It was the very thing I wanted when Piero was ripped from me.
I press my forehead against the windowpane and allow the cool glass to still my pounding heart.
“Hey, guys,” Angelina says softly behind me. “Give us a minute?”
I’ve never been so grateful for my best friend.
When the door closes behind them, I feel Angelina’s hand on my shoulder.
“Hey,” she says in a soft voice. “You okay?”
I nod, and swallow the lump in my throat. “Just pre-wedding jitters. I’d say cold feet, but that’s so cliché.”
“And implies you made a choice in this,” Angelina says quietly.
It’s funny sometimes how a bestie can put into words exactly what’s bothering you.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
She sits on a little stool beside me. The baby sleeps peacefully over her shoulder.
“Look at you,” I whisper. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Proud? Of me?” She tips her head to the side curiously. “Why? And don’t you dare change this subject.”
“I’m not,” I insist. “I promise, I’m not. It’s just that you did this for me. And you didn’t make lemonade from lemons, Angelina. You built a goddamn lemonade franchise.”
She grins at me, rocking side to side with Nicolo, and shrugs. “Honey, it wasn’t like that. Yeah, I didn’t plan this, and Orlando knows it.” She shrugs. “But sometimes, two people find each other. Like two grains of sand on a beach. It’s impossible, right? The odds. But they find in the end that it isn’t impossible at all because somehow, some way… maybe they were cut from the same rock. Right?”
I shrug. “I think I’d need a better understanding of geology to answer that accurately.”
I laugh when she sticks her tongue out at me. “It’s just that… we make things so complicated, I think. Sometimes, we overthink the most obvious things, don’t we?”
I sit on a stool beside her. Or, more accurately, flounce, as a billow of fabric poofs then settles all around me like a cloud.
“Like how?”
“Like we think marriage is this perfect match, and that if we don’t find the perfect match, we should scratch it all and start again.”
I’m thinking of her father and his many wives and affairs. Vittoria and Romeo, brought together despite all odds, Angelina and Orlando, thrown together in the wildest of circumstances.
“But I don’t think that’s how it is, no…” her voice trails off. “I mean, I believe in soul mates and all that. But sometimes you just start with… well, a spark, right?” She shrugs. “And it’s up to you to kindle the flame. To keep it going. To make it work.”
I think this over. “I don’t know,” I say softly. “I’ve never known a happily married couple. Until… well, until the Rossi family.”
“Well, that’s just it, babe. Isn’t it? I mean, you met Orlando. And did he check off those boxes on my list in the journal we wrote together?”
I laugh, remembering the romantic notions we had and silly lists we wrote to each other in journals we shared as teens.
“Some, yes, but definitely not all.”
“And yet here we are,” she says softly. “Orlando loves me, Elise. He truly does. Just like… well, in a sense, just like you did. You saved my life once, and I’ll never forget it.”
Her eyes fill with tears. The baby stirs, and she holds him closer, either to soothe him or herself, I don’t know.
“I did,” I whisper. “And I’d do it again.” It was my proudest moment.
I remember that night so vividly. We were only teens, two girls who were forced into circumstances neither of us had ever imagined. Whereas my life was a carefully-orchestrated drama complete with acts, stages, and a script to follow, hers was a reckless chasm with no boundaries or rules. Complete opposites, really.
And one night we ventured out alone. Her, under the premise of spending the night with me and me, having bribed Piero to give me one little taste of freedom. We drank stolen nips of peach schnapps and thought a little swim in the quarry, a known teen hideout in Quincy, would do us a little good.
Honestly, it did. A night apart from the controlling oppression of my family and total apathy of hers. We were talking about our plans for the future, our hopes and dreams and fears. We swam way too deep, in over our heads, but craved the exhilaration and danger and freedom.
“You turned too quickly,” I whisper, reliving that night like I have, over and over and over again. Both of us could’ve endangered our lives in so many ways—between the friends her father’s kept and the dangers that lurked at my door—but no, we were two stupid teens who made a reckless choice. “I can still see the way you hit your head on the steel beam.”
I didn’t know humans could sink like lead, under the right circumstances. I remember pulling her up to breathe, swimming with her tucked under my arm, dragging her onto the pine-needled ground and performing CPR.
“Was the first time I ever kissed a girl, and don’t even remember it,” Angelina says with a smile.
I jokingly smack her arm.
She sobers. “I would’ve died that night if not for you.”
I sigh. “You gave up everything for me because I saved your life. And it was my fault that you almost lost it. I hardly think we’re playing quid pro quo here.”
“Babe,” she says softly. “Don’t look at what I gave up. Look at what I gained.”
She kisses the fuzzy top of her baby’s head and twirls the diamond wedding band on her finger. “I have a family now. A real family. A husband who adores me. And you, my best friend, will become my sister.” Her eyes shine.
“I know,” I whisper. “And all because I saved your life, because you were a dumb teen who didn’t know better than to swim out by the quarry drunk and alone?”
“Did you, now? Both of you? Went to the quarry and got drunk?”
I hear Tavi’s deep voice and immediately throw my hands over my gown to block him from seeing me. The door to the room creaks open, but I’m still hidden behind it on the other side.
“Ottavio Rossi, don’t you dare! I’m in my wedding dress!”
Angelina leaps to her feet and holds the baby with one hand and tries to shove me behind her with the other.
Tavi sighs heavily but doesn’t walk in any further. “I bought the dress. Can’t I see it?” Oh that voice. I’m ready to hand over my panties and he’s only teasing me from the doorway.
“Not now. Tomorrow! Oh my God, don’t you make me call Nonna and your Mama on you!”
“Oof. Playing hardball, baby. Don’t tell me you believe those stupid superstitions?”
“Of course I do!”
I could write a book about Italian wedding traditions. We’ve got enough going against us, the last thing we need to do is test the anger of the gods.
Rain on the day of the wedding means good luck. He’s not supposed to see me or the dress before the ceremony, we’re not supposed to buy our wedding rings at the same time, and we cannot arrive in the same manner or time to the wedding.
“Oh for the love of–”