by Sofia Tate
I’m grateful that Davison doesn’t show up at Le Bistro the following day. Not that I expected him to, since he told everyone he was going to be in China. He obviously had to keep that as a cover. I do my best to keep up an upbeat demeanor at work, but physically, the lack of sleep from the previous night has taken a toll on me.
When my shift ends, instead of crossing Broadway, I walk around the corner and head one block east for Central Park West. I don’t want to risk the chance of Charles seeing me or even Davison surprising me. He’d probably assume I would be so excited to see him and fall all over him—Oh my God, Davison, what are you doing back so early? I can’t believe you’re here! I’m so happy to see you!
But I know better than that now.
I head down Central Park West to Columbus Circle to catch the subway there. After the past weeks of enjoying the luxury of being driven home, I do miss it for a second, but then I remember La Traviata, and I know I made the right choice.
When I get to my street, I start to search for my keys. Then I hear a car door slam. I don’t look up until I hear his voice roar at me.
“Where the hell were you?”
Davison is leaning with his arms crossed against the Maybach parked in front of my building. I refuse to look at him and walk right up to my door.
He pulls me back roughly by my arm, turning my body to his so he can look into my eyes.
“Don’t ignore me, Allegra. I was waiting for you. Aren’t you even pleased to see me?”
Fuck, he looks so good. He has that messy look after a long day at work—hair askew, his suit all wrinkled, but still sexy as hell.
Get a fucking grip.
I reply coolly, “No, I’m not.”
He shakes me by the shoulders. “Hey! Talk to me! What the hell is going on with you?”
I decide to play this out and ask him point-blank. “Where were you last night, Davison?”
He pauses for a second and stares at me confusedly. “Why?”
“Just tell me.”
“At the Met. With my parents.”
“Anyone else?”
Say it.
“Ashton.” He sighs. “Let me explain—”
“Don’t bother,” I tell him pointedly, still rummaging for my keys. “I was there too. I saw you.”
He pulls on my shoulder so I would look at him. “Fuck! Will you just listen for a goddamn minute?”
“Fine. One minute. Go,” I tell him impatiently.
His jaw clenches in frustration. “The trip was canceled at the last minute. I was going to call you, and then my mother called and asked me to go to the opera. I didn’t know Ashton was going to be there. My parents asked her to come. It wasn’t my idea.”
“Then explain to me why your hand was on her thigh,” I demand from him.
“Because she put her hand on my leg, and I was placing it back on hers so she would get the point that I wasn’t interested. Anything else?” he asks exasperatedly.
I hate myself for believing him, but something still bothers me.
“You could’ve called or texted me. You have my number. You put it in my phone yourself, remember?”
He reaches for my hand. “I fucked up. I’m so sorry. I—”
I shake him off me.
“Please, Venus…”
Hearing his nickname for me now twists my insides, my blood boiling. “Do not call me that ever again!”
“Allegra, si sente bene? Ti sta dando fastidio?”
I turn around and see my neighbor Pietro walking his bulldog.
“No, Pietro, he’s not bothering me.”
He looks over at Davison, then the car, then back at me. He nods, satisfied I’m not in trouble. “Bene. Ciao, cara.”
“Buona notte, Pietro.”
We watch him stroll across the street into the building directly across from mine.
“What was that about?” Davison asks curiously.
“My neighbors. They’re very protective of me.”
“Why do they need to be?”
Shit.
“I meant we’re very protective of each other. People who care about others tend to be like that.”
“Meaning I’m not.”
“I never said that.” I’ve never felt so deflated. “Look, Davison, this is getting way too complicated for me. The two of us together doesn’t make sense. We’re from two different worlds.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it, Allegra!” he roars.
How can he not see it like I do?
“It’s late.” I sigh. “I’m tired and I want to go to sleep.”
“Fine. I’ll let you go. For tonight,” he warns me, his eyes heated, the emerald tint of his eyes even darker now, as if he’s about to erupt.
