When in Rome...Break His Heart

by Lena Mae Hill

  Cynthia had decided not to go home for her dad’s funeral. Maggie wasn’t super close with her dad, either, but she would have gone to his funeral. But then, from what little she knew, Cynthia’s dad was a deadbeat who she’d barely seen since childhood. And her staying might have something to do with her financial situation, though she hadn’t said it. Her mom worked at a hotel and had raised Cynthia alone, so Maggie had to assume they didn’t have much. Probably not enough to fly home and back again.

  Maggie hadn’t felt right since her conversation with Weston earlier. Even a nap hadn’t cured her blues, and naps cured everything. “Did you know that public transportation is actually very dangerous?” Maggie said to Rory as they took their seats on the tram. “You would think that, since there are witnesses, it would be safer than a taxi or an Uber driver, but people get groped on the subway all the time. And there was a bunch of women who were gang raped in India on buses.”

  “Wow,” Rory said. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s true,” Maggie said. “They took them out into secluded areas and left them for dead afterwards. And no one on the bus did anything about it.”

  “I’m glad my mom doesn’t know about that,” Rory said. “She’s practically hysterical every time I call her. And she wants me to call just about every day.”

  “Really? I only called my mom when…Cynthia’s dad died,” Maggie whispered. “Because, you know. It makes you think about your parents, and how much you take them for granted.” Kind of like Weston took her for granted, thinking she’d always be the perfect girlfriend, always stay with him, even if he never proposed. So far, she hadn’t proved him wrong.

  “Yeah,” Rory said. “My parents are total control freaks. But, I mean, I love them. They just worry a lot. It’s kind of exhausting.”

  “That’s what Kristina says about me.”

  “Yours is kind of cute, though.”

  “That’s what my boyfriend says,” Maggie said. “Want to see a picture of him?” She showed Rory pictures of Weston and her cats until they got to the tram stop and climbed off. It made her feel better to see his cute smile as he held up one of her kitties next to his face and waved its little paw at her.

  When they climbed off the tram, the cobbled streets were lit with little old-fashioned lamps, and it was all so much like a movie that Maggie could hardly believe it was real. All she wanted was for Weston to be there with her, pulling her over to one of the benches overlooking the river, getting down on one knee and opening a ring box. She’d fall into his arms, and they’d kiss. But not too much, because they were in a public place. He wasn’t like Enzo, who would shove his tongue down anyone’s throat in the middle of a club with hundreds of people around. Weston had class.

  When they arrived at the bridge, Maggie’s throat constricted. If only he had come with her. For everlasting love, you were supposed to attach a padlock—but you were supposed to do this part with your true love. What happened if you attached a lock alone? Did that mean you’d end up alone forever? She swallowed past the lump in her throat and stepped onto the bridge. Below the railing, a grid-like iron fence kept people from falling into the river. On each and every bar in this grid, couples had attached padlocks of all shapes and sizes. Thousands and thousands of locks, hanging or layered on top of each other, so thick they almost formed a wall, glinted dully in the streetlight. All these people had visited with the person they loved.

  Suddenly, Maggie couldn’t hold back her tears.

  Maggie was not a public crier. It was worse than kissing in public. At weddings, she cried daintily if she had tissues in her purse, but otherwise, crying happened in private. She wasn’t one of those girls who cried in the dorm bathroom stalls so other girls would ask what was wrong, or to get her way with Weston. She didn’t cry when her boss got mad at her and reprimanded her, or when she got her one and only B in a class, or to get out of speeding tickets. She didn’t cry on bridges in the middle of Rome, with the largest cathedral in the region standing sentry in the background.

  Except, here she was, crying. Cynthia rubbed her back and told her it would be okay, but she didn’t know. She didn’t know how when she talked to Weston, somehow, the distance seemed further each time. Like it was growing, like the world was getting bigger between their phone conversations. And if she traveled the same distance she’d come to get back, even accommodating for the earth’s rotation, she didn’t know if she’d ever reach him again.

  Chapter Ten

  Maggie loved napping. She loved it so much that, during sophomore year when she’d roomed with Kristina in the sorority house, they had a special sign to signify when one of them was napping. They had a running joke about it, how they should put a sock on the knob like people did to warn roommates if they’d brought a guy home. It was one of the few things she and Kristina had in common, and when they’d decided to go study abroad in Italy together, they’d rhapsodized about the siesta culture.

  Maggie loved napping so much that, when her phone rang on Monday afternoon while she was asleep, she answered without registering that the number on the screen wasn’t just unknown, it was foreign.

  “Hello?” she mumbled, pushing herself up on one elbow and reaching for her glasses on the nightstand.

  “Ciao, beautiful girl,” a voice on the other end said.

  “Who is this?” she asked, sitting up further. “Are you trying to reach Kristina?”

  “I’m trying to reach you,” he said. “This is Enzo.”

  “How’d you get my number?” she asked, her eyes moving to the other bed, where Kristina lay napping as well.

  “You don’t sound very excited to hear from me,” Enzo said. “I’m hurt. Don’t you want to talk to me?”

  “Of course,” she said automatically, although, in fact, she did not want to talk to him at all. “But…why?”

