Chapter 15

It was Saturday. Many people work on Saturdays, and usually Sasha was one of them. Not today, though. Not this Saturday. She knew Peggy would be expecting her, however, and would come to the boat to find her, if she didn’t answer the phone. It had already rung several times. So, finally, she sat up and reached onto the floor for her dress. She wrapped it around her and started to pick the cushions, also, up off the floor. One by one, she tossed them onto the seat, not bothering to arrange them in any particular way.

Somewhere in the middle of the picking up of her dress and the cushions, she became aware that there were no dishes, no glasses, no empty bottles, nothing left from the moonlight picnic of the night before. She sat down to think. He must have moved them while she slept. Yes. But she was sure she had not slept – not after the first time. She was sure she had lain awake while he slept. She thought about it for a moment, dismissed it, got up again and walked along the deck to the stern of the boat, holding her dress in place around her body.

Her cell phone was lying on the table there, right where she had left it when Lionel had held her hand and walked her forward to the dinner he had served her in the bow. She checked and noticed that she had missed calls from him and from Peggy. She looked at the time. He would be in the air by now she figured, so she decided to call Peggy instead. Peggy answered right away.

“Good morning, to you,” she said, sounding cheery and bright, the exact opposite of what Sasha was feeling.

“You’re in a bright mood this morning,” Sasha remarked. “What’s up?”

“Nothing special,” Peggy answered, “It’s just that I think I know how we can get ourselves organised and have a really fabulous opening for the spa, even though we aren’t going to have our equipment and stuff on time. I thought about it all night last night, and I think you are going to like my idea. I’ll tell you about it when we meet. What time are you heading out?”

“Erm! I’m not sure I am heading out anywhere today, Peggy.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Nothing’s up. It’s Saturday. I’m not working today.”

“Ok?” Peggy sounded it out. “You’re not working today. Am I working today?”

“No! No. Don’t work today.”

“Well, I suppose there is not much we can do at the hotel today, anyway. We’ve done just about all we can do to the space itself until we actually get the shipment. Yeah. But, I can come meet you on the boat and tell you my ideas. That, we can do from there.”

“It’s the weekend, Peggy,” Sasha said when Peggy took a breath. “Take the day off. Go to the beach or something. We can’t do anything much today, even with your lovely ideas, so I’m taking the day off and so are you. I need a break. Let’s continue to think through our options and we can make our plans and start working through them when we meet again on Monday morning. How does that sound?”

“ERM! Sounds good, I suppose…erm…so…Ok. Yes,” Peggy half-heartedly agreed. “Yes. You’re right. Once you make a decision about what we’re going to do, then we are going to have to kick into high gear, and it’ll be all systems go, full speed ahead until opening day. You’re right. Get some rest today. And tomorrow, too. You could do with the break. I will keep thinking and we’ll get back to work Monday morning bright and early. I’ll be ready. Call me if you need anything, though, yes?”

“Yes, Peg, thanks,” Sasha answered. “Catch you later.”

“Later.” And Peggy hung up.

Sasha decided to take a shower. She didn’t want to take a shower. In truth, it seemed like much too much of an effort. She would have preferred to just fall into bed and find oblivion. Her mind was racing and her body was not keeping up. A shower was what she needed, in fact, or a long run, to settle her mind, but she was up for neither of the two. A long cool drink would help, too, she thought. Lemonade, beer, water, whatever. At this point, anything would do, as long as it was cold. She opened the refrigerator, found a carton of orange juice, took the cap off and put it to her head. She stood in the open doorway of the fridge and drank until she felt a brain freeze coming on, then she drank some more. She closed the fridge and walked towards the shower, taking the carton with her and drinking still as she went.

She dropped her dress onto the floor of the passageway and kept walking. She turned the cold water tap on. The water was not exactly cold. She wanted cold. After a while, it started to get cooler little by little. She made do with what she got, intending to just let it run over her body for as long as she felt like letting it do so. She was waiting to feel calm – well, maybe not calm, necessarily, she thought. Maybe just different. But that just was not happening. Gallons of water and many minutes later, she still felt strange. Her body felt strange; her mind felt strange. She kept thinking of Lionel and how he had loved her last night. She couldn’t get her mind off him. Couldn’t think of anything else. But, there was this other thought just beneath these sexy and romantic ones. There was something niggling at her, and she couldn’t quite put a name to it – or wouldn’t.

