I squinted up and down the beach, trying to get my bearings as my pounding head tried to make sense of everything that had happened.
Then my bladder began to complain, urging me to drain the mainframe before I did anything else. I lurched to my feet and took a long and satisfying piss against the wall of an old fisherman’s hut, watched by a one-eyed dog.
“Don’t look at me, buddy,” I croaked. “I’m in worse shape than you are.”
I ran my hands across my scruff and took a tentative sniff at an armpit. Not too rank. Well, that was something.
I found my bike still intact in the bar’s parking lot then remembered that the tank was nearly empty. Luckily a local gas station had opened, selling fuel at the extortionate sum of €1.73 a liter, or about nine bucks a gallon in good ole US dollars.
I headed back toward Casa Giovina, wondering what to say to Caro, wondering what she’d say to me. But just before I reached the turnoff, I saw her walking along the highway, my overnight bag slung across one shoulder. Shit! She was already leaving!
I pulled over, but when she recognized the bike, she put her head down and started walking faster. Annoyed, I jogged up behind her, cursing the movement that made my stomach and head protest in stereo.
“Caro, wait!”
But she didn’t, so I grabbed the handles of the bag, forcing her to stop.
“Caro, I’m sorry.” No response. “Okay?” Still no response. Pissed, I tugged on the handles of the bag again until she had to let go. “Are you going to talk to me?”
“I think you’ve said enough—for both of us,” she snapped.
“Fuck, Caro! It was the alcohol talking, that’s all…” I protested.
“It was more than that and you know it, Sebastian.”
Her dark eyes flashed with a fury that matched my own.
“Can’t you take a fucking apology?” I barked.
“I don’t know,” she hissed. “Can you make one?”
We stood staring at each other; both hurt, both angry.
I ran my hand over my hair and frowned at her. “Can we just go somewhere and talk? Or are you going to walk back to Geneva?”
She folded her arms across her chest, glaring back at me. “Yes, frankly. I was going to get a cab to drive me to the airport. I’m sure I’d have no trouble getting a flight.”
I tried to make my voice softer because I could see that being pissed was getting me exactly nowhere.
“Don’t leave like this, Caro,” I reasoned. “Let’s just talk and if we can’t … fix this, I’ll take you to the airport myself.”
Even as I said the words I knew with certainty that I didn’t want her to go. I had to man the fuck up and make this right.
She hesitated for five long seconds, then nodded coldly. I stowed the bag and silently passed her a helmet.
When I climbed back on the bike, she refused to take my hand, preferring to scramble on awkwardly by herself. I heaved out a sigh when she held onto the small grab-bar at the rear of her seat instead of linking her arms around my waist as she’d always done before.
I swung the bike around in a slow U-turn and headed southeast, away from the airport, following the coast road. After a few miles, I pulled up by a beach café in the small town of Bogliasco.
“Do you want a coffee?” I suggested.
“An espresso and a glass of water, please,” she replied stiffly.
The waiter was talking to a group of old guys and seemed surprised to have customers so early in the morning.
I thought I might feel better if I ate something, even though my stomach rebelled at the idea.
I leaned back in my chair, staring across at Caro, not flinching from her gaze as she stared back. I had no idea how to start this conversation, especially as she didn’t look like she wanted to talk to me.
Our coffees arrived along with a basket of rolls, and I wondered who was going to break the silence first.
I pushed the basket toward her but she shook her head.
“No, thank you. I’ve already eaten.”
“Did you check out of that place?”
“Yes,” she clipped out.
“Did you pack up my stuff?”
She seemed surprised by my question. “Of course!”
Yeah? Well, I’d expected her to have tossed my stuff or left it behind.
“Okay, thanks,” I said quietly. “What do I owe you for the room?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“Just tell me what I owe you, Caro.”
“Seeing as you didn’t stay in it, I don’t see why you should pay.”
I took a deep breath, trying to calm my irritation.
“Is this how you’re going to be?”
“How would you like me to be, Sebastian?” she asked coldly. “Because, honestly, I just don’t know.”
Fuck fuck fuck.
I grabbed a roll as a distraction, needing to do something with my hands so I could think, and started tearing it into pieces.
“Look, maybe we should just cut our losses,” she said, her voice empty and tired. “I’ll get a cab to the airport and you can … do whatever you want, Sebastian.”
God, no! Was that what she wanted? I stared at the crumbs on my plate.
“I don’t want you to go,” I admitted, the tug of desperation making my gut churn again.
She waited for me to say something else—but I had no clue what she needed to hear. What the fuck did I know about relationships? I’d gone out with Brenda when I was 16, then met Caro, and had boned so women since her that it was lucky my dick hadn’t died from over-use.
“Sebastian,” she said, with the tone an adult uses when a kid is pissing them off but they’re trying not to lose it, “you’re going to have to tell me why on earth you’d want me to stay. Last night you said some pretty unpleasant things: and I’m not going to accept your explanation about having drunk too much. It’s clear that you’ve been hanging on to a lot of anger toward me. And I don’t know what I can do about that.”
She was right. Christ, I hated that. I needed to give her something; explain the flashpoints that kept setting off my explosive temper.
“Caro, did you really try and find me when I turned 21?”
She sighed, looking disappointed.
“I’ll tell you exactly what I told you before: I wrote to Shirley, and I wrote to Donna. But no, I didn’t try and find you directly, because I simply wanted to know that you were okay. When both letters were returned unopened, I suppose I took it as an omen that it wasn’t to be. I didn’t feel I had the right to interrupt your life and risk doing further damage. I felt a great deal of guilt at the devastation I left behind me: I didn’t want to remind you of all that, or make you feel any obligation toward me. It never occurred to me that you … that you’d be waiting for me.”
Was she for real? I leaned forward, my tone angry. “But I said I’d wait for you. I promised I’d wait. Hell, Caro, it was the last thing I got to say to you. And you … you said…” I stopped, wondering if she even remembered what she’d said to me.
Her gaze softened and her eyes creased with emotion.
“Oh, Sebastian … I’m so very sorry.”
I swallowed hard, hearing the regret in her voice. “Did you mean it, Caro? Did you mean it when you said you loved me?”
“Yes, tesoro,” she whispered.
Her admission stunned me, that and hearing the nickname that she’d had for me all those years ago … but was it all in the past tense?
“I loved you very much,” she continued, but then her back straightened, and some of the softness hardened again. “But you’re not the person I knew ten years ago. The Sebastian I knew was sweet and gentle and loving, but you … you can be like that, but your anger scares me. The hatred I saw in your face and heard in your words—that was hard for me. I can see that you think I let you down badly ten years ago, or when you were 21 … and I can’t tell you how sorry I am for that, but I can’t fix it either—I can’t change the past.”