Escaping Valentine's Day, page 12
Nic’s easy teasing felt nice. Enjoyable. Far more comfortable than anticipated.
Just not as comfortable as chatting with Huck.
Which was fine. Huck had lived with her from the age of seven. She’d known Nic for five days. These things took time.
But…but…why was she having any thoughts about Huck while on a moonlit terrace with a prince?!?!?!?!?!
She touched her neck. Reminding herself the ladybug pendant was gone. Reminding herself to be in the now. “So what’s the justification for a blue cocktail?”
Nic pursed his lips. Which made Rory think back to what a stellar kisser he’d been. “Tell me what you know of St. Valentine.”
Thank goodness her social feeds had flooded her with this very trivia over the past few days. “That he secretly married people in the Christian faith. The, ah, pagan Roman emperor felt threatened, so he was executed.”
“That’s one version. The foundation, as it were. Italians like to embellish a good story. Make it more.”
Maybe this was something she could use in her content. She double-patted the glass table with both hands. “Do tell.”
“One version says that while imprisoned by the emperor, Valentine tutored the daughter of his jailer. She was…without sight?” Nic scrunched up his face in the cute manner he had when trying to come up with the correct word.
“Blind?” Or sight with a capital S, like being psychic? You could never tell with these ancient legends.
“Sì. Bright blue eyes that could not see. The story goes that after he prayed with her, God restored her sight. The night before he was executed, he wrote her a note and signed it, ‘from your Valentine.’ And so the tradition began.”
“That’s so depressing.” She’d never write that on a card again.
“The martini tonight is called the Julia. It is blue, like her eyes. Made with gin and pear vodka, dry vermouth and blue curaçao.”
“It sounds delicious.”
“Perhaps. The blue is difficult to get past. A cocktail should not be blue. Let us hope there are no paparazzi here to steal a photo of me drinking it. It is not a good look for me. For any man.”
Oh no. Rory started to whip her head around to look. Then she remembered to be subtle, and stopped quickly enough to feel like mini-whiplash. “Could they be here? Should we move to a table where your back can be to everyone else?”
“I was joking. There is no way to know if someone will snap a photo. To sell or just to post. It does not matter. My businesses will not be in jeopardy from this.”
“Your ego, though. That’d take a hit. Your masculinity.”
He caught up her hand. Kissed the back of each of her knuckles. Looked up at her from beneath half-lidded bedroom eyes. And that look warmed her from head to toe as if she’d just walked into a sauna.
“Then I would simply have to find a bellissima woman to kiss to bolster my self-esteem. Do you know of anyone who would volunteer?”
Rory tapped a finger against her lips. Cocked her head to the side and strung the moment out. Because it was actually delightful to flirt with the man. “You know, I would have. As a courtesy. As a favor to a new friend.”
“But?”
“I’m so not in the mood for kissing. At all. Because now all I can think about is sophomore-year biology class, when we dissected a cow’s eyeball.”
Palm to his chest, Nic dropped back against the chair. “That is a shame.”
“I don’t want to drink anything remotely connected to eyes.”
“You must. You ordered it.” He leaned forward, sandwiching her hand with his other. “We will be brave together.”
“That’s a solid plan.” They had an inside joke now, to share, forever. The kind of thing to reminisce about. To order on their six-month dating anniversary, no matter how vile it tasted. The reason behind the sapphires flanking the center diamond on an engagement ring someday.
That’s the way you spun these things from a first date, right?
By the time she’d had her first official date with Huck, they already had dozens of inside jokes. On their first date, they’d walked through the Chicago Botanic Gardens. It provided lots of bushes and trees to sneak kisses behind. A ladybug had landed on Huck’s arm. She’d told him to make a wish as she prepared to blow it away.
And he’d told her that his wish already came true. That she was his ladybug. He gave her the necklace a month later.
Dang it.
Rory was having such a good time with Nic. Why did Huck keep intruding in her thoughts?
