by Lily Zante
“We don’t have to. We can stay in bed all day.” Mimi had told her that she would visit their mother in hospital today.
“I like that idea,” he said, “but I need to catch a train back home in the afternoon.”
“Why not the evening?” She raised herself onto one elbow and stared into his eyes. “We could do stuff here and I could show you around Verona.”
“Do stuff here?” A mischievous look twinkled in his eyes.
“Have breakfast, maybe some coffee.”
“Or take a shower together?”
“Together?” Her body warmed to the sound of that and heated up even more when his hand slipped under the sheets and he cupped her breast.
“Ahhh,” she mewled, arching her back at the touch of his fingers. “Again?” Blood raced around her body at the idea of what would come next. She had come hard last night, two, or was it three times? Each time was more powerful than the last.
“Again…” He said softly, as she moved even closer up against him. She was just about to kiss him when a sound downstairs stopped her. She thought she heard a door close. Startled, she turned her head.
“What—”
“Ssshhhh.”
Voices. People talking.
Her heart plummeted. It couldn’t be.
Good god, it was.
Her mother and Mimi. Downstairs.
She shot out of bed.
“Wait,” said Christian, leaping off the bed and putting on his boxers.
“What are you doing?” she hissed as he marched towards the door with his polo shirt in his hand.
“Someone’s broken in—”
“No!” She threw herself in front of him.
“Gina?” Mimi shouted.
He looked at her, puzzled. “You know these people?”
“Shhh!” She put a finger to her lips, while her mind succumbed to chaos. Snatching his polo shirt, she slipped it over her head frantically then hunted around for her panties.
The color drained from her entire body—her panties were somewhere on the stairs.
“Gina!” Her mother’s staccato voice almost made her stomach empty and panicked, she flung open her closet door and pulled out a cardigan. Christian grabbed her arm, but she was in full-blown panic mode. “Not now!” She pulled her arm away, desperate to get downstairs before her mother found her underwear, or worse, came upstairs.
She rushed out, slipping her sleeves through the cardigan and smoothing her hair as she attempted to walk down the stairs as calmly as possible.
“What’s going on?” her mother yelled, her voice like thunder, her face hard like stone. She hobbled around on crutches and peered up at Gina.
“Calm down, Mama,” Mimi soothed. “Sit yourself down before you fall over and injure yourself.”
What the hell were they doing back so soon?
“How come you’re home?” Gina struggled to keep her voice steady as she looked from her mother to Mimi. Her state of shock deepening.
“She wanted to come home,” Mimi said. “And they thought she was ready to.”
“You could have told me you were on the way.” A warning would have helped. The sisters glared at one another.
“I tried,” said Mimi. “But I kept on getting your voicemail each time.”
“WHAT is your top doing on the couch?” her mother cried. “And what are you wearing?”
Gina looked down at the old gray cardigan she had on and pulled the edges of it close together so that they covered her chest. She folded her arms across it, knowing her hastily mismatched clothing coupled with her been-up-to-no-good look was a dead giveaway. Soon enough, her mother and her sister would know exactly what she had been up to.
Gina swallowed.
“Sit down, Mama,” said Mimi, again.
“Sit down? How can I sit down? I want to know what’s going on. Whose jacket is this?” Her mother’s voice went higher. “And whose luggage is that? I almost tripped over it and broke my neck.”
It was an obvious exaggeration but not one that Gina felt compelled to challenge. Her mother’s cold, accusing eyes met her own and sent a shiver of fear through her. She felt like a teenager who had come home late, and knew that punishment awaited.
“I didn’t know you were coming home yet, Mama,” she said.
“I can see that. Who else is here?” her mother snapped, looking at the two wine glasses on the table. Gina stared at the empty wine bottle and tried to strengthen her defenses, tried to figure out what to say and where to begin.
“I had a friend over last night.”
But her mother didn’t appear to be listening to a word she said.
“WHAT?” her mother screeched. “Are. Your. Panties. Doing on the stairs?” The muscles in Gina’s neck tightened, and she drew her neck back stiffly, willing for the ground to swallow her up.
“Mama, calm down,” said Gina, closing her eyes and preparing to die.
“Gina obviously had a friend over, Mama. It happens. You don’t need to worry about—”
“Fornicating under my roof while I’m in the hospital!” Her mother’s face turned purple.
“Mama!” exclaimed Mimi.
“Shhhhh,” hissed Gina at the same time. “I can explain, if you calm down.” Her pulse was racing as she turned away from Mimi’s searching stare. Running out of the house and driving away, wearing just the clothes on her back, seemed like a good alternative right now.
“It was my fault.” Her stomach sank at the sound of Christian’s voice behind her. All hope was lost. There was no coming back from the truth. She turned around slowly to find him standing in nothing but his jeans. Bare foot and bare-chested. Looking like a stud.
Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
She felt her face turn crimson as if the flames of hell had scorched them.
“Your fault?” her mother asked.
“Please put some clothes on,” Gina begged.
“You’re wearing my shirt.”
