Tessa's Escape to Athena's Ground(92)

                4:49. 4:53. 4:55.

                David wasn’t coming.

                There was no ‘us.’ Not even the possibility of one.

                The rain started again and Tessa reached for the hood on her slicker. As she juggled the wine and the jacket, her cell phone chirped.

                “Who’s texting me now,” Tessa said, dropping the hood of her slicker and reaching for her phone. It would be Happy New Year! from the girls in the office or her exercise partner from the gym. She’d have to text back the same, and the thought annoyed her. Pretending you’re fine when you’re not is a bitch.

                The text turned out to be a photo. There were no words, just a picture of two pizza boxes.

                “What?” Tessa said.

                Tessa stepped out from the clutch of people at the fountain edge and scanned the crowd. She looked up, towards Quirinale Palace and down along Via delle Muratte.

                You bring the Chianti and I’ll bring the pizza, Tessa remembered from an old email.

                “David?” she screamed at the top of her voice. His name sounded like a sob. “Are you here?”

                A million people surrounded the Fountain, and only one mattered.

                Tessa began plowing through the crowd, twisting her head from right to left. Searching for a glimpse of the man she didn’t want to lose.

                “David!” she screamed, so loudly a little boy next to her put his hands over his ears. “Where are you?”

                “Right behind you.”

                Tessa whirled around. In front of a face were two pizza boxes. The boxes lowered slowly, inch by inch, to reveal damp brown hair, sparkling blue eyes, and a smiling, sensual mouth.

                “I didn’t know what kind you’d want,” he said, jiggling the pizza boxes, “so I got two. It took longer than I expected.”

                Tessa threw her arms around him, crushing both boxes between their chests. Her words were swallowed by huge, ragged sobs.

                “I don’t know where this will go,” David said, his lips pressed against Tessa’s ear. “But I’m committed to finding out.”

                 Tessa pulled back to face him. At the Trevi Fountain, in the fading moments of the last sunset of the year, she pressed her lips against his and kissed David as softly as the gentle rain falling around them.

                David accepted her kiss. Then he pulled away, wiped the single tear that had formed in his eye, and returned to Tessa’s lips with a kiss of his own. To Tessa, it tasted of pain and forgiveness, passion and patience and, most of all, hope.