I handed him a glass. He had large, calloused palms that were used to woodwork, and tools, and strings. He was wearing his wedding ring. I averted my gaze.
“Maybe you can start.”
Angelo raised his glass in anokayand took a sip. Then, leaning back, he draped one arm on the backrest. It reached just the curve in the L where I sat. “Let’s focus on the meaningful ones,” he said.
My pulse pounded harder in my ears, like it had on the first day of school every year in Wayford High when the teacher asked us to share about our summer activities. I knew everyone would have stories about vacations abroad and travels to New York and Florida, while all I could share was babysitting my sister and working with my mom.
It was obvious that Angelo had lots more relationships to talk about, both meaningful and meaningless, although I had a ten-year lead on him.
He took another sip. “Okay, so, there was Chiara when I was fifteen or sixteen. Federica at twenty—we were together for a year, I think. Then there was … were”—he stared into space, glass in hand, his eyes narrowed, as if he were counting—“Sofia and another Sofia. Each was about a year. I was twenty-five with the second Sofia. Then the last one, before I came here, was three years ago, Bianca. And …” He looked like he was browsing through his memory, deciding who was worth mentioning and who wasn’t.
To his credit, he wasn’t bragging. He was enumerating facts. Indeed, it was a fact of nature that many women would go for his type, especially when his type looked likethat.
“That’s it,” he ended up saying.
That’s it?
Chiara, Federica, Sofia the First, Sofia the Second, Bianca.
Just like in high school, I opened my mouth to blurt out the little I had to share so I could get it over and done with. But then Angelo continued.
“And there was Amber.” He brought his eyes to me, and just from the way he’d said her name, I knew she was the most meaningful one.
Angelo threw a gaze at his left hand, the one that was almost touching my shoulder on the back of the sofa. He was looking at the ring. Mine was in my purse.
“I asked her to marry me.”
In sickness and in health, June.
A few days ago, all I wanted was to get my divorce decree, and Angelo was just a means to an end, a random choice that happened to be what Jerry had offered in exchange for my debt. We were a business deal. Him being here, these conversations, everything between us was just part of a contract. But despite it all, despite the cream and beef, and discarded shoes and the manspread, despite all the self-warning drums I’d been beating all day, my heart plunged to the floor at those words.
I felt like bronze to gold, the before to an after, the knockoff to the real thing.
“What was she like?” I found myself asking.
Angelo brought those blue eyes from the ring back to me. “Rock ’n’ roll.”
He didn’t really have to add anything else. And maybe he knew it because he didn’t.
Outwardly, I nodded. Inside, I was busy telling myself that the crumbling I was feeling wasn’t about Angelo. It was just that I never had anyone else’s eyes looking at me like his did when he said her name. I never had anyone summarize me in one word that meant everything to him.
“How old was she?” Somehow, I felt that the answer to this question would solve the puzzle for me.
“Twenty-four.”
I’d had my bittersweet sixteenth birthday when the woman he wanted to marry had been born. Puzzle solved.
“What happened?”
“She said no.”
Which is why you had to marry me. And you’re still in love with her.
“What about you?” he asked after a beat passed.
I sipped my wine. “For the USCIS interview purposes, you can say I never mentioned a serious enough relationship.” I wasnotgoing to delve into my failures. Not afterthat.
Angelo slowly nodded. “You don’t settle for less than perfect, do you, June?”
