Love & Gelato

by Jenna Evans Welch

  Howard. I flinched, but Matteo didn’t notice. He was looking past me, like he was watching the scene unfold on a big-screen TV.

  “That’s when she snapped. She started screaming, telling me that she was going straight to the school director to tell him I’d taken advantage of her. I told her that no one would believe her. And then she pulled out a journal—that journal, I’m guessing—and told me that it was all there. She’d filled it with a fantasy—a vision—of what she’d wished had happened between us, and told me she would give it an unhappy ending and offer it up as proof.

  “The next day I requested a meeting with the school director, and we agreed that even though I’d committed no fault, it was best for me to resign. Later I heard she began sleeping with any man who looked her way. I’m guessing you’re a product of that.” He met my eyes, and a cold burst of air moved through me. “I wanted nothing to do with your mother, and I want nothing to do with you.”

  “You’re a liar.” My voice trembled. “And a complete coward. Look at me. I look just like you.”

  He shook his head slowly, a pained smile on his face. “No, Carolina. You look just like her. And whatever poor man she suckered into her pathetic imaginations.” In one quick motion he stepped forward, snatching the journal out of my hands.

  “Hey!” I tried to grab it back, but he whipped around, blocking me with his shoulder.

  “Ah, yes. The famous journal.” He began flipping through it. “I guess she called me X? Clever, wasn’t she? ‘The only hard part about being with X is not telling anyone about it’ . . . ‘Sometimes I feel like my time is divided into two categories: time with X, and time spent waiting to be with X’ . . .” He turned around, fanning the pages lazily. “Carolina, you seem like a smart girl. Does this sound real to you? Does it seem likely that your mother was in a relationship that she managed to keep entirely secret?”

  “She didn’t make it up.”

  He glanced down at the book. It had fallen open to the front cover, and he held it up to me. ‘I made the wrong choice.’ You see? Even in her craziness she knew that faking this journal was wrong. She was so talented, but folle. I hate to tell you this, Carolina, but science has proven that the parts of the brain responsible for creativity and madness are the same. At least you can take comfort in the fact that it wasn’t really her fault. Your mother was a genius, but her mind was weak.”

  Suddenly all I could see was hot, boiling red. Before I could think, I lunged at him, twisting the journal out of his hands and running for the foyer.

  “Lina?” Ren looked up from the desk. He had a clipboard in front of him. “Are you okay?”

  I pulled the door open and burst out onto the sidewalk, Ren chasing after me. I turned and ran up the street, my legs heavy as sandbags. Her mind was weak.

  Finally Ren caught up to me, grabbing my arm.

  “Lina, what happened? What happened in there?”

  A wave of nausea washed over me and I ran over to the edge of the street and started dry heaving. Finally the feeling passed and I sank to the ground, the pavement hard under my knees.

  Ren was kneeling next to me. “Lina, what just happened?”

  I turned and pressed my face into his chest and suddenly I wasn’t just crying. I was sobbing. Like splitting-at-the-seams, exploding-into-a-million-pieces, falling-apart crying. The weight of the last ten months was dumping down on me, and I couldn’t do a thing about it.

  I cried and cried and cried. Hot, noisy tears that didn’t care who was watching. The kind of crying I’d never done in front of anyone.

  “Lina, it’s okay,” Ren said over and over, his arms wrapped around me. “It’s going to be okay.”

  But no, it wasn’t. And it never would be. My mom was gone. And I missed her so much I sometimes wondered how I was breathing. Howard wasn’t my father. And Matteo . . . I don’t know how long I cried for, but finally I felt my feet reach the bottom, my last few sobs coming out in shudders.

  I opened my eyes. We were both still kneeling on the ground, and I was smooshed into Ren, my face buried in his neck, his skin hot and sticky. I pulled back. Ren’s shirt had a giant soggy puddle on it, and he looked mortified.

  This was so much more than he’d bargained for.

  “I’m sorry,” I said hoarsely.

  “What just happened?”