She wanted to scream, yet somehow managed to walk calmly to where his suitcase lay, and pulled out the first suitable item she found. As she walked over to give it to him, she couldn’t help but notice Mimi staring at him, dazed, her eyes bulging.
“Stop ogling him, Mimi,” she warned.
Ignoring Gina, her sister flashed Christian the kind of smile probably reserved only for men. “I’m Gina’s sister, Mimi, and you are?”
“Christian.”
“Christian?” her mother barked. “What happened to Davide?”
“I’m Christian,” he stated, very matter-of-factly. It was strange, but not surprising, how calm and steady his voice was amid all the mayhem. Her mother threw Gina a look that was undecipherable. “How many men do you have?”
“Mama, stop it!” Gina pleaded, then turning to Christian, “Please get dressed.” As if he sensed her discomfort, he headed back up the stairs without a word. When he was out of earshot, she found herself staring into the angry and shocked faces of her mother and sister.
“This is the reason you didn’t come and see me today?” her mother barked.
“Today it was Mimi’s turn.”
“Has that man been here ever since I left?”
“He’s a friend who was passing by, Mama.”
“He looks like more than just a friend,” her mother replied.
Gina sighed. “He came last night to give me the handbag that was stolen. He was going to catch a train back to Rome, but I asked him to stay.” The truth seemed easier to let out and, much to her surprise, she found herself reciting it as if she were a narrator in a play.
“Rome?” Her mother snapped. “This is why you’re moving to Rome?” Gina looked at her sister accusingly. “I thought I told you not—”
“It slipped out,” said Mimi, apologetically. She looked genuinely upset, but it didn’t stop Gina from wanting to slap her sister. “Why did they discharge her so early?” Gina asked.
“She hated being there. It’s not the best place for her ei
ther, with all those hospital bugs crawling around.”
“Then why don’t you take her to your place for a while? The change of scenery will do her good.”
“Because this is her home,” said Mimi, firmly. “And this is where she wants to be.”
Her mother sat on the couch fanning her face while the two sisters faced one another.
“They would have preferred her to stay a few more days, but you know what she’s like.”
Gina nodded. “I know exactly what she’s like.”
“You told me your boss sent you to Rome,” her mother snarled. “You told me you were taking a course.”
“He did, and I was.”
“Mama, leave her alone,” said Mimi. “Be grateful she’s put up with you for as long as she has.”
“I’m her mother! She should consider herself lucky for having a place to stay.”
“Me consider myself lucky?” Gina placed her hands on her hips and stared at her mother. “If anyone should consider themselves lucky, it should be you, Mama. I look after you, I put up with you—”
“Put up with me?” her mother bellowed. “You live in my house, you do as you please—”
“Do as I please?” Gina yelled. “If I did as I pleased, I would be out every evening, I’d be away every weekend, without a care in the world instead of worrying about you and your pills and your pillbox, and making sure you have enough medicine to see you through, and taking you to the doctor, and going with you to your hospital appointments, and cleaning, and cooking, and shopping, and doing all those things that you can’t do most of the time because you consider yourself to be too ill to move from the couch.”
“You ungrateful little girl!”
“I’m not a girl, Mama. I’m a woman!”
“You’re no better than a miserable teenager, arguing with your poor mother even when I’ve come home from hospital. If it wasn’t for your sister, I’d have been sitting there all by myself while you were at home—”
Gina glared at Mimi. “One day,” she hissed. “One day she comes and visits you when I’ve been there every day since your operation, running around, from work to here then to the hospital, making your favorite dishes so that you won’t have to eat the hospital food you complain about so much and all of a sudden you’re pleased that Mimi has come back?” She paused to take a breath, feeling dizzy. The shock of this sudden state of affairs wreaked havoc on her senses.
“Leave it, Gina. We’re all stressed out,” Mimi said, “It’s not worth the—”
“You don’t look stressed out,” Gina countered. This barely affected her sister. Mimi would go home to her peaceful house and her loving husband and her daughter and get on with her life. This drama now was only a slice of her day. Mimi turned her back on her infuriating her even more. “This doesn’t affect you, does it?” she bellowed. “It’s not like you have to do this every day. You swan in and out when you feel like it and Mama thinks you’re wonderful because you made the effort to pass by when it suited you. She’ll worry that you’ve put yourself out just to come and see her because she doesn’t want to trouble you too much.” She knew it was wrong to start on her sister but her emotions had taken a battering and she was all charged up with anger.
“Stop it, Gina!” Mimi spun around and faced her.
But she couldn’t stop it. “You didn’t have to hear the things they said, her and Papa, when you got pregnant, and you left home. You weren’t the one left behind picking up the pieces, trying to do the right thing, making sure not to upset them. You weren’t here to see the damage it caused.”
“I didn’t set out to get pregnant.”
“But you did get pregnant and you left me to deal with the consequences. You and Marco were out of sight. You weren’t here to see the misery it caused and you didn’t have to live in it.”
“I can’t help how they reacted.”
“And I couldn’t either! But you weren’t around to handle the fallout.”