Eventually, she stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a big beach towel. She had perched the orange juice carton on the edge of a countertop before stepping into the shower, so, now, she picked it up as she left the bathroom, drank some more and went to bed. In bed, she tossed and turned and tossed some more, unable to fall asleep. It was getting warmer by the minute, as well – there was not much of a breeze, and whatever little there was, could evidently, not make itself felt through the portholes. That did not help her state of mind. She had long abandoned the towel so now she lay naked, hot, uncomfortable and completely out of sorts. It was not even midday yet.

Finally, however, she did fall asleep. She slept a deep and untroubled sleep and when she awoke, the sun was high in the sky, but already beginning to lean towards the west. She rolled over and sat up, and immediately her thoughts went to Lionel. She wondered whether he had arrived in Los Angeles and how he was doing. Had he seen his brother yet? How had he felt when he saw him? What did his father have to say? Did he tell Antonella about his night with her? She must have realised that he had not come home. Did she know that he had spent the night at her place? Making love to her? What would she think if she knew? She shook her head several times and got to her feet.

“What the hell?” she exclaimed out loud. “What the hell is wrong with me? First, I don’t like this man, then I’m not sure. Then I wanted him, and then I didn’t and then I wanted him again. And now, he has gone away, back to his real life and I am acting like a schoolgirl with a giant crush. What the hell is this?”

She needed to get ahold of herself, she thought. Like right now. She thought that very clearly, but just could not get her mind to move off the track it had been stuck on all morning. So, she told herself, he had said, “You are the woman I love.” What did that mean? Why did he not just say, I love you, and leave it at that. “You are the woman I love”! Out of how many? It sounded to her, as if there was another woman somewhere. And maybe there was, she tod herself. And why not? They had got to know each other less than a month ago. Why would she think that this man, young, good-looking, rich and sophisticated would be unattached and not have a woman somewhere? What did he mean when he said, “You are the woman I love.”? Who else was there? Those words just kept swirling around in her head. She couldn’t get rid of them. Was he being expected to love somebody else? Maybe even a wife?! Or, maybe he was a don Giovanni, a Latin lover with several women on his roster. The thoughts were giving her a headache.

She put on a pair of running shorts and a t-shirt. She grabbed her sneakers and found a pair of socks, then she filled her bottle with water and went for a run. It was hot, but the sun was low enough by now to not be too much of a concern. Not that it would have made a difference to her. She needed to do something intense; blow off some energy; do something that would get her focused and take her mind off of Lionel and the millions of questions that were running around in her head and clouding up her mind. She left the boat and ran and ran and ran until she was spent. When she stopped running, she was on the other side of the marina, on the beach away from the docks. She took off her sneakers and walked in the surf until she came back around to the dockside. On the boat, she took another shower, made herself a cup of soup, had it with some crackers and went to bed. She deliberately did not check her phone, and when it rang – as it did several times – she ignored it.

Lionel was getting agitated. And even worried, at this point. He had been calling Sasha all day, since the moment he landed in LA and she never picked up. Why was she not answering? Where could she be? What had happened between last night and now that could have made her be choosing to ignore his calls? Had something happened to her? Had she had a car accident or something? At other times, he felt almost certain that she was deliberately ignoring him, but could not come up with a reason why? He’d try calling Peggy, he thought, and then realised that the only number he had for Peggy was the hotel extension and it was Saturday, so she might not be there. He would give it a try

anyway. The hotel answered, of course, but the extension rang itself out. There was no-one there. He called Sasha’s number again. Still no answer.

He looked through the glass partition at his brother Mario, still in a coma, lying in his hospital bed with tubes and cables hooked up to what seemed to be every part of his body. His mother was dozing in an armchair across the family visiting room next to his brother’s room. His father had gone walking with Lorenzo, and his sisters were each curled up on a chair, one reading a book, the other doing something on her laptop. His heart and head hurt.

He remembered now, that when he had said, “I love you” she had not answered except to ask him if it was time for him to go. Why? Did she not feel the way he did? She must not, or she would have answered his calls. She might even have called him herself! He swung his legs off the coffee table on which he had them perched, put his phone down and left the room. He needed air. His sisters looked up briefly as he walked out, glanced over at their injured brother and went back to their activities.

I will send her a Whatsapp message, he decided. She won’ t be able to pretend she didn’t see it. He was just turning around to go back into the elevator and up to the room to get his phone, when he heard a woman call his name.

“Hey, Gina,” he said, when she came up to him. ‘How’s it going?”

