Chapter Fourteen #3
I retreat to my room and collapse onto the bed, exhausted from the day.
My head is spinning but I’m content to lie like this all night even if it’s a sleepless one.
A knock on the door forces me up. My heart picks up a beat with the hope that I’ll find Benito on the other side of it, but it’s Lucia.
“Hi,” she says, in a whisper that almost makes it seem like she shouldn’t be talking to me. “I thought you might need an extra blanket. It gets chilly up here at night.” She hands me a stack of soft, plush throws.
“Grazie,” I say. She smiles but it doesn’t quite reach her tired eyes. I take a deep breath, “I’m sorry for making dinner contentious. Don was the invited guest, and I shouldn’t have gone off like that.”
“Don è un coglione,” Lucia says without skipping a beat.
If I remember correctly, coglione is akin to calling someone an idiot, and I can’t help but grin knowing Lucia sees him the same way I do.
“You’re our guest too, and he pushed you too far.
Papà would never flinch in front of company, but even he is embarrassed. ”
“Really? I didn’t know he was capable of shame,” I say, and I immediately regret it when Lucia looks to me with surprise.
But then she laughs. “Benito has told you some things, no?” She sighs heavily. “It should tell you a lot that even our father feels bad.”
She turns to leave but a pressing need to know her take on everything jumps out of me. “Hey, wait,” I say. “Can I ask you a question?”
Lucia turns back to me quickly, almost like she was waiting for the opportunity to gossip. “Do I think my father still has his ‘friend’ in Milan? Yes, I do.” She rolls her eyes and shakes her head.
I let out a short laugh. “No, although I wouldn’t be surprised,” I say.
“But what do you think about Sutton?” She presses her lips together and looks up at the ceiling, like she’s trying to decide if now is the right time to air out a long-held opinion.
I try to help her along. “I mean, Benito and I have become friends, I guess, and I don’t know.
. . she seems a little. . .” Phony, harsh, vindictive, critical.
. . there are endless ways to end that sentence, but I wait for Lucia to fill in the blanks.
“She’s not what I pictured for him,” she says.
The diplomatic answer. “She’s too much like my father, and honestly, Benito is so much like him too.
He needs someone less intense, someone to ground him, someone to remind him there’s more to life than work.
” Someone who ditched all of her dreams for the specific purpose of doing nothing in Italy? She continues, “Someone like—”
My heart flutters. I’d never expose Benito’s secret breakup to his family, but it would be so nice to hear someone declare themselves as Team Benizzy.
Lucia waves her hands in front of her. “Someone like Giac, really.”
I nearly drop the blankets she’s so thoughtfully brought me. “Giac?”
She giggles and shakes her head, leaning forward to put a conspiratorial hand on my arm.
“Not actually Giac, obviously, but someone like him. You and my brother are alike too, and I see how much Giac balances you out. You’re always laughing when you’re around him.
Benito needs that.” She gestures toward the moonlight dripping in through the window. “He needs more light.”
I rack my brain for a response. She’s not wrong—Giac is light. Giac is the human equivalent of an early-summer sun. Maybe Benito needs someone uncomplicated, not someone who sees an opportunity to verbally take down a family friend and takes it.
“Yeah, maybe that’s what it is,” I say.
“Don’t get me wrong, I like Sutton.” Lucia puts her hands up in surrender, but I don’t know that I believe her. “She’s beautiful, she’s brilliant—”
“Sure, of course,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Who knows what will happen? I’ve given up on trying to guess the next moves of my brother and father, as lately they’ve been totally unpredictable.”
Lucia leaves me to ponder that as I change out of my dress and into the cream-colored silk shorts and tank top pajama set I brought. There’s a soft cotton robe in the closet that I fling on as a breeze rolls off the lake, and I close the open window.
It’s unsettling that the Benito I know is not the Benito Lucia is used to.
For her, he’s always been far from home: boarding school, Cambridge, his life in London.
Raffaello’s been the one who has been there.
He was frequently away on business trips and “business” trips to Milan and God knows where else, but her whole life, up until six months ago, he was La Musa’s Mayor Farentino.
Vincenzo said he hasn’t ever seen Anita, Lucia, and Benito as happy as they’ve been lately, but that doesn’t mean the new normal I found them in will last. Maybe Benito will return to London.
