JUNE 18
I have to write this. It’s ugly and brutal, but it happened and I can’t leave it out.
I took Matteo to dinner at this gorgeous little restaurant near my hotel. It was candlelit and quiet and absolutely everything about the moment was perfect, except when it came time to tell him, I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. Once the bill came, I asked if he’d like to go back to my hotel with me.
My room was messy—my clothes and photography equipment were everywhere—but at least it was quiet and private, and when we stepped into the room I told him to have a seat. He sat down on my bed and then he pulled me so I was sitting next to him. He said he’d been thinking about something for a long time and he believed it was time for us to take the next step.
My heart started beating so fast. Was he proposing? Then I looked down at my hand and panicked. I was still wearing Howard’s ring. Would I just have to take it off? Can you say yes to someone when you’re wearing someone else’s ring? But instead of pulling out a diamond, Matteo laid out what basically amounted to a business plan. He said he’s tired of making almost no money working for schools, and he wants to start his own business, leading retreats for English-speaking photographers who want to spend time in Italy. He’s already booked two tours and he said I’d make the perfect addition. I could help organize travel and accommodations, and once I have a little more experience I could teach photography as well. Then he put his arms around me and said he’d been an idiot to let me out of his sight. It was time for us to join our lives together.
I hadn’t let him kiss me until then, and as soon as his lips were on mine the only thought I had was Howard. And that’s when I knew things would never work out with Matteo. Pregnant or not, I love Howard. You can’t be in another relationship when you feel that way. So I pulled away from Matteo and blurted out the two words I’d come to tell him.
The words hung heavy in the air. And then he jumped up like the bed had burned him. “What do you mean, pregnant? How did this happen? We’ve been broken up for two months.” I explained that it must have happened just before he left and I hadn’t known until earlier this week.
That’s when he freaked out. He started yelling, calling me a liar and saying there was no way this baby was his. He said I’d gotten pregnant by someone else—probably Howard—and now I was just trying to pin it on him. He started grabbing all my stuff and throwing it around the room—my camera, pictures, clothes, everything. I tried to calm him down, but then he threw a glass bottle at the wall, and when he turned and looked at me, I was suddenly very afraid.
So I lied. I told him he was right, that the baby wasn’t his, it was Howard’s, and that I never wanted to see him again. I was telling him what I thought he wanted to hear, but it made him even angrier. He said he was going to ruin both of us and that Howard would regret ever coming near me. Finally he shoved past me, then kicked the door open and was gone.
The ring. The denial. The lie.
I was finally getting a clear picture of my mother’s life—like up until now I’d been looking through a fogged-up window and hadn’t even known it. I’d had no idea she’d been through so much heartache. Honestly, she was freakishly cheerful. Like once our upstairs neighbor left the bathtub running and when it flooded our apartment and ruined a bunch of our stuff, my mom just pulled out a mop and started talking about how awesome it was that we could clear out the room and start fresh.
Had that bouncy, count-your-blessings attitude I’d grown up with just been some kind of elaborate PR campaign? Had she been afraid I’d find out what her pregnancy had forced her to give up?
I closed the journal. I was pretty sure that if I tried to keep going I’d have another massive breakdown, and this time I didn’t think even Ren could pull me out of it. And besides, there was no point to reading any more. No matter what my mom did next—flew by hot-air balloon back to Florence, spelled out HADLEY LOVES HOWARD in hundred-foot letters across Piazza del Duomo, sent him a handful of love letters via Venice’s plentiful pigeons—it wasn’t going to work out. Period. She was going to end up living the rest of her life six thousand miles away with only a slim gold ring to remind her of what she’d lost.
Oh, and me. Otherwise known as the world’s most inconvenient souvenir.
I leaned back and closed my eyes, feeling the tiny back-and-forth movements of the train jostling on the track. I was approximately one hundred miles from a man who was about to get his world turned upside down and six inches from another who wanted nothing to do with me.
I literally wanted to be anywhere else.