The Turning Point

by Marie Meyer

  “He went with me when I met Martino. He knows about Graziana and Dad. He knows that it could happen to me, too. He said he wants to go with me when I get tested.”

  “Sounds like a pretty awesome guy.”

  You have no idea. “I love him, Mom.”

  “I can tell.” Even though I couldn’t see her, I knew there was a smile on her face. I could feel it. “So what’s the problem?”

  “I love him so much, Mom, that I had to set him free. He deserved so much more than I could ever give him.” I could feel the monster that had clawed its way out of my chest after Pen’s funeral stirring again. “I can’t put his future at risk. He needs to find someone who can promise him a lifetime of happiness, not pain and suffering.”

  “I don’t know where I went wrong.”

  “What?” I snapped. Was she even listening to me?

  “You chastise me for having romanticized ideals of love, but you’re right there with me.”

  I shook my head. No, I wasn’t. I did what had to be done. Love meant sacrifice. In order for Lucas to be happy, I had to take myself out of the equation. I was no longer a variable that could wreck his life. “If I’m sick, Mom, he can’t have a normal life with me.”

  “But what if the test tells you something different?”

  Claws scraped against my insides. “It’s too late,” I choked.

  “I’m sorry, Patatina. I wish I could wave a magic wand and show you the future. But I’m only your mom, not a fairy godmother. I’ve always wondered why godmothers were given the wands when a mom is on call night and day. Do you know how many times I’ve wanted a goddamn wand? Every scraped knee, every nightmare, every time you were scared of a storm, every temper tantrum—”

  “I never threw temper tantrums,” I interrupted.

  “Okay, that one was for Nonna. But my wand would work on her, too.”

  Laughter, deep in my belly, stilled the angry monster clawing at my throat. “Leave my Nonna alone.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” She paused for a minute; then her voice changed from joking to somber. “I know this hurts, Soph, but the pain will fade. Sadly, though, I can tell you it will never disappear. Your first love leaves a deep mark on your soul, and when that person’s gone, the ache is permanent. You just grow to accept it as a part of who you are, because they’re a part of you. Always.”

  I held back my tears with every ounce of strength I could muster. “I know why moms don’t get magic wands. Because you’re real. You have words, and arms, and lips, and a heart. Words to speak the truth in love, arms to hug and protect, lips to kiss away sadness, and a heart with the capacity to love endlessly. Moms don’t need magic wands with that kind of arsenal.”

  “I love you, Soph. You’re going to be all right. And when you get off that plane tomorrow, I’ll have my arms and lips ready.”

  “I love you, too, Mom.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Wheeling my carry-on behind me, I pulled up to the end of the security line. I wouldn’t be going anywhere quick. One would think the city was being evacuated with the number of people flying out today. This place was packed.

  With a sigh, I dug through my bag, pulling out my travel documents so I’d be ready when I needed them. I was antsy to get home. The more distance I put between Lucas and me, the easier it would be to get back to reality. With all of Mom’s talk of fairy godmothers and magic wands last night, I realized my summer in Italy had been the fairy tale. I’d lost sight of what was real and let myself get carried away. I needed to go home; then everything would be fine.

  I shuffled forward.

  With each step I took, my legs grew heavier. My heartbeat pounded in my ears the closer I got to the front of the line. I might as well have been standing in quicksand, because I was sinking.

  Instead of focusing on the excitement of going home—getting to see Mom and Nonna—my mind replayed the time Lucas and I spent together.

  I inched forward despite the bog of memories. It had only been six weeks. How can six weeks’ worth of memories weigh this much?

  Lucas’s dimple and smiling eyes ran through my head, as did other things I loved about him: the way he slept with one foot poking out of the covers…the way his not-awake voice broke through the silence late at night…his exuberance to try new things without any fear…his deep, throaty laugh that segued into a cough when he got excited…his gentle, yet firm touch…the way he kissed me, like I was something precious to behold, and with the simple act of our lips touching, the planet would continue to orbit.

