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“A little,” I say.
“A lot,” he replies. “Look, I’m worried… I’m scared actually.”
That I did not expect. Well, we are both scared of dying, obviously. Scared out of our minds. But I have been thinking about that the whole time, and I bet he has too. He wouldn’t mention it like that, right now when we’re eating, would he?
“Of what?” I ask him.
“That you might get attached, or, even worse, that I might.”
Well, isn’t that just…
I don’t know what to think. Emotions tangle inside me, grip me by the throat.
“Well,” I say slowly, “you might be the last person I ever meet, so I might as well get to know you.”
He goes white.
Then, slowly and with precision, he picks up his fork to continue eating. As if I didn’t just say that. Or as if I did just say that.
“Let’s talk,” he says.
We eat and talk for hours, barely noticing the hours passing. We talk about our families, our exes, well, his mostly, as all of mine are princes or nobles, and I’m not supposed to talk about them. Also, nothing ever happened with them.
He talks to me about his mom (he loves her, and my heart hurts just listening to him talk about her, his eyes going all tender and glassy) and I don’t talk about my dad (except I end up kind of talking about him, and he listens, and the weight on my chest lightens a little bit.) All around us in the restaurant, waiters come and go, white china plates are removed and set, candles are lit and snuffed out, cutlery clinks, fresh roses are placed in vases and people arrive shaking the cold off their scarves and hats. Outside, the sky is studded with stars, and we are still sitting there, talking.
I tell him about my first kiss. I tell him about how I made the decision to come to Vermont.
He tells me about being an only child (I can relate), and about how he’s sick of being chased by girls (I can’t), even though he feels he has to keep doing it, because it’s sort of become his identity now.
It happens to a lot of dudes, he says, and they don’t know how to get out of it.
I talk to him about the scandal, and try to get him to speculate about who my siblings might be, but he is very careful. Very discreet. He lets me talk as much as I want about it. He listens.
“I am so sorry,” he says when I’m done. “I am so very sorry.”
Which, somehow, is what I needed to hear all along. My chest expands, as if I’m finally breathing after drowning for ages and ages.
I sip a glass of wine, and when it begins to make me a bit light headed, Marco laughs and pushes a glass of water towards me, but we don’t stop talking. Actually, it helps to loosen up a bit. I talk to him about my hair, and what a huge difference it makes to me to finally have it the way I want.
I think he’ll laugh at me, but he stays perfectly serious and listens. And nods. And then I talk to him about Angel, because what the heck.
I might never see Angel again. I might never see any of them again.
Once, when I get up to go to the bathroom and admire my hair some more in the mirror there, I come back and catch Marco wiping his eyes as he sits at our table all alone. He quickly slides his phone in his pocket when he sees me coming, and turns his face away from me.
I find it hard to believe that he was actually crying, but we have been talking for more than three hours now, so I ask him about it.
He laughs, but his eyes are red, his lips moist.
“It’s ok,” he says. “I was crying, a little bit. I was leaving a voice message for my mom, but I haven’t sent it yet. I… I keep recording them, then saving them for later. I don’t know if I will ever get the guts to send them. Does that sound pathetic?”
It does not. “Are you ok?” I ask immediately. That’s all I care about.
“Does it matter?” he asks, taking me by surprise.
“Nothing else matters,” I reply at once, and he chuckles again, as if what I just said is the most ludicrous thing he’s ever heard. “I mean it.”
“Stop being so sweet,” he says.
