Chapter Four #2
Giac smiles at me and it lights up his whole face.
His teeth are shiny, and his smile is without flaw.
The kind of perfect that in Los Angeles means they’ve spent an exorbitant amount of money on veneers, but for Giac it’s just his natural aura.
He’s not tall, probably only an inch or two taller than me, but his shoulders are broad and strong.
The kind you can cling to when the moment calls for it.
Shoulders that make you feel safe. I’m too drunk for this, because I immediately picture myself kissing him. “Hi,” I sputter.
“Giac is a teacher. Beatrice is his student,” Valeria says.
“One of my best students,” Giac says.
I’m still tongue-tied by his handsomeness to find actual words, so I simply nod. Vincenzo gestures to the chair next to me. “Please, join us.”
The bartender walks up to us and hands Giac a shot of yellow liquid, limoncello.
“I wish I could,” Giac says, his voice melodic, like a song that you hear for the first time and know you’ll be playing on repeat for the next month.
“But I am on the late train back to Perugia.” He turns to me.
“I live in Perugia but work here.” He sips on the limoncello.
“I was having dinner with my aunt.” Vincenzo and Valeria groan sympathetically.
I’ll ask later what the deal with the aunt is.
Giac finishes the rest of his shot. “I’m sorry to leave so soon. Izzy, it was lovely to meet you.”
I nod. “Mmm,” is all I can get out.
He smiles at me again and I think I notice a hint of interest in his eyes. I’m not the best at knowing when someone is flirting with me, but the way he looks at me makes something in my stomach spin. “I hope to see you around?”
I nod again. He leaves. Vincenzo sits back down and we’re all quiet for a moment. I still feel flushed. It’s pathetic, really, how easily a man smiling in my direction leaves me flustered. “Izzy, you are a tomato,” Vincenzo says. Valeria playfully hits him on the arm.
I fan myself. “It’s hot in here.”
“Something is hot in here indeed,” Valeria says, raising her eyebrows at me.
I top off my wine glass. “Do you know if Giac is, like. . .” I twist a lock of hair around my index finger, “. . . I don’t know, single?”
Valeria nods knowingly and leans in conspiratorially, like she was waiting for me to ask.
“Since he doesn’t live here, I don’t know all the details, but what I do know is that he did not bring a date to the end-of-term school banquet.
” At my blank expression, she clarifies, “Everyone brings a date to the end-of-term banquet.”
I take another sip of wine, smiling, stopping myself from immediately fantasizing about Giac.
After a moment Vincenzo hits his hands on the table. “Giac, my love. You meant Giac is hot in here. I get it now! You are so clever, amore mio.”
When I get home I collapse onto my bed, my head spinning from the alcohol.
I open my computer to watch more Housewives, but it erupts with a FaceTime call from my mom.
I hesitantly click accept. Both my parents appear onscreen, scrunched together on a patio sofa, the rugged terrain of their Beachwood Canyon backyard visible behind them.
“Izzy? Izzy, can you see us?” my mom says, moving her face closer to the screen as if that would help.
“Yes, Mom. I can see you. How’s it going?” I ask, knowing the point is moot because they’re calling for a wellness check. I don’t blame them for being concerned, considering how rarely I left my dark childhood bedroom in the months before I fled the country.
My mom sits back and turns to my dad. They’re coordinating in acid-wash button-downs. It’s early afternoon in Los Angeles, but they’ve probably already had a full day, hiking and gardening. “We’re fine. How are you? How’s Italy? Do you have everything you need?”
“Yeah, as it turns out, I’ve had everything I need inside me all along.”
I hear a sigh. “Izzy. . .”
“I’m good. Italy is good. I updated my data plan and bought soap, everything is fine,” I say. My mom asks if I have a plan for work, for my next step, for the future, and I shake my head.
“Why not, Iz?” my dad chimes in. “You need to keep yourself busy. You’re not an idler. You aren’t the type of person to sit around for more than a vacation’s worth of time. You need to be needed by something bigger.”
In the before-time, I would have agreed with him, but there’s no good way to tell the people who made you that nowadays you’d rather lurk in the shadows of the very edges of your existence, like an otherwise well-adjusted Phantom of the Opera.
“I have a purpose. I’m adjusting to Italy and I’m making friends.
My friend Vincenzo is teaching me Italian. In bocca al lupo means good luck.”
My mother lights up. “Vincenzo?” She takes on an unnecessary and incorrect Italian accent to repeat his name. “Is he cute? Single?”
“He’s at least 45 and happily married. I love his wife too,” I reply, wondering if I should tell her about Giac, but what would I say? I briefly met the one handsome young man in town and got so hot and bothered that I could barely speak to him?
My mother sighs dramatically. “Izzy, you would move to the one town in Italy with no eligible men—”
“Colleen,” my dad cuts her off. “She doesn’t need us to pressure her about getting married.”