I don’t want to argue with him anymore. Honestly, I don’t know what I want.
Actually, I do know. I want to forget I ever met him. “Bye.”
Before I can stop him, he takes a step closer to me to tuck a strand of my hair behind my left ear. I quiver at his touch. “Good night,” his voice rumbles.
His hand drops, letting me pass. I put my key in the lock and walk into my building. I refuse to look back to check if he is still there.
For the second night in a row, I strip off my clothes and go straight to bed. This time, I have no trouble falling asleep.
* * *
“Mamma!”
“Run, Mia, run!”
“No! Stop hurting Mamma!”
“Go, Mia! Hide! GO!”
Someone is shaking me. I’m still screaming when I open my eyes and see my father hovering over me.
“Cara, stop! Wake up! It’s just a dream. I’m here.”
I’m hyperventilating. My father reaches for an empty plastic bag on the floor next to my bed. He holds the edges close together so I can breathe into it. My sobs diminish as my heart rate begins to normalize. I drop the bag from my hands.
My father grabs a bottle of water that’s sitting on my nightstand. He unscrews the cap and gives it to me. I take slow sips as he runs his hand across my upper back to calm me down.
“What happened? You haven’t had a nightmare in such a long time.”
“It was a bad night. I don’t want to talk about it.”
I know why I had the nightmare. It was Davison. I closed myself off for so long from possessing any true emotions, and then he woke me up. He allowed me to feel, to care, to hope. And now that we’re finished, I’ll have to go back into my hiding place, pretend that he never affected me, and seal myself off for good.
Damn him.
“Maybe you should go back to see Dr. Turner.”
“After one nightmare? No, Papa.”
He sighs. “Fine. But if it happens again—”
“It won’t.”
“All right. I’ll let you get back to sleep. Ti amo, Allegra.”
“I love you too.”
He kisses me on the head and walks out of my room.
Once he’s gone, I take a small prescription bottle from my nightstand drawer. I stare at the label and the pills inside through the tinted plastic. I have fought the demons before. I can’t go back. This time, I will fight off the beasts with my own whip and chair, everything I have, whatever it takes.
I put the pills away and try as hard as I can to fall back asleep, praying for one night of peace before they return.
Chapter Seven
For the next ten days, I live my life as if I’m in a daze. Nothing holds my interest. My professors reprimand me for not focusing in class. I am numb. I feel nothing.
I can’t say the same is true for Davison.
He won’t leave me alone.
Being at work is complete torture. He’s at the restaurant every day. I do everything I can to avoid glancing over at him. But it’s futile. Seeing him in his custom-made suits that accentuate every muscle of his body, with his dark hair and commanding presence, I can’t help being aware of wherever he is. He is just there. We catch ourselves now and then when we sneak look
s at each other, but they only last for a second so it won’t be obvious.
He leaves me two flowers in my Lost and Found box every time I’m at work. One blue rose and one yellow rose. The first night they appeared, I looked up the colors on my phone. Each had several meanings, but I took the ones that applied to me—yellow was for an apology, the blue for love at first sight.
Then there are what I call the “drop-bys.” He thinks of any ridiculous excuse to stop by my post at the coat check. He’ll ask the most inane questions that he knows I won’t have the answers to, ranging from “Do you know where the sommelier went?” to “Was the bread delivered?” I mean, really? Doesn’t he have better things to do with his time—like run a financial empire—than ask me such ridiculous questions?
And then there are the drop-bys when he thinks he has something in his eye or asks me to fix his tie. It’s like having a root canal without any novocaine; that’s how painful it feels. I manage to evade those requests nine times out of ten, but then when he’s persistent, I can’t help myself. I lean in to check his eye for some imaginary speck of dust, and then his hot breath caresses my cheeks, I inhale his scent that’s all Davison, he touches my arm lightly with his fingers, and I lose all rational sense. Then when I finish helping him, he smiles like a contented fox that just consumed its prey. And I’m left trembling and aroused, my pussy soaked with desire.
