Chapter 23
I look back at the semi-packed bag on my bed, the lid flipped up, the last three months of my life strewn across the covers of my crudely made bed. How has it only been three months? How can one summer feel like a lifetime and a breath all at once? Cruel and beautiful, it’s been a season of firsts and lasts.
I toss my journal into the desk drawer and rise. It’s time. I need to get this out between us so I have the courage to actually pack my things and leave. My feet drag me toward her office despite my heart’s reluctance. Giuliana’s bent over the desk, typing like she’s on some kind of deadline and I have to clear my throat for her to notice I’m there.
Looking up, that glazed look of concentration softens into an easy smile. The intimacy of her gaze leaves my stomach lurching. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. How can I leave her?
The words don’t exist. I can’t pull them from the mess of my mind, even the voice that’s been my constant companion is silent.
I open my mouth to try, gaping, a stutter of a sound squeezed from my throat. I want to say so many things—tell her my feelings, drop to my knees and thank her for our night under the stars. In an ideal world I would be doing that right now. But this world is far from ideal and there’s no way to turn back time.
I’m saved for a moment by my phone buzzing insistently in my pocket. If it’s Alan I’m going to toss it across the room.
“Sorry, one sec,” I say as I pull it out and press the end call button, not even bothering to check who’s calling.
“Take your time.”
“It’s done, I just needed to turn that off.” Letting out a deep breath, I steel myself.
“Hi,” she says, that same gentle look from last night on her face and it trips me.
“Hi,” I murmur back, lost in my feelings for her.
This time her phone and mine blow up at the same time. Hitting the end call buttons simultaneously, we scoff at the coincidence. Maybe the universe is trying to give me a sign, though I doubt karma is kind to people like me. The powers that be want to drag this out to fully enjoy watching me squirm.
My phone rings again, hers following soon after, and this time we pay attention. This time I press the green button and lift the screen to my ear. She does the same.
“Bro, what the fuck? You disappear for the summer without a word, ignore my texts, and now your face is all over my feed. Is it true?”
I pull back to double check the name—Brandon. I’m sucked back to that sweltering night in New York before I left to come here. The drinking, the desperate feeling clawing up my chest. My hands gripping the guard rails on the balcony and wishing they were just a little shorter so I could?—
“What are you talking about?”
“Hold on, I’m sending you the link now.”
This can’t be good. Whatever this is cannot be good.
Giuliana is listening intently to whoever is speaking on her phone call, rapid Italian filling the silence as I wait for Brandon’s message. And realize I have about fifteen others. Not counting app notifications I’ve had turned off for weeks. A link pops up into the chat.
Matrimony Matt.
Palmer heir’s secret proposal in Italy.
Oh no.
Oh no.
No. No. No
Fuck.
“Listen, I need to go.”
“But! You didn’t answer me, is it—” Hanging up before he can finish speaking, I click the link to motherfucking Buzzfeed. My stomach drops, settling low with the lead balloon of dread accompanying the words on the screen.
Mind spinning, I scroll through the pictures, not even bothering to read the text. My mostly harmless Instagram pictures are splashed across the beginning of the “article.” But then, nights of inebriation and fucking around, drunken red irises from the flash’s glare. The photo of me wrapped around the Senator’s daughter resurfaces again.
And under that, toward the bottom, is a gallery of pain.
Me on one knee with olive trees framing our bodies, and Giuliana staring at me in shock and awe. Her hand outstretched. My face lit up with a joy I’ve never seen in the mirror or in those intoxicated photographs. Our bodies in motion as I spin her around and then that moment with my hand cupping her cheek, where I thought I might lean down to kiss her. My heart in my eyes.
I’m going to be sick.
Looking up from my phone to face her, her cheeks are ashen as she scrolls through her own phone.
“Matt Palmer?” she asks and the panic rises in my body. I can’t speak. Can’t answer. Can’t focus on anything but the frantic need to run. “Matt Palmer, not Matteo de Palma?”
There’s something dark in her tone and she rises from her desk.
I want to say something—offer to explain—but there’s no good way out of this.
Taking a step toward me, Giuliana reads off the screen. “The heir to illustrious Palmer Enterprises, last seen at a party for his birthday with his tongue halfway down political princess Cassidy Bridges’s throat, has apparently given up his wicked ways.”
Another step and I feel like a rabbit caught in a snare, Giuliana the hunter.
“Matt Palmer, everyone’s favorite playboy, has lost his heart after a hot and heavy Italian summer. The lucky lady is known only as ‘Giuliana.’ Will this be another stint on the long list of Palmer’s antics or is this the real deal?”
A final step and she’s right in front of me, staring up at me with fire in her eyes. It doesn’t matter anymore that I’d hoped to leave on good terms, with only some aches but good memories of our time together.
“Sources present at the proposal describe the couple being very much in love. Buzzfeed has reached out to Palmer for comment but has received none.”
I slip my phone back into my pocket and gaze down at her, helpless.
“Who are you?”
I don’t even know anymore.
“Both. I’m both. Matteo is my birth name. Matt is the name that worked best for my father’s rise in society.”
“Did you know about the photos, the article?” It’s a broken whisper. Anger fading for a moment, her hurt peeks through.
“ No . I had no idea they were even taking pictures. But the bride knew who I was. I should have expected this, anticipated it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” For more than just this.
“You should have told the truth about who you are! You should have said something before now. How can I trust whatever this is between us? Has it been a lie the entire time?” Her voice rises and there’s nothing I can do but take it. I deserve it.
Poking a finger into my chest, her voice shakes with emotion. “I am not some mindless, one-night fuck on a laundry list of your indiscretions. I thought we were friends. I thought I could trust you. This would never have happened if I’d known you?—”
“He told you?” Isabella asks from the doorway, drawn by the sound of Giuliana’s raised voice.
