Chapter 55
Fifty-Five
Lexi
I buckle my airline seat belt, and it sounds so final I have to clench my fingers to stop them from shaking.
Next to me, Julie asks the flight attendant for an extra blanket, then shakes it out, tucking it over my shoulders. “Get cozy. Try to sleep.”
She’s coddling me, treating me like glass.
Which is ridiculous. I was in Rome and have known Mark for ten days. This is just like camp the summer I was fourteen, when I convinced myself I’d fallen in love with one of the other campers and then pined for weeks after we left for home. It’s good to know I’ve matured so much since then.
Well, at least I’ll recover within the month. I don’t even remember that camp kid’s name.
“Besides,” I say, like we were in the middle of a conversation.
Julie nods. She knows how to jump in and out of my mental gymnastics.
This is not her first Lexi Emotional Shutdown Rodeo.
“Italy was about opening my mom’s letters.
Finding the temple. Honoring her at the gallery and unveiling her painting, donating it to the city. Pulling off the festival.”
“And you accomplished all of that.” Julie squeezes my arm over the blanket. “You should be proud. The festival was a raving success.”
“Gia must have thought so.” I gaze out the rain-streaked window at the ground crew loading the luggage into the belly of the plane. “She offered me a job this morning.”
As I outline the idea, Julie’s mouth starts to drop, but she forces it shut. Carefully, neutrally, she asks, “What do you think about that?”
She fought for Mark when I told her about our impasse, listing all the reasons he’s good for me, but when she saw I wasn’t budging, she switched to compassion and comforting mode.
Now she’s waiting for any sign of emotion from me behind my mask of composure so she can match my opinion.
Reigning in her drama is the hardest part of her job as my best friend, and I love her for it.
“I haven’t thought about it much yet. Obviously it would affect you and would mean I make an international move, or at least travel back and forth a lot.
I mean, it sounds like a dream job, frankly, but I don’t think I’m in a place to make a big decision like that.
I asked her to give me time to talk through it with you and consider. ”
“Okay. We’ll give ourselves a few recovery days and then figure it out. If you want to go for it, we’ll make it work.” She wants to say so much more, I can see it in the way her cheeks and mouth twitch.
Ten bucks she doesn’t make it to the count of ten.
One. Two. Three. She shifts toward me in her seat.
Four. Takes a deep breath. Yup, here she goes.
“There’s always a reason to stay and always a reason to go.
You just have to figure out where you want your life to take you.
” She huffs and faces forward again, fluffing her short hair.
“And that’s all I’m going to say, even though you’re purposefully goading me into giving my opinion. ”
I chuckle and drop my head onto her shoulder. At least Julie can still make me laugh. “What would I do without you?”
Get a grip, Lexi.
I’m sitting at my antique wooden desk in our Newbury Street office, organizing my overstuffed day down to the minute. The tasks on my list blur. Scheduling is not giving me the calming sense of control like it used to. I miss Mariella, Santino, Luca. And of course, Mark.
It’s been three days of this—overproduction during the day, and feverish nights when I can’t quite turn off the feelings. I even have Star Wars queued on my streaming service for tonight. Sign up here for more useless tips on how to get over a guy.
A notification on my phone dings, a direct message from Ninth King.
Well? Who won?
Sorry, no idea.
You get me all invested and then leave it hanging like that? I even voted! Paid good money too. What happened?
I debate what to tell him. That everything with Mark blew up? That I put a decrepit temple above a man I loved? That I didn’t have the heart to look at his bet photo or find out the results?
Things got too busy with the festival.
So you never even saw your competitor’s photo?
No. Was it good? Did I make a fool of myself?
They were equally good. I’m guessing the voting was pretty tight and I’m super curious. Keep me posted if you find out.
I send him a thumbs-up, then flip my phone facedown.
How am I supposed to make a level-headed decision about Gia’s Rome job when Mark keeps popping up in every conversation, in every memory?
Especially since Mariella and I are texting back and forth.
She told me that the Russos won the Gallos’ palazzo reconstruction job.
That Luca added a fudgy raspberry dessert on the menu called The American.
I want to be there for all of that, but what kind of reception would I have with Mark’s family when we’re not even friends anymore?
The bell above the door tingles and Julie breezes through the reception area and into our tiny office space with a large purple smoothie from the coffee shop down the street. “Morning.”
I paste on a smile that feels brittle. My mask as Well-Adjusted-Professional is cracking. “Nice. Did you match that smoothie with your outfit on purpose?”
She glances down at her purple dress, swiveling her hips so the skirt flares. “You know it.” She sets the plastic cup on the desk opposite mine and powers up her laptop. “Gia emailed a plan and a merge contract. Have you gone through it?”
See? My life is Rome with every breath, as if it’s calling me.
I mean, I lived and breathed Italy before my trip too, but now, each lungful hurts like every bone in my rib cage has fractured.
“Not yet. I saw the three texts she sent though. She’s full of exciting ideas.
She keeps saying to take my time with this decision, but I’m guessing patience isn’t her strong suit. ”
Julie laughs. “I noticed that. We should talk through it, if you’re up for it.”
I lean forward. “I don’t have the faintest idea how to go about making that decision. It’s a land mine.”
“Take Mark out of the equation. Would you want to take this job if you’d never met him?”
