Racing the Sun(94)

I’m packed, with one foot out the door.

I have been pushed off the tightrope.

Now the fall begins.

“Goodbye,” I whisper to him as I turn the door handle. “Tell the twins I’m sorry.”

And then I steal out past the sad lemon trees, all which seem to weep yellow tears for me, and walk down the Via Tragara for the last time, heading for the ferry, for the mainland, for freedom. For home.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


I’m curled up in the fetal position in a hotel in Naples, letting the pain pass through me in sharp, thorny ribbons. It hurts. It really fucking hurts. Heartache is so physically real that it needs to be recognized as a sickness, an ailment, a cancer of love. A broken heart is a sad, angry, powerful thing that shakes you by the collar and demands your respect, and it’s pummeling me into the mattress, shattering me to pieces. It’s as real as the actual heart in my chest.

In some ways, it’s more real because it flows throughout your whole body, wrapping around your bones and your organs and your blood. It’s in everything you do, every breath you take. I can’t drink, I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I just hurt as my mind turns over and over what I’ve done and what it means. I keep seeing the look on Derio’s face, his heartbreak at my own hands, and I’m suffering all over again.

And again and again and again.

I think about everything I’m giving up by walking away and doing the so-called right thing. The twins, the love of my life. Everything changed for me on that island, and a part of me is afraid I’m throwing in the towel too soon.

But the other part feels wise and in control. It tells me it never would have worked, that this was a long time coming, that it was always going to end this way. A vacation romance, nothing more, nothing less. There was never a need for it to get complicated. But complicated, it is, and like a coward I ran when the going got tough.

You didn’t run, I tell myself. You chose to go because you had to go. Derio could have come after you but he didn’t.

Derio also has a brother and sister to deal with now, the day before the race. I wince, knowing I might have screwed up his first race in over a year. I tell myself there will be others, that he will win them, and all will be fine. But I don’t believe it; I just feel guilty.

Guilt, sorrow, emptiness; they surround me in that tiny room as darkness falls over the city.

I think about the way he loved me.

Because he really did love me.

He really does love me.

I fall asleep clinging to that thought, like maybe one day it could save me.



* * *



I don’t know how I manage to get everything done the next day but I do. I book my ticket home for tomorrow evening, then I call my parents and give them the so-called good news. My father is especially happy, telling me he’s proud of me for knowing when to come home and even recognizing that it must have been hard for me to leave my job. Of course, he said it in a way that made it seem like I was fooling around at a summer camp, but whatever. My heart is too heavy to argue with him.

I send an e-mail to Shay telling her what’s going on, then realize I have no one else to tell. There’s Angela, but I haven’t spoken to her properly in so long that it feels weird to do so—it’s better if I just call her once I get home.

Home. The concept seems so weird now. The idea of living in the suburbs, in that cul-de-sac with my parents, where everyone’s green lawns are the same color and the backyard fences all end at the same height and the roofs all have cheap red tile, feels stifling and somehow more claustrophobic than living on a rock in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

Am I doing the right thing? I ask myself as I pay for my ticket.

Am I doing the right thing? I ask myself after I hang up the phone with my parents.

Am I doing the right thing? I ask myself after seeing the one text Derio has sent to me since I left, which I ignore.

Senza di te, non sono niente. Ti prego torna a me.

Without you, I am nothing. Please come back to me.

How am I supposed to respond to that? Thank you for making me cry into my coffee? Because that’s exactly what happens.

But sometimes you never know if you’re doing the right thing until after you’ve done it. And I know this is definitely one of those times.

In the afternoon, I decide to drag myself out for some pizza—I can still taste the glorious slice I had when I was here with Derio and the twins, and I start craving it, as if all the feelings of happiness, love, and security are wrapped up in that thin, oven-baked crust.

While there are a lot of pizzerias in the neighborhood, I’m looking for a place that sells authentic Neapolitan pizza. The government has imposed some quality-control standards regulating what is considered proper Neapolitan pizza, so I need to make damn sure I eat the right thing.