Tomorrow. There. Tomorrow, I’ll walk down that aisle and say I do.
Sudden panic swoops in my belly, and I don’t know how to process all of this. It looks so gorgeous, even though this isn’t the marriage of two people who’ve fallen in love.
Nothing is ever as it should be here.
I don’t feel like a bride about to be married. I feel like we’re having a party and I’m wearing a fancy dress. That tomorrow, I’ll take the next step and do what I must, because it’s the only choice I have.
A part of me longs to see Tavi. I want to feel his solid, immovable presence beside me. I want to feel his hot, warm skin next to mine. I want to hear his rock-solid voice and look into the depths of those strong eyes of his that give me the assurance of his safety and protection.
It was the very thing I wanted when Piero was ripped from me.
I press my forehead against the windowpane and allow the cool glass to still my pounding heart.
“Hey, guys,” Angelina says softly behind me. “Give us a minute?”
I’ve never been so grateful for my best friend.
When the door closes behind them, I feel Angelina’s hand on my shoulder.
“Hey,” she says in a soft voice. “You okay?”
I nod, and swallow the lump in my throat. “Just pre-wedding jitters. I’d say cold feet, but that’s so cliché.”
“And implies you made a choice in this,” Angelina says quietly.
It’s funny sometimes how a bestie can put into words exactly what’s bothering you.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
She sits on a little stool beside me. The baby sleeps peacefully over her shoulder.
“Look at you,” I whisper. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Proud? Of me?” She tips her head to the side curiously. “Why? And don’t you dare change this subject.”
“I’m not,” I insist. “I promise, I’m not. It’s just that you did this for me. And you didn’t make lemonade from lemons, Angelina. You built a goddamn lemonade franchise.”
She grins at me, rocking side to side with Nicolo, and shrugs. “Honey, it wasn’t like that. Yeah, I didn’t plan this, and Orlando knows it.” She shrugs. “But sometimes, two people find each other. Like two grains of sand on a beach. It’s impossible, right? The odds. But they find in the end that it isn’t impossible at all because somehow, some way… maybe they were cut from the same rock. Right?”
I shrug. “I think I’d need a better understanding of geology to answer that accurately.”
I laugh when she sticks her tongue out at me. “It’s just that… we make things so complicated, I think. Sometimes, we overthink the most obvious things, don’t we?”
I sit on a stool beside her. Or, more accurately, flounce, as a billow of fabric poofs then settles all around me like a cloud.
“Like how?”
“Like we think marriage is this perfect match, and that if we don’t find the perfect match, we should scratch it all and start again.”
I’m thinking of her father and his many wives and affairs. Vittoria and Romeo, brought together despite all odds, Angelina and Orlando, thrown together in the wildest of circumstances.
“But I don’t think that’s how it is, no…” her voice trails off. “I mean, I believe in soul mates and all that. But sometimes you just start with… well, a spark, right?” She shrugs. “And it’s up to you to kindle the flame. To keep it going. To make it work.”
I think this over. “I don’t know,” I say softly. “I’ve never known a happily married couple. Until… well, until the Rossi family.”
“Well, that’s just it, babe. Isn’t it? I mean, you met Orlando. And did he check off those boxes on my list in the journal we wrote together?”
I laugh, remembering the romantic notions we had and silly lists we wrote to each other in journals we shared as teens.
“Some, yes, but definitely not all.”
“And yet here we are,” she says softly. “Orlando loves me, Elise. He truly does. Just like… well, in a sense, just like you did. You saved my life once, and I’ll never forget it.”
Her eyes fill with tears. The baby stirs, and she holds him closer, either to soothe him or herself, I don’t know.
“I did,” I whisper. “And I’d do it again.” It was my proudest moment.
I remember that night so vividly. We were only teens, two girls who were forced into circumstances neither of us had ever imagined. Whereas my life was a carefully-orchestrated drama complete with acts, stages, and a script to follow, hers was a reckless chasm with no boundaries or rules. Complete opposites, really.
And one night we ventured out alone. Her, under the premise of spending the night with me and me, having bribed Piero to give me one little taste of freedom. We drank stolen nips of peach schnapps and thought a little swim in the quarry, a known teen hideout in Quincy, would do us a little good.