  I wiped my face, then pulled him up to standing. “He said my mom made it all up. She was obsessed with him and she wrote a fake journal to get him in trouble with the school.”

  “Che bastardo. That’s not even that good of a story.” He looked at me closer. “Wait. You didn’t believe him, did you?”

  I hesitated for a moment, then shook my head hard, my hair sticking to my wet cheeks. “No. At first it scared me. But that wasn’t her. She never would have hurt someone she loved.”

  He exhaled. “You scared me for a minute.”

  “I just can’t believe that she loved him. He was horrible. And Howard is so . . .” I looked up.

  Ren’s face was like six inches away from mine, and suddenly we locked eyes and I wasn’t thinking about Matteo and Howard anymore.

  Chapter 21

  IT WASN’T A LITTLE KISS. Not like your first peck or like the time you made out with your junior high boyfriend behind the movie theater. It was throw-your-arms-around-his-neck, bury-your-fingers-in-his-hair, why-haven’t-we-done-this-before kissing straight through all the salt on my face. Ren circled his hands around my waist and for five seconds everything was perfect, and then—

  He pushed me off him.

  Pushed.

  Me.

  Off.

  Him.

  I wanted the sidewalk to swallow me up.

  He wouldn’t look at me.

  Seriously, why hadn’t it swallowed me up yet?

  “Ren . . . I don’t know what just happened.” He’d been kissing me back, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he?

  He was staring at the ground. “No, no. It’s okay. I just don’t think that the timing’s the best, you know?”

  TIMING. My face went up in flames. Not only had he just had to peel me off of him, but he was being nice about it. Lina, fix this. Words started pouring out of my mouth.

  “You’re right. You’re totally right. I think I just got carried away after what happened in there—it was really emotional, and I think I just redirected and . . .” I squeezed my eyes shut. “We’re just friends. I know that. And I’ve never, ever, ever thought of you as anything more.”

  Does it count as a lie if you’re denying something you’ve only fully admitted to yourself for about a minute? Also: One too many “evers” there. But I was going for believable.

  Ren’s gaze shot up, meeting mine with literally the most unreadable expression on the planet. And then he was gone again. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

  Why, why, why did I do that? I slumped against my door of the taxi. Ren was sitting as far away from me as was physically possible, and he was staring out the window like he was trying to memorize the streets or something.

  Couldn’t I have a repeat? Go back twenty minutes to when I hadn’t already lost my head and kissed my best friend who had a girlfriend and clearly didn’t want me? Back before I’d noticed how much I loved his shaggy hair and sense of humor or the fact that even though I’d known him for less than a week I somehow felt comfortable sharing all my crazy history with him?

  Oh my gosh. I was so in love it hurt.

  I pressed my fingers into my chest. You’ve known him like five days. There’s no way you can be in love with him. Totally rational.

  Totally not true.

  Of course I was in love with Ren. He was exactly himself, and I was exactly myself when I was with him. And all of that would be perfect if he felt even close to the same. But he didn’t. I glanced over at him, and a flash of pain moved through me. Was he even going to talk to me again?

  The cabdriver was eyeing us in his rearview mirror. “Tutto bene?”

  “Si,” Ren answe
red.

  Finally the driver swerved to pull up to the train station and Ren handed him a wad of cash, then practically jumped out of the cab, me following miserably after him.

  We still had to get back to Florence. A whole train ride, and then the scooter ride, and then . . . Oh, no. After that I’d be back in the cemetery. With Howard. I couldn’t let myself think ahead that far. It made me feel like I was going to hyperventilate.

  Ren slowed down for a second so I could catch up. “Our train leaves in forty-five minutes.”

  Forty-five minutes. Aka forever. “Do you want to sit down?”

  He shook his head. “I’m going to go get something to eat.” Alone.

  He didn’t say it, but I heard it.

  I nodded numbly, then walked over to a nearby bank of chairs, falling down in one of the seats. What was wrong with me? For one thing, you don’t sob all over someone and then immediately try to kiss them. For another, you don’t kiss someone who has a girlfriend. A gorgeous one. Even if you thought he might be into you.

