L’Arancia Più Dolce – by Gemma Snow #2
“I mean, it’s a lot,” Anne Marie says. “But if it makes you happy, Harlowe, you know I’ve got your back.
I also have about a million questions, but those can wait until after your wedding day.
” Some of those questions she may never get answered.
I’ve found that many people will never understand, until the moment they do.
“Thank you.” Harlowe’s voice is brimming with relief. It’s like she’s putting down the universe for the very first time, and she sighs softly when Anne Marie reaches over and takes her hand.
“Oh, my wife owes me so much money,” Paul says, as if in a quiet joke with himself. “Julie said you’d never spill it.”
“How did you know?” Leo asks, looking a little more like the pirate he plays on their television show when his eyes darken “We thought we were being pretty discreet.”
Paul laughs so hard he nearly falls to his knees, but eventually catches his breath when he realizes no one else is laughing with him.
“Oh, you’re serious,” he says. “My apologies. I think it might have been the time I caught you and Mason making out in a prop closet. The time Harlowe’s trailer started rocking when London and Simone came to visit the set, the time I saw Cas’ phone screen, the time you got down on your knees and tied Mason’s shoes like you were some debauched Roman boy toy, the time?—”
“Yeah, I think we get the picture,” Caspian says, and he is trying very, very hard not to join his friend in laughter. “Apparently, we’re not great at keeping secrets.”
Paul clutches his chest and catches his breath. “I tease,” he says. “I only realized it because I know you guys all pretty well. And because, well, you were happier.”
“And you’re okay with this?” Mason asks. “Like, for real?”
“For real.” Paul sobers up. “I don’t know if I fully understand how it works, especially since Cas and Harlowe are about to get married, but if this is what makes you guys such incredible artists, if this is why you come to set with a smile every day, I’m not going to be the one to tear that down.
There’s enough real shit in the world to worry about.
Why would I begrudge my friends true happiness? ”
Some of our friends said the same. Some of them stopped talking to us all together.
For love, there will always be sacrifices.
It’s clear Paul loves his friends, and it makes me happy to know that Cas has someone like that in his life, someone to back him up and act as his second.
Caspian comes home when he can, but his new life is in California — even more so after today — and it’s important to me that he has his people. His family.
“Sofia?” Caspian asks quietly, finally turning to me.
We’re grownups now, with lives and partners and oceans between us, between now and the memories of growing up by the seaside, acting out our little plays and making our little crafts.
We’re worlds and miles and years apart, but sometimes siblings, especially siblings that no longer live so close, live all their lives all at once, remembering and being and seeing and missing, all in the same moment.
I know, because all day long I’ve been grappling with the truth that my little brother, mio fratello piccolo , is getting married, and I know he needs me to say that his type of love doesn’t change anything.
“I know you have your men,” he continues, “but this is…maybe a little more complicated than all that.”
Maybe. Loving two men isn’t simple. Is it that much less simple to love two men and three women? In admitting one secret, Cas has admitted another, but the very real truth is that the only thing that matters to me is that my brother is happy.
“Love isn’t meant to be simple,” I whisper, whisper because in this moment I’m seeing the next reel of my little brother’s story, one of love and self-reflection, whisper because I’m missing my men and they’re only a room away, whisper because I can feel the hot press of tears at the back of my eyelids, and in this moment, I need to be strong, and I need Caspian and the people he loves to know I mean every word I say.
“I found my own type of love in my own type of way, and I’m happy that you’ve found yours.
” I smile at Harlowe. Because she loves him.
Because loving Caspian binds us together in this world, and because finding someone who can share in your path, windy and twisty as theirs might be, that’s everything .
“You’re all going to make me cry,” she says quietly. “Thank you. It’s a gift you’ve given us in your acceptance, and it’s one we’re going to treasure.”
“Thank you for being the wonderful friends you are,” Paul says, and maybe this crying thing is going around, because we’re all breathing a little shallow now. “It’s easy to love and support you. All of you.”
“Seconded,” Anne Marie says beside me. “If you were all real assholes, we’d have something different to say about it.”
“I’ll make sure not to become a real asshole,” Harlowe says. “I can’t speak for the others, but I promise to always work to be worthy of your acceptance and love. And theirs.”
She looks to London and Simone, to Leo and Mason, to Caspian.
Love. Sometimes the whole universe. Sometimes the golden sun slipping below the door on a late summer morning.
“Well then,” I say, standing and holding out my glass, the pearls of condensation cool on my heated skin. “To love, in its many iterations.”
We clink our drinks together. To love. In its many iterations.
“Now,” Anne Marie says, “what do you say we go have a wedding?”
Simone, London, and Anne Marie follow Harlowe back to the dressing room and Caspian and his groomsmen leave the orangery a moment later, but I need a moment alone with my thoughts.
Rather, I need a moment alone with my men.
But I need to collect myself first, in the truest sense.
They can always tell when I’m overwhelmed, no matter how many times I tell them that artists feel their feelings out loud.
Matteo should know. Alesso never will, but it’s best for all of us to have a level head amongst us.
But in this moment, I believe I’m entitled to overwhelm.
It is the day of my little brother’s wedding —his celebrity Hollywood wedding —and he casually mentions he’s in love with four other people, two of whom are his male co-stars, which is more just a curiosity moment than anything else, but it is a moment.
I suppose, after all this time, I’m most surprised that I’m surprised.
Because I’ve known how complex love can be, and I didn’t let it stop me.
Perhaps it’s simply because it’s Caspian, and part of me always thought I was the odd one out of the de Mara famiglia .
Perhaps it’s because knowing love can be complex and personal is one thing, and seeing it in real time is another.
Or perhaps it’s simply that I’m proud he’s standing up in front of his friends and loved ones and declaring the truth about who he is, and maybe a little bit jealous that it seems so much easier for him than it ever did for us.
“Caspian said we could find you here.” Alessandro. Of course.
I close my eyes and let the familiar voice wash over me.
Even if they didn’t speak, I’d know my husbands were in the room, like I know how to breathe, how to sculpt — innate, the function of blood in my veins, ions in the cells.
Of course, I know the scents both of them are wearing.
Alesso with his designer cologne labels perfectly lined up on the vanity.
Matteo, oil paints, charcoal, the faint echo of turpentine.
Their scents mingle with the earth-rich orangery, and all at once we are a world away, in a grove back in the countryside, in a storybook of forbidden lovers, in a fantasy of princesses and knights.
I have never been a damsel in distress. But I have always been theirs.
“Did he mention anything else?” I ask. There’s anticipation in this moment, the two of them at my back, a locked glass door, if the turning tumblers I heard had anything to do with my husbands, the air as rich and thick as a summer day along the Venetian canals, my hair curling loose at the nape of my neck, like I’m not about to be photographed by the biggest lifestyle magazines in America.
“He said you’d fill us in,” Matteo replies, and there’s a touch of humor to his tone, like he might already know something, and he’s delighted to have a secret. Matteo is my Pan, Dionysus, Puck in his enchanted forest. Alesso is my Hades, stalwart, logical, controlled, power incarnate.
“My brother has quite the secret,” I whisper, not turning away from the glass window overlooking the ocean. It’s the perfect backdrop for what will undoubtedly be the wedding of the decade.
“Does it have anything to do with the way he was looking at the bridesmaids?” Matteo asks, as they walk slowly toward my spot in the orangery.
“It might.”
“Or the way he was looking at his groomsmen?” Alesso adds.
“It definitely might.”