  “Why do I want to talk to you? Besides the fact that you are so sexy and cute?”

  “Okay, you’re crazy,” she said, laying back on her pillow. She caught herself smiling. Not quite the madcap way Kristina smiled, but too much, just the same. She shouldn’t be happy that he called. She didn’t even like him. He was rude and presumptuous and pushy. And she had a boyfriend.

  “Only you can make me this crazy,” Enzo said. “When are we going out again?”

  “We didn’t go out,” she said. “I went out with my friends, and you happened to be there. And you know I have a boyfriend. I’m getting engaged as soon as I get home.”

  “So you keep saying, but I think you only say it to break my heart,” he said. “Why would you do that to me?”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. He was so ridiculous.

  “I don’t know what that means in Italy,” she said. “But back home, if someone has a soon-to-be fiancé, you kind of take that as a sign you shouldn’t call them.”

  “You don’t want me to call you?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it. But no.”

  “Oh, my heart,” he said. “After only one kiss, she breaks it into a million pieces. So cruel, you heartless American girls.”

  “Okay, I did not kiss you,” she said. “You kissed me. Without permission, I might add. So it’s your own fault if your heart is broken.”

  “Next time, I will ask permission.”

  “There won’t be a next time.” She had to stop smiling. It wasn’t right.

  “You didn’t like it? Not even a little bit?”

  “No, I most certainly did not.”

  I said, stop smiling, stupid face.

  “And you don’t like it that I called? Not even a little bit?”

  She had to pause a moment for that one. She didn’t like him, but he was kind of cute in his insistence. And it did feel nice to be wanted, even if she already had the person she wanted. It had been fun flirting with him the other day, and she’d wanted him to come back when he’d finally left her alone.

  “It was nice of you to call,” she said.

  “But you don’t
like that I called? If you say you don’t, I will never call you again, I swear it.”

  “You probably shouldn’t call.”

  “But that is not what I asked. I don’t care what I should do. I only care what you want. Do you want me to sit by my phone every night, waiting for you to call? Or do you want me to call you again?”

  “Neither,” she said. “I want you to realize that it’s inappropriate for you to call me.”

  “I don’t care about appropriate or not appropriate,” he said. “And until you have a ring on your finger, I think it’s okay for us to go out.”

  “I’m not going out with you,” she said. “But I guess it’s okay if you call, as long as you’re clear about the fact that nothing is going to happen between us. If Kristina and Armani hang out, and we’re both there, we can hang out. As friends.”

  “That is all I ask,” he said. “To be your friend. It is an honor to call myself that.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

  When she hung up, she gave up and let a smile spread across her face as she snuggled down in her pillows.

  “You kissed Enzo?” Kristina asked from the other bed.

  “No,” Maggie said. “I absolutely did not kiss Enzo.”

  “Maybe you should,” Kristina said. “He’s totally smitten.”

  “Yeah, thanks for giving him my number,” Maggie said. “Back stabber.”

  Kristina laughed and rolled onto her side to face Maggie’s bed. “I meant to tell you,” she said. “I just forgot. Anyway, he really likes you. And it’s your last chance to get this out of your system. I mean, a last fling. Just flirt and have fun. I’m not saying you should sleep with him or cheat on Weston. Just let him make you feel good about yourself.”

  “I feel fine about myself.”

  “It never hurts to have that guy friend who would definitely be more if you let him out of the friend zone,” Kristina said. “Like Cynthia and Nick. If you tell him up front there’s no chance, then you’re not leading him on. And it gives you confidence to know he’d do it in a second if you just said the word.”

  “I told him we could be friends.”

  “Good,” Kristina said. “I’ll make sure y’all get to hang out again. Don’t worry, I’ll be there, too. I won’t let you get carried away.”

  “Riiiight,” Maggie said. “Like I’ve ever gotten carried away. I’m not the one who needs an adult chaperone.”

  “No, you need to remember to let loose and have fun a little more,” Kristina said. “I mean, even Weston told you that. And he’s Weston. He doesn’t have a spontaneous bone in his body.”

  “He does, too,” Maggie said. “You just have to catch him in the right mood.”

  “I’ve known him for three years,” Kristina said. “And besides, you told me yourself that he gave you his blessing to go dancing and have fun. It’s not cheating to hang out with guys. Even Weston doesn’t care.”

  “Of course he doesn’t care,” Maggie said. “We trust each other. He knows he has nothing to worry about.”

  “Did you tell him about the kiss?”

  “There was no kiss.” Maggie could sense the danger in that one little lie even as she said it, the upset in the balance of their friendship, her relationship with Weston, everything she’d so carefully built.

  Of course she hadn’t told Weston. What was there to tell? A guy had come on too strong and kissed her when she wasn’t expecting it, and she’d pushed him away.

  But if there was nothing to hide, why was she hiding it? Not just from Weston, to keep from upsetting him, but from her best friend, to whom she told everything.

  But she didn’t know how to tell Kristina without making it a big deal. Kristina would freak out and want to talk about it with everyone, and analyze it to death, and see what it meant to Enzo, and to Maggie, and she’d make a big drama out of it, like she did everything else. At home, it had never mattered, because Maggie never had any drama. She was content to let Kristina have it all. But the second she told her about Enzo, Kristina would take it all wrong. Of course it had been nothing.

