fever dream
9
"Oh, ragazza mia." Nonna shakes her head, then waggles her fist at me. "What did Nonna tell you about getting mixed up with boys, eh?"
Pursing my lips to stifle a smile, I tug her fist close enough to kiss her weathered, wrinkled knuckles. "Lo so, lo so."
"If you know…" she trails off, dark eyes boring holes in my face. I can't tell what she's thinking, and the only way to find out is to wait.
Riley's at home spitting feathers, so it's not like I'm in a rush to get back there, anyway.
Sitting back in the chair, I cross my legs, one over the other, and pick at the frayed corner of the cushion in my lap, wondering how I let this turn into such a mess.
Of course I knew Riley would find out about Edward's visit to the studio at some point. If not from Edward himself, someone was bound to tell him, never mind the fact that Riley occasionally checks out the site anyway. He's got free access to it all, the subscriber section as well as all the free stuff. He's a guy who travels for work at least once a month. Of course he checks out porn occasionally. And his wife produces it; it'd be weird if he didn't make the most of that.
Chewing my lip, I realize how dumb I was to think I could just not mention it.
What if he'd just stumbled across the video by accident?
"Come lo aggiusto?"
"How do I fix it, she asks," Nonna snorts under her breath, reaching for the tupperware box of sfogliatella on the table beside her. Stuffing one in her mouth and keeping another on her knee to eat in a moment, she puts the box back and eyes me as she chews. "What does Riley say?"
"He's furious," I breathe, and...I can't be angry with him for that.
I let him be blindsided by the news that his brother not only just starred in a porno, but he did it at my studio.
"He doesn't know I was there," I admit. It feels good to say it aloud. Rose probably suspects that I didn't share that tidbit with Riley; she called when I was on my way over to Nonna's to see how Riley took everything. Luckily she stepped out to deal with some other drama so she doesn't have that on her conscience, but I stupidly stayed.
Nonna's eyebrows twitch. "Perchè no?"
"Why not?" I repeat, almost laughing except nothing about this is funny. "I don't think it'll help."
"Honesty always helps, bambina."
Bambina.
I'm thirty-six years old, but I've always been Nonna's 'child'. I always will be.
And sometimes, I feel like it.
Reaching for my hand, she twists our fingers together on her knee. "You love him, si?"
"Of course."
Nonna's eyes crinkle in the corners, but not in a smile. More like...knowing? "Non Riley, bambina. Tu ami Edward."
"O-oh."
"Lo vedo nei tuoi occhi."
A short, sharp laugh bursts out of her tiny body, and I can feel my carefully stacked castle of cards starting to tremble.
"Let me tell you a story. Once, I was in love with a boy. Smart, strong, sexy." I can barely breathe, but I manage a weak smile for Nonna, wondering where she's going with this, why she's telling me a story after dropping that bomb.
Lo vedo nei tuoi occhi—I see it in your eyes, she said.
The idea that she might be right terrifies me.
"We were going to, how do you say?" She waves her free hand, scattering bits of flaky pastry all over the place. "Get married, run away?"
"Like, elope, get married in secret?"
"Si! I had a dress and he borrowed a suit from his papa. He was eighteen, had no money to buy one."
Frowning, I glance up at the row of pictures on the mantle. On the end is a picture of Nonna and Nonno on their wedding day, barely twenty and looking far too young to be making that commitment.
Riley and I were the same age.
"We didn't do it, bambina. And two years later, I married your nonno."
Married…
"Wait…" Blinking, I try to put the pieces together. "That wasn't—you nearly married someone else? Not Nonno?"
Nonna shakes her head, her eyes far away. She stares out of the window at something only she can see. "Non. Carlos, bless his soul, he was scared." She scoffs and rolls her eyes. "What will the villagers think, he said. His parents were strict, tradizionale."
"Nonna…" I breathe shakily. "I never knew."
"Of course! I told Carlos he was an idiot and married your nonno, god bless that grande idiota, to prove it."
I can't stifle my laugh at that; it's no secret that Nonna thought Nonno a fool at times. He was a jovial man, large and loud. Loyal. Looking back now, I wonder if he knew that he was Nonna's lesson for Carlos. Her rebound.
