“That’s bullshit. That’s not what happened. I had nothing to do with this.”
“Oh, you’re just following someone else’s directions, right? Makes it easier, I guess.”
“It’s not like that. It’s not like that at all.”
“Then tell me you don’t already have another deal set up.”
Cris opened his mouth, but closed it again. He shook his head and looked down.
“That’s what I figured,” she said.
“I did not want this to happen. We should have kept things separate. I didn’t think.”
“That’s obvious,” she said. Her eyes were steel. Ellie pulled her ponytail out, ran her fingers through her hair to gather up the stray wisps that had escaped in the breezy afternoon, and yanked it all back again. She pressed her fingertips into the corners of her eyes to erase any chance of tears and looked back at the half-finished trellis. She was setting the scene for the wedding of her grandmother and Cris’s grandfather. It was something beautiful and unexpected. But sometimes theunexpected thing was not beautiful. Sometimes it hurt. Sometimes it kept dads at practice for hours longer than they had promised. Sometimes it made people cheat with their clients. Sometimes it ended thirty-year marriages. Sometimes unexpected things ruined careers before you even knew your mic was on. She’d been telling herself that she would be protected from the unexpected if she just didX, Y,andZperfectly. If she could hold everything together, spin all the plates, hide all the feelings, everything would be okay. But it was a lie. It was another fraud—just like this mess with Cris. There was no way of controlling the variables, only a need to keep trying to prove there was.
She placed the two silk roses she was holding back in the box in front of her and closed it, aware that Cris was still watching her. She wanted to run off the terrace and head straight to the airport, but she wasn’t a quitter—unlike some people.
“You’re staring at me,” she said, looking down at the box.
“I’m not trying to.”
“Well, you are.” She could feel his eyes on her, but now it was making her skin crawl. She was back in the fishbowl again, sweating under the bright lights and humiliation, looking for an exit. She was so, so tired of feeling that way and thought it was over. She never would have believed that she could misjudge someone so badly and end up right where she started.
“Do you want me to go away? Is that what you want?” he asked.
“I have nothing else to say. I will deal with it.”
“Will you talk to me, please? You can’t shut me out now.”
“I can’t?” She whirled around to face him, aware that anyone could be watching them now. She kept her voice low. “And why is that? You think we owe each other something? I think it’s clear that you are mistaken.”
“I didn’t want this to happen.”
“But it did,” she said, choking back tears, hating that they wouldn’t stop. “Don’t you worry, you’re off the hook now. You conveyed your news.” She stood, pushing back the chair. She found her sandals and slipped her feet in. “And you can get as far away from the damage as you like. There’s nothing more to talk about.”
“I’m—I’m sorry,” he stammered. Cris reached out for her hand, but she could only stare at his hand, hanging in the air.
“Yes,” she said, picking up the box. “You are.” Ellie walked straight past the cabanas and dropped the box in the closet by Mario’s office where the wedding supplies were being held. She kept walking, did a mental inventory of the contents of her pockets—house key, phone, lip balm—and decided that she could keep going all the way back to her house without difficulty. It was likely that someone was going to be looking for her, but right now all she wanted to do was get inside somewhere cool and dark to stop the swirl of anger and sadness. At least she knew she wasn’t missing anything crucial. In the process of planning the wedding events, Graziella and Simone had decided that the night before the wedding would be a great time to rest and relax before the big day, and not an occasion to get one last party in. Ellie had never been so grateful for octogenarian wisdom as she unlocked the apartment, shuffled into her bedroom, and curled into a ball under the covers.
The empty house was a quiet backdrop to the first all-out ugly cry she’d had in probably a decade while that montage of memories kept playing over and over in her head like a greatest-worst-hits album. Although the scenes and characters changed, there was only one phrase that kept repeating in her head.Why does it hurt so bad?
Today was a confirmation of every instinct she’d had to not getinvolved with him. The athlete. The emotionally underdeveloped. The unpredictable. The untrustworthy. He was everything she had always tried to stay away from and all of her fears and insecurities in one place. She couldn’t count on someone who would never be around, could never believe that guys like him weren’t looking for the next way to cover their own ass, and could never hope to be a partner to someone who was paid to be egocentric. She had known all of this but let herself fall down the rabbit hole anyway. And now all she had left was a snotty pile of tissues, a destroyed career, and herself to blame. Ellie allowed one more silent tear to fall before wiping her nose, tucking into herself, and drifting off to sleep.
CHAPTER 25
Mario had promised to get everyone off the terrace by 12:30P.M.the next day in order to have time to set up for the wedding. On a summer afternoon on the Riviera, however, the promise turned out to be more theoretical than practical, and the entire place was still packed at 12:50. Ellie and Peggy pulled the trellis out into the middle of the chaos to finish the roses despite the danger of the archway being toppled by a rogue game of mini-ball soccer that had migrated up from the beach. Ellie enlisted Pina and Greta to sit flanking the trellis as sentries, but Greta had to be relieved by Renata when she couldn’t get a visual on at least two of her offspring. Franco and Ugo realized they were not going to be able to move tables on their own with their combined age of 162 and enlisted a regiment of college kids to do the work in exchange for a cold Peroni each. Of course, they couldn’t agree on the placement of the tables, so Maria Elena stepped in as sergeant at arms. Ellie hadn’t seen her father since yesterday afternoon, but she was pretty sure that he was off at the bike store with Greta’s husband since she’d heard hermother mutterProbably thinks he’s going to be Lance Armstrong nowto one of the silk roses.
As far as the location of anyone else of importance, Ellie did not care to wonder. Ignoring Cris was not the most mature option, but she was fresh out of fancy coping mechanisms, and all that was left was pure avoidance. After that, every remaining scrap of energy was spent collecting the pieces of her heart together to be happy for Graziella and Simone. How many people got to say that they’d attended their grandmother’s wedding? There her grandmother was now, looking completely at ease as she stood talking to the caterer. She was holding her left hand flat while miming cutting into it with the edge of her right, Italian gesture-speak for “slices of something.” Ellie envied her so much. Graziella had been through so much in her life that the only options left were acceptance and grace. Ellie felt so far from those right now, they didn’t even seem like possibilities.
There was only about a one-square-foot section at the bottom of the trellis to finish. She crouched down and set the box of flowers next to her. All she wanted to do was be done, have the chat with Omar about the implosion of everything they had been counting on, and then take her time showering before attempting to pull off the engineering achievement of a lifetime with her bridesmaid gown. She was already mentally composing a letter of recommendation for Omar in her head, but her shoulders sank when she considered the fact that a letter from her might be more of a hindrance than a help. She squeezed her eyes together. How the hell did she get here?
“Dove mettiamo il vino?”
Ellie heard his voice and froze. It was one thing to avoid her own thoughts about him but quite another to ignore him when he was standing about ten feet away. She didn’t turn around, didn’t breathe, thoughshe knew he couldn’t be talking to her. She was relieved when someone from the café called to Cris to explain where he and the twins could put the wine. That damned wine called Moonlight—what good was a bit of dim moonlight anyway when it made it impossible to see things clearly? Her thoughts went directly to the hammock at the vineyard, his hands on her back, his mouth on her mouth. The wire cutter she’d been using dropped out of her hands and clattered onto the wooden floor. Peggy glanced in her direction and likely noticed her face looking like a bee sting. Peggy may have been humming while she was working, but it didn’t mean her mother wasn’t clocking her like a sniper.
“Whoops,” Ellie said, smiling. “Guess I’m a little clumsy today.”
“You must be tired. Your eyes look a little puffy. But, then again, you went to bed before us last night, didn’t you?” Peggy kept her eyes on the trellis.
