by Nichole Van
I could do this. I would do this.
I was a man on a mission.
FIVE
Olivia
I studied Tennyson D’Angelo through the windshield of my rental car, getting my first good look at him.
Turns out, the online photos might have actually understated his good looks.
Huh.
Tennyson sat one row over in his Jeep, rifling through the center console searching for something. Change for the parking meter, perhaps? His Hot Person card?
The towering medieval walls of Volterra soared up the hillside in front of us. The worn arch of an old city gate stood directly ahead. Gold edged the green leaves on the trees, autumn creeping in.
He finally found what he was looking for and stepped out of his car, feeding coins into the nearby parking meter, seemingly oblivious to my presence. Clearly, Tennyson’s psychic abilities didn’t extend to detecting stalkers.
Granted, I didn’t understand how having a Sixth Sense worked. If I possessed psychic powers of my own, I wouldn’t be needing Tennyson D’Angelo, would I?
I discreetly took a photo of him through my windshield, texting it to Langley along with a rawr emoji. I had no secrets from Langley. She had wanted to join me on my Tennyson D’Angelo hunting expedition, but she couldn’t get the time off work. I had promised to keep her updated via judgy texts.
Superficial Judging is my favorite love language.
Besides, I needed a distraction from the seriousness of my current situation, particularly if Tennyson declined to help me.
Three dots and then Langley replied with a dog panting, a nuclear fireball and Go get ‘em, tigress.
I slid out of my car and followed Tennyson, dumping coins into the parking meter as I went.
I kept a polite distance behind as he entered the old city gate and climbed worn stairs, passing by bubbling medieval fonti—open wells that a sign said supplied water to the ancient city.
Again, Tennyson didn’t appear to notice me.
Of course, I more than noticed him.
Wiry and lean, he topped six feet by an inch or so—tall but not looming. He definitely looked like a guy who played college soccer, built for quick action and miles of running. His dark hair was shorter, not quite military regulation, but cut up over his collar and ears. He wore a light gray button down tucked into jeans that had the mix of texture, cut and style that only designer denim could master. Expensive Italian leather shoes were on his feet, an equally expensive-looking watch on his wrist and designer sunglasses over his eyes.
He had every appearance of a man who lived in an inherited, opulent, historic villa. Sexy, confident, wealthy with a side dish of cocky attitude.
A walking advertisement for beauty privilege.
Reaching the top of the long stairs, Tennyson wound his way through the sinuous pedestrian streets of the medieval city center. He moved decisively, obviously familiar with the town and where he was heading.
More to the point, he ignored the heads snapping around as he passed, the women discreetly taking photos. He was honestly so good-looking, your average human had to do a double-take.
Who lived like that? How was this even a thing?
Did Tennyson bother to have a personality? When it came to men, I had often found that each percentage gain in height and looks corresponded to an equal percentage decrease in personality. Just being pretty and tall was sufficient, why bother nurturing a personality, too?
It probably explained why I had always made friends with the short, awkward guys. They usually had killer personalities.
Tennyson turned up another street, continuing to climb higher and higher into the city. I noticed details of Volterra in passing: the charming old-fashioned streetlights, the moss-covered stone archways, the occasional Wriggle embedded here and there.
Ya know—typical, medieval-city stuff.
But as if I needed any further confirmation, the occasional Wriggle would dance as Tennyson passed by. So . . . that was positive, I supposed.
Granted, I was panting and puffing, trying to keep up. Steep cobblestone streets and I were not on cordial, speaking terms. I preferred to have an Uber between me and strenuous hills.
Tennyson, of course, looked fresh as a daisy. Not a drop of sweat in sight. He would never do anything so plebeian as perspire.
Surely Tennyson had problems. People did call him The Prophet, so there had to be more to him than just superficial good-looks, right?
That said, Hot People tended to only associate with other Hot People. They only flourished with their own kind—hot house flowers, if you will.
When together, they did things that only Hot People could pull off without looking like an idiot. Like use ‘summer’ as a verb—We usually summer in Martha’s Vineyard. Or wear a mankini (or spandex anything, for that matter). Or strut around in Crocs—
Hah! Who was I kidding? No one can wear Crocs without looking stupid.
Hot People know this. That’s why they don’t wear slide-on molded-plastic footwear.
Full disclosure: I own three pair of Crocs because . . . comfort.
One more nail in my clearly-not-a-hot-person coffin.
I pitied the Not Person who dared to have a crush on him. Tennyson had heartbreaker written across his extra-fine shoulders.
Obviously, I had a hang up with this. I knew it was stupid. Here I was, thirty-three years old and still obsessing over looks like a high school sophomore. I had degrees from UCLA and Stanford. I was the director of a successful non-profit. I had purpose and drive in my life.
Langley once said I see everyone through the lens of an enormous Venn diagram: one circle encompassing Hot People, the other representing regular people.
No overlap.
She might have had a teeny, tiny point.
For me, there were Hot People and Not People and never the twain shall meet.
I had been raised in political circles where outward appearances mattered enormously and my Not Person status was a liability. It was always a relief to return to eastern Europe and lose myself in humanitarian work. No one there cared how I looked; they were just glad I could help.