“I came as soon as I heard,” she said. She smiled at him, opened her arms wide and put them around him. “Poor baby,” she added, reaching up and holding his head so she could kiss him full on his mouth.

He held her hands and unwound her arms from his body.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming in?” she asked. “I’d have picked you up from the airport.”

“Wasn’t necessary, Gina,” he said.

“Well, I would have liked it,” she purred. “I would have got to see my baby earlier.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked at her, but only shook his head.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?” she asked. “While you’ve been lolling around in the Caribbean sun, I’ve been here in Los Angeles missing you.”

“Missing me?” he asked.

“Yes! Missing you.”

He moved sideways so he could get past her and walk away. “See you later, Gina,” he told her.

She stepped quickly to the side so that he walked right into her. On instinct, when he collided with her, he put his arms out to steady her. She chuckled, forcing an embrace, and put her arms around him again. He unwound them again, against her resistance and walked away.

“I’ll wait for you in the family room,” she said, smiling after him as he walked away. He just shook his head and kept walking.

She must have heard through Pierpaolo that he was coming in, he figured. Her father was an old friend of Pierpaolo’s and over the years, his father had been hinting subtly and not so subtly, but relentlessly, that she and Lionel would make a good marriage. He, Lionel, had never been interested in her in any way other than one would a distant cousin who just happened to be female. The families had spent many holidays together when the children were children and the parents were younger, and they still all got together for major holidays and events. But a marriage was not in the cards for Lionel and Gina. Right now, the only woman on his mind was this woman across the ocean who had made fiery love with him last night and now was refusing to answer his calls. He decided that he would continue on his walk and wait awhile for Gina to get settled in with Francesca and Antonella and his mother, before he’d go back upstairs.

He walked around the hospital until he found a coffee shop. He took his time ordering and then took the longest way he could find back to his brother’s bedside. He realised that his phone was ringing right as he came through the door. Unfortunately, Gina was seated in the same chair he had been and she looked at the screen, then picked up the phone and handed it to him, but not before remarking, “Oh! Sasha! Sasha! Who’s Sasha?” He grabbed the phone from her hand and walked away to answer it.

“With a name like that, I could imagine what work she does,” he heard Gina say. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Antonella sit up and turn around to Gina and then look toward him.

“Oh, shut up, Gina,” Antonella told her. “You really need to stop doing shit like that.” Gina shrugged.

“You still waiting for him to marry you, girl?” Francesca asked her.

“Cause, who else can he marry?”

“Anybody at all that he wants to, G,” Francesca explained. “This is the twenty-first century, and we’re not in Calabria anymore.”

Lionel had long left the room. He heard nothing of this conversation.

“Sasha! Amore mio!” he said into the telephone. “What’s up? I’ve been calling you all day. Is everything ok?”

“Yes,” she told him. “Everything’s ok. I saw your calls but I actually slept for most of the day. I was just so tired.” He heard her, but he sensed that something was not quite right. He wondered, however, if he was overreacting and maybe just overthinking things.

“I hear you!” he said. “I slept the entire flight. Didn’t wake up until we were landing in LA.” And then, very softly, “You ok, Sash? I’m sorry I had to leave this morning. I would have loved to wake up with you, or sleep most of the day with you but I had to leave! I’m sorry, my love.”

“Yeah!” she answered just as softly. “That would have been good. Although, I probably would not have slept all day, if you had been here.” He laughed. “Me neither,” he said. He noticed that she wasn’t laughing.

“Listen, Lionel,” she went on, and his heart sank.

“Tell me, amore.”

There was a brief pause before she asked, “How is your brother? How’s he doing? Any improvements yet?” He let out a sigh of relief.

“He is stable. The doctors say he is stable. I’m here at the hospital with my sisters and my mum. We’re just waiting.”

“Well, stable is not the worst it could be.”

“You’re right. It could be much worse. He is breathing over the vent, too. That means he is breathing on his own, but they’re keeping the ventilator attached just as an added support until he gets stronger and his functions improve.”

“Good. That all sounds hopeful. What about you? How are you doing?”

“I am doing better now that I am getting to talk to you,” he answered. She made a laughing sound. It pleased him, and at the same time, it disturbed him. He was still feeling that there was something else; that she wanted to tell him something else but was holding back, and it didn’t quite worry him, but it did make him feel somewhat uneasy.

