Chapter 34 #3
He nods again. He puts his hands back in his pockets. He stands there for a moment, on the rooftop, having travelled a very long way to arrive at a conclusion he probably could have reached from his couch. Then he turns to Melissa.
“So,” he says. “Do you know if there’s a good hotel nearby? The Frankfurt airport had a Marriott, but?—”
“I’ll help you find something,” Melissa says, taking his arm, steering him away with executive prowess. She looks back at me over her shoulder. She mouths: Proud of you. I mouth back: Thank you. She nods. That’s enough. That’s always been enough with us.
I walk across the rooftop to Rodrigo.
He watches me approach. His eyes— those warm, dark, impossibly steady eyes— follow me the way they have followed me since Barcelona, since the train, since the compound, since every moment in between.
He does not ask what happened. He does not need to.
He reads it on my face the way he reads everything on my face: clearly, completely, without effort.
I reach him. I kneel down. I take his face in both hands— carefully, mindful of the bandaged arm, the blanket, the general medical situation— and I kiss him.
I kiss him hard. Not the gentle, tentative kiss of the hotel corridor, but one that tells him I’m all in.
I pour everything into it— the fear and the relief and the gratitude and the bone-deep want that has been building since I first saw his perfect face at a baby shower in Chicago and thought he was rude.
Now, he’s the man who took a bullet for me.
He kisses me back. His good arm comes around me, pulling me closer, and the emergency blanket crinkles between us, and Benny says “This is like the end of—” and someone— probably the universe— shushes him.
I pull back just enough to see Rodrigo’s face. His eyes are bright. He is smiling— the crooked one, the devastating one, the one that undoes me every single time.
“I’ve been thinking,” I say.
“That’s dangerous,” he says.
“I’m wondering if it was me or Alana who needed therapy this whole time.
” I settle against him, careful of his arm.
“She’s the most selfish person I’ve ever met.
And I’m the biggest pushover. And maybe we were both wrong?
Maybe she needed to be a little less selfish, and I needed to be a little more?
” I pause. “You won’t believe this, but she told me to get therapy. ”
“Rude,” Rodrigo says.
“She also stole the real rings and gave me fakes and I threw twelve-euro souvenir jewelry at an international arms dealer.”
Rodrigo processes this. I watch the information travel across his face— surprise, then acceptance. “Of course she did,” he says. “Thank God we’re leaving with our lives.”
“She's going to be on a yacht,” I say. “With that actor. The one from the show.”
“To each their own,” Rodrigo shrugs.
We are quiet for a moment. Rome hums around us, alive and ancient. The stars do their thing. Somewhere below, the casino is being systematically dismantled by law enforcement, and somewhere above, a helicopter is banking toward wherever helicopters go when the crisis is over.
“Billie,” Rodrigo says, and his voice has gone to the soft place, the place where the real things live.
“I was thinking. Perhaps we can contemplate the question of therapy and selfishness at the country house.” He tilts his head.
“I could paint. You could read. We could eat terrible food and pretend my grandmother’s recipe was good. ”
I picture it. The stone house with the olive trees.
Morning light through the kitchen window.
An easel in the corner with a half-finished painting.
Coffee on a table in a small garden. Rodrigo, beside me, painting in silence, and me, beside him, being exactly who I am— no blazer, no negotiation, no performance— and finding that it’s enough.
“I would like that,” I say.
“Sí?” he says.
“Sí,” I say, and the word feels like the beginning of something I’ve been waiting for without knowing I was waiting.
His arm tightens around me. I lean into him. The rooftop holds us— two people who met at a baby shower and ended up here, in the aftermath of everything.
Benny clears his throat. “So,” he says, from approximately four feet away, where he has been standing this entire time. “I know this a romantic plan, but you know I will be there at the country house too, yes? Because I have more cheese in the car, and also?—”
“Benny,” Rodrigo says.
“Right,” Benny says. “I’ll be in the car.”
He walks away, eating brie from a napkin, and the night continues, and Rome continues, and somewhere in the Mediterranean a yacht is waiting for a woman who is barefoot and holding two rings and climbing toward whatever comes next, and here— on this rooftop, in this moment— I am not the assistant.
I am not the pushover. I am not the woman who puts everyone else first and herself last and wonders why she’s tired.
Instead, I’m the woman who seized her destiny.
Who was brave enough to love a man who now loves her back.
I’m the woman who’s wrapped in Rodrigo’s arms— right now— feeling like she is enough.
I am Billie Harper. And I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.