  I flipped open my messenger bag again and yanked out my phone. Memories were often subject to tricks of the mind. Our brains had a unique way of distorting the truth, especially when our hearts decided to get involved. Maybe it would help shift things into perspective if I looked at a picture of him; I’d see the Lucas in the photograph, not the idealized, flawless creation my brain had conjured in his absence.

  I scrolled through some landscapes of Capri, a picture Lucas took of me sticking my tongue out after sampling some terrible gelato, a photogenic dish of lemon shrimp cream pasta Lucas and I shared, and the selfie we’d taken as we passed through Lovers Arch on the way to the Blue Grotto.

  My heart sank. Staring at the photo didn’t reset my opinion of “the real Lucas.” My brain hadn’t raised maudlin notions of the time we’d shared.

  It was real. Everything.

  The warmth of his hand on my cheek, the whisper of his breath at my ear, the brush of his smile against mine, the gravitational pull of his eyes, and the anchoring of my heart with his.

  There was a tap on my shoulder and I gasped, looking up from the photo. An older woman started at me, irritation bleeding from her eyes. “Move ahead,” she commanded, gesturing to the large gap in front of me.

  Move ahead. Yes. That’s what I should do. I took a tentative step forward and stopped.

  Move ahead? Is that what I want to do?

  Behind me, the lady groaned.

  I’m having a crisis of conscience here. Didn’t she understand that?

  What had I done?

  “Spostarsi!” she shouted. “Move!”

  I glanced at her, taking another step forward in line. As I closed the gap, little truths echoed in my head, voices…Mom, Nonna, and Dad’s nurse Lydia, all of them intertwined with Lucas’s.

  I will always love your father, Mom said.

  Your dad loves you, Sophia, Nonna affirmed.

  He left because he didn’t want you to watch him die, Lydia confided.

  I love you, Lucas dreamed out loud.

  But Lydia’s words were the punch to my gut. Dad had walked out on me all those years ago, and I’d just done the exact same thing to Lucas. For the same reason.

  I was my dad. I finally understood him.

  Sometimes, in order to move ahead, you have to go backward.

  “Excuse me!” I shouted, whipping my head around. Staring at the annoyed lady behind me, she cocked her head, clearly exasperated. “I have to leave.” Gripping the handle of my suitcase, I squeezed past her. “Excuse me. Thank you.”

  She stepped aside but grumbled something in Italian. If I had to guess, it probably wasn’t very nice.

  Once I got beyond her, I continued to the back of the line, elbowing my way through a throng of travelers, trying not to roll my suitcase over anyone’s feet. “Scusi…pardon me…,” I apologized.

  Clearing the bustle, I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts. I had no clue what I was doing, but I did know I needed to call Lucas.

  With my suitcase in one hand, I started walking while I searched my phone for Lucas’s number. I walked with purpose, in a hurry to get somewhere quiet.

  I alighted on Lucas’s name and tapped it just as I ran full steam ahead into something solid and unmoving.

  “Umph—” I groaned, my breath rushing out of my lungs from the impact. Large, strong hands gripped my shoulders, absorbing some of the impact.

  I looked up and saw two cob
alt eyes boring into mine.

  His ringtone sounded, a high-pitched staccato.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus!” I gasped. “Lucas!” How was he here? How did he find me? I just ran into him, again. How is that possible?

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  “Sophia.” He let go of me and stepped back, putting a polite distance between us. His tone was cold, detached. Hurt.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  He lifted his hand and glanced at the incoming call. I caught a glimpse of my name at the top of the screen.

  Oh, shit! I’d called him. I fumbled with my phone and stabbed my thumb at the bottom, ending the call. “Sorry.”

  His expression softened slightly. “You were calling me?”

  “Uh…yeah.” My reply came out sounding more like a question, but I couldn’t help it. I’d just been knocked for a loop. I was reeling. Coherent thought was impossible at the moment. “How did you find me?”

  “It wasn’t that hard, Sophia. I knew when you were flying out; we’d talked about it.”

