have to ask yourself, what it matters? If you can’t hide it from her forever and it doesn’t change how you feel about Claudio, then who cares? She can be mad if she wants, and maybe your career will hurt. But can you imagine caring so much that you leave Claudio behind? Can you imagine coming into success and having no one to share it with? Because that’s what will happen and you’ll end up feeling empty.”
She raises the glass to her nose. “You are putting all your stock into the wrong person. Jana is just an agent. If you are a good writer, and I know you are, then you will find success no matter what happens. You will get another agent. But Claudio? There is no other Claudio. Capisci?”
There is no other Claudio.
He’s one in a billion.
As am I.
“Capisco,” I answer.
I understand.
She closes her eyes and breathes in the wine. “Perfetto.”
I do the same, the notes of lemon and apples and hay wafting in my nose. Then I sip. The wine tastes like gold.
In fact, the whole moment is golden.
Because what Maria said is the truth.
I have nothing to be afraid of anymore.
After a moment I say, “I will talk to Vanni later tonight.”
“Good,” she says. “And then tell Jana, and get it all over with so you can be with my brother. And maybe, somewhere along the way, you’ll fall in love with him.”
I give her a shy smile at that, because, I know I’m starting to fall.
It’s after dinner when Maria and Sofia drive off back home, and all the digestifs have been finished, that I decide to follow through with her advice and find Vanni.
He’s not hard to find. After a day of running around with his cousin and splashing around in the pool, he’s up on the couch, reading a book. The house is silent, aside from the occasional muffled drill coming from Claudio’s studio.
“Ciao Vanni,” I say to him, sitting beside him on the couch. “What are you reading?”
“Space time continuum,” he says, glancing up at me from behind the book. “Though the author’s voice is a little dry. You ever think about writing about time travel?”
I grin at him. “If I could understand it, maybe. Or I could make it a romance. Like Outlander.”
He makes a face. “I told you. Outlander’s science is all wrong and romance is gross.”
Ah. This might actually make a good segue.
“You say that now Vanni, but in time, it won’t be so gross to you.”
He mumbles something in Italian, and shrugs. Probably the equivalent of whatever.
“I’m serious. One day you’ll fall in love with someone and you won’t find them so gross anymore. You’ll want to spend all day with them. Play all your video games with them. You’ll teach them about space stuff and time travel and they’ll eat it all up, and then they’ll tell you about things you’ll find interesting. And you’ll never want to let them go. You’ll want to spend your life with them.”
“And then marry her?” he adds. “And have a baby? And get divorced? I don’t think so.”
Well, shit. He has me there.
“But that doesn’t always happen.”
“It happened to my father.”
I don’t know how to tell him that his father never loved his mother and I’m not about to. So I just say, “Things happen. But your mother and father are very happy now, just not with each other. They have other people to love. Big careers. They’re happy.”
He shakes his head. “My father is not happy.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “I think he is.”
“No,” he says. “He isn’t. The father in Gio’s universe? He is happy. He never divorced. He is in love. And Gio is happy. That’s why this is the darkest timeline. I got stuck in the wrong one. I should have been in the one where my parents are still together.”
Crushed. I feel absolutely crushed. Not just that poor Vanni feels this way, but that the chances of him ever being accepting of me and Claudio have gone out the window. He will never accept us together. He will never understand.
“What if…” I begin, grasping for straws. “What if neither timeline is better than the other? What if there are good things and bad things in each one?”
He stares at me. I have his attention.
I clear my throat and go on. “They say the choices we make every day are the things that influence our life. Our timelines. There are so many choices, though.