That Month in Tuscany (Take Me There)

by Inglath Cooper

  I find it hard to sync the man I see in front of me with the one Ren is so certain exists. Does he? And if so, why have I not seen him? People are only so good at concealing their true nature. Or at least that is what I once thought. Using Ty as an example, I guess I would be dead wrong.

  I actually haven’t let myself think about Ty even once in the past several hours. I’m not sure that it’s been deliberate. Maybe on some level, but on another, I feel like someone completely different with Ren.

  And I am different. Have I ever known this version of me? Someone who can live in the moment? Not try to predict what will happen at the end of this trip? At the end of this week? This day?

  I don’t think so.

  For dinner, I put on a flowy skirt in a shade of magenta that I’ve always loved, but mostly felt was too bold for any of the things I attended at home. I add a white tank top and flat sandals, lipstick in the same shade of magenta.

  I’m downstairs before Ren, and I wait by the front door, feeling nervous for reasons I can’t exactly pinpoint.

  I hear him on the stairs before I see him. Butterflies assault my midsection. He’s wearing jeans and a white shirt. His dark hair is still wet from the shower. I feel an undeniable urge to run my fingers through it.

  He meets my gaze with a smile. It’s not a bold, confident smile, but has something uncertain at its edges. I’m caught off guard by it. Uncertainty is the last thing I would expect from him.

  “Is Sophia out for the count?” I ask, inexplicably nervous.

  “Yeah, she’s nearly in a coma.”

  I smile. “We’ll have to bring her a snack.”

  He nods, opens the door, and we step out into the cool night. The cobblestones are uneven beneath our feet.

  “So where to?” he asks.

  “Want to just walk until something looks good?”

  “Sure,” he says.

  We turn right, heading up the incline of the street.

  “It’s called the town of fine towers,” I say, glancing up at the tall structures that once represented the wealthy families who lived here. “It’s unsettling to think that thousands of years ago, people walked these same streets.”

  “I read that the Black Death killed about two-thirds of the citizens in 1300 or so,” Ren says. “They went from thirteen thousand citizens to four thousand in something like six months.”

  “How horrible,” I say.

  “The town mostly stays the same,” he says. “We’re the ones who come and go.”

  We walk in silence for the next few minutes, checking out menus of little places we pass until one in particular resonates with us both. It’s small and rustic, and Ren has to duck a bit going through the door. Copper pots hang from beamed ceilings. Farm tables with wood chairs provide the seating in the room.

  We’re greeted by a young Italian man in a dark suit, the formality contrasting with the more casual décor of the place. He leads us to a table in the middle of the restaurant. Several other tables are already occupied by diners intent on conversation and eating.

  We sit and study our menus in silence for a couple of minutes until it becomes awkward.

  “Will he follow you here?”

  I look up, a little startled by the question. It’s the first time Ren has spoken since we sat down at the table. “I honestly don’t know,” I say.

  “He seems like a persistent guy,” Ren says.

  I can’t deny this. Winning is as much a part of Ty’s genetic makeup as the DNA that contributed to his blonde hair and green eyes. I suspect that my leaving Florence the way I had was pretty much the same thing as throwing down a gauntlet of challenge as far as Ty is concerned. “If he does,” I say, “it won’t be for the right reasons.”

  Ren takes a sip of his red wine, watches me for several steady moments before he says, “What is his reason?”

  “Guilt?” My answer is automatic and uncensored.

  “Because he didn’t come with you in the first place?”

  I shake my head. “No. That wouldn’t have been enough to bring him all the way over here.”

  “What then?”

  I want to change the subject because I honestly don’t know if I can answer him without making a bawling fool of myself. But he’s watching me with his patient blue gaze, and there’s something very like compassion there. And it’s only then that I realize how much I need to talk about it. If for no other reason than to provide a release valve for the pressure that’s been building inside me since Winn’s phone call.

  “As it turns out, my best friend discovered the real reason Ty didn’t want to come on this trip with me.”

  Ren says nothing, just continues to wait with that steady gaze of his, as if he has all the time in the world and is willing to give it to me if that’s what it takes for me to finish what I’ve started.

  “It’s cliché to the point of being embarrassing.”

  “Go on,” he says.

  I try to. My lips actually part with the words’ intent to come out. Only I can’t make them. And I sit there with my fork poised in midair, mute, while tears well in my eyes and glide down my cheeks. He slides his chair back, stands and walks around the table to sit next to me.

  He slips an arm around my shoulder and pulls me up close against him. My resistance lasts for no more than a second, and I literally crumple into him. He brushes his hand across the back of my hair.

  I am mortified to feel myself sobbing into his shoulder. My sobs have no sound, but my shoulders shake. I don’t know how long I cry like that. It doesn’t matter. He just lets me. Every once in a while, telling me in a soft voice that I’m okay, that everything will be all right. I don’t know how to tell him that it really won’t. That seems a little like a slap in the face of his kindness.

