by Leigh, Anne
Matteo sat in the driver’s seat and reached towards the back. When he moved I could smell the scent of his aftershave, clean and crisp. All man.
“I stopped by Gazelle’s,” he said as he handed me a small pink box with swirls on its font, Gazelle’s Italian Goods. “I hope you like them, I’m not into bread, but I heard they’re really good.”
He really wasn’t a carb guy. Even as a kid, Matteo loved meat and sometimes he indulged in a little bit of ice cream, but not as much as me.
“Thank you.” I replied as I started to open the box and stopped as I realized, “I don’t want to get your car dirty.”
He chuckled, it was rich and throaty. I’d forgotten what it sounded like.
“Nic’s still obsessed with keeping his car clean?”
My brother had no problem giving me rides everywhere I wanted when he was at home and before I had my license. The only condition was that I didn’t eat in his car.
“He has to check my purse before I get inside his car,” I replied, sniffing the air now being filled with butter, flour, and heaven. “He said that chocolate can leave fingerprints that are hard to get off.”
“He’s crazy,” Matteo smirked, I watched as his lips thinned into a smile and I pulled my eyes away from the glorious sight.
Growing up, he was the boy I wrote letters to when we were apart. We had cellphones, but Matty liked my handwriting and I loved buying stationery. Writing on paper had dissolved as an ancient form of communication, but I always looked forward to sending him letters. They were short, just half a page, describing how my week went because he wasn’t allowed to use his cell phone during school days.
He usually responded with an email or texts during the weekends and sometimes, on special days, he sent me little packages – a figurine, a collection of funny stickers, or a fluffy stuffed toy.
“How was your trip?” I asked before I bit into the croissant. Oh my, it was even better than I thought it would be. It was flaky, airy, and buttery. A groan left me as I closed my eyes.
“It was ah – “ A fake cough came out of him. “Really good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he simply said as he veered the car towards the main street. “We made great progress in rebuilding the hotels in Portugal and London. They’ve needed remodeling for five years now, but we held off for the construction of the Grand Siren in Paris.”
The Grand Siren was Paris’ most iconic hotel. It was comparable to the Burj Al Arab Jumeirah in Dubai and Baiyoke Skye in Thailand. When it opened, all of France marveled at how striking and glamorous it was. Less than a mile away from the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Siren was a masterpiece of glamour, elegance, and comfort.
“I’d love to go there.” I said, clearing my teeth from strips of the croissant that got stuck to the side of my mouth, “I’ve seen pictures of it, it looks wonderful.”
“I’ll take you,” he said without hesitation. “I’ll show you around.”
“I’ve been to Paris.” It’s been years and I was with my family.
“I know.” He replied, then as if realizing what he’d just said, “Nic told me that he was with his family. I assumed you were there.”
We went to Paris after Reece’s passing, it was a sad time and it was the beginning of my no-contact with Matteo.
“What’s going on?” I couldn’t help it anymore. I liked surprises, but I wasn’t clamoring for whiplash.
“What do you mean?” His eyes were on the road. Traffic wasn’t bad. At this rate, we’d be arriving at the office with ten minutes to spare.
“Why are you being nice?” Matteo was always nice to me. Maybe it wasn’t the right choice of words, but it was the only words I could come up with.
“I’ve never been mean to you.” There was sadness in his tone. Maybe even disappointment.
I took a breath and put the remainder of the croissant back inside the box. “You’re right. It’s not mean to stop talking to your friend. It’s not mean to ignore her calls after going through what we’ve gone through. It’s not mean to put the blame on her even though she constantly blames herself about what happened to Reece.”
“Ali –“ His voice cracked, but my ears stopped hearing what he had to say.
Before we got to the office, I wanted to find a way to make sense of why the connection between us mattered. Or if it shouldn’t. I knew I wasn’t making any sense, but it’d been so long since I’d communicated like this with Matteo.
Before I even asked Greyson to do that stupid favor for me, I wanted to believe that I was wrong, that I couldn’t keep living my life and regretting the loss of friendship between Matteo and I.
Five years.
I’d spent half a decade waking up to a nightmare, wishing that I could have changed the outcome of that day.
I’d talked to my parents, my brother and my sister, and skilled counselors on how to approach my life as a grieving friend.
When I needed him the most, he turned his back on me.
I couldn’t attend her funeral because I was stuck in the hospital from the injuries I’d suffered myself.
There were times when I refused to get in the water because it brought me back to that day.
Reece was my friend.
She was bubbly and energetic when I was lazy and procrastinating.
But this man, the man who was now sliding his car into his assigned parking, he was also my friend.
He forgot about me when we lost her.
I asked to talk to him, but he’d avoided me.
Five years was a long time.
It felt like forever when your heart had been literally and metaphorically broken, and every single day you wondered if it could be whole again.
“I asked for you…every day I wished you’d talk to me,” I said in a neutral voice, I’d already cried so many times that it was a miracle I didn’t dehydrate from all the crying. “Your parents said you didn’t want to talk to anyone, that you were grieving, that you were sad.”