Nick gestured, as if batting away the mere idea of the cocktail. “If it is horrible, there is always Prosecco. It is the Italian fix for many things.”
“I think I could get used to your Italian ways.” She would stay in the moment. She would. Nic was the sort of man she should be with.
Her head had given very specific marching orders. Her heart would just have to fall in line. Sooner or later.
“I certainly hope so, Rory.” His voice was as rich as the truffles they’d tasted. It was also full of promise.
Chapter Ten
The good thing about living—temporarily—in a villa was that it had oodles of space. Rory knew that Huck was cleaning up after dinner. But she couldn’t hear him from the library. Out of sight, out of…
Well, never out of her mind. That was the basic problem, wasn’t it?
In the library, though, with its walls of books and a roaring fire, she didn’t have to worry about putting on a brave face. Not for Huck, and not for the widows. Only Rowan knew the truth of what had happened a few hours previously.
The big breakup revelation. Not the romantic cocktail date.
It had been lovely. But it had been a distraction. A solid one, to be sure. But she knew she still needed to process the raw hurt from Huck’s story. She also knew she needed to do it tonight, so that she could act naturally around him for the rest of the tour.
Sometimes, wallowing was the best solution. Feel all the feels in order to shove them behind her.
Given that, Rowan was sipping limoncello in the billiard room to keep her company. Which only heightened Rory’s misery. “I appreciate the babysitting. But you should go hang with the widows. They’re a ton of fun. I am, most decidedly, not.”
“What? This is relaxing.” Rowan tucked the plush green blanket tighter around herself. “I’m playing Candy Crush on my tablet. You’re holding your tablet and staring at that bust in the niche that, given we’re in Italy, might be a genuine antiquity. Uber-relaxing. Chill.”
Talk about a wrong interpretation. “Uh, I’m far from chill. What’s the opposite? Superheated?”
“I don’t think there’s an antonym in the urban dictionary yet.”
Rory stalked to the fireplace. Its flames had nothing on what pulsed through her brain right now. “You should come up with one. Tonight. Copyright it. Then at least there’d be a silver lining to my misery.”
“Are you really miserable? Or just peeved? Put out? Perturbed?”
“Pissed,” she said flatly. It was adorable of Rowan to try and alliterate her out of her mood, but this wouldn’t be so easily smoothed over. Rory balanced on a pivot point for the entire rest of her life.
Rowan held out a placating hand. “Okay, but hear me out. You got over Huck a long time ago. Years ago. This week’s been a shock, but your actual deep feelings for him are long gone, right? You’re having a deserved pout, but you’ll be over it by morning.”
If only it could be that easy. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
Unbelievable. She’d flown across an ocean, was here in an actual villa in a library that smelled of whatever creamy bouquets were tucked among the shelves and beneath the gorgeous paintings of the countryside.
Yet she was still boxed in to the same emotions she’d tried to guard against back home.
“No, you see, I don’t think I ever got over my feelings for him. That’s a problem. Being with Huck again scraped off a layer of paint covering the hole in my heart. No drywall. No bricks. Nothing substantial shoring off how much I loved him.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re using the construction metaphor wrong.”
Clearly Rowan wasn’t getting the depth of Rory’s seriousness. So she threw off her blanket. It was too confining. Then Rory grabbed the edge of the carved wooden mantel as if to orate to the Roman Senate in the Forum, circa aught something A.D.
The words spilled out of her, like the unstoppable overflow of the bowl of the fountain in the circular main drive.
“I never stopped loving him. Is that plain enough? But Huck certainly didn’t love me as much. Not if he was willing to just walk away. To give me up. To consider that an hour-long, knock-down, drag-out fight with my parents was just too much effort, too much drama to deal with. He claimed to love me, but he stripped away my choice, my free will. And I’ve had about the hell enough of that.”
“Message emphatically received!” Rowan stretched to poke Rory’s leg with one socked foot. “Feel better now that you let all that out?”
