When in Rome...Break His Heart

by Lena Mae Hill

  Enzo had texted once during the day, but Maggie wasn’t up for another night of partying with him. She was still exhausted from the night before. So she took a late nap and then hung out with her host mothers. She ended up telling them about Christmas in July, and then they told her about Italian Christmas cookies, which inevitably led to cookie making and listening to carols on her iPod.

  The next day, she texted Enzo back, but he didn’t answer her text all day. “Do you think he’s messing with me?” she asked Kristina that night. “Because I didn’t text him back yesterday, so now he’s not texting me back today?”

  “Probably,” Kristina said. “You hurt his feelers. Guys’ egos are so fragile.”

  “I know,” Maggie said with a sigh. “But Weston would never play games like that. He might sulk for a minute, but he wouldn’t passive aggressively punish me by not texting. I was just too tired to hang out yesterday.”

  “I’m sure he’ll get over it,” Kristina said. “And next time, you’ll know to tell him that instead of blowing him off.”

  “I didn’t blow him off.”

  “You kind of did.”

  Had she? She hadn’t meant to. It was just that Enzo was so intense. Everything he did was at warp-speed. They’d slept together right away. He always wanted more. He seemed to go out every night, and get drunk every time he went out. Maggie wasn’t used to that kind of person, that kind of life. Weston was a gentle breeze. Enzo was a hurricane.

  Maggie texted him again the next morning, but when she got out of class at around one in the afternoon, he still hadn’t texted back. This was getting ridiculous. She wasn’t going to beg him to go out with her. When he wasn’t touching her, she didn’t even like him.

  But what if he was done? What if he never called her again? If he dumped her just like that, like she was nothing, then she’d thrown away Weston for nothing. Because she had broken up with Weston for him, hadn’t she? Wasn’t that the real reason she’d done it? At the very least, it was one of the reasons.

  She hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself, but staring at the text-deficient screen of her phone, she couldn’t deny it anymore. The truth stared into her face like that empty message box. She had wanted something more than Weston was willing to give her, so she’d given up all that he did give her. She’d given up an almost-perfect guy in the hopes that she’d find someone willing to give her what he wouldn’t. But what was that—a ring?

  She hadn’t been stupid enough to believe Enzo would give her that. If he’d tried, she would have bolted. In truth, she’d only wanted to make Weston propose. Kristina had said that she should be less available, make him jealous, make him think he could lose her. In some desperate, misguided way, she’d thought that going out with someone else would make him want to marry her.

  Instead of taking the tram with Kristina, she told her she was sticking around the university for a minute. She started walking, keeping track of her surroundings so she wouldn’t wander into a bad part of the city. After a while, she boarded a bus to Villa Borghese Park. The lush greenery in the park reminded her of home, even though the park was all man-made and full of fountains and monuments like nothing in Arkansas. She sat on a bench watching a handful of kids chase ducks around a perfectly circular pond with a tiny fountain in the center, and a couple sitting on a picnic blanket kissing under the shade of a redbud tree. In America, those would never be the parents. But here, they could be. Somehow, the Italians seemed to have figured out how to keep love alive even after being married long enough to have kids running around underfoot. She hadn’t even been able to do it while dating.

  She pulled out her phone, bargaining with herself before checking the screen. If he hadn’t texted by two, she’d call Weston. She only had to wait eight minutes.

  Taking a few deep breaths, she hit the call icon. The connection clicked on, but she didn’t hear anything. “Hello?” Her voice sounded small and tremulous, more like Rory’s than her own.

  “Hello, Maggie.” His voice—it sent every emotion known to woman, those named and those unnamed, into chaos inside her. Each one bumped a thousand threads of memory, sent a vibration down each one, awakening nerve endings she’d forgotten existed. She closed her eyes and took another deep breath.

  He sighed, and another round of associations burst into life inside her, these ones not so pleasant. “Why are you calling me?” he asked, that measured patience in his voice that she hated so much, like he was talking to a child.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I just, I miss you,” she blurted out. “I never wanted to stop talking to you. You’re still my best friend. I’ll always love you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I thought maybe we could talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No.”

  Silence.

  “How are you?” she asked after a minute.

  He sighed again. “Maggie. What are you really calling for? You’re not calling to ask if you woke me up. You want me to tell you I’m miserable without you?”

  “No,” she said. “Why are you acting like this? I’m not a stranger. I’m still me.”

  “I thought you didn’t know who you were.”

  “Maybe I don’t,” she said. “But I’m still me.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Silence.

  This time, he spoke first. “Well, maybe when you figure it out, it will be easier to talk to you.”

  She wanted to ask why it was hard to talk to her, but she knew. It was hard to talk to him, too, and she couldn’t expect him to be the one to say he was miserable without her. She had no right to call him begging for compliments or professions of love.

  “Wait,” she said. “Don’t hang up. I just want to talk. We don’t have to talk about us. Just about, you know, regular stuff. What have you been up to? Are you okay?”

  “I’m great.” His voice was flat and bitter, almost sarcastic. But Weston didn’t use sarcasm.

