Chapter 7 Without a Story to Tell #3
She looked at him one last time, then: “Please don’t come to the bookstore. I was honest with you from the beginning. Arrivederci.”
Sandy’s apartment was across the street and fifty meters down from the bookstore.
Not one person, aside from her son, Jack, and the electrician and plumber, had entered in the ten years she’d lived there.
When she’d moved in, she’d thought it would be so nice to have such a short commute. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
She flicked on the light, kicked off her heels, and slung her purse onto a chair. “Nicolo, sono a casa.”
Her mixed-breed cat, what the Brits called a moggy, came racing down the hallway, a flash of gray. He weaved around her legs, and she knelt down to run her hand through his fur. “You’re my true love,” she said in Italian. “There’s no room for anyone else.”
Nicolo’s purr was the sweetest sound in the world, even better than the morning ballads Salvatore played.
“Are you hungry?” Sandy went into the kitchen to prepare his meal. As always, she mixed dry and wet, then shaved some cave-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano on top. Only the best for Nicolo.
While the prince enjoyed his meal, Sandy poured herself a glass of pignoletto and went out onto her terrace.
A half-moon glistened in the night sky, and down here in her little part of the world, Via Giulia glowed under the warm streetlights.
If she squinted and ignored the scaffolding blocking her bookstore across the street, she might even admit that life was okay. Nicolo and Sandy forever.
There had been such wonderful energy inhabiting the store at one time. She could see herself standing next to Jack, coming alive for the first time in forever. He’d been so encouraging, agreeing with her that the bookstore idea was a great one and that they’d found the perfect location.
It really had been wonderful for a while, the bookstore. Till it wasn’t.
If Bianca’s slogan was “Leave burn marks,” then Sandy’s was “Till it wasn’t.” Moira could tattoo that one to her other arm.
A copy of An Echo in the Bone, the seventh in the Outlander series, called out to her from the small table next to her. Maybe she’d jump back in, but her mind was a mess.
God, Moira would love to know that Sandy had broken down and cracked open the first book in the series about two months ago.
Sandy had gotten tired of everyone raving about it and had been curious why such drivel had captured readers everywhere.
Okay, it wasn’t drivel. That Diana Gabaldon was a storyteller, plain and simple, and if Sandy had been forced by threat of waterboarding, she’d admit that she might have recently fallen back in love with reading because of these stupid books.
And no, they weren’t romance, Moira; they were so much more than that.
Either way, Sandy still didn’t believe in romantic love—not the kind that lasted.
Sure, it was nice to enjoy a fictional love story, to imagine that kind of thing might be possible.
But Sandy had tried and failed too many times to ever give love another proper go.
That was fine, though. Casual flings could be just as enjoyable, like eating the frosting off the top, then discarding the rest of the cupcake.
Why did Salvatore have to do that, want to take their relationship up a notch? He’d been a good one, a good lover.
Nicolo popped up on her lap. She petted him as she thought of all the lovers who wouldn’t escape so cleanly tonight. They’d eventually learn. In truth, Salvatore owed her a thank-you. She’d just saved his little heart from one day shattering.
The endings weren’t always as ugly as what she’d experienced with her two marriages, but what she knew with all of her heart was that endings always came, and they were never pretty.
She took a long sip, set down her glass next to the book, and nestled into the chair. Gazing up into a sky streaked with clouds, she accidentally let herself think back to the two men who’d turned her into the hard-edged, distrusting pessimist she’d become.
Husband #1, the world-class tight end for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who’d impregnated her with Jack at age twenty-two, had about killed her. Thank God, Jack had been young and couldn’t remember much of it. Once he was finally old enough to understand, she’d had to beg her son not to seek revenge.
Sandy had met Will at a nightclub in Ybor City, a lively Tampa neighborhood where one could dance late into the night.
That’s exactly what they did, this huge hunk of a man who could move with the grace of a ballerina wrapping his big arms around her.
Will had been so sweet during their courtship, and he’d been beyond charming at their huge wedding at the Ringling in Sarasota.
Such a romantic on their honeymoon in Saint Lucia, where they’d conceived Jack.
She’d only just started her career as an English teacher, but Will had talked her into retiring so she could focus on raising Jack and follow Will around the country during the NFL season.
Then, out of nowhere, Will had started showing signs of a temper that she’d never seen before—well, at least not off the football field.
She couldn’t pinpoint the change (was it a particular hit during a game?), but it was around the time Jack took his first steps.
He’d start screaming at her, often over the smallest of things.
When he hit her the first time, it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d crossed a line.
The emotional abuse had been growing so steadily that the natural progression to violence hadn’t even surprised her.
She should have left him a thousand times, but that’s the moment that should have been the point of no return, when his club of a hand struck her face, knocking her to the floor.
Instead, she let him do what he always did: beg for forgiveness.
He picked her up and stroked her hair and told her he didn’t know what had come over him and that it would never happen again.
And it wouldn’t for a while. He’d return to being as charming as when they’d first met. But eventually, the monster reemerged.
She’d eventually learned that he was likely suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease caused by getting hit too many times.
The last time he struck her was in the hallway of a hotel in Atlanta, several hours before his game against the Falcons.
There’d been several witnesses who went on to testify against him in an unbearably public trial.
How mortifying it had been to be gossiped about on the news, everyone knowing that she was nothing more than a woman who stuck around for domestic abuse.
She’d stupidly signed an airtight prenup, and despite him going to jail, the only money she was awarded by the judge was monthly child support.
Thankfully, it was enough to get by without working, because she barely had the energy to raise Jack, let alone find another teaching job.
Five years after the divorce, Husband #2, the real estate agent, had swept in and rescued her from a potentially loveless life.
Howie was the gentlest soul in the world, always mindful of what she’d been through.
He took his time getting to know her, learning how to love her.
After six months of dating, she’d decided it was time for him to meet Jack.
Howie embraced him as if he were his biological father, and that’s when Sandy knew it was time to give marriage a second try.
It might have worked out if Howie hadn’t fallen in lust with their housekeeper, a twenty-year-old Cuban girl named Alena who had dreams of one day winning American Idol.
Nine years into their marriage, shortly after Jack had first been deployed, Howie came home with Alena’s perfume clinging to him.
The hardened Sandy didn’t have an ounce of forgiveness left in her heart and filed for a divorce the next morning.
Not long after, Jack had taken leave and helped Sandy move to Bologna, the city she’d fallen in love with while studying here during her teenage years.
Once again, she found herself begging her powerhouse marine son not to seek revenge against her poor choice of a husband, the man who’d raised him from age ten.
It was Jack who’d named the bookstore. They’d walked through the city, looking at different properties, and when they’d found her dream location, the one down below, she’d said, “It’ll be the only English bookstore in Bologna, that’s for sure.”
Muscles pushed out from his tight T-shirt. His head was shaved. A dog tag hung from his neck. “That’s what you should call it, Mom. What could be better?”
Till it wasn’t.