“They didn’t want me here, what was I supposed to do?” Mimi cried. Their mother remained silent in all this, and continued to fan her face, her hand and the small magazine in it, moving faster and faster.
“I was left to make sure they were okay. What was I supposed to do?”
“You didn’t have to stay,” countered Mimi.
“I couldn’t just leave them.”
“But you did leave them.”
“That was later,” said Gina.
“But you came back. Why did you come back?”
“Because Mama wasn’t well, and Papa had passed away. You wouldn’t remember because you were too busy—”
“Living a life. That’s right, Gina. I had my own family to take care of.”
This was going nowhere, and she had run out of steam. Christian was upstairs, and he had probably heard every word. “I’m not listening to this.” She spun around on her heels, and ran up the stairs, picking up her panties along the way.
Chapter 38
It explained everything. She had never mentioned that she lived with her mother and now he understood why. The missing pieces of the puzzle that were Gina were fully revealed to him.
Christian heard them arguing downstairs, and knew it was best if he left. One look at Gina’s face had told him how humiliated she felt.
Maybe now she would understand what it was like to not want to share an uncomfortable secret. He suddenly felt sorry for her, his eyes were truly opened now that he had seen things for himself.
So much for their plans for the day.
He called for a cab to arrive in 15 minutes’ time, and brushed his teeth quickly. What he wanted, and what he needed, was to shower properly, but he decided against it. The urge to escape was stronger than the need to be clean.
Just as he pulled on his t-shirt, Gina walked in and they looked at one another for what seemed like an eternity.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” she said, breaking her gaze first. “I didn’t expect my mother to turn up like this. She wasn’t supposed to be back for a few days.”
Of course, it was the only reason she had allowed him in, not only into the house, but into her heart, the only reason she’d let him be within an inch of her. With hindsight he could see that her guard had been down. She had been freer, more giving, more revealing.
Softer.
More of the Gina he wanted her to be.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he asked.
“I didn’t know how to.” She hugged her arms around her body, looking lost and lonely. He wanted to take her in his arms, but he wasn’t sure it was what she wanted. He placed his hands on his hips. “We all have our little secrets, Gina. The things we can’t bring ourselves to tell other people. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you about Rachele, and I get why you couldn’t tell me about this. It’s nothing to be ashamed about, and you shouldn’t worry that I had to hear it.”
She scowled. “I’m a grown woman,” she said, pacing around the room with her arms still folded, her face set hard. “But she makes me feel like a scared teenager, and I hate it.”
“Then break the pattern.”
“I’m trying.”
He placed himself in her path, halting her, and took her hands in his. “Is this why you’re looking to move away? The reason you resigned?”
“I love my job, but I can’t do this anymore.”
“It doesn’t have to be one way or the other, Gina. You can have both. You can find a way to have all the things you want, and let go of the things that don’t make you happy.” Milan beckoned for him, and he knew it was only a matter of time before he said goodbye to Rome.
She turned away, but he cupped her chin in his hands and turned her face back to him. “I’m not sorry I came here last night, and I’m not sorry about what happened. What I am sorry about is that we have no more time together.”
The corners of her mouth turned up, and he felt better knowing that he had made her smile, at least. Whatever this was, going on between her m
other and her, he fully understood why she longed to escape. That she had put up with this at all, for goodness knows how long, was beyond him. But sometimes, the things people did were hard to explain.
He ran his hand through her hair. “I want to hold you and kiss you, but I feel as if your mom’s eyes are all over this room.”
“She’s probably praying for my salvation as we speak.”
He smiled. “Are you going to be alright?”
“I’m going to be fine,” she told him. “They’re going to hear a few home truths from me once you’ve gone. Let me get changed, and I’ll drop you to the station.”
“I’ve called a cab. It should be here any moment.”
“You did?”
“I should go. Can’t stay here.”
“I wish I could go with you,” she said, and he suddenly had the urge to take her with him.
He lowered his head and kissed her. “That’s in your hands.”
She threw him a quizzical look. “I’ll be in Rome next week,” she said. “For the course.”
“I’ll be waiting.” He would have to wait until then. He would wait it out and let her make the next move.
“I’ll see you to the door.”
“I’d appreciate the escort,” he replied. “Your mother scares the hell out of me.”
Chapter 39
“Did you know that Gina failed the project management test?”
“Did she?” Nico surveyed the young man before him. A few years away from thirty, Demetrio wasn’t that much younger than him, and Nico wondered why this member of his management team would choose to relay such information to him. He had been wondering a lot about Demetrio lately.
Demetrio chortled. “She told me she got 95%. And it turns out, she failed.”
“I know. She had a bad day. It happens.”
“You knew she failed?”
“Yes. But what I don’t know, or understand is why you feel the need to bring this matter to my attention?”
Demetrio uncrossed his legs and sat up. “I thought it would be best if I brought it to your attention.”
“Why’s that?”
“Excuse me?” He ran his fingers down his tie, and cleared his throat. “I don’t see why she couldn’t tell the truth.”