Chapter Seventeen

 

Luca

 

My heart pounded in my chest as I looked at Roxie. I wanted to reach out and touch her but the way she was glaring told me she wasn't feeling the same way. Hopefully, though, tonight would go as planned, and she forgive me and be in my arms again.

"What's going on, Luca?" she asked again. "Where did all those people go?"

"They left," I said.

"Why?"

"They were only here because I asked them to be."

"What do you mean you asked them to be here?"

"Do you remember when we were at the airport and I told you I have connections?"

"You have connections that let you empty out a subway station for your own amusement?"

"It's not for my own amusement," I said. "And I didn't just empty out the station."

"What do you mean?"

I gestured above my head and the doors of the train in front of us opened.

"Would you take a ride with me?" I asked.

Please say yes.

Roxie stared at the waiting train and back at me incredulously. I expected to see a spark of romance in her eyes, for her to immediately catch on to what I was trying to accomplish here. Instead, she looked suspicious.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"If it's OK with you, I thought we could just ride around aimlessly for a while."

"I'm sorry, Luca, but I don't have time to just ride around with you."

I reached out to her before she could walk away.

"Please, Roxie. I just want to talk with you. I've been trying to see you for five months. Can't you just give me a few minutes? There's something I want to show you."

"I think I've heard you say that before,” she said. “Last time it was a room full of old DVDs."

"I promise it's not a room full of old DVDs," I said. "Talk to me. Give me a few minutes. If you still don't want to be here after that, you can leave. We can stop the train at any station."

The reluctant look on Roxie's face gradually disappeared. With a sigh, she started walking toward the train. I smiled and followed her, guiding her to sit down beside each other. As soon as we were seated, the doors closed, and the train lurched beneath us. Roxie gasped and gripped the seat beside her.

"Can I ask you something?" I asked.

"Yes.”

"Why don't you like the subway? I thought most people who moved to New York couldn't wait to get on it and ride around."

She tilted her head slightly at me. "Wait, you remembered that we met on the subway?” She laughed and then glanced over at me with an inscrutable look on her face. "That's why you did this," she said. "You wanted to make the story come true."

"As true as I could," he said. "And you really can get off at any station you want.”

"No," she said. "I think I'd like to ride around for a little while, too. Besides, the traffic out there is horrible. The cab driver said it was completely backed up for at least twenty blocks."

“I bet he did tell you that.”

As I said it, her face changed with the realization of what was happening here.

"Because you told him to," she said. "Did you also block off the street? Who are you?"

"I might have," I said. "I had to find some way to get you down into the subway. I knew if you thought you were supposed to meet Thea at the airport, you would do whatever you had to do to get to her. She told me about what happened the day the two of you did the dress fitting, and it all kind of fell together from there."

"So, you did all of that? Just to get me down into the subway so you could talk to me?”

"Yes," I said.

"Do you know I nearly punched that taxi driver in the face? He was rude as hell, and I was really at the end of my rope today. What with thinking I had forgotten about Thea, and Kevin standing naked in my office…"

"Wait, what?"

"Oh," she said, making a dismissive motion with her hand, as if she was trying to sweep that comment away. "It’s nothing."

"A man standing naked in your office in the middle of the day sounds like something to me. Didn't you say that you have glass walls?"

"Yeah, I do. But everybody knows Kevin, so it's not really that big of a deal."

"I don't know Kevin," I said.

"He's just a guy I hired for an administrative position about a year ago, but I thought he was interviewing to be one of the shirtless guys at first… You know what? Nevermind. That’s a long story. But basically, Kevin has decided he wants to be a performance artist, not an office worker, and was auditioning to be a merman."

"I’m still really confused," I said. "But I'll go along with it."

"I appreciate that."

"I'm sorry you had a bad morning. I didn't mean for the driver to be rude to you. He's not even a real taxi driver. He's an actor. Almost everyone you saw today, actually, were actors."

She looked stunned, as if she wasn't entirely sure how to process everything I had told her. I waited for the inevitable barrage of questions, but she didn't ask any. Instead, Roxie seemed willing to go along with it and find out how this was going to unfold.

"Actors?"

"Yes. I realized the only way I could get this to work was if I had the street and this station closed down for a film shoot. You know —people make a huge deal about how hard it is to make that happen. It really wasn't that difficult."

"What kind of film?"

"A documentary."

"About what?"

"A man who made an incredibly huge mistake and wanted to find the perfect way to make up for it."

"I think I've seen that one."

"This one has a different spin, I promise."

I brushed her hair away from her face, but Roxie turned away, shaking her head.

"Luca, I can't just forget what happened."

"I'm not asking you to forget," I said. “All that I'm asking you to do is hear me out. Let me explain."

"I don't think anything needs to be explained."

"Yes, there is. I know what Brad told you. I was there when he told Thea."

"You were?"

"Yes. I know he told you that he heard me talking to Greg about losing a bet, which meant I had to go to the wedding with you."

"That's what he told me," she said. "Is that not what happened?"

"No, that's exactly what happened."

