I took a step back.
“New Year’s Eve?” he suggested, his eyes trying to read mine.
I couldn’t speak, I didn’t know how to say goodbye.
His fingers brushed mine, the briefest of touches. I wanted to cling on, to tell him I loved him, to pull him into the cab and make him understand, but I didn’t.
“When the ball drops,” I said, and he smiled his heartbreaker smile.
“I didn’t get you alone to give you your gift,” he said.
“I have yours too,” I said, thinking of the only gift still wrapped beneath my tree.
“Iris, I—” he said, but the cabdriver slid his window down and asked us to hurry things along, so I’ll never know what he was going to say. Perhaps he was going to say he’ll call me later, or maybe he was going to tell me he loves me. I hope not.
I climbed into the car and he closed the door for me, and I laid my hand against the cold glass as we moved away from the curb.
“Chrystie Street?” the driver said, meeting my eye in the mirror.
I nodded and gave him the address of the noodle house, then laid my head against the window and closed my eyes, exhausted.
33.
COULD I HAVE DONE THINGS differently? I could have not lied about Adam in the first place. God, how I wish I could change what happened in that bookstore, that I hadn’t spoken so impulsively. I’m so tired of shaming myself for it. I’ve hung my green dress back in the wardrobe and scrubbed my face clean of makeup. I haven’t turned the tree lights on, because I’ve never felt less celebratory in my life. It’s too hard, being in love, like jumping from a plane without a parachute and trusting someone to catch you. I’m in terrible distress.
When I lost my mother, I had time to acknowledge her illness, I knew she was going to leave me. It didn’t make it any less devastating, but at least there was a process, it followed the expected downward curve.
When I left Adam, I was at rock-bottom, on my uppers in every possible sense, but it didn’t come as a bolt out of the blue. There was a downward spiral, an erosion, a build-up of pressure until I finally found the strength to end things.
And now I’ve lost Gio. There is to be no gentle goodbye, no attempt at an explanation that might soften the blow, no slim chance that he’ll understand, because, as Santo said, a clean break heals easiest. Part of me—a big part of me—wants to push back, because this is my life, and Gio’s life, maybe even our forever if we were lucky enough to have that. And I would push back, if I wasn’t so held down by the guilt of my own lies. What good would explaining myself do? Make myself feel better? Whichever way it happens, the end result is going to be the same, so perhaps Santo is right. A clean break will mend soonest—not for me, but for Gio, at least. He is at the center of all this, the person Santo is trying to protect, the person I’d rather hack my own heart out of my chest with a rusty knife for than cause even a second’s pain. But I’m going to, either way, so the only decision that’s mine to make is how. Santo doesn’t want me to tell him anything about my mother or the recipe, doesn’t want his son to see him as less than perfect. I’m more than a little wounded that he has scrubbed my mum out of his story completely, when there are so few people left who knew her. Oh, I get it. He picked himself up and went on to build his strong, solid family, built a beautiful relationship with Maria. Of all the women in all the world, I’m probably the last one he’d choose for Gio. And I understand that. I do. If I was him, I might even try to do the same thing, anything to steady the Belotti ship. But I’m not him. I’m the one over here losing everything—not just Gio, but all of them, all of this life I’ve built in New York.
I can’t stay here, living a few blocks over from the gelateria. That isn’t anyone’s idea of a clean break. It’s a messy, vicious one where I’ll be forced to look him in the eyes and tell him even more lies, to steel myself against him. Sophia would come, and Bella would come, and Maria would come, because they would all see him struggle and need to understand why I would do that to him. I can’t fathom it. I don’t know what to do, but I know I can’t wait here in my apartment to be looked for and found. So I don’t spend my Christmas night watching crap TV or drinking champagne or playing board games. I spend it folding clothes into the same suitcase I dragged away from Adam’s house exactly one year ago today, too numb to cry as I pack toiletries. I drag the box with my gelato maker in over to the doorway, and then I turn back to take a long last look around. It’s as I found it really, no extra cushions or ornaments to feather the nest. My nomadic roots run deep after all, it seems. I turn out the lights and lock the door, then drag my suitcase downstairs to the sidewalk.
* * *
—
SMIRNOFF SITS ON THE noodle house step watching me pile my belongings up out of the snow with a disinterested eye. I lay a saucer of food on the back corner of the step for him and risk my fingers to give his ears a scratch.
“Bye, buddy,” I whisper, hunkering down beside him. I’ve texted Shen to ask if she’d mind taking care of him for a few days until Bobby gets back; she sent me back a string of emojis that suggest she’s fine with it.
“I’ll miss you,” I add, and he lifts his face out of his dinner to glare slowly sideways at me. If he could speak I think he’d be saying he won’t miss me a bit as long as someone puts his tuna down, and I’m glad, because he’s one living being I don’t have to feel guilt over.
I pull Felipe’s Christmas card from my pocket as I wait for the cab and read it again.
From one rolling stone to another, I thought you might need somewhere you won’t be disturbed to hang your hat for a few days while you get yourself together.
I’ve paid the electricity up to New Year’s Eve, consider it an apology.
Good luck, kiddo, I know it’s tough. Florida’s warm this time of year.
F
I put the key to unit 359 back inside the card with a heavy sigh. The cabdriver pulls as close as he can to the sidewalk in the snow, and I heave my things into the back and ask him to take me to Belotti’s. He waits while I slide an envelope under the painted glass door, then I get back in and give him the address of Easy Self Storage.
34.
Dear Gio,
Before I say what I need to say, please know that these last few months with you have been the happiest days of my life. You’re the best human I’ll ever know, even if I live to be a hundred.
I have to tell you something. My heart is heavy as I write this, I’m so sorry not to tell you myself, to your face. Truth is, I can’t. I just can’t bring myself to say the words out loud and watch you hate me, so I’m taking the coward’s way out and writing them down.
I lied to you, Gio. My ex isn’t dead, and we were never married. Adam Bronson is an awful, manipulative, abusive man who I ran away from on Christmas Day last year. I got into the habit of telling myself he was dead to try to stop myself from looking over my shoulder all the time, but I should never have said it out loud to you. I should have corrected you when you assumed I was married that day in the bookstore.
I don’t have any excuses for it. Finding out you’re a widower made it impossible to walk back from that stupid, horrible lie, but I just can’t go on with it any longer. What kind of a person tells a lie like that? I’m so ashamed. You deserve so much better than that, than me.