She lifts her head, breathing deeply as tears stream down her cheeks. “I assumed I didn’t really matter. When you’re eighteen, you blame yourself for not knowing. I had wanted you so much. I said to myself that I must have misread it. I was so lonely at that time.” Her eyes squeeze shut, and she bows her head like she might lose it. But she doesn’t. She just stands there with her head down, and she covers her mouth like she’s afraid she might be sick. Then she moves her hand and she looks at me.
“I think you should know it absolutely ruined college. I played…a role…the whole first year. I played a role of someone who had never known you and who never knew of all the bullshit Shakespeare in the track field, all that stupid shit you used to tell me in Italian. I knew you couldn’t fake the way you came when I would bite your lip or how you would lay on me when we cuddled. Like, you’d shift your weight so I could feel you lying on me, like on top of me—so I would have to hold your body up with mine. Like you just…needed to be close to me. I told myself that didn’t happen because there was no way I could explain why you would just break things off. Deep down I knew something bad might have happened, so I came by one time when I heard where you were. And Isa’s people sent me away.
“My parents took me to Southampton and I did cocaine and figured out how pot was better, and I went to college how I should have after that because you can’t be dead over a boy who never even loved you. That’s just crazy! I was crazy, and I knew you have to hide it if you’re crazy. That’s what people do, you know, they have to hide how much they’re crazy or they worry everybody else!” A little sob escapes her as she hugs herself. “It was like…a swimming pool that had this magic water in it. I just had to pave it over.”
She holds her forehead, breathing deep and slow, controlled, despite the tears that keep on sliding down her cheeks. Then she lifts her head and looks at me with eyes that flash. “I just wanted you to know that. And how I feel bad that you’re a mob guy, and I have to think about the downfall of you.”
My heart pounds. “So don’t.”
“I don’t want to. I hate you.”
Something cold and heavy shifts in my chest as her eyes hold onto mine. “So it doesn’t matter, does it then?” I ask her.
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter what went down that week. Why I did it. I was right.”
“Yes, you were right,” she rasps. She steps closer, looking like she wants to slap me again. Slap or bite me, rake her nails down my cheek.
Do it, I think. Please, Elise.
Her upper lip curls. “Now get the hell out of my sight.”3IsaI find him on the rooftop, in the moonlit garden Dad had someone build when I asked for it last year.
There’s this spot where a big tree leans over the rail. The tree is roped off, and there’s a sign that says no climbing. That’s because part of the rail is bending. I don’t know how Luca knows this, but that’s where he’s standing. He’s under the tree’s limbs, camouflaged unless you’re looking. As I walk closer to him, I see he’s got both of his hands around the bent rail and he’s leaning over.
“Hey…” I sprint through the raised flower bed, ducking under the tree’s limbs. He turns toward me slowly, and by then I’m close enough to touch his arm. “Ciao, Bello.”
I’m so worried that I wrap my arm around his hard waist. And I can feel him shaking. He’s shaking and breathing hard. I smell the liquor, feel his chest pump.
“Poverto tesoro…” I hug him, and my heart rolls over as I feel his body tremble against mine. “Quello che è successo?” I rub his back with my palm, moving smooth and slow and firm, and then up to his upper back, so I can press him to me. “Dillo a tua sorella, tesoro.”
I can tell he can’t talk. How he’s shaking… Goddammit, he hasn’t been this way in so long!
“It was her, wasn’t it?” I knew she was here, knew she was going to be here. I’m so livid that my father asked him to come here tonight.
He quakes harder, sort of panting, like he might be on the way to hyperventilating. I stroke his nape.
“No, tesoro. Andrà bene.”
“Don’t say that.” His words are rough groans.
“You’re so good, and good and good. You’re going to be okay.”
He groans, and I urge him down into the dirt with me. He lets me hug him, maybe only because he can’t push me away. When I ask him to, he lies on his side, lets me hold his head in my lap. He’s so still and heavy as I run my fingers through his short hair.