Jo Piazza (17 page)

“The
Fat Whore
. It belonged to a fisherman named Pippo, who got the boat after his wife ran away with his business partner, Marco. They went to the next island to raise goats. So every time Pippo would circle that other island, passing the goat farm, he would honk the horn, pull down his pants, literally moon his ex-wife, and then point to the name of the boat.”

This made me laugh so hard I had to catch myself when I remembered there were people sleeping in the other room who had to get up in a couple of hours.

“So are you telling me you would name your boat something crazy after your ex-wife?
Elizabeth Is a Slut
or some such?”

“No. I’m not angry at her anymore. Plus, why would I give her the satisfaction of naming my boat after her?”

I switched gears for a minute. “What’s Marettimo like?”

“It’s the most beautiful place in the world. Picture these untouched white cliffs plunging into water that alternates between turquoise and emerald green.”

“It sounds like paradise. But Pippo still wanted revenge. He couldn’t be happy in the most beautiful place in the world?”

“Love makes people crazy, Sophie. You know that better than anyone. I think the
Puttana Grossa
was his version of, say, putting a naked picture of his wife on the Internet.”

I gasped and turned red, before realizing he didn’t actually know that I had done something like that. He must have just been using it as an example. I hoped he was just using it as an example.

“You’d love Marettimo,” he murmured. “I’d love to see it again sober. We should go there sometime.”

The use of that pronoun—
we
—gave me flutters in my belly of the happy sort I hadn’t felt in years. But the flutters were quickly followed by a twinge of warning: DO NOT GET AHEAD OF YOURSELF, SOPHIE.

I thought for a minute.

“I would name mine
Serenity Luna
.”

“
Serenity Moon
? That’s nice,” Joe said, burying his face in my hair.

As I listened to his breathing get shallower, I decided not to admit to him that I thought the
Floozy McSecretary
sounded like a jaunty name. Of course, Eric didn’t have a goat farm and I couldn’t exactly ride my boat around his office building. The closest I could come would be to rent an ad on the side of a taxicab. But that would be ridiculous. And anyway, the thought didn’t give me the same satisfaction my former revenge plots had in the past. I pushed it out of my head to fall asleep thinking about towering cliffs, green and blue water, and the word
we
.

I thought Joe was asleep, until he smoothed my hair back.

“Did you really kiss me back that night?” I blurted out before I could stop the verbal diarrhea from spewing out. Old habits die hard.

“Mmmm hmmm,” Joe said.

The old me would have asked nineteen questions. Why did he kiss me back? Did it mean he liked me? Did he want to be my boyfriend? How was the kiss? And on and on and on, but I decided, for once in my life, to just be content in a nice moment.

“That’s good,” I whispered and drifted off to sleep.

Jordana came in and discreetly shook me awake, glancing at Joe with a knowing smile. “Oh, Dr. Twelve Steps,” she said, to which he awakened and stretched with a low lion roar.

“What time is it?” I asked her.

“Five thirty. I’m going to the reservoir. Tito wrote back. His cousin is trying to figure out the plan for this evening. Let’s reconvene for breakfast at Sarabeth’s below the park at seven?”

“Sounds good.”

As Jordana walked out the door Joe reached down and intertwined his fingers with mine.

“I bought the Dixie Chicks album after you crashed that first AA meeting in the Presbyterian church.”

“Did you like it?”

“No, it was terrible, awful, whiny stuff, but it made me smile when I listened to it because it reminded me of the madcap story you told that night. And it reminded me of you.”

“Did you also buy
Downton Abbey
?”

He looked away. “I did.”

“And?”

“It was pretty fantastic. I can’t blame you on that front. I don’t know if Lady Mary and Matthew Crawley are going to be able to make it work, but I’m rooting for them. Of course, that reminded me of you too. The entire twenty-one hours of it.”

This was quite possibly the sweetest, nonforced thing a man had ever said to me. I decided I needed to return the favor with some memories of my own.