  “Are you…have you…you know. Met anyone?”

  He snorted. “I’m not going to tell you that.”

  “What? Why not? I told you we should see other people. I wouldn’t be mad if you were.”

  “Are you?”

  She hesitated. But he already suspected, and she didn’t want to lie to him. “Yes,” she said, straightening on the bench. The couple had left without the kids. So they weren’t the parents. She didn’t see the parents anywhere, though. Italian parents didn’t seem very concerned about kidnappers, either. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen children left unattended.

  “Good for you,” Weston said.

  “So…are you?”

  “I’m not going to answer that.”

  “Why not? We said we’d always be honest with each other.”

  “That was when we were together.”

  He could have rubbed it in harder, said, Before you broke up with me so you could see other people. But he didn’t. Weston was not the vindictive type.

  But then, he’d never been the secretive type. She couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to tell her. It would have crushed her to know he’d met someone else. But she also didn’t want to hear that he hadn’t, that she was the bad one who’d broken his heart and slept with someone else while he was alone at home, crying over her. She didn’t want to be the bad guy. But she didn’t want to be easily replaceable, either. Not telling her was the right thing for him to do, the kindest thing.

  But not knowing drove her absolutely fucking insane.

  “Please tell me,” she said. “I have to know. I don’t know why, I just have to. Please.”

  “Goodbye, Maggie.”

  “No, don’t hang up,” she said. “If you won’t tell me that, at least tell me you’re okay.”

  “I did.”

  “Okay, then tell me that. You don’t have to tell me who. I swear, I
will never even ask for a first name. Just yes or no.”

  “Goodbye,” he said again, and the phone went dead.

  She growled and dropped her head back on the bench. She’d acted completely crazy, but she couldn’t help it. How could he not tell her? She had to know. Not knowing if Enzo would ever call her again was nothing compared to this. Not knowing Enzo’s past, or what he liked to do, or anything about him, was nothing compared to this. She knew everything about Weston. She had to know this, too. She couldn’t stop thinking about it all the way back to Mary’s, and all the rest of the day.

  As they left class the next day, Rory said, “Have you heard from Enzo?”

  “No,” Maggie said. “But I talked to Weston.”

  “Weston?” Kristina said, rounding on her. “Is that why you were acting so weird yesterday? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

  “Because I knew you’d act like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “All judgmental and mad, because he’s not fun enough and you like Enzo better.”

  “I’m judgmental? Hello, have you met you?”

  “What did he say?” Rory interrupted.

  Maggie glared at Kristina.

  “Yeah, what did he say?” Kristina challenged. “Did he say he took the stick out of his butt and decided you should have fun instead of being tied to a boring ball-and-chain all your life?”

  “At least he answers when I call,” Maggie said. “You picked a guy for me, and yeah, he’s fun, but he also disappears off the face of the earth whenever he feels like it.”

  “Maybe he’s scared,” Kristina said. “Guys do that when things start getting serious.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” Maggie asked. “From your married boyfriend?”

  “Armani is married?” Rory asked.

  They both looked at her, and then Kristina laughed, and Maggie laughed, too. She hated bickering with Kristina. In fact, that was the reason they’d decided not to live together after sophomore year. Somehow, they’d forgotten that when they asked to be roommates in Rome.

  They met up with Ned outside and walked to the café he liked. Rory and Ned ordered pizza, like always. They seemed like an old married couple, but in the cute way. Had Maggie and Weston looked like that to other people? Or did they look like the boring, naggy, crotchety old couple that Kristina saw?

  “I can’t wait for our trip to Florence,” Maggie said. “I need to get away and take my mind off everything.”

  “We’re in Rome,” Ned pointed out. “Haven’t you already gotten away?”

  “Like they say, wherever you go, there you are,” Rory said.

  “Maybe you can give me some more photography tips,” Maggie said. “I was thinking about getting a real camera, like yours.”

  “You’d never use it,” Kristina said. “They’re so bulky, and you always have your phone with you, anyway.”

  “Yeah, probably true,” Maggie admitted. “I like taking pictures of my food. It drives Kristina nuts.”

  “Only because you take a picture of literally everything you eat,” Kristina said. “It’s like, here, I totally understand. If I hadn’t made fun of you for the past three years for taking pictures of your food, I’d start doing it. But at home, it’s like, ooh, look, here’s a packet of peanut butter snack crackers. Hashtag, lunch for losers!”

  “Don’t mind her,” Maggie said. “She just got dumped. She’s really a nice person if you don’t mind self-absorbed narcissists.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come to Florence with you?” Ned asked Rory. “You might need someone to break up these two.”

  Rory’s questioning gaze bounced from Kristina to Maggie.

  “We’ll be fine,” Maggie said, embarrassed that her little squabble with Kristina had caught an outsider’s attention. But then she saw that Ned didn’t care at all about their bickering. He just wanted an excuse to go with Rory. He was looking at her the way Maggie had looked at stars for the first time after getting glasses and really seeing them.

