Love & Gelato

by Jenna Evans Welch

  That night I could hardly sleep, but it wasn’t because I was conflicted. It was because I was so sure. X could appear on a white stallion carrying a dozen roses and a perfectly crafted apology, and I still wouldn’t want him. I want Howard.

  “How’s the journal?”

  I looked up. Ren’s expression was way more relaxed than it had been at the station, and my heart sprouted a tiny pair of wings. Forgiven? I tried to meet his eye, but he looked away again.

  I dropped my gaze. “It’s okay. And I was really wrong about something.”

  “What?”

  “Howard wasn’t just the rebound. She fell in love with him.” I tilted the journal so he could see the page I’d been looking at. “What does this mean?”

  After the entry about Francesca’s visit there was an entire page scribbled with the words “sono incinta” over and over.

  “Sono incinta. It means ‘I’m pregnant.’ ”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  I looked sadly at the page. I know it pretty much meant self-annihilation, but I almost wished she weren’t pregnant. Her fairy tale had just blown up.

  Chapter 22

  JUNE 11

  Sono incinta. Sono incinta. Sono incinta. Would it feel different if those words were in English? I’M PREGNANT. There. I can barely think. This morning I puked up my breakfast like I have every day for the past week, and as I was flushing the toilet a horrible thought occurred to me. I tried to brush it off, but then . . . I had to know. I’ve always been sort of irregular, but had I been more irregular than normal? I walked to the pharmacy but forgot my English-Italian dictionary and had to go through this horrible pantomime to tell them what I needed, and then I rushed home and took the test and—positive. I went back for two more. Positive. Positive.

  They were all positive.

  JUNE 13

  For the past two days I’ve barely come out of my room. Francesca left yesterday, and now every time Howard knocks on my door I pretend to be asleep. I know I need to leave here. Howard loves me. And I love him. But that doesn’t matter anymore, because I’m pregnant with someone else’s baby. I know I have to tell X, but the thought of it makes me want to die. What will he say? According to Francesca he’s been looking for me, but I know for a fact that he wasn’t looking for this. And the timing is so unbelievable. Is it a sign that Matteo and I were meant to be together? But then what about this time with Howard? Three days ago I wrote that he was the one for me. And now this.

  I want to tell Howard so badly, but what do I say? I have called my mother and hung up twice. I keep dialing Matteo’s phone number but only getting a few digits in. I’m giving myself until tomorrow night and then I have to decide something. I can’t even think.

  June 14

  I called Matteo. He’s working in Venice and I’m going there to meet him. I can’t tell him over the phone.

  JUNE 15

  I’m on the train now. Howard insisted on giving me a ride there, and even though I didn’t tell him why I was going, I think he knew. Tears just kept running down my face, and the last thing he said was, “It’s okay. Please be happy.”

  As soon as the train pulled away I started crying so hard that everyone around me stared. I’ve gone over this again and again in my mind, and everything points to Matteo. I’m having his child. I have to put Howard out of my mind. I have chosen Matteo. Fate has chosen Matteo. Our baby has chosen Matteo. He has to be the one.

  JUNE 15—LATER

  Venice might be the worst place in the world for a pregnant woman. Of course it’s beautiful. One hundred and seventeen islands connected by boats and water taxis and those striped-shirt gondoliers paddling tourists around for ridiculous fees. The Floating City. But it smells horrible, and the water lapping against everything makes me feel like I’m going to topple over at any second. As soon as the train arrived I dried my tears, then forced myself to eat a salty piece of foccacia bread. One hour until Matteo and I meet. One hour until he knows. I read that Venice is sinking into the ocean, an inch and a half every century. What if I sink with it?

  JUNE 16

  We met in Piazza San Marco. As soon as I’d gotten my bearings I left Venice’s train station and went straight to the piazza. I was early, so I walked around looking at the Basilica of St. Mark. The Basilica is so different from Florence’s Duomo. It’s Byzantine-style with lots of arches and a flashy mosaic on the exterior. Part of the piazza had flooded and there were tourists rolling up their pants and wading through the water.

  Finally it was five p.m. I realized we hadn’t said where to meet, so I just walked into the center of the piazza. Pigeons were everywhere, and I just kept seeing children. A little boy with dark hair and eyes ran past me shouting something, and my first thought was How clever, he speaks Italian so well. Will I have a child that speaks a language I hardly understand?

  And then I saw Matteo. (Why call him X anymore?) He was walking toward me in a suit, his jacket in one hand and a bouquet of yellow roses in the other. I just watched him for a moment, feeling everything that this moment meant. Then, before I could say anything, he scooped me up in his arms and pressed his face into my hair. He just said over and over, “I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you,” and feeling his arms warm and solid around me, I closed my eyes and exhaled for the first time since I found out I’m pregnant. He isn’t perfect. But he’s mine.