“No.” She poked her back. Gently. So it wasn’t at all like the giant kick in the shins Rory wanted to give Huck. “More riled up. Like I just heaped wood on the fire.”
“What do you want to do about it?”
That was Rowan. Practical, when Rory was an emotional Slinky just flailing in a downward trajectory. “There’s nothing I can do. Maybe that’s why I’m so—” she shook out her hands and arms “—jumping out of my skin. I can’t, I won’t try to change Huck’s mind. Begging for the right sort of love’s no good. I can’t change the past. He clearly doesn’t want to change our future.”
“Hmmm.” Rowan threw off the blanket. Walked around the room, stopping to peek out the window. “There’s a hot tub. Want to go soak in that? I think there’s a full moon tonight. We could try to harness the power of our femininity to cleanse you by moonlight and chlorine and some rhyming couplets we make up.”
That was the most un-Rowan-like thing that had ever come out of her mouth. She wasn’t fanciful, she was focused. “Wow. You must really be worried about me to make an offer like that.”
“Honestly? A little bit. I’m worried that there’s no way to fix your current situation. Feels like I’m letting you down as a friend.”
Rory couldn’t let her sadness spoil her friend’s trip. Enough of this self-pity party already. Italy and this beautiful villa and all the amazing women deserved better from her.
“If there’s nothing I can do, the same goes for you. Trust me, if I think of anything, I’ll go down on one knee and beg for your help.”
“No dramatics needed. Please,” she added with an eye roll. “Hey, I think your tablet’s ringing.”
“Weird. Who would try and FaceTime me in Italy? I’m supposed to be busy having fabulous adventures,” she said as Rowan brought it to her.
“You are. You’re just taking a tiny, one-night break so you can appreciate them all the more tomorrow.”
Rory propped her tablet on the mantel and answered the call.
Oh, geez.
Her parents.
“Hi there. Great to see you two, but I only have two minutes, tops, before I have to head back into my group. Can’t take too long of a bathroom break and miss any of the fun!”
Because of course she’d only told her parents that she was going on a vacation. Not that she was working, not that she was hopefully taking the first step of a new career that would send them into an epic over-worry revolving around the lack of a pension/insurance/paid sick leave/ twenty-six weeks of guaranteed paychecks. Nope, all they knew was that she was tootling around, with a guide and a part of a safety-in-numbers tour group.
“We’ll make it swift, darling.” Her mom’s face filled most of the screen. Makeup nearly nude, artfully silvered hair coiffed. Only her dad’s ear showed. “I’m afraid it’s bad news, but under control. You see, your apartment’s pipes froze and burst. You know how Chicago in the winter can get those brutal spells of wind chill. Somebody in the building didn’t leave a tap running.” She tskd. “Who doesn’t know to take that basic precaution?”
Lots of people. When you lived in an apartment, pipe maintenance wasn’t high on a list of priorities. That’s what landlords were for. “Are you saying my place flooded?”
“Yours and six others.”
A flooded apartment—to her parents—could be anything from a puddle next to the shower to a fully soaked and floating sofa. “How badly?”
Her mom waved a hand and frowned. “Is there ever a good amount of flooding?”
Dad shoved his way into the frame. It must be serious for him to be home in the middle of the day. “Now listen, we handled everything with the landlord.”
Wait. Hang on.
Why were they talking to her landlord? “How did you even find out?”
“Oh, we left the rental company all our info as emergency contacts from day one. They were relieved to have someone to deal with and not let everything mildew until you came back home.”
That was high-handed. Presumptuous. They’d been hovering in the background of her rental contract without her realizing it. Good thing she was already deeply entrenched in a shitty mood. “What do you mean, you handled it?”
“Well, we salvaged what we could.”
Her mom squeezed back in. “Personal bits and bobs and clothing can be cleaned. The furniture, not so much. And speaking of furniture, is that a grand piano behind you?”
