That Month in Tuscany (Take Me There)

by Inglath Cooper

  IT’S AFTER EIGHT p.m. when I wake up. I hadn’t really meant to fall asleep, but it seems to hit me like that these days. This utter fatigue that makes me feel like I have no other choice but to sleep.

  I’m starving. I could order room service, but somehow, finding a place outside the hotel sounds more appealing.

  I take a shower, get dressed and then grab a book from my suitcase before leaving the room. I’m in the elevator, headed for the lobby when I think about her.

  I wonder if she’s had dinner. I’m tempted to get off on the second floor, knock at her door and see if she wants to go with me.

  It’s not a good idea though. I know it. I knew it this afternoon when we got back from the museum. Something told me then that the smart move would be for me to at least imply that we probably wouldn’t see each other again.

  She’s married. I’m a mess. We’re not exactly the likeliest of friends.

  But I enjoyed her company. That hasn’t been true of anyone in my life for a very long time.

  Not since my brother, Colby, in fact.

  I resist pushing the second-floor button, step out into the lobby when the doors open. I walk by the front desk, glance at the keys lined up behind the clerk and notice that hers is gone, which means she’s in her room.

  I head for the door, and then, on impulse, turn back and walk over to the table where a house phone sits. I pick up the receiver and dial her room number. The line buzzes over and over again with no answer. I hang up, thinking maybe she forgot to leave the key when she went out.

  I walk into the street, deciding to go right. I pull my baseball cap down lower over my eyes since wearing sunglasses at night would make me stand out more than blend in. I don’t have to go far to find the kind of place I’m looking for. Small. Family run. Everything on the menu homemade.

  I ask for the back corner of the restaurant where I can see but not be seen so easily. There’s a candle on the table. I read my book, drink some really good wine and eat a large bowl of tagliolini tossed with rosemary and olive oil.

  The story is good. I actually lose myself in it for a couple of hours. No one looks twice at me, including the young waitress who takes my order and brings my food. Anonymity is something I haven’t felt in a good while. It’s like stepping outside into the cool spring air after being inside all winter.

  I walk back to the hotel with the book tucked under my arm, feeling full from the great meal, but somehow lighter from the stretch of time during which I’d gotten lost in a story.

  In the lobby, I see that Lizzy’s key is still not on its hook. Which means she could either be back or still out. This time, I ignore my common sense and push the button for the second floor. I get out and walk to her door without examining my reasons for doing so too closely.

  I knock, but there’s no answer. I wait thirty seconds or so and then turn to go. I hear something though that makes me stop and listen. It sounds like crying. And it’s definitely coming from her room. Given that she didn’t answer, it’s clear she doesn’t want company. We don’t know each other well enough for me to think I have any right to ask her what’s wrong. But I can’t deny being concerned, so I knock again.

  This time, I call out her name in a low voice. Silence now but she still doesn’t answer. “Lizzy? It’s me. Ren. Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she says through the door. “I’m fine. Thanks. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight,” I say, reluctant, and yet what else, really, can I do?

  I walk back to the elevator, get inside but just before pushing the button, step back out again. I stop in front of her door, and that’s when I hear the crying again. “Lizzy? You’re not all right. Will you please open the door?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I stand for a moment, aware that I’m about to cross a line I have no right to cross. This has all kinds of red flags waving in front of me. For some reason, I ignore them. “If you don’t let me in, I’m going to go downstairs and tell them I think something is wrong. Then you’ll not only have me to contend with, but them as well.”

  A full two minutes pass before I hear her unlatch the chain. She pulls it open, barely wide enough to peer around it and say, “I’m okay. Thank you for your concern, but—”

  I push just hard enough to get her to step back and let me in. I see the surprise on her face. Maybe I’ve surprised myself a little too. I close the door and stand looking at her. “What happened?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” she says.

  “Nothing wouldn’t make you look like you’ve been crying for hours.”

  She bites her lower lip and looks as if she’s going to cry again despite an obvious resolve not to.

  “Have you had dinner?”

  She shakes her head. “I’m not hungry.”

  I notice then that she’s wearing the hotel’s white cotton robe. She doesn’t appear to be wearing anything under it. She notices me noticing it and steps back, wrapping her arms around her waist.

  “Can you just go, Ren? Please.” She walks to the bathroom and closes the door. I sit down on the sofa in one corner of the room and wait for her to come back out.

  When she returns, she does not look happy to see that I’m still here. She’s dressed in regular clothes now, a skinny white skirt and a light blue fitted T-shirt. I actually feel a little disappointed by this.

  “You don’t need to stay,” she says.

  “Even if I believed you, I’d rather hang out here a while than go back to my room.”

  “Why?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. It seems awfully quiet.”

  “I guess you are used to a lot of noise, aren’t you?”

  The assertion is not a compliment, and for the first time, I wonder what she really thinks of what I do.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m really not fit for company right now.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “We can just hang. I’ll read, and you do whatever you need to do.”

  She stares at me for several long seconds, and says, “You’re not going to leave, are you?”

