This Close to Okay(86)
Tallie was clear with Nico about not wanting to get married again and needing her freedom, always. And she made sure he knew she would remain in contact with Rye because he was her friend. “I understand. I know you. I know who you are,” Nico had said. And as soon as he’d said that, she knew she would marry him someday. Maybe. Probably. His vim was heady and arresting. Dreamy. Enough. She loved Nico to distraction; she’d easily agreed not to sleep with anyone else. They’d finally gotten the timing right, and now they could set their watches to it.
“Ik hou van jou,” he’d said after he’d given her a key to his place.
“Ik hou van jou,” she’d said after she’d given him a key to hers. She’d said it in Dutch and English. French, too.
I love you, Nico. Je t’aime, Nico. Je t’aime follement de tout mon c?ur.
*
When it got warm again, Tallie and Nico went to Florence to eat and drink and visit David at the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze. “You have to do things when you have a chance to do them,” her dad had told her when she’d mentioned wanting to go. The advice was so simple that it rang poignant. She’d been focusing on remaining heart-open and ready for anything. Zora had gotten pregnant not long after Lionel’s last skin-graft surgery, and although Tallie couldn’t have been happier for them, it reminded her of what she wanted but didn’t have, the things she hadn’t done yet.
And Florence! A lovely escape, with its palaces, gardens, and medieval cathedrals. Bistecca alla Fiorentina and Chianti by candlelight, strong espresso out of small white cups, and tiramisu under wide-striped patio umbrellas. Cobblestone streets slicked wet with Italian rain. Moonlit Nico-kisses: astral, sparking the dark. He’d bought her a blu e corallo Pucci scarf made of Italian silk, and she’d worn it around her neck, wrapped it around her hair, tied it around her wrist so she could feel it cool in the warm wind. She’d gifted him an austere moon-phase watch the color of night.
“Orologio,” he’d said, putting it on, after his grazie and lo adoro.
“Prego. Tennis players love orologios.”
“I tennisti adorano gli orologi,” he’d translated properly in a deep, singsongy lilt.
They stayed at the Villa Cora and swam there in the pink rose garden, Tallie loving how Nico’s ropy body cut through the pool water, how he’d pull her close—both of them sun-kissed and weightless—grab behind her knees, and wind her slippery body around his like an octopus. And afterward, in their room, he’d peel off her bathing suit and his, hang them to drip in the heat. Sunshiny Nico-kisses: celestial, lemon-bright. Sex and naps smelling of coconutty sunscreen, windows open, white curtains breezing, waking to red wines and dinners.
He’d started wearing a masculine square onyx ring on his middle finger, and Tallie found the sharp contrast of the sight of it plus the tinkling it made against the wineglass brutally romantic. Nico tried his best to teach her some useful Italian phrases, but she was too easily distracted by the lightness of his tongue, the handsome smush of his mouth when he said them.
Ti amo tanto, Nico. Ciao bello. Ti amo pazzamente con tutto il cuore.
*
She’d put her head on Nico’s shoulder and cried on the plane ride home until it sank all the way in that Florence was a real place that existed and she could go again. It didn’t disappear simply because she was leaving it. And there were so many other places she hadn’t been! She wanted to go back to Italy and see Scotland and Paris and Australia, too. She’d fallen in love with a sunny Australian soap opera on Netflix and tacked a postcard of Coogee Beach on her bathroom wall.
She considered her future with Nico and adopting a baby, how those two things had seemingly converged in a blink. She’d completed her home-study portion of the adoption process, and the birth mother she’d chosen was due near summer’s end. Nico had been supportive all along and wanted to stay updated on everything, but they hadn’t discussed in full detail what their lives would look like moving forward. Together.
You are the true love of my life, he’d said.
nico, i do want to be yr only girl…forever, she’d texted him in the dark of the first night they’d spent apart since returning home.
you already are, lieve schat.
*
Tallie deleted her social media account and finally donated the rest of Joel’s stuff to Goodwill, all of it. She hadn’t talked to him since he was in town to see Lionel; she and Joel had met for a quick coffee before he left Louisville. It’d been okay and sneakily healing, sparking her dreams of writing a book on comfort and creating safe spaces and mental health.
She’d made little waterproof note cards that said: You are not alone. You matter. You are so loved. The suicide hotline number appeared underneath, and she left them tied with lilac ribbon to prevention the bridge where she’d met Rye. She’d also written several letters and made as many calls to the mayor’s office petitioning for higher railings on the bridge.
*
She hadn’t heard from Rye since the beginning of spring, right before she left for Florence. There were times when she scanned the Southeastern Kentucky News online and the obituaries, hoping not to find his name. Every night, she prayed he was okay. Her phone calls and voice mails and hi texts went unanswered.
She rewatched the crime-show documentary clips about his case. Rye in a backpack in his high school hallway, Rye in a suit in the courtroom, Rye standing in front of the lake restaurant, Rye crying at his sentencing. Rye with Brenna on his shoulders, his hands holding her tiny feet, next to Christine, smiling sweetly in front of their yellow house. The torn photos of their family—Rye, alone on one side with Christine and Brenna on the other—floating downward in slow motion in the Ken Burns effect. Clips with titles like Mystery in Bloom, A Long Walk in October, and Double Death.