THE iTALiAN
The one that wouldn't let go of the other guy
We were three weeks into a four-week break. A scheduled pause, designed to be temporary. The kind you invent when neither of you can let go. Our goal was a month. A month then we would come back and talk it out. High school sweethearts don’t let go easy. Especially not after they have let gone before and come back together.
It was the summer after college graduation, and I had just started my job in tech sales. She was getting ready to start dental school. The long distance, the disapproving parents, the drifting feelings. There were a million and one reasons for this relationship to end. But we were hooked to one another. First loves, first everythings. Her a Scorpio, me a Cancer.
The day before I was scheduled to fly home from Atlanta, after a bender of a work trip. Delta fucked me and I had no choice but to take a new flight to Washington D.C. to connect. When I made it to D.C. after a few hours of delays they informed me the final flight to NYC had also been cancelled. I trekked over to Union Station and got on the 11pm bus to NYC.
I stared out the window at the falling rain and the amber streetlights. Too tired to even listen to music, but too uncomfortable to sleep, I drifted in and out of a half awake nausea until we finally pulled into Penn Station at 4 in the morning. I was delirious on the Uber ride home but finally opened my apartment and flipped on the light switch. I had left a window open and there were stacks of half written poems all over the floor. My pile of blank canvases mocked me in the corner. I quickly tidied the papers up and showered before crawling into bed. I grabbed my phone to let my boss know I would be working from home the next day and saw a text from her.
I need to talk to you. Can I call you?
She had just sent it a minute before.
My adrenaline made it easy to swing my feet out of bed and walk over to the dining room table. It was a circular one, the type that two people can barely share a meal on. The chairs I had were the hard metal types, at a strange height so you had to awkwardly hunch over to eat your meal. I tended to opt for holding my plate up. The table had a beautiful top though, alternating blue, orange, and white mosaic pattern, almost mandala like. I ran my fingers across the tiles as I dialed her number.
“Hi,” Her voice was small, far away.
“Hey,” I tried to control mine but it tumbled out.
I waited for her to continue, putting my necklace between my teeth and chewing it. My bare feet felt good on the cold kitchen floor, but that was about the only part of me that felt good.
A week before our break had started she had traveled to Italy with her two best friends. They had planned a three week post grad trip. I went for the first weekend, since it was my birthday weekend. It was a magical weekend but it had the feeling of squeezing out the last bit of ketchup from the bottle.
“You can’t be mad,” she started. I started to breathe deeply.
“I didn’t cheat on you. I swear to God, I didn’t cheat on you.”
“Layla, just tell me what it is,” I wanted my voice to come out in a roar but it registered whisper. I dug my nails into the back of my head and tightened my grip on my hair as I pulled.
He was an Italian studying dentistry in Rome. They met at a restaurant her and her friends had become regulars at. Later that week he invited her and her friends out to a boat party his friend was hosting. She had told him she had a boyfriend back home. Nevertheless, in typical Italian male fashion, he had showered her with affection and promises to treat her better than anyone ever would.
She didn’t do anything with him, nothing so much as hug him (she said this over and over), but after she left Italy she began texting and calling him everyday. She would send him nudes and he would send her long texts about how she was the world to him and he was researching how he could transfer to the United States to be with her. She hated and loved every second of it. She talked to him more and more so that she could push me to the side but eventually it boiled over and she broke down and told him she wanted nothing to do with him. And now here she was, telling me all this in the hopes that I would understand and take her back.
At this point the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon. The kitchen window had a sliver of a line of a sight to the skyline, beyond the backyard patio and the apartment buildings. I just kept my eyes on the sun slowly rising, willing it to blind me. There wasn’t much for me to say, for she kept on pouring it all out, how much she hated me, hated him, how much she loved me, loved him, how much she hated herself, loved herself, how much she wished we would both disappear, how much better I treated her, how much better he treated her.
Periodically she would ask me if I was still there and I would grunt and she would continue. When she was done, and her crying had evened out, I stood and paced back and forth, opening the fridge to have something to do. There was a jar of olives, some chocolate and a couple of beers my dad had left me almost six months ago.
I told her I needed time to process it all and hung up.
There was no way I could be at home alone in this state. I ended up sleeping for an hour and a half and taking the train in to work. Everything felt on autopilot. I got off at the Union Square stop and it astounded me how normal everyone was around me. At the top of the station, the newspaper stand man yelled at someone who had swiped a gum from his counter. For some reason that really pissed me off, that he cared so much about something like that.
I took the elevator up, trying to avoid meeting anyone’s gaze. My desk was I left it. Picture of me and her in front of a ferris wheel, my arm around her and her head resting on me, her hand on my chest. My Russian doll, my F1 miniature die cast, my small cacti. I only made it an hour before my boss sent me home when he took one look at me and said I looked horrible. Luckily he thought it was just the overnight travel.
I still couldn’t go home. I walked to Madison Square Park and sat on one of the small tables in front of the Shake Shack. It was a warm day but the temperature, the sweat making my shirt stick to my back felt good. The chair I chose was unusually low to the ground, but it made it easy for me to grab my knees. I watched as a boy kept chasing his father around, jumping up to try to grab something out of his hand. The father was laughing and the boy was laughing and it made me cry.
I called her in this state and told her I wanted to be with her. That she needed to promise me she would never talk to him again. She cried and promised.
The next two months were filled with her calling me randomly and telling me she was sorry because she had accidentally responded to his message, had accidentally stayed up late and talked to him on the phone. I kept forgiving her but it cost me everything. She would tell me that she would spend most of her time talking to him about me and how she chose me. I told her if she chose me why did she need to tell him. She said she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. The worst part wasn’t that she wanted him. It was that she needed me to forgive her for it—over and over.
It’s okay. We were just kids.