“I wasn’t pressuring her—” my mother replies.
“I know,” says Dad. “But we said we’d focus on getting her back to her normal self and then we’d ask around for a setup.”
This is all news to me. “What do you mean, back to my normal self? And you are not setting me up with anyone. I’m an adult. I get to make my own choices.”
They share another look. As an only child, I’m used to playing two-on-one with my parents, but they’ve usually veered more on the side of supportive than manipulative.
“You’ve been easy to raise, Iz,” my dad says.
“We’re overdue for a parenting challenge.
” He says it with a laugh, but it feels like a jab to the chest. They haven’t outright said they’re disappointed in me, but I know they are.
I knew it as soon as my dad patted me on the back after my concession speech and said, “Two years to figure out how to beat him, Iz,” even though I had already decided I was never running for public office again.
“No one is setting me up,” I repeat, “and I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”
They share another look, still unconvinced.
They’d never been prouder of me than on my swearing-in day.
I kept a framed picture on my desk of their beaming faces standing behind me that day.
It used to center me on hard days, to know that if all else failed, I had them.
My mother kept the same photo tacked to the refrigerator with a K.C.R.W.
magnet. They were supportive when I lost, but I knew it was as hard on them as it was on me.
I couldn’t look at that picture afterward.
I’d given it to Kate and asked her to make sure I never saw it again.
When I got home, it wasn’t on the fridge anymore either.
“Look,” I say. “It’s late here. I should go to bed. It’ll take a good night’s sleep if I have to figure out the rest of my life come tomorrow.”
My father sighs. “We’re not saying you need to have it all figured out, Iz, but you can’t aspire to nothing now that your first dream is over.”
I consider. All of my life had been for this one thing and look how that turned out? “I don’t need another dream,” I say. “I need to aspire to nothing.”
“Well,” he says, “in bocca al lupo with that.”
We hang up and I try to go back to my housewives. My buzz has significantly worn off, and I need to hear a woman screaming at another woman or I’m going to have a panic attack. My phone dings with a text.
Marisol: don’t look at the news.
I sigh. Now I have to look at the news.
Me: why would you say that. Now I’m curious.
Marisol: don’t!!!!
I open the news app on my phone and don’t see anything out of the ordinary: The world is terrible, the wars are worse, the famines are unresolved.
It seems more or less a run-of-the-mill news day in the U.S.
I scroll to the celebrity gossip. A lifetime in Hollywood means I don’t really care about famous people, but one of my housewives is pregnant and I know People has the exclusive on their name reveal.
Sue me, I’m curious if it’s going to be a Rio or a Cruz.
My heart drops when I see the headline. Congressman Levi Cross Steps Out with Actress Olivia White.
There are pictures of the two of them. Levi in a crisp oxford shirt and slacks, Olivia in a tiny dress, pumps, and Levi’s suit jacket draped over her shoulders.
They’re holding hands, ducking out of the lights of the camera flashes and yet smiling, glowing.
I resist the urge to run to the bathroom and hurl.
It’s probably a P.R. relationship. It’s not unheard of in either world.
An arrangement made by their respective teams for more press and elevated star power, but still.
What do they even talk about? Olivia was in a teen drama up until last year, she can’t be older than 26.
Levi’s pushing 40 and grew up on a farm outside of Bakersfield.
He knows more about different types of soil than television.
He judged me for even watching shows like the one Olivia was on.
He always wanted to talk about books, symphonies, poetry.
He didn’t touch any piece of culture that wasn’t considered highbrow.
I used to think that made him an intellectual, brilliant, but now I think it was more that he was pompous and pretentious.
I hope Olivia learns this soon and dumps him. Or maybe she finds it sexy, and they’ll get married, their wedding an exclusive in Vogue. Her dress will be a Vera Wang original. Vera did my inauguration ball dress. Fucking traitor.
Levi, who didn’t think it was wise for me to be in a relationship during my freshmen term, is now in one publicly.
He told me it was better for me to focus on the work, that it wouldn’t be right for the voters or for me to try to start something new in the midst of all the fuss.
Levi, who was wary of the level of attention I was getting, who told me he was worried it would distract from what I set out to do, is now dating a freaking starlet.
And the worst part is, no pundit, internet troll, or fellow congressperson will wonder if he can balance his high-profile relationship and the job.
It will only make him more known, more popular, and better liked.
I was no stranger to the media, but I know if it had been the other way around, I would have been ridiculed and my motives would have been questioned.
My phone dings again.
Marisol: You looked, didn’t you?
Me: I looked. Wtf adjkflsjfksldfn
The three bubbles appear immediately as Marisol writes out a response.
Marisol: You have more Instagram followers than her <3
I wish that were enough to make me feel better. I shut my laptop, take a sleeping pill, and crawl under the covers.