Regardless of whether or not Sutton is in the picture, he’s never wanted the small-town life.
Maybe Raffaello is back for good, and maybe his family will continue to turn a blind eye to his more illicit extracurriculars.
It’ll be chaos, but there’s a comfort in chaos if it’s all you’ve ever known.
Maybe it’s not possible to let go of who you used to be and escape old patterns. At least not forever.
Despite my exhaustion, I can barely lie still, let alone keep my eyes closed.
Without the window open, the air in the room has gone stale.
I desperately wish Simone Cantoni had installed a ceiling fan or that Italy had a penchant for central AC.
I think of my bedroom in the Beachwood house with its slanted shiplap ceiling and the two big windows on the east and west side.
My parents weren’t the biggest fans of air-conditioning either, but when the cross-breeze cut through after the marine layer settled on summer nights, it wasn’t necessary.
Knowing sleep won’t find me anytime soon, I venture downstairs.
The party has long since wrapped, and even the staff has gone home for the night.
It’s serenely quiet, and I can finally appreciate the view out back for its full worth.
I perch myself against the terrace wall and breathe in the crisp air.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I turn and see Benito walking toward me. He’s in the same clothes from earlier, but his hair has been the victim of several stress comb-throughs.
“I think my room is haunted by the ghost of Marco Polo,” I say.
He leans against the wall next to me, a slight, amused smile emerging across his lips. “Is that really the first Italian you could think of?”
“No, I was going to say Julius Caesar, but this just doesn’t really feel like his vibe.” I smile back at him.
His mouth tilts to one side as he looks at me. “That those are your top two proves troubling.”
I turn so I’m facing him. “Since you’re so elitist, who are your top two Americans?”
He thinks for a moment. “Joni Mitchell and Bethenny Frankel.”
A laugh explodes from deep in my chest. “I mean, yeah. Our two finest.”
He tries to keep a straight face, but a laugh breaks through. His mood is so much lighter than it’s been all day, and a thrill runs through me to know I’m its cause.
The laughter settles into a silence, and it’s not a comfortable one. My eyes drift back to the lake. The lights from the villas and the town across the water’s speckled reflections look like stars on the dark water. “Today was a lot,” I say.
Benito inhales sharply. “I shouldn’t have let you walk into that scene tonight. I knew who my father invited, but I had no idea what they were proposing.”
His eyes narrow as he joins me in gazing outward. There’s so much to unpack from the revelations of this evening, but right now I just want to be here, with him, in the now. “It’s a lot,” I say.
Benito, much to my chagrin, is ready to dive in.
“I don’t think my father wants to be mayor again, but he’s always had an issue relinquishing control.
A few small changes I could understand, or even encourage, but this is far beyond what I imagined.
I won’t let what they envision happen to La Musa.
And I won’t let them make you the face of it. I won’t.”
His shoulders start to shake, and I place a hand on him. He’s startled by the contact but relaxes. “I know,” I say. He turns to face me, and I lift my hand off him. “Sutton told me you decided to let me stay in the house because of who I am. Because I might be. . . helpful to you all.”
Benito sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Those were her words, not mine.” He faces the lake, staring out across the water for a moment. “You know we didn’t exactly click when we first met.”
I lean forward, trying to catch his eyes. “I know.”
“For what it’s worth, after that first lunch together—I knew I didn’t want you to leave.” He turns to me and the right side of his mouth quirks into a smile.
“It’s worth something,” I say.
He looks back toward the house; there’s only a spattering of lights visible through the windows, but he scans nervously for spectators.
“I feel bad.” Benito turns back toward the lake and drops his head in his hand.
“You came here for a simpler life, and I’ve made it so complicated with my Shakespearean tragedy of a family. ”
I lean in so my eyes are level with his. “Are you kidding? Fake dating, trickery, secret schemes? This is a comedy.” He smiles again and I feel victorious. I shift my weight so I’m closer to him, a mere inch between our bodies. “Don’t feel bad,” I say softly. “I want to be here.”
His eyes meet mine and I feel a stir between my legs. It would take nothing more than the slightest of gravitational pulls for my lips to be on his. If only the world would turn a little bit faster.
“Are you ok after everything Don brought up?” Benito asks, failing to take this conversation the direction I want. To a conversation where no words are needed at all. “About your past. About what happened with—”