  So I settle for silence until my crying is spent, and my shoulders go still, and I am finally silent. I have no idea how I am going to make myself pull back and look him in the face. I have no choice, so I force myself to do exactly that. While I’m not sure what I expected to see in his eyes, amusement, ridicule, it’s neither. It’s just caring. Unmasked. Unhidden. And I realize that I can tell him. That I need to tell him.

  “She’s a junior partner at his firm. Very pretty. Very smart.”

  Ren smoothes the back of his hand across my cheek. “And he has no idea what he has in you?”

  “Apparently nothing he wants anymore,” I say, hoping I don’t sound pitiful because I certainly feel pitiful.

  “Then that makes him the fool,” Ren says, “not you.”

  I drop my chin, a small laugh of disagreement escaping from my throat. “Not in anyone else’s eyes,” I say. “Including my own.”

  With one finger, he tips my chin up, forcing me to look at him. “He is the fool,” he says.

  I want to believe him. Down to the core of my soul, I want to believe him. Rejection does that to you. Makes you savagely thirsty for reassurance that somewhere down the road, someone might again find you appealing, once the sheen of rejection has lost its glisten. I know, however, that right now, I must positively glow with it.

  “I think, Lizzy, that when we betray someone like that, the way you’ve been betrayed, it says more about something wrong in the person doing the betraying, than it does about the one being betrayed.”

  I hear conviction in his tone and something else, too, that I can’t quite identify. It almost sounds like remorse. And I want to ask him if he’s been through the same thing, but even as the thought enters my mind, it strikes me how laughable it would be to think that anyone would cheat on Ren Sawyer.

  “You’re brave,” he says, breaking the silence.

  “Desperate, maybe,” I say. “Brave, no.”

  “You could have caved. Given in,” he says. “But you didn’t.”

  “Not this time, anyway,” I say, leaning my head back against the booth. I stare up at the ceiling and sigh. “This must seem incredibly mundane to you.”

  “Lizzy, in this life, everyone has pr
oblems. They’re not all the same, but it doesn’t really matter what you do for a living or who you socialize with, there are still problems. And believe it or not, there have been times when I would have taken mundane and asked for the check.”

  I raise my head and look at him, smiling a little. “Over actresses in five-star hotel swimming pools?” I ask, referencing a photo I had seen during my Internet ramblings of him with a well-known actress who’d had a little too much to drink.

  He raises an eyebrow at me and says, “Don’t believe everything you see.”

  “She looked happy.”

  “Let’s just say the hotel wasn’t.”

  “So it was true?”

  “Pieces of it,” he concedes. “Not the whole thing though. That’s usually how it goes.”

  I nod, hearing the note of acceptance in his voice.

  “Want to get out of here?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I answer, realizing I no longer have an appetite for any of the food left on my plate.

  31

  Lizzy

  OUTSIDE THE RESTAURANT, a group of six or seven college-age guys and girls stand waiting with expectant expressions. I realize immediately they’re there for Ren.

  “Hey,” Ren says, dropping them a nod in a way that says he’s used to this. “What’s up?”

  A girl with long, silky blonde hair steps forward, her eyes wide with pure delight. “We were sure it was you! Oh, my gosh! Would you mind if we ask for your autograph?”

  Ren looks at me, apology in his eyes, as he says, “Sure.”

  The girl holds out a T-shirt and points at a spot on the back. “I can’t believe this!” she says, her hands visibly shaking.

  Ren smiles at her, and I wonder if he has any idea what kind of effect he has on women. I know he does. But I mean really.

  All the guys and girls step forward for their turn to get an item signed. Once he finishes, they begin thanking him in unison.

  “No problem,” Ren says, and then nodding at the guitar case one of the guys is holding, he adds, “Wanna do a couple?”

  Everyone in the group looks as if they could be knocked over with a feather, their eyes wide and their nods mute.

  One of them pulls the guitar from the case and starts to hand it to Ren, but he says, “You know ‘Send Me a Sign’?”

  “Yeah,” the guy says. “I know it.”

  They sit down on a nearby stone wall, and he begins picking out the song, warming up a bit and then dipping into the intro.

  Ren starts to sing, and I sit down to listen, as rapt as everyone else in the group. Other people start to wander over, and it’s not long before a small crowd forms. I hear the murmurings of recognition. But everyone is respectful and appreciative, and for the next hour, they go from one song to another. When Ren indicates it’s time to stop, they all clap and whistle. He spends another twenty minutes signing more autographs. Once he’s finished, he looks at me and says, “Ready?”

  I nod. “That was incredible,” I say.

  “Thanks,” he says, reaching for my hand. And we walk like this all the way back to the hotel, as if it is something we have the right to do.

  ~

  WE TAKE THE STAIRS to our rooms. We stop in front of my door. I insert the key, but before I can turn the lock, Ren puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me to face him.

  “I’m going to tell you something that I have a feeling you’re not going to believe because of what you told me earlier.”

  My eyes lock into his, and I don’t think I can make myself look away even if the walls start to fall in around us. “What?” I ask, the word barely audible.

  “There’s nothing in this world I want more right now than to carry you into this room and make love to you. And not just to prove you wrong about there being something in you that would cause a man to do what your husband did.”

  I feel the breath catch in my throat, the protest I’m trying to form not even believable to me.