  After her conversation with Enzo, Maggie couldn’t go back to sleep. She didn’t know why she felt bad about telling him they could hang out again. She hadn’t done anything wrong. No one said she couldn’t have guy friends. Nick was her friend. Alex had been her friend, though he didn’t count, because she didn’t like him. But still. She and Weston had both girl and guy friends. So why did she feel so guilty?

  It must have been the kiss. Though really, the kiss wasn’t the problem. The lie was. She’d have to tell him about it. But not yet, not when things were weird between them, and when she was so far away that he couldn’t do anything about it, if he even wanted to. He might feel threatened, and she couldn’t have that. She knew just the thing to do to make things better. So she texted Weston and asked if they could schedule a Skype date.

  Maybe that would be just what they needed. Maybe he was missing her, too, and he’d propose right then and there, the moment he saw her face.

  Or maybe he was hanging out with friends, including girls. What if some girl had kissed him? Even if he didn’t kiss her back, Maggie would be furious. What if he met someone while she was gone, and he proposed to her in a month, and when Maggie got home, he told her he was engaged to someone else?

  You’re being crazy.

  She was. Of course she was. She would not end up like one of those girls in the magazines. She always got what she wanted, and this time would be no different.

  But if you always get what you want, how come you didn’t get engaged after sophomore year?

  This was not the kind of thing she should be worrying about. Not with Weston. He would never cheat. Neither would she. She was doing what Kristina did, making drama out of nothing. The kiss had been a misunderstanding between friends, that was all. Because she and Enzo were friends, and friends sometimes had misunderstandings.

  By the time Weston called on Skype, she’d driven herself halfway crazy and back again. She had prepared for the call by washing her face and putting on a dab of Kristina’s lip gloss and her new blouse from Milan. Since he could only see her face and shoulders, she kept her sweatpants on.

  “We’re having spaghetti,” she said, propping up her tablet so she could eat while they talked. “Is yours done?”

  “A little overdone, I think,” Weston said, shaking parmesan from a shaker. Mary, their house mother, would have been scandalized by the lack of real parmesan. She grated hers off a brick.

  “Mine’s good,” Maggie said. “But they don’t use enough sauce over here. It barely coats the noodles. And they call it gravy.”

  Weston took a bite and chewed while she was talking. Then he said, “Not bad for whole wheat pasta.”

  “Since when do you eat whole wheat pasta? It took me three years to get you to eat whole wheat bread.”

  “I don’t know,” Weston said, forking his noodles around the plate. “I thought maybe it would be good to eat more healthfully.”

  “Who convinced you of that?” Maggie asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, it just seemed like a good idea.”

  “Was it a girl?” Maggie asked.

  Weston gave her an odd look. “Why would you ask that?”

  “I don’t know, it was stupid. Sorry. I’m just being paranoid.”

  “You know I love you,” Weston said. “You’re the only one who can convince me to eat something healthy.”

  “Right,” she said. “So I made you eat whole wheat pasta?”

  “You didn’t make me,” he said. “I just thought…I mean, when you were talking about Cynthia’s dad… It just got me thinking, that’s all.”

  “Oh,” Maggie said, breathing a little sigh of relief. “That’s why?”

  “It doesn’t hurt to try to be healthier,” he said. “But yeah, I guess so. Like you said, nothing is guaranteed. Might as well do what we can.”

  “That’s true,” Maggie said, but now she felt a litt
le guilty for her plate of white noodles. Why did Weston have to always be so, so perfect in every way? It made everyone else look bad. She was supposed to be the one who nagged him to eat his salad. And now he was making her look bad, like he did everyone else.

  Of course he didn’t do it on purpose. He was just as open and honest and reliable as always, which now made her look bad, too. But that was part of why she’d always loved him. He was someone she could count on, who always did the right thing. So why couldn’t she count on him to propose already? Why hadn’t he done what he was supposed to do? And what if he never did?

  “Tell me about Rome,” he said. “What have you been doing with yourself lately? Any new adventures?”

  She told him about going to the Colosseum with the class, and how she’d invited Rory over because she always seemed so lost, and she didn’t seem to have any friends in the study abroad program.

  “That’s nice of you,” Weston said. “I’m glad you made a new friend.”

  Was he goading her? Had he somehow guessed? But no. Weston didn’t have an ounce of artifice in his entire being. And how could he have found out? Kristina was the only person who knew, and she’d never rat out Maggie. She was her best friend, and she wouldn’t gain anything by it.

  Maggie was just being paranoid. Kristina hadn’t called up her boyfriend all the way from Rome to tell him that Maggie had been kissed by a drunk Roman who had developed an unwarranted attraction to her.

  “What have you been up to?” she asked, taking a sip of water.

  “Not much,” Weston said. “Working, going to my two classes.”

  Because Weston wasn’t going home for the whole summer, he’d signed up for two classes during the first summer session. So they talked about that for a while, but Maggie found her mind wandering, too full of questions about their relationship to focus on the mundane details of his days.