I don’t get back to the house until almost midnight. By now I’ve managed to convince myself murder is a capital crime, and I really don’t want to spend the rest of my life in an Italian prison.
But man, if it weren’t against the law, there would be one dismembered marchese buried in the woods behind the house.
I stop by the kitchen to fix myself a plate of leftovers, then head to my room. When I flick on the light in the bedroom, I find Cornelia snoring in the makeshift doggie bed I created in one corner of the room using old blankets and pillows. She’s snuggled up to one of my T-shirts that she must’ve dragged out of my open suitcase in the corner.
I haven’t had the time or energy to unpack.
Trying to be quiet so I don’t wake the dog, I set my handbag on the dresser. Then I sit cross-legged on the bed with my plate and laptop and munch while looking online for a local clinic where I can get an STD test.
I find a place with a nearby address, have Google translate their webpage to English so I can read it, then book an appointment. That awful task completed, I decide to google my name since I’m already in a bad mood.
I should’ve known better.
After reading every article on the first four pages of results, I’m convinced I can’t move back to San Francisco, at least not without changing my name and having some major plastic surgery. Those pictures are never going away. Never. When I’m a hundred years old, there will still be full-color photos floating out in cyberspace of me punching Brad in the nose on the altar of Grace Cathedral.
Any man I’ll ever date in the future will be able to see those pictures. He’ll be able to read every smarmy detail about the worst humiliation of my life.
“I won’t date,” I tell the computer, getting teary. “I’ll become a nun. I’ll marry Jesus. He won’t care that I’m the laughingstock of San Francisco. He won’t care that I’m damaged goods.”
He might care that I’m about as religious as a head of lettuce, but whatever.
I snap shut the computer and flop back onto the bed. After a minute or two of staring at the ceiling, I’m so angry I can’t lie still anymore. I set the plate aside, hop out of bed, and dig my cell phone from my purse. Then I call Satan.
He picks up on the first ring, sounding wide awake and hopeful. “Babe?”
“You’re not allowed to call me that anymore!”
“Oh. Uh, sorry.” He’s quiet for a moment, listening to me breathe like a dragon. “Are you okay?”
“No. Are you still in Italy?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I’ve figured out how you can make it up to me.”
“I can’t come out to my parents,” he says, his tone pleading. “Anything else but that!”
“This has nothing to do with your parents.”
He heaves a relieved sigh. “Okay. What is it?”
“Come to DiSanto Couture in the morning, eight o’clock sharp.” I give him the street address, then warn, “Don’t be late.”
“I won’t! I’ll be there right on time!” Then, hesitating, he says, “What’re we doing?”
“Taking your measurements.” I hang up, smiling.
He’s gonna look amazing in the pleated dress.
True to his word, Satan shows up at eight on the nose. Speaking of noses, his seems to be healing quickly. The swelling is down, and so is the bruising under his eyes. By the time I need him to look pretty again for the show, he should be all set.
I have Clara take his measurements because there’s no way in hell I’m holding a tape measure to his inseam. Watching him squirm in discomfort as she manhandles him and bosses him around is so much fun I make her recheck all her numbers and take his measurements again.
When it’s over and he asks what it was all for, I tell him the truth. Sort of.
“I need you to model for me.”
“Model? What, clothes?”
I deadpan, “No. Taxidermy animals. It’s my new hobby.”
He squints, confused. “Would I, like, hold them or something?”
“Dude. That was a joke. You’ve heard of those.”
“Oh right. Ha ha. Good one.”
He still looks confused. I stare at him, wondering how I never noticed his tendency to take everything literally.
It hits me in full force that I was so focused on the wedding I didn’t spend enough time considering what marriage to Brad would actually be like day to day. I wasted years daydreaming about one magical event without paying enough attention to who the man behind the handsome face really was.
Whoever coined the phrase “love is blind” was only half-right.
It’s deaf and stupid, too.
But could there be a silver lining to all the humiliation I suffered at his hands? Maybe instead of ruining my life, he actually did me a huge favor. Maybe he taught me the most important lesson of my life.
It isn’t the wedding that matters. Getting that piece of paper and saying “I do” can’t make right what’s fundamentally wrong.
Another revelation rocks me: Maybe I wasn’t in love with Brad himself . . . maybe I was in love with an idea. Maybe I was in love with being in love, the worst possible foundation on which to build a marriage.
Maybe Brad wasn’t the one who screwed me over.
