I look at him sideways. “No, you don’t.”
“I do,” he says. He reaches across the table, placing his palm on the linoleum in front of me. “I’m sorry I was intent on pushing you away, convinced that you were going to leave at any moment. I see now that that was unfair. I was projecting my stuff onto you. Clearly you care about the people in town, and you care about La Musa.”
“I’m staying,” I say. “I told you that over and over.”
“I know. I convinced myself you were here to bask in the Italian sunshine for a couple of weeks then bolt,” he says. “I’m wrong, though, right?”
I agree that he’s wrong, but I’m stunned that he’s willing to say it out loud. I’d always assumed Benito was the kind of person who couldn’t admit he was wrong, like so many people I worked with before—like me. “Why did you think that?” I ask.“I mean, I know I’m not fully settled yet, but I’ve only been here two months. I’m still figuring it out. Do you think I’m lying? Do I come across as flighty?”
He shakes his head. “I guess it was a last-ditch effort at self-preservation on my part.”
A breeze cuts through the restaurant and the stressed server holds down the paper tablecloths on the two empty tables to keep them from blowing away. “Because you’re set on pursuing a changed La Musa?”
Benito picks at the crust on his pizza. “No, because I didn’t want to get too. . . attached to the way things are now.”
His eyes flit up and he casts his gaze into mine. My heart flutters. I do my best not to parse his words for some hidden meaning. A buried but detectable declaration that I’m not the only one confused as to what our dynamic truly is. “It must’ve been really hard to lose Sutton, London, and your father at the same time,” I say.
Another breeze blows through. Benito runs his hand through his hair. “I think I knew it wasn’t right. I knew somewhere deep down that I’d always come back. I thought maybe that’s how you feel too. Maybe this is a temporary stopover, a chance to get over what you’ve lost before you return home.” His words are directed at me, but it feels more like he’s trying to rationalize my actions to himself.
“This is a new life, not a vacation. It frustrated me that you treated me like I was a flight risk when I have no intention to ever go back.”
He opens his mouth to speak but this time I cut him off.
“I know you think I’ll change my mind, but I won’t. I know you think our situations are similar, and they are in a way, but you deciding to come back here for your mom is not the same as me going back home for my career. You don’t understand what I’d be going back to. You don’t know how bad it was. How humiliating. You don’t know how much people hated me. I mean, sure, some people thought I was inspiring, but the people that hate me really, really hate me.” Thunder rumbles in the distance, justifying the electricity in the air even though I’m quite certain its cause is somewhere between me and Benito. “I wish I could flip a switch and shut it all out, but I can’t. I can’t go back to that.”
Benito clasps his hands together. “But the ones that loved you. . . that has to count for something. When you were first elected, they treated you like a revelation. You were on red carpets, magazine covers.”
I shake my head. “The thing about being a woman, a suddenly very famous woman, is that it’s great in the beginning: all the love, all the attention. . . you really feel like you matter and what you’re doing is important, but then people start getting tired of hearing about you all the time, so a small group of contrarians emerge, and the sentiment grows, and before long, they’ll find a big enough reason to hate you that it spreads even more. You can only be on top for so long before people remember that you’re merely human and imperfect. And unless you’re straight and white and male, it’s not enough to be anything less.”
I take a deep breath and a bite of pizza, summoning the magical healing powers of complex carbohydrates to calm the stinging feeling of rejection my confession stirs up.
There’s another clap of thunder and the server bellows out, “Mamma Mia,” which is not something I knew actual Italians said.
Benito looks at his watch. “I should head back to work.”
We pay and leave. The walk back toward the office starts off silently.He didn’t want to get too attached. I want to ask if he still feels that way, but the old wound I’ve allowed myself to open up is too raw. He’s right. I know what it feels like to get something you really, really want, and worse, when what you really, really want gets taken away.
No, it’s better to keep whatever attraction I feel toward him locked up. Minimal risk might mean minimal reward, but it’s the static I’ve been craving.
Thunder cracks again and the sound is close enough to startle us both. A trickle of raindrops follows a few moments later.
“Did you bring an umbrella?” I ask.
Benito shakes his head. “Didn’t you?”
“I’m from Southern California. We prepare for rain by staying home when it’s in the forecast.”
Another clap of thunder allows the sky to completely open and dump buckets onto us. Benito scrunches his face up. “I’ve been living in the U.K. for years and the relentless rain was the one thing I was happy to have behind me.”
The rain pours and Benito’s button-up is instantly see-through. An outline of his pectoral muscles visible. “We need to get out of here,” I say as Benito, right in sync, pulls us under an awning outside a gelato shop.
It’s short lived, though, as a worker inside yells at us in Italian and shoos us away from blocking the entrance to his shop.
Benito grabs my hand and pulls me away. He starts to run, and I move my legs as quickly as I’m able to keep up. He turns down a narrow alleyway and we run still as the cobblestone pathway fills with water. I throw my bag over my head but it’s useless—I’m already drenched.
There are signs for a garden ahead and we follow them, hopeful there’s a communal overhang for us to duck under for the duration of the downpour, but there’s nothing but open air and greenery. It’d be beautiful in clear weather, but in this circumstance, it’s basically a swamp.
Benito stops running and turns to me. We both laugh.