“You had Boston cream all over your face the night we met.”

“Did I?”

“Yup. It was there forever. And Boston cream is my favorite.”

“You could have told me.”

“You looked cute with it on there.”

And then he leaned down. It was definitely him who did the leaning this time and lightly brushed his lips over mine. This time I wasn’t half in the bag and I was able to enjoy every second of his lips pushing down soft, and then harder. His hands came to the sides of my face as he slowly pulled back.

“Wow,” I said.

“Wow back.”

“If you’re still not ready for a relationship, I totally understand.”

“I am starting to think I’m ready.”

“Oh good, because I think I’m ready.”

I was ready for quite a lot actually and I think Joe was too, but we couldn’t be ready just then since I could hear everyone else start to stir and groan their own morning sighs.

“To be continued?” I asked.

“Definitely.”

We hastily untangled ourselves. I rallied the troops and got us all dressed and out the door. My favorite doorman, Nico, stopped me as I headed out and handed me a giant stack of mail.

“I weeded out all the crap, ma’am,” he said with a wink. I stuffed it into my already overflowing purse and hailed us four cabs on Twenty-Third Street.

At Sarabeth’s, Jordana informed us that she met her client exactly as planned and the client was so excited to see her (since Jordana had been conspicuously absent from the city), she insisted on having coffee and croissants, so Jordana had plenty of time to pump her for information. The tulip ceremony was indeed being broadcast live from the roof of the Empire State Building. They would begin setting up at 3:00 p.m. for a taping at 8:00 p.m. It would go down only slightly differently than Joe had explained. The Husband would meet the two women on the observation deck. He would pull one to the side to dump her before getting down on one knee to propose to the other one. The deck would be divided by a false wall so that the women weren’t standing right next to each other.

The producer made our lives one hundred times easier when she offered Jordana tickets to the finale. There had been risers constructed for a live studio audience of about three hundred. In exchange, Jordana had to promise to come back to the city to give the producer three private yoga lessons. No one gives anyone anything for free in this town.

So we had tickets to the actual show and would at least be on deck if we couldn’t stop whatever Stella was planning before this thing actually went on the air. Tito’s cousin said he could sneak some of us onto the setup if we could find a pair of Carrefour coveralls to blend in with the workers. Tito was on his way into the city, and he said he and Princess would do just that to see if Stella had staked out the show early.

Joe had to drive the geriatrics van back to Yardville, since the hospital would soon be missing it, and then take a train back to the city to be there in time for the show.

I went back to my apartment with Annie and had lain down on the bed for a much needed nap when I heard, “I would do anything for love … but I won’t do that.” I glanced down at the phone’s screen to see, “DO NOT CALL THIS LYING CHEATING BASTARD.” It was Eric.

Annie rolled onto her side and saw the name flash across the screen just as I did.

“Don’t answer it, Sophie.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Seriously. I think you could have something great with Joe. He really likes you.”

“How do you know?”

“I lied to you when you asked me before if he talked about you. He only talks about you
all
the time in my counseling sessions. He’s lucky I quite like you myself or I would have told him to shut the hell up by now.”

Butterflies began banging about in my belly again and a grin that I knew could only be described as goofy spread across my face. It occurred to me for a second how it was so odd that the belly could be the indicator of both extreme excitement and extreme grief. The butterflies and the rubber band of despair both resided in there, and both reacted to my sadness and happiness by clanging around. I wondered if one day they would ever have a showdown, and who would win. I wanted the butterflies to take the rubber band out for good.

“He likes me.”

“He likes you. DFIU.”

“Deefoo?”

“Don’t fuck it up!”

Annie went out in search of more coffee and I hopped in the shower. When I emerged, there were six text messages from Eric.

I need to talk to you.

Please call.

I’m sorry, Sophie.

I made a huge mistake.

Will you please call me.

PLEASE.

Eric was never big on saying please, probably because he was so used to getting exactly what he wanted that he never had to.

