8. Alessia
— ? —
Alessia
Then - The Summer We Were Sixteen
I wait for him at the end of the long row where the oldest vines grow, at our spot and our time.
He promised tonight we’d finally talk about us - about letters and phone calls and the future. I’m wearing the blue dress he said he liked, and I’ve put on my mother’s jasmine perfume for the first time in a year. It felt right.
The sun is setting, and he isn’t here yet.
I tell myself he’s late. Anthony is always a little late - he gets distracted, loses track of time. He’ll come running down the hill any minute with that breathless laugh.
Any minute now.
The sky turns gold, then orange, then pink. I sit on the old stone wall at the edge of the vineyard and watch the colors bleed into each other. The crickets start up their evening song.
He doesn’t come.
The first stars are coming out now. I wrap my arms around myself and tell myself it’s just the cold that’s making me shiver.
I wait.
The sky turns purple, then black. The moon rises over the eastern hills. I can’t feel my toes anymore, and the blue dress now feels like a costume for a part I was never going to get.
He’s not coming.
The thought lands in my chest like a stone. Something happened last night after Papa sent me inside, something I don’t know about.
Unless he doesn’t want to be here.
No. He said he loved me. He held me in the dark and told me I was the first person who ever made him feel like he belonged somewhere. You can’t fake that, you can’t-
You can’t leave someone waiting in a vineyard for hours if you love them.
I’m crying before I realize it. The tears come hot and fast, blurring the stars. I press my hands over my mouth to muffle the sound.
Papa.
Papa knew. Papa came to find us last night, Papa sent me to my room-
What did he do? What did he say?
I’m on my feet before I’ve made a conscious decision. I’m going to find Anthony. I’m going to march up to the guesthouse and demand to know what happened.
A flashlight beam sweeps across my face, blinding me.
“Signorina.” Matteo’s voice, gruff and uncomfortable. He’s one of Papa’s men. “Your father sent me to bring you home.”
I wipe my face. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“The boy left this morning.”
The words don’t make sense.
“What?”
“The American boy. He and his uncle flew out this morning. Back to the States.”
“No. That’s not - he wouldn’t-”
“He did.” Matteo finally meets my eyes, and there’s pity there. “Come inside, signorina. It’s cold.”
“But he said-” My voice breaks. “He said he loved me.”
Matteo doesn’t answer. He just stands there with the flashlight pointed at the ground, waiting.
The walk back to the house is the longest of my life.
Papa is waiting in the foyer. He’s wearing his reading glasses and holding a book, like this is just a normal evening.
“Alessia. Come sit with me.”
“Did you make him leave?”
The question comes out hard and sharp.
“Sit down.”
“Answer me.”
“I said sit down.”
I sit.
Papa removes his reading glasses. “The Stallone boy was a distraction. A summer romance. It was time for him to go home.”
“You made him leave.”
“I gave him a choice.” Papa’s voice is calm. “He made the only smart decision he’s probably ever made in his life.”
“What does that mean? What did you say to him?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s gone, and you’re going to forget about him. You’re young, figlia mia. By the time the grapes come in, you won’t even remember his name.”
I stare at him. My father, who’s always been my hero. My father, who just admitted to destroying the only good thing that’s ever happened to me.
“I hate you,” I whisper.
He doesn’t flinch. “I know. You’ll thank me later.”
“I won’t. I’ll never forgive you for this. Never.”
“Go to bed, Alessia.”
I go. I walk up the stairs and close my bedroom door, and then I slide down against it until I’m sitting on the floor, and I let myself fall apart.
Anthony didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t leave a note. He just - left. Like I meant nothing.
He said he loved me, I think, over and over. He said he loved me and then he left without a word.
In the morning, I start writing the first letter.
It’s short and angry, full of accusations. I demand to know why he left. I tell him I understand if his uncle made him go early, but he could have at least said goodbye.
I copy his uncle’s address off the shipping labels in Papa’s warehouse and send the letter before I can talk myself out of it.
He doesn’t write back.
So I write again. And again. And again.
Twelve letters, over weeks and months. The tone changes as time passes - angry, then pleading, then desperate, then resigned. I tell him I’m not mad anymore. I tell him I just want to understand. I beg him to write back, just once, just one word.
Nothing ever comes.
When I finish the thirteenth letter, I don’t mail it. I carry it down to the end of the long row - our spot - and I burn it with a match from the kitchen. I watch my words turn to ash.
I wasn’t enough, I tell myself. I was a summer. A stupid girl with a crush.
I promise myself I’ll never say his name out loud again.
I keep that promise for years. Through high school and college and the string of relationships that never quite feel right. Through the move to New York and the life I construct around the hole he left in my chest.
I keep the promise right up until the night a man turns around on a balcony in Manhattan and says my name like it’s a prayer he’s been holding onto for his whole life.