There was a strange awkwardness between them. He wished again that he had not had to leave so soon after he had shown her his heart. He wished they’d had more time to explore and discover each other. Last night had been a truly amazing night – the food, the stars and the moon, the sea and mostly, her – her body, her spirit, her sweetness and her beauty. He was missing her now. He wondered if she knew.

“I wish I was there with you, still,” he said. “I’m missing you, Sash.”

“You are?” she asked, sounding to him as if she were afraid.

“I am. Yes. You remember what I told you last night? I meant that. I’ve fallen in love with you, Sasha. Last night was about that. I need you to know that.”

She didn’t speak right away. He waited. He could hear her breathing.

“I remember,” she said at last. “I remember, and I told you that my heart was with you. And I meant that, but now you are over there in California – far, far away – and I am on the other side of the continent, and you are back into your life, and your work and who knows when we will see each other again. You know?”

It was his turn to remain silent. He wanted to say the right thing. He wanted to reassure her. She was right, and they had not talked about it, but he had thought about it. A lot. He had been thinking about it ever since that first time they’d had dinner together. He had fallen in love with her, he had realised, probably that first night at the party on her boat. He had gone back to find her because he had been so taken up with her. He couldn’t even remember now, what excuse he had made up to get to go back and talk to her. All he knew at the time was that he had to; he just had to speak to her. He remembered that she had not seemed particularly eager to talk to him then, or any of the other five or six times he had managed to wiggle himself into her life, but she had been polite and that had been enough for him to go on. Now, he was in her life, though, and she in his, and he was not about to let that change any time soon – or ever again, if it were up to him.

“You are going to be seeing me, amore. You are going to be seeing me,” he repeated. “Last night was just the beginning. I know what you mean about me being back here in Cali, but that’s not going to stop me seeing you. That’s not going to stop us being together. I will travel to meet you; to be wherever you are and wherever you want me to be. I will make the time, Sasha. Please believe me. We will have the time we need with each other, even with you in Provo and traveling wherever you have to, for your business and me in Cali doing the same with mine. I will make sure of that.”

“It will be hard, though,” she said. “It feels so hard already.” She paused and he heard her take a deep breath. “I was not sure I wanted to talk to you today, Lionel, because I was afraid, I think. I couldn’t see how we were going to move ahead, especially since you had to leave so soon after last night. There was no time at all, for any of what happened between us last night to sink in, or even for us to talk about it a little bit. It was like, you know, it just happened and then you were gone, and that was the end of that.”

“Oh! No! No, baby, no!” Lionel cried. “No. It’s nothing like that. That was just the beginning for us, my darling. That was just the beginning. There’s no turning back now. I want you in my life, and now that I have you in it, I am never going to let you go. Do you understand, my love? You understand?”

“Yes,” Sasha said softly after some moments. “Yes. I understand. I feel the same way, too.”

“Good,” Lionel responded. “That makes me happy. So very happy. Everything will be just fine, my darling. You’ll see. We will get through this time and then we can be together whenever we want, as much as we want. Do you want that?”

“Yes,” said Sasha. “I want that. More than you know.”

“I’m going back into the room now,” Lionel said after they had talked some more. “We’re taking turns watching Rio, and I’m up next, in about half an hour or so, so I’m going to go back into the hospital.”

“You’re taking turns? Oh wow! That is so good.”

“Well, you know how hospitals are. Even the best ones. So, we are not leaving him alone, not even for a second. There are four of us sisters and brothers, so we’re doing four six-hour shifts every day until he comes through. Mum and Dad are here, too, but they come and go. They’re not on the schedule. But, in reality, only Dad comes and goes. Mum doesn’t go anywhere. She stays at Rio’s bedside all the time, regardless of who’s, there; fixed, stationery, immovable. She has not left the hospital building since the night she came down from Santa Barbara. She hasn’t even been home to her house yet!”

“That’s awesome!” Sasha said. “You guys are a very tight family.”

“Yes,” Lionel said, adding, with a chuckle, “most of the time! Then, there are the times when we’re not!” Sasha laughed, too.

“That is truly amazing. I wouldn’t have anyone to sit with me if anything happened to me. I am an only child – no sisters, no brothers, and no father even, anymore.”

“You have me, Sasha.” Lionel used his most serious tone, it seemed to Sasha. “You have me,” he repeated. “You wouldn’t be alone. You are not alone, babe. Not anymore.”

Sasha didn’t know quite what to say, so at first, she said nothing. Then, “Really?” was the only thing she could come up with, and he responded with exactly that.

“Really,” he said back to her, with emphasis. “Really. Yes. Really.”