  “I can’t hear you,” I say, looking at the pages of my book. “I’m reading.”

  I feel her wanting to say something. But, as if she doesn’t have the energy, she goes over to the bed and lies on her side, not facing me.

  Now that she can’t see me, I do look at her. It’s easy to see that this isn’t the woman I went to see David with this afternoon. That woman seemed as if she wanted to absorb every speck of beauty around her. It had beckoned something inside me to do the same. I don’t know, maybe that’s why I left her in the lobby, not intending to see her again. No one has made me feel anything remotely like that for a very long time.

  But this woman is broken.

  I really don’t need to get involved with broken.

  Still, I get up from the sofa and walk around to face her. Her eyes are closed, and I can tell she knows I’m there, but refuses to look at me.

  I squat down at the side of the bed, brush the back of my fingers across her cheeks, and say, “Whatever it is, it’ll be okay again.”

  She opens her eyes and looks at me. Tears brim over and spill down her face. She bites her lower lip to keep from crying outright. That’s when I stand, scoot her over and sit beside her. I slip my arms under hers, pull her halfway up to a sitting position, and I just hold her. It seems like that’s what she needs, and I’m here. We’re virtual strangers, and even though I can’t explain why, I don’t want to be anywhere else.

  17

  Kylie

  SHE SHOULD HAVE quit before that last shot.

  Kylie knows her limits where alcohol is concerned, but Peyton has a way of making her agree that “just one more” won’t hurt. When actually, Kylie knows that it will hurt tomorrow morning when she has to get up for class and sit through an English lecture with pounding temples.

  The bar is Charlottesville’s most popular hangout for college kids. There are plenty of others in town, but Kylie and Peyton like
this one because they have a live band every night of the week.

  Tonight, alternative rockers have attracted a whole gaggle of freshmen girls to the front of the stage. The majority of them are looking at the lead singer as if they’re all three year olds being introduced to their first lollipop.

  She squints a little to bring him into better focus.

  So maybe he’s a nine on a scale of ten. But he knows it, so in her estimation, that drops him a point or two.

  The music is loud. The beat of the drum and bass guitar pound in unison with her pulse.

  He catches her stare, and Kylie feels the jolt of electricity surge through her. Peyton walks up just then and says, “You go for it, girl.”

  Kylie breaks the look, glancing at her friend with a no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about smile. “You’ve had too much tequila,” she says.

  “Define too much.”

  “Judgment-impaired.”

  “My judgment is working just fine, and it looks as if yours is too. At the next set break, why don’t you go say hello?”

  “Like I could do that,” Kylie says.

  “Why couldn’t you do that? He just gave you the look, an open invitation.”

  Kylie wants to deny it, and as much as she hates to admit it, Peyton is usually right where these things are concerned.

  The band ends the song, and the crowd of girls up front goes wild, clapping and cheering, screaming the lead singer’s name. “Jack! Jack! Jack!”

  “Jack and Kylie,” Peyton teases.

  “Shut up,” Kylie says. But she’s thinking he is awfully cute. And she does have a thing for singers.

  The band starts up the next song, and it’s a minute or more before the girls up front lower their screaming enough that it becomes recognizable. It might be Kylie’s favorite song ever: “Whatever the Wait” by Temporal.

  She closes her eyes and soaks up the words. His voice is not nearly as good as Ren Sawyer’s, but he holds his own with the melody, and when Kylie opens her eyes to find him staring at her again, she decides that maybe Peyton is right.

  She’ll hang around for a bit after the show.

  18

  Lizzy

  MY EYES OPEN to a slit of light coming through the curtain of my room. It takes me a moment to remember where I am. Florence. And how I fell asleep. Ren.

  He’s sitting up with his back against the headboard. My head is on his chest, his wide, well-muscled chest. My left arm is draped across his legs. I sense that he is awake, and I remain frozen for a moment, trying to decide if I am ready to confront how we both fell asleep last night.

  “Good morning,” he says.

  I close my eyes again, squeeze them shut tight, as if that will make all of this go away when I open them again. It does not, however, and I manage a lowly murmured, “Good morning.”

  It’s then that I catapult myself up and off the bed. Once my feet hit the floor, I have a little trouble righting myself and sway like a sapling in a March wind. He reaches out, takes my hand to steady me and says, “Whoa, there.”

  I back up a few steps, suddenly and overwhelmingly aware that I haven’t yet brushed my teeth and say, “I’m not exactly sure what happened here.”

  “Just wanted to make you stop crying. That’s all.”

  “Thank you,” I say, unable to imagine how that begins to cover it.

  “You’re welcome.” He stands then and walks to the door. “I’m going up to take a shower. See you later?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Later.”

  I wait for the door to click shut behind him and then force myself into my own shower where I lean against the marble wall, letting the spray pound my face. I try to process everything that happened last night, one strand at a time. But my thoughts keep getting knotted up like the ear buds I use for running and am forever untangling.

  Ty doesn’t love me anymore.

  This one thought manages to sort itself out from the pile. I hang on it, letting its full meaning settle into me. I wait for the tears to come again, but this morning, they don’t. I feel like a well that has been drained, and now I’m just empty.