  He leans in then and kisses me, softly at first, as if asking permission. And when I open my mouth beneath his, the kiss becomes something completely different. It is a kiss of lust and longing so easily identifiable that even I can’t deny his sincerity. And when he pulls me up against him, I know I’m right. I think how amazing it is to be held like this, kissed like this. To feel so wanted. Just that. Wanted and not alone.

  I don’t know how long we kiss this way, but it’s long enough that I’m fairly sure there’s a point not too far ahead where turning back isn’t going to be an option. Maybe he feels this thought as it shudders through me because he steps back, still connected to me with a hand at my waist. Breathing heavy and hard, he says, “That’s what I want to do. But that’s not the right thing for you right now.”

  “I hate sensibility,” I say, the words out before I can even think about censoring them.

  His smile is the one that’s made who knows how many girls fall in love with just that alone. Not having any knowledge of the rest of him, of how decent a man he is. And as much as I foolishly want to toss what he’s just said to the wind, I know he’s right. For a million reasons, he’s right.

  Right, however, doesn’t equal easy.

  I draw in a deep breath, force myself to turn away and finish opening the door. “Good night, Ren,” I say.

  “Good night, Lizzy.”

  And I close the door.

  32

  Ren

  I’VE SPENT THE LAST fifteen years of my life pleasing pretty much no one but myself. I’ve been the kind of guy who sees something he wants and simply takes it if it’s offered, regardless of who it might hurt. Even people I’ve loved most in this world.

  So no one could be more shocked by what I just said to Lizzy than I am. It’s not that I didn’t want to spend the night in her bed. But it would have happened because she’s hurting. And I would have been far more of an ass than her husband if I had taken advantage of that.

  I pick up Sophia from her snoozing spot on the bed and step out of my room onto the terrace that overlooks a small, very well-kept garden of boxwoods and Italian cypresses. Low lights form a perimeter around it, and I can see at the center a marble statue of a horse and rider.

  I wish I could say that what I did just now makes me somebody worth admiring, but it doesn’t. I think the truth is I already have to look at myself in the mirror every day and know that the man staring back at me is a man capable of betraying his own brother in the worst kind of way. I am that man, and I could spend the rest of my life making different choices, trying to be someone else, when in the end, I can’t erase what I did. Nothing I ever do, no matter how good, how generous, how selfless, will ever make up for that, will ever fix it. It’s not fixable. I’m not fixable.

  And when something isn’t fixable, it’s just broken. Maybe that’s how I deserve to live the rest of my life. The thought surprises me. I realize it’s the first time in three years that I’ve thought in those terms. The truth is I haven’t been thinking of life past the moment when I finally take that bottle out of its hiding place in my shaving case. The moment when I unscrew the lid and take those pills one at a time, every single one, until I am erased from this earth, snuffed out like an insignificant spark whose impact was more flicker than flame.

  Sophia whimpers and tries to nestle closer in the bend of my arm. Her eyes are closed, and she’s all but asleep. I think of the way she had looked under our car, cowering and shaking as if certain that her fate would not be a kind one. In all reality, it would not have been if we hadn’t taken her with us.

  I don’t know what they do to homeless dogs in Italy, but I know what they do in American shelters when a dog isn’t wanted or claimed by anyone. And just the thought of someone taking this little life makes me feel physically sick.

  I sit down on a chair near the railing, lean back with my legs stretched out in front of me. Sophia wiggles up my chest to lay her head on my shoulder like a newborn baby. I feel a surge of something I instantly recognize as love. Pure an
d overwhelmingly real. At the same time, I think of Lizzy and another tangle of emotion settles over me.

  Just a few days ago, I had no desire to remain on this earth. The truth is I knew I didn’t deserve to be here any longer. And I still don’t if I judge myself for what I did to my own brother. In my decision making, I had taken into account the fact there really wasn’t anyone I was sad to leave behind.

  Only now there is. A married woman and a little white dog.

  33

  Lizzy

  I FLIP ONTO MY back and throw the covers off for at least the fifth time since I got in bed a couple of hours ago.

  I haven’t slept. I can’t sleep because all I keep thinking about is that kiss Ren left me with at the door.

  Somewhere along the line, I don’t even know how many years ago, I started to realize that I no longer felt like an attractive woman. It wasn’t something that hit me in one fell swoop of acceptance, but something that seeped into me, little by little, fueled by the fact that Ty rarely noticed my appearance whether I had on sweat pants or a short skirt. Of course, there was also the fact that our sex life had ceased to exist. And I didn’t reject the theory that I was simply no longer attractive to him. I think on some level I accepted it as one of those truths of life. That whatever had made me attractive to him in college, when we were first married, I didn’t have any more. For him, or for anyone.

  But standing outside this room, in the arms of a man I didn’t even know a week ago, I wonder if maybe I was wrong. Could it be that Ren really had wanted me, and the only reason he had left was conscience? Lying here in the dark, thinking these thoughts, I have to admit that maybe I wish his conscience hadn’t made itself known until the morning. But no sooner have I released the thought than I can’t deny that he was right.