My shoulders drop, and I spin my pink highlighter on the desk. “On paper, it’s perfect. But it’s not that cut and dried, Julie.”
She gives me a quick understanding nod, then starts clicking and typing.
Her phone rings and she answers it, pacing to the corner as she fields questions for a potential client, fingering the ficus tree there, and then to the bay window where we have a large bureau of samples. Nice and busy and normal.
I’d give up all this for an exciting move that would help my career, except Mark isn’t out of that equation. He’d be there, which would mean running into him in awkward coincidences that leave me in fresh pain every time. High risk, and I’m not into risk.
After a while, Julie gasps. She’s staring at her computer screen. “Oh, wow.”
“What’s wrong?”
She slams her laptop closed and blinks at me. “Have you seen the festival web page lately?”
“Not since yesterday, why?”
“The photographer uploaded a gallery of photos. There are several from the reception and then a ton from Saturday and Sunday.” She’s staring at me, waiting.
“And?”
She shrugs. “Just thought you might like to know. There are a lot of good shots. It’ll be effective advertising for next year.”
“Okay. I’ll look later.” I’m not doing it in front of Julie. She already suspects I’m fragile, though outwardly I’ve been a rock of productivity and steadiness. Having her watch me relive the day Mark and I walked away from each other is a nonstarter.
Julie takes a loud, obnoxious slurp from her smoothie, still staring at me.
I turn back to my computer. The photo that got Mark’s attention on the airplane covers the screen as my wallpaper. I jiggle my mouse, scowling at yet another reminder. Plus, now I agree with his assessment that it’s an over-filtered, impossibly perfect portrayal of Italy.
Unrequited love is the worst.
“Julie, stop hovering and waiting. I’ll look when I get home.”
I lose myself in my work, despite her dramatic sighs every ten minutes. We grab sandwiches for lunch from the deli and lock up around four o’clock. My apartment is walking distance from the office, which is nice. We part ways at the Commons. Another day survived.
At my apartment, I drop my purse on the console table and slip out of my black slingback flats.
I take my laptop to the guest bedroom that doubles as my home office, pausing in the doorway at the blank wall above the bed where I always thought I’d hang Mom’s temple painting, before I knew her plans to dedicate it to Rome.
It’s good that it’s in Italy, I remind myself for the hundredth time.
Maybe there will be a print-worthy photo from the festival photographer to mount above the bed instead.
Standing at the desk, I open up the festival website and navigate to the gallery of pictures, clicking through shots of families and couples enjoying the art and music around the city.
The items on display at all the exhibitions are each given their own close-up shot. An artisan kaleidoscope out of olive wood. A pottery bowl painted with blue flowers. Paintings of Rome’s bridges and the Italian countryside.
The next photo is the chalk sign above our bet display, Vote for the Heart of Italy. Then there’s my shot of Mark’s grandparents at the dinner table, a mother serving her family pasta as a tangible comfort from heartache. Blown up on display, my entry looks good.
I take a deep, shaky breath. The next one will be Mark’s bet photo. I swipe. It’s not one picture, but a collage—a grid of nine shots around one large one in the middle, half of which aren’t even of Rome.
What. A. Cheat.
That’s what goes through my mind, but I drop onto the desk chair with that heart-melting, tingling, weak-kneed sensation that keeps happening with Mark.
The pictures are not the heart of Italy.
A woman’s hand holding out a stuffed animal to a little girl’s chubby, eager fingers in the airport line.
An awkward-angled selfie—dark hair hiding a woman’s sleeping face, her head resting on Mark’s broad shoulder, a worn Jane Austen paperback fallen between them on the airline blanket.
A bright turquoise scrap of fabric tied to the handle of a suitcase in the lobby of his apartment.
A faraway shot of a woman’s tense jawline, her hand clasped around a necklace chain, Trevi Fountain in the background, Santino gesturing at the water.
A woman on the Spanish Steps, framed through the window of the Keats house, bent over a paper, with an expression of bittersweet longing on her face.
The side of a woman’s face as she giggles with a boy and a bird.
The back of a woman resting on the parapet of Mariella’s rooftop terrace, her head tilted with interest and care as she stares out over Rome lit at night.
Pink toenails peeking out through the top of an espadrille sandal.
It’s me. All me.
My heart pumps like I’ve been running at a full sprint, sharp warning pricks that it’s having trouble handling the load. I catch a sob from breaking free.
The largest picture in the center is me perched on the blue Vespa in front of my hotel. My cheeks are chapped by the wind, and my hair is a tangled mess. The fountain behind me is classic Rome, but what makes me clench my fist to my mouth is the way I’m smiling at the photographer.
It’s the open, radiant happiness of a woman looking at a man who loves her. His heart of Italy.
Mark’s parting words after our fight ring in my memory. “Goodbye, Lexi.”
And that’s when, finally, I break down and truly cry my eyes out. I’ve lost the man who once made me laugh and feel seen, and that pain isn’t going away. Not in a month, not ever, because I love Mark.
Like Mrs. Gallo said, love happened. It didn’t wait for a convenient time or place. And it stinks.
Even if I said yes to this job and eliminated the geographical distance separating us, the lines we drew in the sand are etched onto my soul. There’s no plan I can make to change that.