“I’m sor –“ He started, but I put my hand up.
“I missed you. I wanted you to be there. I understood your loss,” I replied. I’d visited Hindu temples on my trip to India. I was fascinated by the magnificent buildings and the history inside them, so I began reading about them. Amie, one of the girls I’d gotten to know during the trip, was a believer of Hinduism, and she’d explained that one of the cardinal virtues was forgiveness.
Forgiveness didn’t mean burying the hatchet with the person who’d hurt me.
Not necessarily.
Being emotionally hurt was unintentional at times.
To Matteo, ignoring me was his way of coping, my therapist would be so proud.
“I’m here because I want to learn from the best.” It was true. Matteo was quiet, he still hadn’t made a move to get out the car, he kept the engine running. “I could have asked anyone to show me the ropes of how to start charities and how to be a great businesswoman at the same time, but I knew that you were the closest to my age and to my family…”
“I’ll learn everything and this time–“ I waited for him to reach out to me. I’d sent him a text on his birthday. Five years’ worth.
“Maybe after this, after being with you for a short period of time, seeing how well you’re doing in your world…” He was stoic, unmoving. A rock. A muscle showed on the side of his jaw every few seconds. “I can finally let you go.”
I couldn’t keep on clinging to the past.
I loved Reece and I’ve accepted that she was now an angel watching over me. Over us. And I couldn’t keep hanging on to regrets.
I was letting go.
Of him.
Of what we’d been.
Forgiveness was not about reconciliation.
It was about freedom, letting go of the burden I’d been carrying all these years.
I wanted to save her.
But I couldn’t.
I wanted Matteo to listen.
But he didn’t.
“Thank you for the croissant. It was really thoughtful of you,” I said, feeling the dryness in my throat and the strange hollowness in my heart as I’d finally accepted that this was the purpose, the sole reason why I fought to be here with him.
The silence coming from his side was piercing, penetrating yet absolving.
“You have a meeting.” I felt like I had to say it, just to bring him back to the present because he held an empty look in his eyes.
He didn’t move.
“Matteo.” My tongue wasn’t used to saying his full name out loud. Some habits were difficult to break.
He lifted his chin to signal that he heard me.
I eyed the time on my phone. We had two minutes before our phones would be ringing. Before everyone started to panic, wondering about our whereabouts.
“Bella,” he muttered. He used to call me that in his sleep. I knew because he’d say, “Bella…Ali.”
His dad was fluent in Italian, his mom had French lineage.
Matteo was adept in both languages.
“We have to go,” I said as I motioned for him to open the car door. The doors were engaged so he’d have to unlock my side.
He afforded me a nod, then the passenger door lifted so I could exit.
He held out his hand and I gave him the box filled with the half-eaten croissant.
He took the box and tossed it into the trash can five feet away from us.
Then he opened his left palm, the action unexpected yet so familiar at the same time.
My right hand clasped on to his and he held it tightly.
He didn’t let go when we walked inside the building, the security guards waving to us as we bypassed the metal detectors.
He didn’t let go when he punched the elevator button with his right thumb to the tenth floor.
He didn’t let go when we passed by his secretary, Elaine, whose blue eyes widened when she saw that Matteo and I were holding hands.
We stopped in front of the door to the conference room, hearing the chatter from his employees, and only then did he let go.
But before he did, he leaned down to whisper to my right ear, “Mi dispiace, Bella.”
I didn’t have time to react to what he’d said because he’d taken a step back and walked inside the room.
I didn’t know Italian that well, but from what I’d gleaned into, from listening to Matteo and his sister bicker when we were younger, I deciphered that he’d just apologized to me.
Apologies were good.
They staunched the hurt and lessened the impact of the pain.
But sometimes –
Sometimes
Apologies came too late.
Matteo
I hadn’t always been on the winning side of deals.
I’d seen the exhaustion in my mother’s eyes when she wanted to acquire the beachfront properties overlooking the turquoise beaches in Turks and Caicos. We didn’t have a hotel there and when Dad and her took a vacation there, she thought that T & T would make a great addition in the row of luxury hotels in the area.
Mom fought to acquire the property, but there were other offers, higher than hers, and the local government had just imposed a new property requisition in the area. Mom was extremely bummed about it. I was eight at that time. She hugged me and said, “We don’t always win. We don’t have to. We just have to find alternatives.”
She found the next best thing.
Three years later, T & T started construction in the southwestern shore of Providenciales. To this day, it’s the go-to vacation spot in the area. Celebrities, media moguls, and anyone who wanted to be off the grid and still enjoy decadence, were regulars in Estancia.
I didn’t like the taste of losing deals and I never got accustomed to it which was why I made it a goal to always win.
I applied the same rule to Ali, but I heard the desolation in her voice.
She was tired of the guessing game.
She wasn’t going to stand by and wait for me to get my head out of my own ass and finally address what had been a black cloud hovering above us for half a decade.
Dad would have said, “Cut the shit, Matteo. Tell Alissa what your problem is and deal with it.”
