One Italian Summer(63)

So much history, so many stories. So many love stories, too.

I suddenly realize that tomorrow is my last day here. After tomorrow, I am meant to go home. Back to Los Angeles, back to a life that is changing—that has already changed.

I lie down in my clothes. I do not want to fall asleep, but I feel like I haven’t rested for years.



* * *



I wake up to the brightest morning. Sunlight streams in through the open doors. I squint into the sunlight. I brush my teeth, change, and head down to breakfast. A sundress and sun hat. I stop by the lending library outside my door and pull out Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner. Maybe I’ll do some reading at breakfast.

The red chair covers are back. The buffet breakfast has been moved down, closer to the kitchen. The pool…

And then I hear his voice, the same one I’ve heard nearly every day for the past eight years. Calling me.

“Katy,” he says.

He’s standing in the open lobby, at the top of the stairs. Eric. My husband. Here on the other side of the world.

“Eric?”

Is it possible he’s found me in this other time? Is he here now, too?

But as he walks closer to me—his face threaded with relief and intention and a little bit of joy—the world around me reveals itself to be exactly what it is. Present. There is a book in my hand that was published two years ago. Of course, I am here, I am back now. Which means she is gone.

Eric reaches me. He’s carrying a small duffel bag—a J.Crew tote I got him for his twenty-eighth birthday. It has EB monogrammed on it. He’s wearing jeans and a light blue T-shirt. He has a hoodie draped over his arm. He’s fresh off the trip.

“Hi,” he says.

I search his face. “You’re here?”

“I kept calling you,” he says. “I left you all these messages, but your cell phone wouldn’t even connect.”

I think about my phone, locked up in the safe.

“I turned it off,” I say.

“I called the hotel; they could never seem to find you. There was a mix-up with your room, maybe?” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. I realized about thirty seconds after you left that I shouldn’t have let you go.”

“That wasn’t…”

“That’s not what I mean,” he says. “Can we…” He looks around. “I really need to set this down.”

I nod. I gesture out to the patio. There is a couple sitting at my regular outdoor table. But the small tables by the pool are empty. I lead Eric over. There are stacks of bottled water by the open window. I think about Adam—days—years?—ago getting me one from inside. I hand Eric the bottle. Some water falls onto his T-shirt, dotting the light material dark. I know when he puts the cap back on, he’ll twist twice, to make sure it’s really secure. I know he’ll take a little bit of water at the end and run it over his face, which I can tell is hot. He does.

I choose a table in the shade. We sit.

“Sorry,” he says. He twists and sets the bottle down. “I didn’t mean I shouldn’t have let you go. I meant I shouldn’t have let you go without asking if you wanted me to go with you, without telling you I wanted to.”

“Eric…”

“No, listen, I know. I’m so glad you came here. You look great, by the way.” His eyes graze over my face. I feel a familiar tenderness. It tugs at me, like a small child at the hem of a dress. Look. Look at me.

The first time I brought Eric home to meet my parents, it was a hot October day. We drove down from Santa Barbara blasting Destiny’s Child and Green Day. We took the long route, by the water, winding in and out of towns, the ocean always on our right.

When we got to my parents’ place, it was well after the hour we said we’d arrive. I figured my parents wouldn’t mind, but they’d want a reason. My mother wouldn’t want the time to go unremarked.

Eric opened my door for me, took our luggage, and then took some sunflowers out of the backseat. I hadn’t even noticed them there.

“You told me she likes yellow, right?”

I remember thinking it was so thoughtful. I remember thinking it was proof of what I already knew, what I had already uncovered: I loved him.

I loved him far before she ever met him. It might have mattered, had she not loved him. But it wouldn’t have changed things.

“Thank you,” I say.

“I love you, Katy,” Eric says here, now. “Always have, always will. I didn’t come here to tell you that I want you back. I don’t. I want you…” He winces. “Forward.”

“You want me forward?”

He nods. “I want whatever is next for us.”

I think about the house in Culver City, the garden we never made. What is our life, alone? What does it look like when it’s just us?

“How do we know it will be different?” I ask him.

He thinks about this. He wipes his hand across his forehead. “It’s up to us. We have to make it different,” he says. “You have to want to find out.”

“I can’t believe you’re here,” I tell him.

“Me neither.”

He looks out over the town. He sees the ocean, takes it in for the first time. “This place is incredible,” he says.