I knew I shouldn’t obsess on looks. I needed to cast it all aside with a feminist, blasé shrug of my shoulders and love myself just as I am.
But . . . let’s face reality. Generally, people aren’t all one attribute or another—insecure or confident, lazy or motivated, judgmental or accepting.
Humanity is more ‘and’ than ‘or’—a sliding scale of hypocrisy and contradictions.
Learning to love yourself, warts and all, is a lifelong challenge. Only hyper-overachievers or narcissists (or some combo of both) manage it before age forty.
So even though I knew my hang-up over Hot People and Not People was stupid and irrational and dumb, I still fixated on it.
Which means, I walked ten paces behind Tennyson D’Angelo with his glowing beauty and radiating confidence, feeling every last ounce of my plain, awkward, oddball self.
My superficial judging and objectification of Tennyson “Eye-candy” D’Angelo would have continued unabated, but two things stopped me short.
One, a bicycle careened around the corner, forcing Tennyson to dart sideways to avoid being plowed down. Instead of dancing to the side with both feet, Tennyson lurched out of the way with an odd hopping motion, keeping all his weight on his right foot. As he moved, I clearly saw the outline of a thin, sleek prosthetic where his left leg should be.
My heart lurched into my throat.
Ah. So he had been seriously injured.
My world view stuttered; shame followed quickly behind. Clearly, being a Hot Person wasn’t all Tennyson had to endure.
And two, after regaining his balance, Tennyson walked right into an upscale boutique with adorably cute baby clothing in the window display.
As I had mentally run through possible scenarios once I located Tennyson D’Angelo, this was one I had not anticipated.
Bionic leg and baby
clothing.
I wasn’t sure if those small details humanized him or moved him from Hot Person to Superhero.
Damn him. He probably would look good in Crocs, too.
Figured.
Either way, in the competition of Life, never bet on Reality being more predictable than Fiction.
Every time I thought Fiction might have Reality beat when it came to absurd randomness, Reality came back with the same, competitive answer—
Hold my beer.
SIX
Tennyson
This would be adorable.” The store clerk held up a frilly, tiny dress. “The lace is handmade by nuns from an abbey south of Naples.”
I touched the soft lace, keeping my expression neutral. “I’m not sure this dress is my taste. Too many ruffles.”
The woman kept her eyes on me as I talked—gaze darting to my lips, chest, thighs and back to my lips—a smile permanently etched on her face.
Her emotions swamped me. Excitement. Admiration. Lust.
The emotions of the person physically closest were always the strongest, but others pounded in the background—ragefuryblissterrorpainhatehatehate.
It didn’t help that Volterra housed a high-security prison within its city walls. Weird, I know, but the enormous Medici, Renaissance-era fortress/dungeon was still in use. Tourists took photos and ate their gelato in front of a maximum-security prison. Weirder, there was a five-star restaurant inside the fortress where diners were served by inmates. Just add Jason Bateman and Portia Rossi and you had yourself a lost episode of Arrested Development.
Today, I had finally found the courage to drive into Volterra to buy gifts for Alessio and Bronte. Despite talking to Branwell almost every day, I hadn’t yet purchased my nephew and niece ‘welcome to the world’ presents.
I could have ordered something online. But I wanted to do it in person. I wanted to touch and feel and choose my gifts. This was about more than just the physical items. This was me showing my brother and his wife how much I loved them.
I loved them enough to face my demons. It was the greatest sacrifice I could give.
I slowly spun in a circle, taking in the baby boutique before turning back to the eager sales clerk. “Do you have anything else? I like the idea of a dress for my niece, but maybe something less frilly?” I pasted on my most polite smile.
The clerk instantly dove into the piles of clothing, enthusiastically pulling out things for me to consider.
No to the bulky rompers.
Yes to the velvet-soft stuffed bunnies.
Yes to a pair of cute patchwork quilts.
Eventually, I had a pile of absurdly adorable baby kitsch.
The clerk chattered away as she rang me up, hinting broadly that she would love to get together later. She clearly had decided that I could be the next flashy accessory for her life.
I supposed she was pretty if I clinically assessed her exterior. Beautiful enough that she probably expected a guy to leap at the chance to spend more time with her. Her emotions told me as much—preening, vain, confident.
I often found classical beauty to be soulless—less interesting for its perfection.
Don’t get me wrong. Not all beautiful people are vain and arrogant. Many—all my family members included—are brilliant, funny, warm people.
But the outwardly pretty clerk was similar to some people I met: there was a deadness within her. A lack of life.
I had long ago realized that some people were simply more alive than others—more thinking, more conscious in their living, more intense. And more interesting because of it.
Obviously, I valued interesting over pretty any day. Interestingness was timeless; external beauty had an expiration date.
She flashed through my mind . . . the unknown woman of my visions. Was she interesting?
Regardless, as the clerk continued to drop not-so-subtle hints about meeting over coffee, I was already planning my polite refusal.