  JUNE 17

  I still haven’t told him. I’m waiting for everything to feel natural between us again. He has been incredibly kind and gentle with me, and we’ve been spending most of our time walking through the streets of Venice. He is renting a small apartment with a view of a canal, and every half hour or so a gondolier passes below, usually singing to his passengers. Matteo told me he knew he’d made a mistake the second my train pulled away in Rome. He said he saw me everywhere—once he followed a woman who looked like me for half a block before realizing it couldn’t have been me. He said he couldn’t concentrate and that he’d started spending hours studying the photographs he’d taken when he was with me. He said I’d inspired some of his best work.

  He invited me to stay in his apartment with him, but I booked a room in an inexpensive hotel. It’s run by an older woman and has just three bedrooms that all share one bathroom. There are lace doilies covering everything and I feel like I’m staying at an elderly relative’s house. I haven’t taken a photograph in more than three days, which may be a record for me. My mind is just too full. Tomorrow I’ll tell him about the baby. Tomorrow.

  JUNE 18

  I have to write this. It’s ugly and brutal, but it happened and I can’t leave it out.

  I took Matteo to dinner at this gorgeous little restaurant near my hotel. It was candlelit and quiet and absolutely everything about the moment was perfect, except when it came time to tell him, I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. Once the bill came, I asked if he’d like to go back to my hotel with me.

  My room was messy—my clothes and photography equipment were everywhere—but at least it was quiet and private, and when we stepped into the room I told him to have a seat. He sat down on my bed and then he pulled me so I was sitting next to him. He said he’d been thinking about something for a long time and he believed it was time for us to take the next step.

  My heart started beating so fast. Was he proposing? Then I looked down at my hand and panicked. I was still wearing Howard’s ring. Would I just have to take it off? Can you say yes to someone when you’re wearing someone else’s ring? But instead of pulling out a diamond, Matteo laid out what basically amounted to a business plan. He said he’s tired of making almost no money working for schools, and he wants to start his own business, leading retreats for English-speaking photographers who want to spend time in Italy. He’s already booked two tours and he said I’d make the perfect addition. I could help organize travel and accommodations, and once I have a little more experience I could teach photography as well. Then he put his arms around me and said he’d been an idiot t
o let me out of his sight. It was time for us to join our lives together.

  I hadn’t let him kiss me until then, and as soon as his lips were on mine the only thought I had was Howard. And that’s when I knew things would never work out with Matteo. Pregnant or not, I love Howard. You can’t be in another relationship when you feel that way. So I pulled away from Matteo and blurted out the two words I’d come to tell him.

  The words hung heavy in the air. And then he jumped up like the bed had burned him. “What do you mean, pregnant? How did this happen? We’ve been broken up for two months.” I explained that it must have happened just before he left and I hadn’t known until earlier this week.

  That’s when he freaked out. He started yelling, calling me a liar and saying there was no way this baby was his. He said I’d gotten pregnant by someone else—probably Howard—and now I was just trying to pin it on him. He started grabbing all my stuff and throwing it around the room—my camera, pictures, clothes, everything. I tried to calm him down, but then he threw a glass bottle at the wall, and when he turned and looked at me, I was suddenly very afraid.

  So I lied. I told him he was right, that the baby wasn’t his, it was Howard’s, and that I never wanted to see him again. I was telling him what I thought he wanted to hear, but it made him even angrier. He said he was going to ruin both of us and that Howard would regret ever coming near me. Finally he shoved past me, then kicked the door open and was gone.

  The ring. The denial. The lie.

  I was finally getting a clear picture of my mother’s life—like up until now I’d been looking through a fogged-up window and hadn’t even known it. I’d had no idea she’d been through so much heartache. Honestly, she was freakishly cheerful. Like once our upstairs neighbor left the bathtub running and when it flooded our apartment and ruined a bunch of our stuff, my mom just pulled out a mop and started talking about how awesome it was that we could clear out the room and start fresh.

  Had that bouncy, count-your-blessings attitude I’d grown up with just been some kind of elaborate PR campaign? Had she been afraid I’d find out what her pregnancy had forced her to give up?

  I closed the journal. I was pretty sure that if I tried to keep going I’d have another massive breakdown, and this time I didn’t think even Ren could pull me out of it. And besides, there was no point to reading any more. No matter what my mom did next—flew by hot-air balloon back to Florence, spelled out HADLEY LOVES HOWARD in hundred-foot letters across Piazza del Duomo, sent him a handful of love letters via Venice’s plentiful pigeons—it wasn’t going to work out. Period. She was going to end up living the rest of her life six thousand miles away with only a slim gold ring to remind her of what she’d lost.

  Oh, and me. Otherwise known as the world’s most inconvenient souvenir.

  I leaned back and closed my eyes, feeling the tiny back-and-forth movements of the train jostling on the track. I was approximately one hundred miles from a man who was about to get his world turned upside down and six inches from another who wanted nothing to do with me.

  I literally wanted to be anywhere else.

  When our train arrived in Florence it was after four o’clock. Ren had dozed off again, and his phone kept vibrating spastically on the seat next to him like some kind of giant bug. Finally I leaned over and took a look. Text message from Mimi. Ouch. Was he going to tell her about me kissing him? If so, I’d better brush up on my street-fighter moves. I was going to need them.