Looking at his smiling face on the mantle, arms wrapped around Nonna, I realize he must have.
Just like Riley knows something is wrong with your marriage.
The nagging voice that's been taking up space in the back of my mind is getting increasingly loud as the days go by. I swallow hard, reaching for the glass of water at my feet, drinking until I reach the bottom.
I recall all the times I've come home later than late, freshly showered and unable to summon a good enough lie. All the times he's been out of town and I've let family babysit so that I can sneak off to the dingy motel on the outskirts of the city.
I picture his face when I walked into the house earlier, after he called to ask why he was getting emails about his brother being a porn star, screenshots of Edward and Molly together, of the Notte Oscura website with their faces on the 'featured' banner right on the home page.
Nonna's fingers squeezing my own pull me out of my head. Her smile is gentle, understanding. "I want you to be happy, bambina. Truly happy. Don't waste sixty years pretending like me, not when your Carlos is out there."
~ fd ~
He's waiting for me.
The door closes with a click that echoes like a gunshot. My purse hits the floor with a thud, and it feels like someone has sucked the oxygen from the room.
Air whistles through his nose as he sits heavily on the side of the bed, one hand buried in his hair, the other white-knuckling the edge of the mattress.
"I'm—"
"Don't. Bella, just…" he sighs. "Don't apologize. This is, it's my fault."
"I mean, yeah," I laugh, because I don't know what else to do. This mess... "What were you thinking?"
Edward lifts his head, green eyes glittering in the dim glow of the crappy lamp in the corner. Even now, even when everything feels like it's falling apart, he's wearing that cheeky damn smirk that makes me want to sit on his face. "I was thinking it might be fun to get you all riled up and then fuck it out of you."
"Oh…"
His smirk slips away, replaced by a look so desolate that it makes me want to curl up in a ball on the floor and cry. "Didn't work out that way, obviously."
I snort, dropping down onto the bed beside him. "No, not so much."
"How mad is he?"
"At me?" Edward nods. "Pretty mad. He doesn't get why I didn't tell him."
"What did you tell him?"
"That we have confidentiality agreements that prohibit us from sharing identities unless the talent shares first."
Edward chuckles. "He buy it?"
"No, of course not. He's not stupid, Edward." He shrugs, so I roll my eyes and shoulder-bump him. "But he can't really argue, he knows we have privacy stuff in place, so...he's still mad, though." My teeth sink into my lip. "He's pretty pissed at you, too."
"Yeah, I got a couple ranting voicemails from him earlier. I'll invite him over for a beer tomorrow, straighten things out."
Something about that just doesn't sit right. My murmured agreement tastes like crap on my tongue, like the idea of just...letting this go doesn't fit.
But it does, of course it does. What else are we going to do?
We could tell him about us. This could all be over.
That little, ever-growing voice is back.
A frisson of excitement and fear hitchhikes into my brain on the back of that thought.
The shrill sound of my phone ringing over by the door cuts me off before I can let the ridiculousness in my brain spread, spill from my lips.
"I need to go...that's probably Riley. He thinks I'm with Nonna."
"That's okay, you should go."
I watch his chest rise and fall in a deep breath, feel the bed dip a little as he leans in close enough to press a lingering, warm kiss against the apple of my cheek. My breath hitches; for some reason, my brain tells me that this is it. The bell of finality rings, and as I watch Edward stride toward the door, I can't slow my racing heart.
He pauses, hand splayed on the wood next to the handle, and tilts his head just enough to show me a glimpse of his profile. The glint of a tear on his cheek brings me up short, steals my words before I can put sound to them. "Bye, Bella."
~ fd ~
Inevitably, the rest of the Cullen siblings find out about the video.
The guys think it's hilarious. They're a non-issue, congratulating Edward on how hot Molly is, as if he has anything to do with that.
If Carlisle and Esme know, they choose not to say anything, and I'm grateful. They know what I do, what my business is, but we don't talk about it.