  Had I completely misread him? Had he really been spending all this time with me because he was just a good friend? What about all the times he’d held my hand or told me he liked me because I was different? Didn’t that mean something?

  And what about Matteo? My father was literally the worst person I’d ever met. I had no doubts my mom had kept me away from him on purpose, so why had she sent me all the clues I needed to find him?

  I needed a distraction. I pulled the journal out of my purse, but when I opened it, the words wriggled across the page like bugs. There was no way I’d be able to concentrate. Not when things felt like this.

  Ten excruciating minutes later Ren walked up carrying a big bottle of water and a plastic sack. He handed them both to me. “Sandwich. It’s prosciutto.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Thinly sliced ham. You’ll love it.” He sat down next to me and I unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite. Of course I loved it. But it was nothing compared to how I felt about Ren.

  And yes. I’d totally just compared the only guy I’d ever felt this way about to a ham sandwich.

  Ren reclined back in his chair, stretching his legs in front of him and crossing his arms over his chest. I tried to catch his eye, but he just kept staring at his feet.

  Finally I exhaled. “Ren, I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry I put you in that situation. It wasn’t fair.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I mean, I know you have a girlfriend and—”

  “Lina, really. Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

  But it definitely didn’t feel okay, and there was maybe a cyclone right in the center of my chest. I leaned back in my chair too and closed my eyes, sending him telepathic messages. Sorry I dragged you to Rome. Sorry I kissed you. Sorry I messed this up.

  Thirty-five minutes without talking.

  No, thirty-one. Because we’d had that one horrible exchange and then I’d gone to the bathroom and stared hatefully at myself in the mirror for like two minutes. My eyes were all puffy and I looked destroyed. I was destroyed. I’d lost Ren and I was about to lose Howard, too. There was no other choice. I had to make sure Howard knew he wasn’t my father, no matter how badly I wished that he were.

  “Train’s here,” Ren said, standing up. He headed for the platform and I followed after him. Ninety more minutes. I could do this, right?

  The train was crowded, and it took us several minutes to find a seat. Finally we found two empty spots across from a large older woman who’d put a bunch of plastic bags in the space between us. A man took the seat next to her and Ren nodded at them, sliding into the window seat, then closing his eyes again.

  I took the journal out of my bag and wiped it on my jeans, hoping to get rid of any lingering Matteo cooties. Time to dive back into the story. I had to get my mind off of Ren.

  JUNE 3

  Tonight Howard let me know in his gentle way that he knew about X all along. It made me feel ridiculous. Here I thought we were so sneaky, but it turns out most everyone knew. I found myself telling him everything about the relationship—even the bad parts. And there were a lot of bad parts. The problem was that when things were good with X, they were SO good that I forgot about all the rest. It was such a relief to talk about it, and afterward Howard and I went out onto the porch and talked about other things until the stars came out. I feel the most peaceful that I have in a long time.

  JUNE 5

  Today I am twenty-two. I woke up this morning with absolutely no expectations, but Howard was waiting for me with a gift—a thin gold ring that he bought from a secondhand shop in Florence almost a year ago. He said he didn’t know why he bought it; he just loved it.

  The thing I love about it most is that it has history. The man who sold it said it belonged to an aunt of his who had fallen in love but was forced by her family to join a convent. Her lover had given her the ring and she’d worn it secretly her entire life. Howard said the shopkeeper made up a story to add some value to the piece, but it really is pretty and somehow fits perfectly. I was feeling exhausted, so instead of going out to dinner tonight like we’d planned, we stayed in and watched old movies. I barely even made it through the first one.

  JUNE 6

  Tonight Howard and I were sitting on the swing on the front porch, my feet in his lap, and he asked me a question: “If you could photograph anything in the world, what would it be?” Before I could even think about it I blurted out “hope.” I know, cheesy, right? But I mean hope as in stillness, those moments when you just know that things are going to work out. It’s the perfect description of my time here. I feel like I’ve hit the snooze button, and I’m taking a breath before I face whatever comes next. I know that my time is slowly ticking down here, but I don’t want it to end.

