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Nothing Means Nothing

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How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face...

-- William Butler Yeats, "When You Are Old..."

Okay, so I lied.

Not completely. I did go crazy. I did try open face. Wraps – jeez, never want to go there again, it was worse than swimming through a hangover. There was even this brief fling with pocket pitta breads. I mean pocket bread.

Two months I tried those things. Two months, never to be repeated in the history of Giovanni Rossi. Amen.

And Katie… Jeez, Katie. What to say about her? She rolled up to me one morning, bitch-slapped me to hell and back about those goddamn wraps and then handed me manna from Hell. Heaven surely never tasted so good, after all.

Rustic sourdough. Chewy – just enough so you can feel it tear away when you dig your teeth in. Bitter – pricking all those tastebuds to action for the meat and salad fillers to swoop down and saturate into your tongue. And with that woody, farm-house kick that nearly sent me weeping back to Tuscany and the little agriturismo two hours from Milan.

My mom bullied the story about St Paul on the road to Damascus into me when I was a kid. It always meant the same thing. See the light! Be a good boy! Stop kicking Tony Salvatore in the balls when he mocks your sister!

But I finally got it, that pissing rain day in Manhattan, when this Kansas know-it-all blonde stands in my condiment bar and smirks at me over the golden rib of a rustic sourdough.

So we went into business together. I didn't lie about that either.

But I did lie about the next bit. Engaged? Sure, Katie might have dropped a hint or two over our morning bread-buttering. But rolls never translated to a roll, if you get my drift. A roll in the hay. You know, the low music, dim lights, ice cream and cream on bare skin…

Nah, we never got that far.

So all that crap about finding myself in a good woman was just that. Crap.

So I lied. That's me. The guy who lied. So screw me.

A man - and a Rossi - has his pride. Pride doesn't jam too well with telling this bright sexy going-places girl that you spent the last year nit-picking over every moment you had with her. Breathed with her. Argued with her just to see her pout in disgust. Drove around New York in a sandwich van for twelve hours in the rain listening to that dumb singer she liked just because she broke your heart and you were so pissing angry with her…

Uh. Yeah. So, uh… I lied.

And I lied again when I said the flirting meant nothing. One rule the Rossi household – nothing ever means nothing. That flirting meant something.

When I told she was in my heart always… that meant something too.

But she's going places. London, Paris. I don't know about you but my salary don't stretch much further than that one trip to Europe. Not yet anyway. How can I compete with that? Sandwiches versus the world? Go figure.

But she'll come back someday. When she smiled at me that time, there was something there. Something Egg Salad never got. An extra twist. A glance flickered up to check out my own smile.

She'll go places. She'll see the world and write about it. I'll make sandwiches and show people the world my own way.

But she'll come back. You don't need to be a psychic or even a Rossi to know that. Someday, when the world's saved and jam-packed with teddy-bears, she'll come back. Grab a sandwich. Throw me that smile. Kick in the extra twist of the lips. And stay.

I'll be waiting, Suarez. I know how to wait for something good.

After all nothing ever means nothing.

I don't own Ugly Betty.

Okay, so I know I haven't updated any of my stories in a while, notably In the Streets of Paris what with school and certain... unmentionable... things... *coughs* but when I glanced at the *London Calling* episode of Ugly Betty and saw Gio (Eeeee!) this thing wouldn't stop bugging me. I personally love the conclusion of the Getty story line but still, it's nice to think that he still hopes...