Trust Anne Hibbert to focus on Rory’s vacation furniture rather than her actually owned and apparently ruined furniture. The woman would skip Christmas to attend opening day of a decorator showcase house.
“Yes. I’m in the library-slash-music room.” Rory shifted just enough to block it with her body. “But there’s no time to give you a tour. Uh, can we get back to my apartment, please?”
Her dad held up a hand to tick off points. Lapis lazuli cuff links gleamed at his wrist. “The landlord will have to replace the pipes, and the drywall and carpet, and bring in a mold mitigation company. It’ll take some time for all the repairs.”
“We couldn’t bear the thought of you in a hotel for that long, darling. So we just hired a company and moved all your things back into our house.”
No.
Nonononono.
That was…the absolute last thing Rory needed to hear today.
Her parents had “handled” the landlord. The situation. Most of all? They’d “handled” her. Taken away her decision-making. Assumed whatever they decided was better than anything Rory would come up with.
Assumed they knew what was best for her.
Just like Huck.
Well, as grateful as Rory was to not be returning to a closet full of mildewing clothes, it was still the final straw.
Her parents had handled her for the last freaking time.
Rory grabbed the mantel with both hands.
Then let go right away, because man, that fireplace kicked out some heat! She tossed her head instead.
Imperiously. Showing she meant business.
Although maybe not so much, what with the short hair. The lack of an actual hair flip weakened the potency of the power move.
Plus, she was wearing a blue hoodie with a cartoonish Perugina chocolate on the breast. Nic gave it to her as a souvenir of their tasting. A hoodie was not optimal stand-your-ground clothing.
Oh, geez. All she was doing was stalling. That real-life split second felt like it’d lasted three minutes in her mind.
In a rush, Rory said, “So, thank you. I appreciate your effort and expense. But you should’ve called me before all this unfolded. Calling to inform me what you’ve already done with my possessions is not okay.”
There was a shared glance of confusion. “You wanted us to leave them there and collect plaster dust from the reno?”
“I am an adult. I want to be not just consulted but asked flat out what course of action upon which to embark. I want the landlord to have called me, not you.” Which wasn’t Santino’s fault. Rory was sure her parents had greased the wheels with him. That was how they worked—they threw money at obstacles until they disappeared.
Oh.
Oh, God.
It hit her with the velocity of an asteroid punching through the atmosphere. That was precisely what they’d done to Huck with that bribery check to leave her five years ago. He hadn’t stood a chance against their slick, often-practiced move.
Anne held on to the confused squint, but paired it with a soothing half-smile. “Why should he bother you on vacation? You would’ve called us, asked for help, and we’d be right where we are now. Everything is set up and ready for you to move back into your old room. The boxes of kitchen things and knickknacks we tucked into the basement.”
They didn’t get it.
Truly.
But Rory didn’t have to nag them into understanding. They ought to respect her enough to accept her decision. That approach hadn’t worked in the past. Didn’t mean it was all their fault, though. Maybe she hadn’t stuck to her guns enough.
Maybe, she kept proving to them, over and over, that she wasn’t strong enough to handle life by not being strong enough to stand up to them.
Huh—all it took to get that massive self-realization was flying almost five thousand miles away from them. No wonder it hadn’t occurred to her sooner!
In a tone as flat as the tile beneath her feet, Rory said, “I’m not moving back in with you.”
Her dad sucked in air through his teeth. “You want us to get you an apartment? It’s the middle of the month when you return. We’ll try, of course, but it’ll be tricky. Especially with just a short-term lease.”
Omigosh. If Bugs Bunny—was it Bugs? Or the Road Runner?—raced in and handed her a box from Acme Corporation containing a sledgehammer, she still couldn’t get the gist of her issue through to her parents.
“No, I definitely do not want you to find me a new apartment. I also don’t want you to look anyway and then passive-aggressively send me links, insisting that you’re just sharing because they’re so cute, or so-and-so’s daughter just moved in and wouldn’t it be fun to have a neighbor I already know.”