  JUNE 7

  I want to record every minute of what happened today.

  Howard woke me up just before five a.m. and told me he wanted to show me something. We hiked back behind the cemetery, me half-asleep and wearing pajamas. It was still gray out, and it felt like we walked for hours. Then finally I saw where we were going. Ahead in the distance was a small round tower. It was old-looking and completely on its own, like something that was waiting to be discovered.

  Once we got to it, Howard led me to the entrance. There was a small wooden door that had probably been put there to keep out trespassers, but had broken down with time and weather. He moved it out of our way, and then we both ducked under the doorway and followed a spiral staircase out to the top of the tower. We were just high enough to get a view of everything around us, and I could see the tops of the cemetery’s trees and the road that leads to Florence. I asked him what we were doing there, and he told me to just wait. And so we did. We stood there without talking as the sun rose in the most amazing pinks and golds, and before long the whole countryside was awash in color. I felt this sudden ache—it had been cold and dark for so long, and then suddenly, slowly, it wasn’t.

  When it was full daylight I turned around. Howard was watching me, and it was like I was suddenly seeing him for the first time. I walked over to him and suddenly we were kissing like we’d kissed a million times before. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. When he finally pulled back we didn’t say a word. I just took his hand and we went home.

  JUNE 8

  I keep thinking about what it was like to be with X. When I had his attention it was like a spotlight was shining on me and everything in the world was right. But the second he looked away I was cold and alone. I tried to find the word for “fickle” in Italian, and the closest I came up with was “volubile.” It means “turning, whirling, winding.” I was attracted to that whirlwind feeling in X, but it also left me feeling uprooted. I thought I wanted caprice and fire, but it turns out that what I really want is someone who will wake me up early so I don’t miss a sunrise. What I really want is Howard. And now I have him.

  JUNE 10

  Frances
ca came for a visit yesterday. Maybe I’m just not used to her anymore, but in the course of three weeks she’d somehow managed to become an exaggerated version of herself. Her stilettos were a half-inch taller, her clothes were even more fashionable, and she was smoking a record amount of cigarettes.

  After dinner we sat around talking. I thought Howard and I were doing a great job of hiding this new thing between us, but as soon as he went to bed Francesca said, “So it happened.” I tried to play dumb, but she said, “Please, Hadley. Don’t patronize me. I don’t know why you think you have to keep all your relationships secret. I could tell the second I walked in that something had happened between the two of you. Now tell me all the details. Subito!”

  I told her about the past few weeks—how peaceful and healing they’ve been. And then I told her about the morning at the tower and how perfect everything has felt for the past few days. When I finished she sighed dramatically. “It’s like a favola, Hadley. A fairy story. You’ve fallen in love for real. So now what will you do? Aren’t you returning to America?” Of course I had no answers for her. I’ve submitted my portfolio to several schools and should hear back from most of them by the end of summer. Yesterday, on a whim, I asked Petrucione if he’d ever consider hiring me as an assistant teacher, but he silenced me with one look and then told me I was too talented to waste any more time.

  That’s when Francesca told me. At first all she said was, “He contacted me.” I asked who, but by the way my heart was beating I knew who she meant. “He found me working on a set in Rome. His excuse was to congratulate me on my internship, but I knew the real reason. He wanted to find you.” For a moment I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. (He was trying to find me?) “He said that you’d changed your phone number and now that you’re no longer enrolled at the institute, your school e-mail doesn’t work.” I’d never considered that I might be unreachable. I had about a million thoughts running through my mind, and Francesca was watching me carefully. “I didn’t give him your information, but I took his. Hadley, I think it would be a mistake, but I didn’t want to play God. If you want to contact him I have his new phone number. He said he’s had a change of heart. That he has something he wants to tell you.” Then she handed me a business card. His name was embossed on it in large letters and his new phone number and e-mail were spelled out like a trail of bread crumbs.