Oh God. I think I might have done that all by myself.
Watching me, Brad draws his blond brows together in worry and shifts his weight from foot to foot. “The way you’re looking at me is, um, kinda scary. Did I say something wrong?”
He’s a little kid. He’s just a big, goofy, self-centered kid who’s scared of his parents and can’t be alone.
I stare at him, struck by how obvious it all suddenly seems. Bradley Hamilton Wingate III isn’t a man. He’s a child in a grown-up’s body, playacting to get acceptance and love the only way he knows how, too insecure to stand on his own two feet.
Everything he’s ever done has been motivated by fear.
What a miserable way to go through life.
Aw, shit. And here I was determined to hate him forever.
Reeling from my epiphany, I say, “I’m still mad at you for being dishonest. But it’s not all your fault. I can’t hang all the blame on you, because I was busy being an idiot, too, just in different ways.” I take a deep breath. “So if you ever decide to come out to your parents, I’ll go with you. You won’t have to handle that conversation alone. Okay?”
His eyes round. His lower lip quivers. He stares at me in white-faced shock for what seems like a long time, then swallows. In a small voice, looking at his shoes, he says, “Okay.”
Then bursts into tears.
I’m not one of those people who can watch someone cry without giving them a hug. It’s an uncontrollable impulse. So, sighing, I put my arms around Brad and let him blubber on my shoulder until his tears have turned to sniffles and he’s red with embarrassment.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
“I’ve seen you cry more in the last week than I have in the entire time we were together.”
He whispers, “Tough guys aren’t supposed to cry.” He chews his lower lip and sniffles again, looking pathetic but also adorable.
He’s always adorable. It’s one of his best qualities. He’s playful, good tempered, and lighthearted, and always wants everyone around him to have fun.
Unfortunately, the man is actually a decent human being.
When I groan, Brad glances up at me, his forehead crinkled with worry. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s inconvenient feeling empathy for someone you previously decided to hate.”
He grabs my hands, his eyes full of desperation and hope. “So that means you don’t hate me?”
Overwhelmed by a wave of exhaustion, I heave out a lungful of air and beseech the ceiling, “How is this my life, God? Did I do something to personally offend you?”
Brad is too busy getting excited by this new development in the conversation to pay attention to my pleas to a higher power.
“Because I’d do anything to stay friends with you, even if you don’t want the money and stuff. I meant it when I said you were the only one I ever felt safe with. You’re my best friend, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to—”
“We’re not breaking out the BFF charm bracelets and matching outfits yet, pal,” I interrupt sarcastically. “Let’s wait until after I get the results from my STD test to see how things are going to go.”
I’m taken aback by the volume and confidence of that pronouncement. “You sound pretty sure.”
“I am. I get tested every month!”
Watching my face, he immediately realizes that was a mistake. He cringes in that puppy-about-to-get-smacked-for-chewing-a-new-pair-of-shoes way and bites his lip.
But I don’t care. I’ve flipped from empathy to murder in two seconds flat. I peer at him in narrow-eyed suspicion. “If you were ‘safe,’ like you said you always were, why would you need to get tested every month?”
He glances at my clenched fists. “I’m afraid if I tell you the truth, you’ll deck me.”
“I might deck you anyway. Talk.”
He debates it for a moment, inhales a breath for courage, then blurts the words out in one long breathless rush. “Because nothing is one hundred percent effective there’s always a chance you can pick up something bad even if you use protection and I was scared I might pass something on to you so I got tested a lot to make sure I was clean so you wouldn’t catch anything.”
He stops for a breath, bracing himself for a hit, but my head is spinning too fast for me to take a swing at him.
“You’re telling me you were trying to protect me?”
He nods.
“From getting a sexually transmitted disease that you might unknowingly have had?”
He nods again, but has to think about it first.
My voice rises. “Because you were sleeping around so much, with so many different partners, that the risk of catching a nasty virus was so high you had to be tested once a month?”
He says defensively, “Sometimes more often than that, just to be sure.” Then he brightens. “But I’m totally clean, so we’re all good!”
I stare at him with my mouth open because there just aren’t any words.
There are. No. Words.
He decides this would be a good time for us to share another hug, and throws his arms around me.
At that moment a man’s hard voice comes from the doorway behind us.
“I hope I’m not interrupting.”
I peek over Brad’s shoulder and see Matteo standing in the open doorway of my shop, his back stiff and his eyes blazing, looking as if he’s about to burn the place to the ground.