  Oh. Right. “Um…”

  Now’s your chance, Sophia. Spill your guts, tell him how stupid you were, what an idiot you are. Tell him you love him, the voice in my head demanded.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Why were you calling me?” he countered.

  So many reasons ran through my head, but I couldn’t verbalize one. “Uh…” I just stuttered.

  Lucas clutched my elbow and tugged, leading us out of the middle of a busy thoroughfare. “Let’s get out of the way.” Dozens of people filtered around us, hurrying in all directions.

  “You forgot something,” he said, holding up a necklace.

  St. Raphael dangled between us.

  “Oh my goodness, thank you.” My heart swelled. I put my palm at the bottom of the pendant. Lucas dropped the chain, and it pooled in my hand.

  “When I woke up the other day, I expected to see you but had a nice view of the night table instead. That was lying on it.” He nodded, regarding the contents of my hand. “Then I rolled over, thinking maybe you were on the other side of me, and I found this.” He dug in his back pocket and pulled out the note I had left him.

  “You know what sucks about this whole situation?” he asked with a humorless chuckle. “I broke my own damn rule. I expected. I expected to wake up with you next to me and when you weren’t there…” He trailed off.

  “You were disappointed,” I finished.

  He blinked a couple times, his eyes a furious blue. “Damn fucking right I was disappointed. Against my better judgment, I let myself hope for something, and once again, all I got was disappointment.”

  So much hurt bled from his eyes. I wanted to erase the last forty-eight hours, go back and make it so he’d wake up to my face instead of a cold, empty pillow and a piece of paper. Sickness boiled in my belly. He was the last person on earth I ever wanted to hurt. What I had done, I’d done out of love, because I didn’t want him to feel any pain.

  He rubbed a hand over his stubbled chin. “I don’t know what it is about the women in my life, but they all have this deep-seated urge to leave me at some point.”

  A knife plunged right between my ribs, piercing my heart. My face contorted into a grimace. I was no better than his mom or Julia.

  “Lucas—”

  “Nuh-uh.” He shook his head, glaring at me. “I get to talk now. You had your chance right here.” He held my folded note between his thumb and forefinger.

  I bit back tears. He had every right to be angry with me. God, what did I do?

  “This”—he flicked the paper—“is bullshit. Well, some of it isn’t, but most of it is.” Ripping open the letter, he scanned my words, his eyes flicking from me to the paper, then back again. “Should we start with the bullshit first? ‘Love comes with expectation.’ ‘Love is like a bump that wakes you up,’” he read.

  “Here’s where you’re wrong, sweetheart.” He turned the full force of his blue eyes on me. “Love is unexpected. It slams into you with the force of a damn bullet train, crashing into you at speeds greater than two hundred miles per hour. There’s risk in love, adventure, peace, happiness, and the thrill of figuring out the future with the person you’re in love with. Love isn’t a momentary bump in the road, something you get over and forget about. It’s a high-speed journey of shared unknowns. Unexpecteds.”

  Tears filled my ears.

  “When my mom left,” he continued, “it hurt, but I didn’t have the energy to go after her, no desire. I had my dad. He was cool. I carried on. When Julia left, I had the energy but no desire to win her back. I opted to use that energy to run as far away from her as possible.” He regarded me with steely eyes. “Then you left. I was fucking pissed. I wanted to write you off as an inconsequential one-night stand, forget your name, and pick up where I’d left off.”

  My heart beat like a jackhammer, ripping me open violently and all at once. His words, salt water on my wounds.

  “Believe me, I tried. For two days, I stared at your necklace and tried to talk myself into hating you. I lost count of how many times I threw the fucking thing in the trash.”

  I looked down at St. Raphael in my hand. A tear plopped onto the pendant.

  “But dammit, every time I said I was going to leave it in there, I was already walking over to pull it out. That’s how I knew this was different than all the other times. I kept going back to the trash, to salvage what was there. Time after time after time. No matter how tired I was, how little energy I had, I bent down, picked it up, and brushed it off. Always coming back.”