Why can’t he see that we’re not right for each other? He needs someone who’s part of his world, who doesn’t mind the spotlight. He just doesn’t get it. And I need to keep my life as uncomplicated as I can.
The worst part comes at the end of my shift. The first night I came back after our argument, I took my alternate route down Central Park West to get the subway at Columbus Circle. But somehow, he found out about it. A few nights later, there it is on CPW: the black Maybach with Charles waiting to open the door for me. I don’t need to ask if Davison is inside.
I would ignore him, but Charles doesn’t deserve that.
“Hello, Charles.”
“Good evening, Miss Orsini. Mr. Berkeley would like to give you a ride home.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’m going to take the subway.”
“But Mr. Berkeley—”
“I don’t need Mr. Berkeley anymore. For anything,” I tell him firmly.
Charles swallows. “I’ll be sure to pass that along to him.”
I step closer to the tinted passenger window and stare right into it. “Oh, I don’t think you’ll need to do that. I’m sure he heard me,” I say to the closed window, trying my best to sound passive and detached.
I turn back to Charles and give him a kind smile. “It was lovely seeing you again, Charles. Have a good night.”
It doesn’t come as a surprise to me when I see the Maybach trailing me as I walk south to Columbus Circle. Just to piss him off, I duck into the Time Warner Center and wait a few minutes, then walk back out to use a different subway entrance. But, damn him, he is still waiting for me on my street when I finally get home. The one blessing is that he doesn’t get out of the car. He knows better than that. If he had, though, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to resist him.
On the eleventh day after our fight, he texts me, which immediately puts me on alert.
I find sometimes the best things in life happen when you least expect them. Don’t you?
Now I’m scared. Not of him, but of what he does to me.
I have no idea what he means by that text. I try to forget it, but it’s always in the back of my mind. With Davison’s money and connections, anything is possible.
* * *
“Number thirteen! Who has number thirteen? Tredici?”
It’s a typical Saturday morning downstairs in Sergio’s Meat Market. All of our friends and neighbors are gathered in our tiny shop, not just to buy meat, but also to exchange local gossip. With Luigi, Papa’s employee, out sick, I volunteer to help out. I don’t mind since I don’t have to be at work until later and I know how Papa likes to run things. I handle the orders, while he rings up the sales and chats with the customers. When I was little, I used to sit in the corner behind the counter on top of wooden crates, drawing in my coloring books, watching my mother help my father.
“Sono tredici, Allegra.”
I look up and see Mrs. Gregorio holding up a torn piece of paper from the shop’s counter machine with “13” written in bold black numbers.
“Buongiorno, Signora Gregorio. What can I get you?”
“A pound of prosciutto and two pepperoni sticks.”
“Coming right up.”
I carefully slice up the ham nice and thin just like Mrs. Gregorio likes it, wrap it up in parchment paper, weigh it on the scale, and mark the price on the outside with my father’s ever-present black grease pencil.
Once I wrap up the pepperoni, I hand the order to my father. “Mrs. Gregorio.”
“Okay, cara.” He puts the meat on the counter and begins to punch the numbers on the antiquated cash register he still insists on using. “And how are you, Mrs. Gregorio?”
I yell out to the customers, “Next, please! Fourteen! Quattordici!”
Our next-door neighbor Mr. Torino waves his number at me as high as his hand will let him.
He always wants the same thing. “Sweet sausage, Signor?” I ask.
“Sì. And…”
“I know. Cut it up so you don’t have to.”
The old man nods at me. “Grazie.”
Mr. Torino suffers from arthritis, so it’s difficult for him to cut anything with a knife. I pull the foot-long sausage from behind the glass and am about to reach the counter when something stops me. The two words seem to boom over the cacophony of voices that bounces off the walls in the small space.
“Hello, Allegra.”