I spend forty-five minutes listening to Alice rant about how stupid Edward was to do it before I finally cut her off, texting a little while later to apologize that my phone must have died.
And Edward...Edward is around.
We don't meet up at the motel and we don't spend any time alone together. He always has one of his siblings, a niece or nephew, or one of his parents as a buffer between us, and I think I get it.
He's finally doing it.
He's finally doing what I couldn't, what I was never strong enough to do.
He's ending it.
I refuse to put too much thought into why that realization makes me want to cut out my own heart just for a reprieve from the relentless ache. The children and work become my distraction, even though I can't completely escape him with those things, either. 'Unc-Ed' gets a new tattoo and Fiorella is obsessed with figuring out what it represents; Jameson just likes to color bits of it with Sharpies.
The hot summer weeks between his birthday and Fiorella's whip by, so before I know it I'm hosting ten twelve- and thirteen-year-olds for a spa morning at my house before a big family barbecue later in the evening.
Fi's one request of Riley is that he takes the week off so they can do fun things together before she goes back to school, so we move around the house with practiced ease, taking care of the house and the children and studiously avoiding the massive elephant in the room.
The fact that neither one of us knows how to act around the other.
Ever since our blow-up fight about Edward shooting porn at my studio, things have been different.
It wasn't until Fiorella asked me why we don't kiss anymore that I realized I don't remember the last time I kissed my husband sober. I barely remember kissing him drunk, and that was at Edward's party where the ridiculous, high-schooler part of me thought it would be a good idea to use him to make Edward jealous.
Petty, I know, but we all make mistakes.
Since then, I've been thinking about the early days of our relationship when the thought of not touching him for the duration of a school day was abhorrent. When his family took him away on a week-long fishing trip and I thought I was going to die. When, not long after we got married and had Fi, his company took him on a team-building retreat and I couldn't wait to have him home so that I could jump his bones.
"Daddy!" Jameson crashes into the kitchen, all goofy grins and icing stained cheeks. "Daddy, snacks."
"It looks like you've had snacks," Riley laughs, scooping our boy up to sit him on the counter while he wipes his face with a cloth.
I watch them together and try to analyze what I'm feeling, my stomach knotting when I realize it's just fondness. There's love there, of course. I've loved Riley since we were fifteen years old.
But the more I think about it, the more I really look at our marriage, the more I realize that we're missing something key.
"Hey, there you are!" Edward skids to a stop when he looks past Riley and Jameson, spotting me. "Oh, hey."
"Hi."
That thing Riley and I are missing—I know it's missing because I feel it now, looking at Edward as he rakes a hand through his hair and plasters the smile back on his face. The one that vanished the second he saw me.
"Want to come terrorize the girls with me? They've got snacks we can steal."
"Snacks!" Jameson squeals, leaping off the counter into his uncle's arms.
They disappear with Riley in tow, and as I sag back against the counter with a muttered "fuck", all I can think about are Nonna's words.
Don't waste sixty years pretending like me, not when your Carlos is out there.
~ fd ~
After my big epiphany on Fiorella's birthday, my life becomes a painful waiting game.
What I'm waiting for, I have no idea. I just know that nothing seems quite right anymore.
It's as though I'm walking through life looking for something to jump out at me, something to scream "here I am! I'm what's going to fix the clusterfuck you've made of your life."
Except that doesn't happen, and I'm left floundering in the mess that I've created with no life preserver in sight and no life jacket to keep me afloat.
My wake-up call comes in the form of an alert on my phone and an uncomfortable task that needs tending to.
"Hi there, Mrs. Cullen. Come on in."
Dr. Gerandy runs through the usual stuff they have to do before a pap smear; height, weight, all that jazz. Then she looks up and asks, "Did we run your urine and bloods?"
"The nurse had me pee in a cup and poked me already." I point to the little wad of cotton taped in the crease of my arm and she smiles.
"Good! Okay, give me one minute, I'll be right back."
One minute turns into five, and just when I'm starting to think she's forgotten I'm even here, Dr. Gerandy returns with an odd look on her face.
"This is purely a guess, but since you didn't mention it...do you know that you're pregnant?"
yup, so that happened.