Chapter Eighteen

Roxie

I didn't know what to think. Hearing him say that he wanted to be honest with me didn’t seem like the best start to a conversation. That type of admission usually leads to bad news or something I really didn't want to hear.

I need to be honest with you... I've been cheating on you for the last three years.

I need to be honest with you... I'm still cheating on you and don't intend to stop.

I need to be honest with you... I am actively cheating on you right as we speak.

"Ok," I said uncertainly. "Go ahead."

Luca coming clean with me hadn't been bad so far. Of course, it hadn't been the most pleasant experience to confirm that I was the prize of a bad joke gone wrong. At least the joke had been intended for Greg and wasn’t anything against me. He was even truthful enough to tell me that he had been talking to Greg on the phone about me. Luca even said he loved me.

Not only did Luca claim to love me now, he said he loved me during those long days, and even longer nights, we had been apart. Hearing him say that caused me to react on a deep emotional level. I could hear his words repeating in the back of my mind and feel them on my skin. I didn't know if I should let myself believe him. I wanted to. I wanted to believe what we experienced together, and the feelings and emotions that had developed between us during that week, were real. But there was something strange about this whole situation that had set me slightly on edge.

"There's something I haven't told you yet," Luca said. "It's something I don't really tell anyone. Unless they've known me my whole life or were introduced to me by my parents, no one knows. Not even the people I consider closest to me."

"Even Greg?" I asked.

"Even Greg. Especially Greg. I don't know how he would react."

Oh, this is just sounding better and better.

"I'm listening," I said.

"When I say that I can arrange things because I have connections, that's not entirely true. It's not really a lie, either. It’s just not the whole story."

"What do you mean?"

Luca paused and struggled to come up with the right words before he finally reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He fiddled with it for a few seconds and then turned the screen to me.

"Do you recognize these people?" he asked.

I leaned in a little closer, so I could look at the screen. An elderly couple in elegant black tie attire smiled at the camera. Glimpses of a red carpet were visible beneath their feet and behind them was an intricate glass and bronze wall that looked like it belonged to a museum. At first, they weren’t familiar, but the longer I looked at them, I realized I had seen them several times before.

“They're major philanthropists. They are the targeted audience when I design fundraising events to woo people into donating money.” I thought about it a bit more. "What are their names? Oh, yeah. Walter and Lilith Pierce."

Luca nodded as he turned the phone around and then tucked it away in his pocket.

"Or as I know them," he said, "Grammy and Pop."

It took a few seconds for what he said to fully sink in. For a moment, I seriously considered the possibility that he had met this older, wealthy couple somewhere and gave them really ridiculous nicknames. Then I realized what he was telling me. Walter and Lilith Pierce were his grandparents. And that meant…

"You're rich? Like billionaire rich?” I asked. "Is that what you needed to be honest with me about? That's what you needed to tell me?"

"Yes," Luca said. "Like I said, I don't tell people. It's not that I'm ashamed of my family. I adore them. But I don't like being associated with money. I don't want the people I know to evaluate me or judge me based on the fact that I have a wealthy family. I didn't want it to change the way you looked at me or our relationship."

I stared at him, trying to reconcile what he had just told me with the time we had spent together. Things were falling into place. When I asked Luca about his career, he had replied that he had a variety of personal pursuits. I never thought to ask how he could take the entire week off to go with me and never have to mention his work. The empty first-class cabin on the plane. The fact that he could literally stop traffic and shut down a subway station. Luca didn't get that permission for that because of a documentary film – which had been fairly obvious to begin with. It happened because Luca had a virtually limitless supply of money at his disposal to get what he wanted. Now a private ferry was bringing us out into the water, right next to the Statue of Liberty... Just like we told my friends and family we did.

"What are you thinking?" he asked. "I need to know how you feel about this."

"I thought you were going to tell me you were a fucking murderer, or in the mafia, or that your connections were some sort of underground, drug cartel, Godfather-type situation."

"I don't really think those things go together at all," he said.