What if I called him? What if I finally got the closure I needed? Besides, Step 8 was very clearly to make a list of all the persons we had harmed and make amends. Eric had harmed me, but I had definitely harmed him too, with my psychotic behavior following our breakup, so maybe it was time for me to make amends. Maybe that was how I could get the rubber band with Eric’s name on it to go away once and for all.

He answered on the first ring.

“Thank you for calling. Seriously, thank you, Sophie.”

“Congratulations, Eric. Megan told me the news, and I hope you two have a wonderful wedding.”

“There isn’t going to be a wedding. Lacey left me last night.”

This was not what I was expecting. Not in a million years did I think someone like Lacey would ever leave someone like Eric, but then I thought twice and couldn’t think of any redeeming qualities Eric really had to hang on to anyone, even someone I didn’t have a terrible amount of respect for. Even someone like Lacey. Ooooo, I was calling her Lacey and not Floozy. This was a healing moment. Oh gosh, and it had been weeks since I looked at a single tweet she had written. In fact, I had been so good about ignoring the both of them on all forms of social media that I was genuinely blindsided by Eric’s news. I’d have to remember to pat myself on the back later. Progress!

“Can I see you?”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“I just want to talk to you. I think we have things we both need to say.”

He was right, and I had never been able to say no to that man. I agreed that I would stop by his apartment on my way to meet Jordana, Annie, and Joe at the show. It was time for both of us to make some amends.

Eric lived in one of those imposing Upper East Side buildings with four doormen who gave you the judgy face when you came over looking anything less than perfect, which was pretty much me all the time. The front desk guy, who I called Dragon because of his long red ponytail, was ready for my arrival this time and buzzed me right up to the penthouse with nary a judgy stare.

Eric’s door was cracked, and he was sitting, back facing me, front to the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Midtown—including the Empire State Building.

He turned around to reveal puffy eyes, a stained T-shirt, and at least two days’ worth of a beard. I had never seen him anything but entirely clean-shaven and perfect looking. He prided himself on his utter perfectness. I almost laughed before catching myself and realizing this would be the absolute worst thing I could do. Besides, he looked exactly like me when I was padding around Grandma’s house in my velour jammies right after our breakup. There was something comforting in that fact.

He slowly stood and padded barefoot to meet me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and resting his chin on my head.

“It feels like shit.”

“What feels like shit, Eric?”

“Getting dumped. Now I know what I put you through.”

“Is that why you called? To tell me you understood what I went through?”

Now I was starting to get angry. I didn’t want his sympathy. I pulled back.

“Eric, you don’t know what I went through. You and Floo— Lacey have been together what? Three months? We dated for two years. You met my parents. I met your parents. We took vacations together. We talked about getting married. It’s a little different.”

But was it different? Who was I to say how in love or in lust with Lacey he actually was? Maybe he had imagined a whole future with her the way I had imagined it with him. I made a silent vow to be more patient and to listen to what he had to say.

For his part, Eric genuinely seemed unable to comprehend why I couldn’t understand his newfound pain. Then it clicked for me: He wanted a tribe, and I was the nearest thing he could make an emotional connection with. Eric had no siblings. His family was as WASPy as they came and firmly eschewed the F word—feelings. I really was all that he had. I was his emotional wastebasket. He wanted to have a pity party and I was the only person he knew to invite.

That pissed me off. “I’m not your shoulder to cry on. You gave that up when you broke up with me. I hate you, remember? Or I
hated
you. I hated you that night I put your penis on the Internet, and I think maybe I even still hated you last night. Last night I thought about naming my boat after … never mind. But now I don’t hate you. Right in this moment, I think I have finally stopped hating you. Now I feel sorry for you. Now I want you to move on, not from me, but from Floozy. Live your life without a woman to lean on for once in your life, Eric.”

“Did you meet someone else?”

I sighed. “Eric, no. Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not dating anyone else, and unlike you, I am certainly not sleeping with anyone else. But that is none of your business. Come on, Eric. Let’s be grown-ups now.”