I freeze in place. The hush that falls over my father’s customers is something I’ve never encountered before on a Saturday morning. Everyone turns to stare at Davison. He looks completely out of place in my father’s butcher shop—smooth, perfect. Too perfect for me, a butcher’s daughter from Little Italy…with a past that still haunts her.
I bite the inside of my lower lip to keep myself calm as I start taking deep breaths. My eyes roam over him. His cocoa-brown suede boots contrast against the bleached white of the shop’s tiled floor. In a similarly colored suede jacket over a cream crewneck sweater, pressed blue jeans, topped by a cashmere scarf wrapped around his neck, he is too beautiful for words.
However, the image he is seeing when he looks at me does not project the same sophistication.
With a white paper hat pinned to my head, my clothes hidden under a white apron stained with meat juice, and holding a lengthy sausage in my hands, I can’t imagine a greater way of mortifying myself in front of this man.
His last text about the best things happening when you least expect them now makes sense to me.
Calm. Remain calm.
I can feel everyone’s eyes on me, most of all Davison’s. I take a deep breath and exhale.
I stare right back at him. “I can’t talk now. I’m busy.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
“Suit yourself.”
He doesn’t move. He keeps staring at me. His attention doesn’t waver once.
Feeling the weight of the sausage in my hands, I realize I’m holding up Mr. Torino. I turn back to reach for the cutting knife, but seeing the other equipment at my disposal, I grab the meat cleaver instead.
With my left hand holding the sausage on the cutting board and the cleaver in my right, I look up at Davison. “Well, go ahead.”
He clears his throat. “Fine. Look, Allegra—”
THWACK!
I bring the cleaver down hard onto the sausage. When my eyes shift back to Davison, he is cringing, his eyes narrowed in imagined pain, his eyebrows furrowed.
It has the effect I hoped for.
“This has gone on long enough, and—”
THWACK!
“Jesus, will you sto
p for a minute?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Berkeley, but this is how Mr. Torino likes his sausage. He can’t cut it himself because he has arthritis. Right, Mr. Torino?”
The old man nods at Davison, smiling. Davison grimaces as he acknowledges Mr. Torino.
“Please, I just want you to talk to me.”
THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
“If you’re trying to make me leave, it won’t work,” he declares.
I roll my eyes as I wrap up the sausage pieces, weigh them, and watch as my father takes them from me. But he doesn’t let go of my hands.
“Cara, is this the man who drove you home?”
“Yes, Papa.”
Davison steps up to the counter and stretches out his right hand to my father. “Forgive me, Mr. Orsini. I’m Davison Berkeley.”
“You’re the one with the fancy car.”
Davison nods. “Yes, sir.”
My father puts down Mr. Torino’s order next to the cash register. He gives Davison a once-over, then extends his own hand to him. “Giacomo Orsini. Nice to meet you.”
“I was hoping I could get Allegra to have some coffee with me.”
“It’s up to her, Mr. Berkeley. She has a mind of her own.”
Davison smiles. “Yes, she certainly does.”
I stand in place with my hands on my hips, eyes rolling. “I’m standing right here! And the answer is ‘no.’”
Pietro, our neighbor who was walking his dog the night of our argument, comes forward. “He’s obviously sorry, cara. Give him another chance.”
Mrs. Gregorio pipes in, “He’s very handsome. Ma che bell’uomo!”
Suddenly, the whole shop erupts in English and Italian versions of “Go!” and “Such a gentleman,” and “If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”
I watch all this in shock. “I thought you were my friends!” But I know they aren’t going to stop until I put an end to it.
I glance back at Davison, who’s brushing away some stray hair that has fallen into his face. He keeps looking down at the floor. I’ve never seen him look so unsure before. So nervous.
I sigh as I pull the pins out of my hair that are holding my hat in place. I untie the apron behind me and hang it on a hook behind me. “Okay, I’ll go as long as you take it easy on my father, since he’ll be working the counter all by himself,” I announce to our customers.