The sales clerk’s outrage and huffy frustration churned through me before I even declined her offer for a coffee later. Her poked pride and anger followed as I took the bag of clothing from her hand and walked out the door.
The clerk didn’t know it, but she was better off without me.
At most, I was a fancy package with a ‘best by’ date that had long come and gone. At worst, I was a ticking time-bomb.
My father had eventually succumbed to his demons when I was sixteen. But in the years before his death, he had spent time teaching me—and only me, not my brothers—how to fight against the darkness inside. As if he had known that I was the one who would bear the brunt of the D’Angelo curse—
“The voice lies,” Dad said. “Don’t listen to it.”
“The voice?” I turned to him, my teenage brain trying to follow what he was saying.
“Sì. It sits inside your head”—he tapped his skull—“and tells you that you need to end yourself. That it’s the only way.” He fixed me with his hazel eyes. “Don’t believe it, caro.”
I knew the voice he referred to. It had recently begun to whisper to me.
“Do you believe it, Dad?”
Silence.
He clenched his jaw. “I fight every day, son. I fight with everything I have. For you. For your siblings. For your mother. I will fight it to my dying breath.”
I shook the memory away.
Annnnnd . . . I was brooding again.
Damn. I needed to get out of my head more.
If nothing else to prevent one of my nosy, empath siblings from calling me and asking, You okay?
I took a deep breath, standing outside the store, hefting the bag in my hand. Despite my fractured state, I had done it. I had finally purchased gifts for Alessio and Bronte.
I had been avoiding the task. And not just because of my GUT and all its associated problems. The issue was more fraught than that.
How do you buy gifts for the newborn twins of your former girlfriend who dumped you for your brother?
Miss Manners doesn’t really have a chapter on the protocol here.
Lucy had once been my . . . well, my everything. She was my first love—my only love, truth be told—though I had come to doubt in recent years if I had ever truly loved her.
I had loved being around her. Her emotions were light and sunny. Cheery and strong, blocking others out and healing the constant fracturing with me. She was absolutely beautiful, inside and out. I had loved how she smoothed my way through life.
My mind flitted to the woman from my visions. How would things work when I met her? Would she be like Lucy, constant sunshine to my shadows? Would she hate the lack of emotional privacy of being with me?
I pushed the thought away. I would not become involved with her.
Lucy was a good cautionary tale when it came to me and love. In hindsight with Lucy, I realized that had always focused on what she did for me, how she helped me, how she made me feel. Me, me, me.
I wasn’t so sure nowadays that was love. Obsession? Sure. Codependency? Probably.
It certainly wasn’t healthy, not for me, not for Lucy.
Branwell’s love for Lucy was different. He never focused on himself. Instead, he was always reaching for her. Everything he did was for Lucy. Her, her, her.
Lucy deserved someone who treated her like that, and I was glad my brother had been wise enough to fight for his right to love her. I was genuinely happy for them. They were two of my favorite people on the planet. How could I not want them to be deliriously happy together?
But . . . as it turned out . . . there was still some lingering part of me that struggled with it. Every time I saw them together, I ached. I hurt. Watching them huddled together at home after the twins were born, my big burly brother hovering over his red-headed wife, each cuddling a tiny baby . . .
It fractured me. Splintering things deep within. I had to leave, rushing out of the room in a frantic panic, desperate to put distance between them and me.
I hadn’t seen them since.
/> After an absurd amount of pondering, I had realized it wasn’t unresolved romantic feelings for Lucy or seeing her with my brother and their little family that had caused my incident.
No. It was covetous jealousy.
Bitter, caustic, bilious jealousy.
I yearned for that life. I wanted someone to look at me like Lucy looked at Branwell. I wanted a wife and children and . . . a future.
It was a bitter irony.
I was so fractured and broken it took me two months to store up enough courage to visit a baby boutique. How the hell did I think I could manage a romantic relationship, much less a family?
The nothingness I saw beyond meeting this woman was clear: the darkness would eventually win. Like my father, I would succumb to my demons.
There would be no future family for me.
But I refused to allow today to be that day.
Shaking my head, I crossed the street and strolled into the piazza across the way. Emotions poured in from around me—excitedboredanxiousworryworrygiddynonono . . .
Empaths are always portrayed in fiction as being hypersensitive, eager to be peacemakers and comfort everyone.
Hah.
Reality?
Exactly the opposite.
I felt so much, so frequently, it was hard to engage with others. Always knowing what they were feeling, what they would say . . .
Human beings could be consummately selfish, interacting with the others solely to be validated, assuming that everyone else’s actions are in reaction to them.
For many people, the world is a mirror they hold up to themselves.
Sorry, man. That hot girl isn’t thinking you’re cute. She’s trying to decide if you’re staring at her lipstick and judging her for it.
Was she like that, too? The woman I was seeing in my visions? Would I meet her and feel the weight of her admiration and lust, like the clerk in the baby shop?
The thought made me squirm.
I needed to return back to the emotional silence of my villa. But just as I longed for the peace of isolation, I was infinitely tired of being alone.
It was the terrible duality of my life. Desperately wanting others’ company but unable to emotionally stomach it for long.