He’d always been straightforward, he hated subterfuges and drama.
I’d managed to listen to both of them and it was the winning formula that I’d used in business negotiations from the time I’d been given the reigns.
On the way back to Vegas, I’d spent most of the plane ride thinking about how to approach Ali.
She was far from the shy girl that she was before.
Now she knew her strength and she wielded it when called for.
She didn’t back down when I told her not to have dinner with Deckard.
She took it upon herself to go out and have fun with him.
I didn’t know where they went, but I knew that she was coming back to my parents’ place.
But my efforts to stay awake and talk to her were nothing but a waste because I fell asleep on her bed.
I’d woken up in the middle of the night, her left hand hugging my arm, and I’d never felt so peaceful.
Her right hand had settled on my stomach and I had the urge to push it down lower.
Ali had always been beautiful to me.
Now there was an added zing to her appeal, her lips were now fuller, made for teasing and kissing.
Her body…I couldn’t even describe how her long legs, full breasts, and an ass made for smacking did to me.
I had to tread carefully with her – I messed up our friendship – and I didn’t want to do any more fucking up.
“Elaine, can you cancel my meetings after three today?” I addressed my assistant. She was one of a kind and I would be lost without her.
Elaine raised a brow, “Sir, you have two calls coming in from the East Coast.”
“Reschedule them for tomorrow.”
“They’ve been asking for a phone meeting while you were gone.” She was very reliable and my schedule wouldn’t be sorted out if she wasn’t here. My mother didn’t want to let her go as her own assistant, but she gave Elaine to me as a welcome present to T & T.
“They can wait another week.” The Correll brothers wanted me to invest in their high-tech security systems company and George Kalees wanted to pitch the sports drink that he wanted to sponsor our fighters with. George knew that he had to talk to my dad, but since we went to college together, he wanted help on how to persuade the old guy.
Elaine didn’t look one hundred percent convinced, but she reneged. “Alright Sir.”
I could have done away with “Sir”, but she insisted on using it and I didn’t have the energy to fight her on it.
“Is Ali still with Jessica?” Jessica was the Head of PR. Ali wanted to learn about engaging stakeholders into donating funds for charitable causes. I’d have loved for her to talk to Shereen Cortez, T & T’s general director for philanthropy, but Shereen was still at home enjoying her time with her new baby who was born five and a half weeks ago.
“Yes, Sir.” Elaine answered, “Do you need her?”
I always needed her. “Not right now, but can you text me when they’re done? I’m going to talk to Todd for a few minutes.”
“Okay,” she replied as she stepped away from my office.
Todd must have been waiting for my call because he answered on the first ring. We discussed the aftermath of the airlines’ proposals from this morning. Hotel sales were boosted when we struck business deals with the major airline companies. It was a win-win situation, but Todd had to iron out the details. I was reading that American wanted 15 percent from us, an increase of 2 percent from the last contract. The other companies were proposing 0.5-1.8 percent. The percentages might not look huge, but when you were talking about seven hundred and twenty million in profits to be shared with our partners, the percentages then become monumentally significant.
I rubbed my eyes with my hands, watching the figures on the screen of my computer cha
nge as Todd played with the figures. He was based in Seattle and I relied heavily on him when it came to risk-benefits analyses. He hadn’t let me down and I trusted him like I would trust my own family. Todd was a family man and you wouldn’t know of his history of being a skilled fighter if you looked at him now. He’d gained at least forty pounds since he’d settled on the desk job ten years ago. He grew up in West Wendover to an absentee mother and an equally absent father. He got involved with gangs at the age of sixteen, and it wasn’t until he did community service as a punishment for his juvenile activities that he met Dad who was speaking at the community center that Todd was serving at.
Dad never thought of fighting as a sport. But he did think of it as a ladder towards achieving higher goals in life. He wanted his fighters to fight and go to school. All of dad’s fighters were enrolled either in community colleges or universities.
“We can offer American 1.5 and we’d still come up a hundred twenty over.” Todd’s voice cut into my thoughts. “As far as the others, even if we take in the highest percent they’re asking for, we’d still be at an advantage.”
That was exactly what I was thinking.
She’s done with Jessica. Do you want me to send her to your office?
The message popped up on my computer screen.
I replied with, No. Keep her there. I’ll be done in 5.
There was no sense for Ali to come up to my floor when she was already on the fifth floor.
I’ll pick her up. I texted back and a thumbs up flashed on my screen.
“Okay, thanks for the help, Todd,” I said into the phone. “I’ll e-mail you tonight. Can you give me an answer by Friday?”
Todd said, “No problem, Boss,” and I hung up the phone.
I stretched my back, elongating my spine. It had been a mentally challenging day. My decisions affected the status of the brand that my parents had established for decades. My choices affected the lives of my employees.
I loved my job.
But sometimes I wondered if I could do more.
If it was possible to do more than merging acquisitions, building new hotels, and traveling everywhere so that I could continue to pad our portfolio.
It was enough before.