"The point is, when you said you needed to be honest with me about something, I thought it would be something horrible. I thought you were going to tell me something devastating. Something that would destroy my image of you forever, and make it where there was no possible way for us to be together. Instead, all I know now is that you lied to me by omission."

"Lied to you?" Luca asked incredulously. "You're seriously saying that I lied to you?"

"Yes," I said. “But I’m not mad. Not really. I understand that you probably don’t want to tell every single person you meet who you and your family are. I get it. It seems silly to be upset by that when the whole reason we met was so that I could lie about having a boyfriend in New York...”

"Thank you, Roxie. But I think you meant you lied about us being engaged."

"Actually, that was all you."

"Me? What do you mean that was me? It was your idea. Why would I suggest that?"

"The being engaged part. I said we were a couple and that we had just started getting serious. When we left New York, we didn't even live together or anything. But then all of a sudden, you decided we were engaged."

He stared at me.

"OK. Whatever. The point is that we are standing here right now because of one giant lie made up of a bunch of smaller, continuous lies.”

Luca was right. I was trying to find the words to say to him when the sound of an explosion behind us made me gasp. I whipped around to see the source of the blast when colorful fireworks burst in the air above the boat. A few seconds later, another rocket went off. I stared at them and their strange, nonsensical juxtaposition against the dark, overcast sky. When I turned around to look at Luca, he had put on an oversized Uncle Sam hat and was holding a miniature American flag.

"Are you kidding me right now? Am I seriously looking at fireworks over the Statue of Liberty in the middle of the afternoon... In November?"

Luca lowered his tiny flag.

"When we were at the resort we didn’t go canoeing at night with the others because you said you don't like being on the water after dark. I wanted to make this happen for you, but I didn't want you to be uncomfortable or afraid."

I looked back at the fireworks and felt tears starting to form in my eyes. My heart was aching, and I wished we could go back to the resort and disappear before any of this had happened. I turned around and looked at him. He saw the expression on my face and took off the hat, tucking the flag inside of it and putting them aside.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "I thought you would like this. We told everybody at the wedding that we met on the subway, so I made it happen. We told them about all these amazing experiences we shared together, including that we took a private ferry to see the Fourth of July fireworks over the Statue of Liberty, so I made that happen. For you. I wanted to experience these things with you for real. I want to be with you, Roxie. I want to have a relationship just like we told them we did. Let’s start over."

"That's just it, Luca. We can't have that relationship. That was fake. It was a story that we made up on a whim. It wasn't us, and experiencing these things together isn't going to create that relationship for us. You didn’t tell me about your family because you didn't want me to judge your money or for me to think of you any differently because of it. But look around you. Look at everything you did today, and even what you did before we went to the wedding. Rather than reaching out to me and letting us find our own starting point, you just threw your money around trying to recreate something that never even existed. This is incredible, Luca. Really, it is. But it's not what I want. I'm sorry."

I backed away from him, trying to put as much distance between us as possible.

“Can you ask Branson to turn around? I’d like to get off. Now.”

"Roxie, please stop," he said. "I’m sorry if this wasn’t what you wanted. I just couldn't go another day without knowing, without even a hint of doubt, that you know I love you and I want us to have a real relationship. Whatever that is. Wherever you want to start. Please."

At this point, tears, and presumably mascara, were streaming down my face.

“Roxie. I know this isn’t ‘us.’ That night in the cabin, with the dancing and the pistachios and Little Shop of Horrors, that was us. That night I realized I had completely, irreversibly fallen in love with you. I put this all together today to get you to realize that I was serious. I love you Roxie. I want to be with you. Because of who you are. Not to recreate some fictional relationship.”

I walked back to Luca and took his hands in mine.

"This," I said. "This is what I want. This is where I want to start. I want to start again with you, Luca."

As Luca wrapped his arms around me, I whispered the words I had longed to say out loud for months. My voice was shallow and hoarse from crying and I knew Luca couldn’t hear what I had said. Before I could overthink it, I repeated it, much more forcefully this time.

"I love you."

He immediately pressed his lips to mine, kissing me with fierce intensity. As our lips separated, I pulled him even closer and he put his hand on the railing to steady himself.

"I love you, Roxie. I love you, too."