  Maggie checked her phone for possibly the thousandth time that week. No messages. She wasn’t going to be the one to text again, not after Enzo had ignored her last few texts and a phone call. Instead, she threw herself into studying and preparing for their final, which was in another week. By Friday afternoon, she’d given up on hearing from Enzo, but she couldn’t resist sending him one last text.

  “Off to Florence with the girls for the weekend. Been fun hanging out with you.”

  To her surprise, her phone buzzed a minute later. It was him.

  “Are you sharing a hotel room? Come over when you get back and give me all the details.” He included three emojis, too—a winky face, a kissy face, and an eggplant.

  “What are you smiling about over there?” Kristina asked, tossing a tangle of underwear and socks into her duffle.

  “Nothing,” Maggie said. “Enzo texted.”

  “I told you he just needed a little space.”

  Maggie rechecked her small suitcase for the third time. “What about Armani?”

  “I’m giving him space, too,” Kristina said. “He’ll come back around as soon as he thinks he’s losing me.”

  “I thought you said he was cheating on you.”

  Kristina shrugged. “I don’t know that. And besides, I have Nick now. So we’re even.”

  “I can’t believe you’re trying to make a guy jealous who already has a girlfriend, or wife, or whatever he’s hiding. I’d think you’d be throwing drinks in his face by now.”

  “Not everyone has all the options you do.” Kristina zipped her duffle and threw the strap over her shoulder.

  Maggie stared at her. “Are you serious? You have way more options than me. Guys love you.”

  “You know how hard I try, though. It’s not like guys just follow me around without any effort on my part.”

  “If you think what I have with Weston is effortless, you haven’t been listening for the past three years. Relationships are a lot of work.”

  Kristina put her hand on her hip. “I’ve been in relationships.”

  “I know,” Maggie said quickly. “Ready?”

  “Sure,” Kristina said, but she was still frowning.

  Chapter Twenty

  They said goodbye to their house mother and took the tram to the bus station to meet Rory. On the bus to Florence, Rory taught them a card game, and then they all sat looking out the windows, listening to music for a while. Maggie should have been thinking about Enzo and his invitation to come over on Sunday, but she found her mind wandering back to Weston. After only a few days without Enzo, he seemed far away, further than Weston. Like a dream that had been so vivid the next day that it seemed real, but was already fading after a few days, the details washed out, leaving only a faint stain discoloring her memories of Rome.

  “Switch,” Kristina chirped.

  Maggie jumped. She’d been so lost in thought that she’d forgotten where she was.

  Kristina was explaining to Rory that they played this game on road trips—and now on flights over the Atlantic Ocean—in which they’d randomly switch music mid-song. While she spoke, she fished Maggie’s earbud from her ear.

  Maggie caught Rory’s deer in the headlights look and said, “Let’s keep our own earbuds this time.”

  Rory shot her a grateful smile as she detached her earbuds and handed her IPod to Maggie, who handed hers to Kristina, who handed hers to Rory.

  “Lionel Richie?” Kristina asked, giving Maggie a withering look. “Really?”

  Maggie shrugged and turned back to the window. She wasn’t about to tell Kristina that cheesy love songs made her miss Weston in a way that was so painful it was almost pleasurable. That it made the missing him something so tangibly tragic that she could take a bite from it and taste the sweet longing in the strains of the song.

  Rory had been listening to a song by Lisa Loeb, which was so perfectly Rory that if Maggie could have guessed beforehand, she probably would have c
hosen that exact song as the one Rory would be listening to. Something about Rory’s pure predictability made her draw out of her self-indulgent pain of missing Weston. After switching a few more times, Maggie said, “Let’s see what song we all have.” They raced through their IPods to find something they had in common. They found “Baby Doll” by Just 5 Guys, and they all started singing along until someone gave them a dirty look like they were tacky Americans, and Maggie shushed them.

  “Why do you care what they think of us?” Kristina asked. “You’ll never see them again.”

  “It’s rude,” Maggie hissed, sinking down in her seat, embarrassed that she’d gotten so carried away.

  “Oh, whatever,” Kristina said. “Half of them probably wish they had the balls to join us, and the rest of them are remembering when they were us.”

  When they got to Florence, it was evening already, so they went out to dinner and then went back to the room where they drank a bottle of white wine and played cards again. The next morning, they went to the Duomo to marvel at the carved golden doors before heading to the Accademia Gallery to see David.

  There was a line to see him even at nine in the morning. While they waited, Maggie couldn’t resist texting Weston, who loved history of all types. Of course, it was two in the morning in Arkansas, but she kept checking her phone to see if he’d text back. Maybe he was out partying. The bars all closed at two, so he’d be on his way home if he’d stayed out until closing time. If he was with a girl, he wouldn’t answer Maggie’s text, even if she was about to experience a once-in-a-lifetime marvel.

  “Wow,” Rory said, raising her camera and snapping away when they got to the front of the line to look for a minute. People were crowding around, clustered at the foot of the roped off statue, gazing up in wonder. Maggie only took one picture with her phone. She didn’t want to miss the sight of the famed statue, his taught muscles and rigid veins, his set jaw and delicate curls.

  “The most famous tiny penis in the history of the world,” Kristina said.