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I study Olivia’s face. Libby’s. Some features, yes, I could still see a resemblance. Then a shocking thought runs through my mind.
“Is this a… what do you call it? A setup? Are you an imposter? What do you want from me?”
“Gianni! Really? Am I so very different from the girl you kissed on that bloody bridge? The one you gave the painting to? I was right. You were, and you are, just a gigolo, preying on the romance of this place and the vulnerable hearts of women who come here.” Olivia’s voice is strained and broken. She finishes her negroni then thumps the glass down as she stands to leave.
“Olivia. Please. Libby. Let’s be calm and talk about this. I am in shock, okay?”
“No. I should never have come back here. I should have quit my job at the gallery as soon as I recognized you. It’s my fault.” Tears well in her eyes. “It’s all my fault.” Olivia clutches her bag as if it offers some support, then bolts for the exit, leaving me in a wide-eyed daze.
Chapter 21
Olivia
Iunderstandwhatismeant by Dutch courage. One and a half Negronis later and the cat is released, screaming, out of the bag. Meow. I didn’t have anything planned. I should have had a speech written out and memorized for the occasion, but in the end, it was better not to have a filter on my emotions. It all came crashing out. Bang on the table like my empty cocktail glass.
I didn’t want to stick around for explanation. Gianni’s face was enough. He looked at me with absolute disbelief that I could be that girl he kissed and laughed with on that bloody bridge. He didn’t want to believe that this dowdy, plain woman beside him in the fancy restaurant was once someone he had adored. He even thought I was posing as Libby as some kind of extortion racket. Honestly, how much more demeaning and humiliating can an evening get?
Outside on the street, I stop and catch my breath, safe in the knowledge that Gianni is not following me. That would be truly disastrous. Sparkles of light bounce on the river and glowing halos spin around the streetlamps. I feel light. Unburdened. It is what it is. My mind is empty. The truth is out. I’m over it. He’s nothing to me.
Tomorrow I will go back to New York, take the painting to Mrs Peabody, and quit my job. There are other galleries. There are other jobs. I am not an idiot. But I can’t possibly live in the shadow of my past with my ex-love-of-my-life as my boss. I am wired with adrenalin and booze. I wander around the city for the rest of the night unable to be still.
Chapter 22
Gianni
It’squiteasurpriseto find out that the mousey, little woman who hides all the time is the same as the fiery confident eighteen-year-old who stole my heart. I never got over her. When you have found The One no one compares.
I knew that when I couldn’t meet Libby at our place on her last night in Florence, I would lose her forever. I never expected to see her again. I didn’t know where to start looking. It was an impossibility. She left the next day, and I couldn’t explain to her what had happened to me and why I couldn’t be there. The thought has haunted me ever since.
I scored the winning goal and ruined my soccer career with one stupid kick. I was stretchered off the field and straight to hospital. Of course, I didn’t know anything about anything because I was so messed up on painkillers and sedatives. I didn’t know my own name. It was days, no weeks later, when I finally came around to the plaster cast and my leg in traction. And my mom crying at my bedside, saying it was a miracle I was still alive, and crying some more. Clicking her rosary beads. Round-the-clock Hail Marys.
I was broken. My friends assumed I cried because my knee injury signaled the end of my professional soccer career. I was down about that, no question. But not being able to play a sport was not what broke my heart. When I was out of hospital, my teammates came over to my house and slapped me on the back saying that it was bad luck that I had to wreck my knee to win the game.
I became a sort of folk hero. The story blew up out of proportion. The reports in the paper and online suggested I had some kind of self-sabotage thing going on: that I couldn’t handle the pressure of top-level competition; that I had caused my own injury. The press is good at twisting facts to spice up an accident; to give it a dark flavor. There was nothing dark or manipulated about my injury. I saw an opportunity to score a goal and went for it. No one else was involved. I slipped on the stupid grass the wrong way and my tendons and ligaments couldn’t stretch to accommodate. Snap.
It was super painful, and rehab went on and on. I didn’t think I would even be able to walk again. But little by little I got over it. I was determined. And now I can run again. Not far. And it hurts a bit, but I can move more freely. And I can use most of the machines at the gym and swimming is a great workout.
My body healed better than the doctors predicted. And better than I imagined from my hospital bed. But knowing I had let Libby down and she had gone back home without a goodbye or exchange of details so we could stay in touch and maybe see each other again, that broke my heart, and I don’t think I ever recovered.
I have kept the idea of Libby alive and the memory of her still inhabits my dreams, so finding out she is alive and inhabits my real world shook me to the core. And yes, I am trying to reconcile these two images of the same person. Libby: eighteen, gorgeous, ambitious, sassy, dynamite. And Olivia: small, quiet, self-conscious, timid, and a whole lot older than her twenty-eight years. Someone who has given up on living.
It’s a whole lot to take in. I should be overjoyed to find my first love again. I have dreamed of this moment. But the reality is much more complex. Disbelief? Disappointment? Relief? What are these emotions I’m swimming in? I don’t even know the woman who was sitting beside me. She is an employee whom I have never really noticed. We’ve only ever had one conversation. How could this person be Libby?
After Olivia fled the restaurant, I just sat alone at the table as if in a trance. I couldn’t eat. I walked around down by the river before finally driving home.
Chapter 23
Olivia
“Oh,isn’thehandsome?”Mrs Peabody exclaims, clapping her hands like a child at a birthday party. “Thank you so much for bringing him home to me, Olivia.”
We stand side by side admiring the portrait of the nobleman that Gianni purchased on Mrs Peabody’s behalf, and I brought back to the States as part of my hand baggage. The eyes in the portrait mock me. The sneer of the rose-colored kissable lips curses the ground I walk on.
Gianni dropped off the painting at the Hotel Grande two days after my Negroni-fueled outburst. I was, needless to say, embarrassed, remorseful, and humiliated. My emotional performance was absolutely unprofessional. To be so vocal about my closed-up inner world was, regrettably, completely out of character. And in front of the ex-love-of-my-life and in Florence where it all began. Well, whatever we had; whatever it was, is now truly dead and buried a thousand feet deep under the flow of the Arno. Forever. I made sure of that.
On the way out to Firenze airport, I felt numb. I have held Gianni’s memory for so long, it has crystalized into something as solid and hard as marble. So much for rewiring my brain with mantras and positive affirmations. I failed on every front. I know it’s going to be a long time before I can lift my head up and not feel like a moron.
I took a taxi directly to the Peabody Mansion from JFK. I didn’t want to bear the responsibility of a million-dollar painting one minute longer than I had to. My main purpose was to deliver it to its rightful owner, go home and cuddle my cat. And maybe have a cry. Job done.