Roxie rolled her eyes and got to her feet.

"I want to get off."

"Roxie, wait."

"You said I could get off the train at any point. Here's that point."

"You can't just throw yourself out of a subway train on the middle of the track. You have to wait until the next station. It's about five minutes from here. Just give me until then and if you're done, you're done. Deal?"

"OK." She sat back down.

"Thank you. Yes, I made a bet with Terri's brother. And, yes, the stakes were that if Greg lost the bet, he would go with you to the wedding and if he won, I was going to. That's all true. That all happened. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that, but I didn't know you then."

"It doesn't matter that you didn't know me. You shouldn’t be using people as a bargaining chip."

"I shouldn't. I know that."

"What was the bet? Did you have to sleep with me?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean.”

"I told Greg that he had to go up to a woman at the bar and convince her to come and play darts with him. If she came over and he won, then he won the bet. If she refused to come over, or she did, and she won, then he lost."

"Wasn't that kind of risky for you?"

"I didn't think so. I knew the woman. It was all supposed to be a joke against him, not against you. He's really awful at darts, and I like to give him hell about it."

"Even though it was a really shady thing to do, I guess I’m happy that he’s bad at darts," she replied.

I smiled at her.

"I am, too."

"Is that what you wanted to tell me? You just wanted to confirm what Brad told me?"

"No," I said. "I wanted to tell you what he didn't. He didn't tell you that when he heard me talking on the phone to Greg, I was telling him that once I met you, none of that mattered anymore."

She looked up from where she had been focusing on her lap.

"You did?"

"Yes. I told him that the stories we told and how long we had been together might have been fake, but it didn't matter to me. I was falling for you back then, and still am now. I told him I was trying to find a way to let you know that I didn't want it to be fake. I didn't want a pretend relationship anymore, and I didn't want to go our separate ways after the week was over. I didn't want to say goodbye to you. That's what I wanted to talk to you about at the reception."

"Brad heard you say all of that?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "But I made sure he knew how I felt before I left. Right after punching him."

Roxie gasped.

"You were the one who punched him?"

"I did. He deserved it."

"I know he absolutely deserved it. I just can't believe that you were the one who punched him. Thea wouldn’t tell me who did it."

"Thea saw it happen. She was right there, actually."

"She was?"

"Yeah. She didn't really seem to mind too much. I think she was as angry with him as I was."

"I can't believe she didn't tell me that."

"I asked her not to."

"Why?"

"Because I wanted you to hear it from me. When you heard that I love you, I wanted it to be from my own mouth. I wanted to be able to look right at you and say I love you, Roxie. I've been falling in love with you since we first met at the airport."

The train stopped. Roxie and I looked at each other. The air was thick with the unspoken tension between us.

"We're at the station," I said. “You can leave, or you can get in the car with me and see what's next. It's totally up to you."

"I'll stay," she said softly.

When we got off the train, my driver was waiting for us in front of my luxury car.

"More connections?" she said.

"Something like that," I told her.

She was silent the rest of the drive and it took everything in me not to ask what she was thinking. I wanted to give her as much time as she needed to process everything, but it was killing me not to know what she thought. At least she was there with me. She was still in the car, willing to go to the next place with me. Maybe there she would see how sincere I was.

I wanted our destination to be a surprise. By the expression she wore on her face when I helped her out of the car, it certainly seemed that it was. Her mouth hung open and she seemed too stunned to move the strands of hair the chilly wind had whipped across her face. I walked up to her side and gazed out over the water with her.

"Come on," I said. "It's not much farther."

"This isn't it?" she asked.

I shook my head.

"Not yet," I said.

As we approached the dock, a uniformed man stepped toward us.

"Mr. Cavett, it's good to see you."

"You, too, Branson. I really appreciate you doing this for me."

"Absolutely. I hope you'll tell your grandfather that I said hello."

"I will. He'll be glad to hear from you. They'd love you to come out and visit sometime."

"I'll do that."

"Branson, this is Roxie."

"It's lovely to meet you."

Roxie gave a single nod, looking at the captain as if he were a mythical creature.

"You, too," she said.

He stepped back and gestured toward the ferry behind him.

"Sir. Miss. We’re ready whenever you are."

I took Roxie's hand and didn't feel her resist. We walked onto the ferry while Branson went to his place behind the wheel. Roxie looked around and then back at me.

"Where is everyone else?" she asked.

"There isn't anyone else," I told her.

"No one?”

I shook my head.

"No. Just us. Well, us and Branson."

"Who is he? How do you know him?"

"He's an old family friend. When I called him and asked if he would do this for me, he was happy to do the favor."

"So, he's one of your connections?"

"I guess you can say that he is."

The ferry pulled into the water and we began our gradual journey toward the island in the center. Roxie's eyes locked on the Statue of Liberty and then lowered again.

"Luca, what is happening here? What is all this?"

"Roxie, there's something that I need to tell you. I should have told you a long time ago and I didn't. But if we're going to have a chance of being together, we have to be honest with each other."