  Ren opened his eyes. “Here?”

  “Here. Your phone’s been going off.”

  “Thanks.”

  He checked his messages, his hair hooding his eyes. As everyone around us gathered up their stuff, I picked up the journal and held it tightly in my hands. It had been one of the longest days of my life and I felt like I was wrapped up in a big, sad cocoon. I couldn’t believe I had to add to it by going back to the cemetery and telling Howard what I knew.

  The ride back to the cemetery was silent. Brutally silent. Everyone we passed seemed to be in the middle of a lively conversation, which made the blank space between Ren and me even more painful. I was pretty much a wreck. But I was angry, too. Yes, I’d messed up, but did that mean we couldn’t even be friends anymore? And why did I have to meet Matteo and lose Ren all in one day? Don’t most people get the luxury of spreading their life’s drama over a couple of years?

  When we finally pulled up to the cemetery a big bus of people was unloading in the parking lot, and they all stared at us like we were part of the attraction. Howard stepped out of the visitors’ center and waved to us.

  At the sight of him my insides froze and then shattered, but I managed to wave back. Even smile. What was he going to say?

  “To the house?” Ren asked.

  “Yeah.”

  He zipped up the road and a few seconds later pulled into the driveway, then turned off the scooter.

  I climbed off the back and handed him my helmet. “Thanks for helping me, Ren. It wasn’t great, but at least now I have some answers.”

  “Happy to.” It was quiet, and we looked at each other for a moment. Then he looked down, starting up the scooter again. “I hope everything goes okay with Howard. It’s going to be all right. He really cares about you.”

  His voice sounded like good-bye and I felt my throat tighten. “Maybe we could go running tomorrow?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he walked the scooter around in a circle so he was facing the road and gave me a little nod. “Ciao, Lina.”

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter 23

  “SO EXPLAIN THIS TO ME again. Howard isn’t your father; he just thinks he is?”

  “Yes. Or at least I think he thinks he’s my father.”

  “You think he thinks he’s your father?”

  “Yes. Either that or he’s lying. But I’m kind of leaning toward the former, because it’s not like people are supereager to take in random teenagers. Even if you did love their mother.”

  “But Howard isn’t your father? It’s that Matteo guy?”

  “Yes.” I flopped back on my bed, holding my phone to my ear. We’d been going over this for like twenty minutes now. “Addie, I don’t know how else to explain this to you.”

  “Just give me a second. It’s not like it’s complicated or anything.”

  “I know. Sorry.” I covered my eyes. “And I still haven’t told you the worst part.”

  “Worse than meeting your horrible jerk of a father?”

  “Yes.” I took a deep breath. “I kissed Ren.”

  “You kissed Ren? Your friend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay . . . Well, what’s so bad about that?”

  “He didn’t want to kiss me back.”

  “No way. Why?”

  “He has a girlfriend, and we’d just met Matteo and I was having this big breakdown, which was like the most inconvenient moment to realize how I really felt about him. So then I like jumped on him and he kind of”—I cringed—“pushed me off him.”

  “He pushed you off him?”

  “Yeah. And we were still in Rome, so then we had to take a train all the way back to Florence and he didn’t talk to me like at all. So to sum things up, I’m all alone in Italy, I have to break the news to Howard that he isn’t my father, and now I don’t even have a friend.”

  “Oh, Lina. And to think, ten minutes ago I was jealous of you.” She sighed. “What about what’s-his-name? Underwear model?”

  “Thomas?” Crap. His text. “He messaged me earlier and asked me out. Some big party for a girl who graduated from the school.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Probably not. I mean, who knows what’s going to happen once I tell Howard. For all I know he’s going to kick me out.”

  “He’s not going to kick you out. That’s ridiculous.”

  “I know.” I sighed. “But I doubt he’s going to be very happy. I mean, how weird is all this? Honestly, I wish he were my father.”

  Words
I never thought I’d utter.

  Addie was quiet for a moment. “When are you going to tell him?”

  “I don’t know. He’s still working, but he wants to go to a movie tonight. If I can work up my courage I’ll tell him as soon as he gets home.”

  She exhaled. “Okay, here’s the plan. I’m going upstairs right now to ask my parents if you can move back in. No, I’m going up to tell them you need to move back in. And don’t worry. They’ll say yes.”

  I spent the next hour pacing around my room. I kept picking up the journal to examine the sliver of pages I still had left to read, but every time I tried to open it I ended up dropping it like I was playing hot potato. Once I read that last entry, it was over. I’d never hear anything new from her again. And I’d know just how badly she’d gotten her heart broken.

  I kept going over to the window to watch for Howard, but he and the tour were moving across the grounds like garden slugs. Did they have to stop at every statue? And what was so interesting about that corner of the cemetery versus this corner? By the time they finished learning about WWII, WWIII would probably be done and over. Finally, when I thought I couldn’t stand one more second of waiting, Howard led the group back to the visitors’ parking lot and waited as they boarded the tour bus.

  “You ready?” I whispered to myself.