  It really should be no surprise that Ty is having an affair. From here, the signs are pretty clear. How little time we spent together. How distant we have become with each other. How rarely he touches me.

  But it is a surprise. And I just feel foolish. Foolish for giving him my complete and total trust. Foolish for never questioning the why behind all the hours he works. Late nights and weekends spent at the office.

  In my defense, the guy I married was deserving of my trust. I don’t know at what point along the way he became the man he currently is, the one who does not deserve it. And I don’t suppose that it really matters anymore. I think of how lonely I’ve been the last couple of years, with Kylie no longer in the house as a diversion. How utterly alone I have felt at times. And I cannot begin to even imagine how gullible I am in his eyes.

  Believing myself still married to the same man who had proposed to me in the delivery room right before the birth of our child. Who’d had a pastor waiting outside the double swing doors? And at my “Yes,” quickly urged him in to perform the ceremony before Kylie arrived.

  I don’t know what happened to that boy or how I lost him. But I have, and he is gone.

  ~

  I HEAR A KNOCK as I’m getting out of the shower. I reach for a robe, slip it on and open the door.

  A bellman hands me an envelope. “A fax for you, Signora.”

  He leaves with a polite nod, and I close the door, pulling the paper out and unfolding it.

  The fax is on Ty’s law firm stationery and written in his handwriting.

  Arriving in Florence at 11:30 a.m.

  I will meet you at the hotel. We need to talk.

  Ty

  I glance at my watch. It’s just after nine. I read the message again. He will be here in two-and-a-half hours. Here in this hotel where I had thought we would celebrate our anniversary together. Now he’s coming. And all it took was me finding out he’s having an affair.

  I ball up the piece of paper and drop it in the trashcan.

  I pick up the phone and ask the front desk for the number of the closest rental car agency. They give it to me, and I dial immediately. The man who answers speaks good English, and within five minutes, he has arranged for me to pick up a car at their main office ten blocks from the hotel.

  I pull my suitcase out of the closet and methodically begin to put in my clothes. In the bathroom, I collect all my toiletries, pack them up in their clear makeup bag and then toss that in the suitcase as well.

  I’m dressed with my hand on the doorknob when a knock sounds from the other side. A little frantic, I glance through the peephole, afraid that Ty will have somehow managed to get here earlier than his fax indicated.

  But it’s not Ty standing in the hallway. It’s Ren. I open the door, and he stares at me for a moment, clearly surprised.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m, ah, leaving.”

  “Leaving Florence or leaving Italy?” His voice is soft and surprised.

  “Leaving Florence.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  For a moment, I’m not sure how to answer. “I just decided to get out and see some of the countryside.”

  “Are you coming back?”

  “No. I don’t expect I’ll be coming back here.” I hesitate, glance away and then meet his questioning gaze again. “It was really nice meeting you, Ren. And thank you for last night. For being kind. For everything, actually.”

  I start through the doorway, pulling my suitcase out into the hall.

  He stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “This wasn’t planned, was it?”

  I consider lying, but what would be the point? As ridiculous as it sounds, it’s as if he can see through my walls and already knows what I’m thinking. “No,” I say. “Kind of unexpected.”

  “And I’m guessing it has something to do with last night?”
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  This time I don’t answer because I don’t trust myself to do so without crying again.

  We’re quiet for a string of weighted moments. Before I can put together an answer, he breaks the silence.

  “Would it be all right if I come with you?”

  I blink, shake my head, sure I must have misheard him. “What?”

  “I’ll come with you.” This time, there’s no question in his voice.

  “Ren. You really don’t have to . . . I’m fine. You’re very sweet.”

  He laughs at this, and I’m guessing sweet is something he isn’t called very often. “I don’t have any real schedule, so—”

  “So you’re just going to get in a car and drive around Italy with me?”

  He shrugs. “Why not?”

  I am not an unintelligent woman, and I’m fully aware this would be a moment where using my intelligence might be highly recommended. My marriage has just caved in around me. I have an either furious or contrite husband about to arrive in this city, and I do not need to be dragging a far-too-good-looking-for-my-own-good rock star into the middle of all of it.

  Of course, I’m not exactly dragging him, but even so, I try one more time. “I really don’t think you want to get in the middle of everything I have going on right now. It’s probably best if I just head out of here alone and find somewhere quiet to think for a bit.”

  “Probably,” he agrees. “But I still want to come. Give me ten minutes, and I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  “Seriously?” I say.

  “Seriously.”

  I shake my head, trying to find a convincing protest. “This is crazy. People don’t do things like this.”

  “I admit it’s a departure for me,” he says, with notable irony.

  “Then why?”

  He shrugs. “Maybe the better question is why not?”

  19

  Lizzy

  THE RENTAL IS A FIAT. I’m driving. Ren is in the passenger seat, his six-three frame positioned accordion style with his knees pressed against the dash. He’s wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, which I noticed him pulling a little lower over his face when the woman at the car rental agency kept checking him out.