I could see that happening to myself. No wonder Leah wanted to make her baby here. She must have visited before. All rich girls made a pilgrimage to Rome at some point in their lavish lives, for shopping of course.
When we both had a glass of wine in front of us and the waiter was walking away with our order in his head. Noah turned to me with a concerned look on his face.
“Did you see him? Your Caleb?”
“From a distance,” I laugh because he was so far from “my Caleb” it was ridiculous. “I was five floors below, spying on their hotel window.”
“Do you know what plan of action you are going to take yet?”
I shook my head.
“Not a clue, but I have to do it. I’ll figure it out…I have a couple of hours to come up with something.”
“An honest something?” he teases, cocking his head in a way that made his hair fall attractively into his eyes.
“Yes,” I laugh. It was so nice to laugh.
“You know, Olivia. What you’re doing. It’s the right thing.”
“What? Being honest?” I take a nervous sip of my wine. There was nothing more uncomfortable than discussing my integrity, or lack thereof.
“No.”
I look up surprised.
“Going after what you love. Despite everything you’ve done, and I won’t sugarcoat, you’ve done some pretty lousy things, but you did it all because you love this single human being so much you couldn’t help yourself. There is an honesty in that,”
“Ha! There is no honesty in me, I assure you.”
“You’re wrong.”
I c**k my skeptical head. No one in their right mind would call me honest, especially if they’d heard my story.
“I’ve never met someone who’s quite as honest about their bad deeds and who speaks with so much candor about their feelings. Are you a bad person, Olivia?”
“Yes,” I say easily.
“See. Your behavior is the problem. You allow yourself to act on every feeling rather than taking the time to be virtuous.”
“Virtue,” I repeat the foreign word, trying my hardest to concentrate on its meaning.
“It’s funny how your life keeps bumping into his,” he says, changing the direction of the conversation. “I mean what are the chances of his getting amnesia and then running into you twice in twenty-four hours?”
I shrug.
“—only to strike up a conversation with you, both times, and then ask you out to coffee?” he continues.
“I know,” I sigh, “I bought a subscription to irony the day I met him.”
“There’s something more there, that you’re not seeing.”
“What? Like a fate thing?” I hated fate. He was a bored little brat who couldn’t let people heal in peace.
“I don’t think so.”“Then what do you think?” The space in between his eyebrows was puckered and his eyes were seeing something I was dying to get a peak of.
“I think that after the first time you give your heart away, you never get it back. The rest of your life is just you pretending that you still have a heart.”
“Okaay…”
“So, just think about that,” he shrugs casually. “He’s living, but he’s broken.”
“How do you know?” I ask. Caleb didn’t look broken to me. He appeared to have completely moved on.
“Because from approximately twelve hours of knowing you, I have decided that I will never forget you, even if we never speak another word to each other. You leave a very strong impression. I can only imagine how that poor bastard feels after so many years of keeping company with you.”
“It feels like a very hard blow to the head,” I laugh, but I am sadly serious. He stares at me for what seems like forever and then he says, “Fight clean. Be honest. That’s the way you’ll win him back. But, if you see that he’s truly happy, leave him be.”
“I don‘t know if I can do that,” I say honestly. “I’m not sure I’m capable of walking away.”
“That’s because you don’t know how to love.”
“Are you saying I don’t love him?” I am shocked. After everything I told him, I thought that my love was obvious. Who would fight this hard without love?
“I’m saying that you don’t love him as much as you love yourself.”
Silence.
I take several seconds to cultivate my anger.
“Why? Why do you think that?”
“He has carved for himself some semblance of a life without you. You are willing to uproot that, throw his life into turmoil once again. Have you thought about the fact that more than one person will be hurt? He belongs to Leah now, too, and what about the child that might already have come into existence?”
I flinch. I hadn’t thought about the baby.
“There is more to loving someone than just making yourself happy. You have to want him to be happier than you are.”
“He’d be happier with me,” I say confidently. “We were made for each other.”
“But he would have guilt. For abandoning his wife, his child, for missing out on years of your life. And where would the trust be? Do you think that he won’t remember what you’ve done?”
I bite back tears.
“We can fix it. Sure, there will be scars, but there will be love enough to cover them,” I was begging him to side with me now, for him to see what I saw. Caleb and I were supposed to be together. No matter how we tried to stay apart, something kept guiding us back together.
“Maybe, but are you willing to put him through the whirlwind for a broken dream?”
I sniff.
“Olivia,” he laid his hand on top of mine, “There was a time for you and Caleb. You chose and now it has passed. Until now, you have proven that you are capable of pretty much anything.” I flinch at the truth of his words. “Prove to yourself that you are capable of something selfless.”
I want to argue with him, beg him to understand that my life will be tasteless without Caleb.
“You are a very wise man, Noah,” I smile miserably.
After dinner, we share a cab back to my hotel. Noah steps out to say his goodbye before continuing on to his hotel.
I don’t know why, but I am terribly sad. I feel the burning of tears in my eyes.