She whirls around to face her grandmother and I breathe for what feels like the first time since Giuliana pinned me with that gaze.
“You… knew?”
“Of course, he looks just like his father. It wasn’t hard to guess. But I’m glad it's out in the open now. You know the truth about the arrangement between Lorenzo and Tommaso, and Matteo making it right. I’m just glad he told you before he left.” Isabella nods at me in what I assume is some kind of pride, giving me kudos for doing the right thing, when I absolutely have not.
“What arrangement? Making what right?”
I watch like a ghost outside of my body as my life implodes right before my eyes.
Isabella clicks her tongue and says, “He gave up Abundantia for you. Your fathers had a contract, if the grove wasn’t successful Tommaso was going to take it all. Matteo might have started out trying to do that but he signed it over to you. It’s all in your name, every inch of it. We never have to worry about someone coming to take it ever again.”
Giuliana turns to me again, achingly slow. Chest rising and falling with angry breaths, her whole body trembles. Unshed tears gather in her eyes.
“Lia…” I finally find my voice.
“Get out . ” Grave. Final.
“Lia, please.” Give me a chance to tell you everything. Give me the chance I lost and desperately want back.
“ Get. Out. ” So quiet, seething rage contained by the barest veil of control. “Leave just like you planned to do. I never want to lay eyes on you ever again. Get your shit and get the hell away from me.”
My feet obey her command, my body bowing under the pressure of the hate in her voice. There’s talking behind me, Giuliana and Isabella discussing the depth of my deception.
It’s strange , I think as I shove things into my bag. I’d have expected to be a total mess right now—panicking, shaking. My breath should be clawing up my throat. But there’s no cold sweat, no racing heart. I tuck away the last of the things on the bed and sling my backpack on my shoulder. The wheels of the bag click over the stone floors on the way to the front and Chiara finds me in the hallway, feet from the door.
Stopping, she takes in the bag in my hand, and asks, “Where are you going?”
“Back. I’m going back to New York.”
“But…” She looks so much like her sister, her eyes staring up at me conflicted and confused. There are a few different arguments and I don’t want to delve into the cause of that “but.”
“Giuliana and Nonna are fighting,” is what she settles on.
“I know.”
She tugs at my shirt as I turn to leave.
“I hate when they fight.” She’s stalling and I hate how much it pierces me to see. It may not have seemed like much but all the hours she spent telling me about everything her curious mind could grasp and talk through made the time fixing up the farmhouse less lonely.
I’m going to miss her and I’m sorry to be another person leaving her.
“I do too. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want you to go.” Soft, devastating.
Letting go of my bag, I drop down so I’m closer to her level, and stare her straight in the eye.
“I know. I don’t want to go either but I have to. Take care of your sister, okay? I’m trusting you to do that.”
She nods, solemn, and throws her arms around my neck. I squeeze her for a second, this little sister I never really got the chance to have.
“ Stammi bene , Chiara.”
Dropping her hold on me, Chiara’s face is so full of sadness I can’t stand it anymore. It’s time to go.
Somehow, I keep it together. I strap the bag to the back of the Vespa and tear down the dirt road. My phone gives me directions through my headphones and Puglia blurs past me as I drive, no thoughts, no feelings. Nothing for hours.
I leave the Vespa outside the airport, free for whoever wants to take it, and I don’t even spare a moment for the memory of Giuliana and that bike. With a flight booked I sit in the airport lounge with a drink I know will only be the first of many. Time ticks by. My phone vibrates in my pocket until I turn it off.
They call my gate and I make it to my seat. First class this time. For what may very well be the last. I order another drink and am barely aware of the burn of it down my gullet. Hours fade away between little bottles of liquor and the flickering screen of a movie I don’t even watch.
It’s not until the wheels touch down in New York, my body lurching with the rough landing, that I realize why I’m so calm. It’s not because I’m drunk off my ass. I’ve been there plenty and still struggled. Now, my chest and mind are empty, no space for guilt or self-hatred or love. Just a disgusting apathy like the beige walls of the waiting room of a doctor’s office. It’s a vacuum of space, years-old magazines on the corner table and a water cooler that’s near-empty with no cups to go along with it.
I’m not in my body. It’s not mine anymore. My heart beats, my lungs stretch with breaths in and out. I step between a crush of people and turn my phone back on, pressing the only number I can think of and it rings twice before a voice answers.
“Hey mom, can you come pick me up? I’m at JFK, international arrivals, terminal 4.”
“Of course. I’ll send my driver right away. Just hold on.” Her voice is pitched at the edges, like she’s worried. Did I say it wrong? Or was it just the fact that I never pick up let alone call. Hearing from me at all constitutes an emergency. She hangs up soon after and I wait again, the passage of time something I’ve come to accept as inevitable but barely feel at all. This will be my life from now on. Every tick of a watch.
I don’t care anymore. Not when it means I’ll never see her again, not when all they are is one click closer to being done with it.
There’s no panic, no anxiety, no tears. My body holds no anger.
I slide into the backseat of the town car my mom sent for me and watch again as New York moves by me in stops and starts. Blaring horns and police sirens. The shadows of buildings defying gravity block out the sun and I rest my head against the back of the seat, shutting my eyes.
It’s all gone and there's no room for anything else. Not with the giant maw of darkness that’s opened up inside of me. It swallows me whole, deafens me, and silences all my worries and thoughts. Loss. There’s no point in any other emotion when loss this profound has taken residence in my body and I know now why that voice inside has stilled.
I have a new companion—one I’ve evaded for a year and finally caught up with. A new “friend.”
Grief.