Chapter 1
Aurelia
After an hour flight from Rome to Catania, and then another hour drive from the airport, we arrived in Taormina, a quintessential Italian village with cobblestone pathways that led through little alleyways to reveal seafood restaurants that had been in the same families for generations, sandwich shops with freshly made focaccia bread, and little spots with Neapolitan pizza.
Paradise.
We’d planned this trip five months ago, and it was hard to believe it was finally here. With a packed schedule of visits to the wineries, the active volcano Etna, a trip to the Greek theatre, lots of cannoli and granita, it would be a trip to remember.
And we needed it now more than ever.
For the past couple months, Enzo had been noticeably withdrawn. It started off small, like not giving me the same focus he had in the past, missing whatever I was saying because his mind was somewhere else. It progressively got worse, and he didn’t even bother to pretend to listen. Then there were other things ...
He used to slip in behind me and join me in the shower. We never had sex in there, not when there wasn’t room and the tiles were slippery and I’d fallen once before, but it always served as awesome foreplaybefore we made it to the bed and dampened the sheets. But he stopped doing that, and when I joined him instead, I could see his glimpse of disappointment. He tucked it away quickly, but not fast enough for me to miss it.
Conversations over dinner had grown stale and forced. He spent more time at work or out with his friends. He used to invite me to join him and his boys, but those invitations stopped.
Whenever I asked him about it, he said he was stressed at work, that he had a falling-out with one of his friends over a stupid argument, that his vertigo had come back with a vengeance ... always something.
I’m not stupid, so I jumped to the conclusion every woman jumps to.
That there was someone else.
I wasn’t proud of my actions, hated myself a bit for doing it, but I went through his phone and checked his messages. He’d never used a passcode, and I took that as a sign of committed transparency.
I never found anything.
I went to his work parties and knew all of his colleagues. He worked in finance, so most of them were men, and Enzo didn’t strike me as the type of man to play for the other team. His boss was a woman, but she was about seven years older than him, with a husband and two kids.
So that was a dead end.
That led to one last possibility ... and it was by far the worst.
That he’d just stopped loving me.
That I’d watched it happen, watched the love and desire slowly fade from his heart, watched the light fade from his eyes. They used to burn bright when they looked at me, with love and attention, and now there was just nothing there.
And the fact that he didn’t acknowledge it when I asked, always had an excuse to explain his behavior, told me he didn’t want to fix it. Didn’t want to fight for this. Wanted to let our tree wither until it killed the roots and there was no going back.
He even tried to cancel the trip, said he had too many projects at work, but the hotel said our deposit was nonrefundable, so he conceded.
Maybe this trip would be a turning point for us. Maybe the sunshine and the warm beaches and the fancy dinners over candlelight would light a spark for a fire that had died in the depth of winter. Bring strength back to our broken bones and blood back to our hearts.
Part of me wondered why I continued to fight for a man who couldn’t be bothered to fight for me. He’d been my boyfriend for two years, and we’d moved in together within the first three months of our relationship because it just felt so right. It was a whirlwind romance, uncontrollable laughter for jokes only the two of us could understand, a scorching chemistry that lit the sheets ablaze, a connection I’d never felt with another man.
I guess it just hurt too much to let that slip through my fingers.
The drive was spent in silence, the two of us in the back seat, Enzo constantly on his phone. He’d fire off a message and put it aside, but then it would vibrate with an instant reply, and he would be typing away again. That meant he was having a full-on conversation with someone.
He glanced at me when he felt my stare, and that was when he put his phone aside and ignored it when it vibrated a few more times. He focused his stare out the window and didn’t explain the messages, even though he knew I was paying attention.
When we arrived at the little town of Taormina, the driver took us down narrow alleyways to get us to the small boutique hotel, Villa Fiorita. It was a short walk from the heart of town and had a pool on the roof. It wasn’t a five-star experience, but it was an adults-only hotel, so that meant it would be quiet.
We checked into our room that faced another room across the hall. It had a double bed on top of a carpet that needed to be changed a decade ago. The bathroom didn’t have a walk-in shower, but a shower in a tub that was slippery just to look at, and a single sink at the vanity that we’d have to fight over.
But at least we were here.
The second he put the luggage on the racks, he pulled out his phone and continued whatever conversation he’d been having.