  He put his fingers on my chin, gently forcing me to look at him. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see the pain in his eyes…the pain I’d caused.

  “Sophia,” he said calmly. If this had been a fairy tale, I’d say he’d said my name lovingly. “Look at me, please.”

  I shook my head but looked anyway. He shoved his phone into the back pocket of his jeans and wrapped his hands around mine, running his thumb over the necklace, wiping away my fallen tear. “I couldn’t throw something this beautiful away.” He squeezed my hands. “Two nights with no sleep, I figured out what makes you different from my mom and Julia.”

  “What?”

  “They left for selfish reasons. They had to do what they felt was right for them, I guess. But you…you ran because you thought I’d be better off without you, that you weren’t good enough for me—which by the way, is more bullshit. What you did was selfless. That’s what made you different from them.”

  “Lucas,” I choked, “I’m sorry.”

  “Shh…” He lifted his hand to my cheek. “Want to hear the parts that aren’t bullshit?”

  I smiled. “Yeah.”

  “One line you wrote really got to me. You said, ‘Maybe one day we’ll bump into each other again and look back on the Italian adventure we shared.’ For starters, you have a bad habit of running into me, and it’s a habit I hope you never break.” His lips broke into a crooked smile. “One day’s here, baby, but I’m not looking back. I’m looking forward, to a future with you.”

  I nodded, a dopy grin on my face. “When I ran into you, I’d just gotten out of the security line to call you. I had to tell you how stupid I was. That I was wrong. I couldn’t leave without you knowing how much I love you.”

  The blue of his eyes sparkled. “You’re my unexpected. And there will never be any disappointment in that.” He kissed me softly, whispering against my lips, “I love you, Sophia.”

  I kissed him back, with everything I had to give. No matter what the future promised, I knew I didn’t want to face it alone. And with Lucas by my side, I knew I wouldn’t have to.

  “Silver,” he said, pulling away.

  “What?”

  “Another color. The necklace.”

  Lucas peeled my fingers back, pulling it free. “May I?” He unhooked the clasp, and I lifted my hair. Looping his hands behind my neck, he fastened the necklace.

  He admired the pendant. “I get more
than ten million colors, Soph. I get you.”

  Epilogue

  Four months later…

  Once again, I was seated in Ms. Turner’s homey office. When I began the testing process four months ago, right after I’d gotten back from Italy, I thought it would be a simple blood test and I’d find out the results. That was not the case.

  Ms. Turner, my father’s genetic counselor (and now mine), had seen me on two other occasions, preparing me for the test and today, results day.

  For the last four months, I’d been a nervous wreck. I knew why my dad had given me that trip to Italy. It was the calm before the storm. A chance to forget about life for a while and just live. Dad knew that once I got home, uncertainty would gnaw away at my sanity and the only way to satiate its hunger would be to get tested.

  I liked Ms. Turner’s office. It was devoid of the obligatory human anatomy posters and cheap dollar-store prints of flowers and lighthouses that usually lined the walls of a doctor’s office. Instead, she filled her space with personal photos. Trips to third world countries, her arms wrapped around smiling children. I’d like to do that one day, travel to an underprivileged nation and offer free medical care. Maybe Doctors Without Borders?

  But before I started making travel plans, I needed to find out if I was going to have the opportunity to pursue a career in medicine in the first place.

  The nervous beast ate at my insides, feasting on the last morsels of my bravery. Lucas held my hand tightly, grounding me, keeping my thoughts in the light and away from the shadows.

  The window shades were open, allowing sunlight to filter through. Had Ms. Turner done that on purpose? With the room drenched in light, buttery sunshine, would her news come across less devastating?

  “Sophia!” Ms. Turner said cheerily, sweeping into her office. Was her attitude a sign? Was she so pleased with the results she couldn’t contain her joy? Or was she overcompensating, dipping the terrible news into the buttery sunshine to make it more palatable. I knew a spoonful of sugar helped the medicine go down, but I didn’t think the same applied to finding out if I’d won or lost the genetic lottery.