile rivaling the width of her oversized sunglasses.
But when I did, I brought the bottle to my lips again.
I tried not to picture that smile in New York City, her looking out those floor-to-ceiling windows at something other than my street.
And I tried like hell not to imagine her looking around as her car pulled out of the driveway for the very last time.
She would’ve left eventually. Even if I’d sped up her departure. Even if I’d asked her to stay.
That was the part I kept circling back to as I sucked back shot after shot. She was always going to go.
And fuck my life, if I didn’t fall in love with her anyway.