ALLIE HAD BEEN right and I didn’t think it was possible. A few days before she died, we were lying in bed and I was reading aloud to her from a book of short stories by David Sedaris. I was just getting to the good part when she moved her hand to block the words from my view and turned her face to me.
“Promise me you’ll get married again one day.”
She said it just like that, totally out of the blue, and it felt like a punch to the chest.
“Allie, I don’t want to talk about—”
“Swear to me,” she insisted, her voice never wavering.
I brushed her hand from the page and tried to continue reading.
“I’m scared to die, Gianluca, but even more than that, I’m scared that this cancer is going to kill both of us. From the moment we met, you’ve loved me so fiercely that I worry you’ll never recover.”
“I won’t.”
“You have to! I’m making it my final wish. You have to live and grow and fall in love again.”
I shook my head and stared at the words starting to blur on the page. “No.”
Her small hand clutched mine, so weak by that point. “I promise that by the time you’re twenty-eight, you’ll be happy again. You’ll have moved on and I’ll be nothing but a distant memory.”
I disagreed. That was only three years. Even if I lived for another lifetime, I’d never get over her.
“Twenty-nine then,” she countered.
“Never.”
“Fine. Thirty. By the time you’re thirty, you’ll be happy again and madly in love. I promise. I’ll work some kind of cosmic magic to make it happen, just you wait and see.”
At the time, I’d insisted she was crazy, but now, a few weeks before my thirtieth birthday, I wasn’t so sure anymore.
I followed Georgie down the hill that morning. She’d acted so strangely, running off as soon as she woke up. I’d given up trying to decipher the meanings of most of Georgie’s words and actions, but she’d run out of there like a bat out of hell and I wanted to know why. The door to the bed and breakfast was locked by the time I arrived. I pulled out my keys, unlocked it, and flipped the light switch in the common room.
Georgie was in her bedroom with the door closed. I could see a small shaft of light spilling out from the beneath the door. I leaned forward and knocked gently.
“Georgie?”
“Oh bloody hell,” she cursed under her breath.
“Are you okay?”
“No! Feeling a bit ill actually, better stay away so you don’t get it.”
“Stop being ridiculous and let me in.”
I heard footsteps moving toward the door and then she spoke again, louder this time. “Now isn’t a good time, Gianluca! I think I’ve come down with that cold you were talking about earlier.”
I rolled my eyes and turned the door handle. At first she tried to hold it closed, but she eventually gave in and stepped back. The door flung open and Georgie stood on the other side with a red nose and puffy eyes and a sad frown tugging at my heartstrings.
I wanted to step forward and comfort her, but she took a step back, keeping a healthy distance between us.
“What’s the matter? Why did you run off like that?”
“Please could we talk about this another time? I’m really tired and I just want to sleep for a little bit.”
“I just want to know what’s going on. Is this about last night?”
She groaned, flinging her eyes past me as if she was deciding the best method of escape. “Please, Gianlu—”
“Stop it. Stop pushing me away and tell me why you ran off like that.”
There were several long moments of silence, with her gaze on the doorway and her fists clenched by her sides. It was such a long pause, in fact, I assumed she would never speak up, so when she did, it hit twice as hard.
“You love her still, don’t you?”
Allie.
I didn’t even have to pause. “Of course I do. I always will.”
She nodded and turned away, trying to hide her tears.
“Is that why you’re upset? Because I love Allie?”
“You keep her up there in that house, Gianluca! You love her like she’s still alive. Her toothbrush, her pills, her clothes—it’s not healthy to hold on to her like that!”
I’d heard the same argument from Massimo and Katerina more times than I could count and my rage nearly boiled over now that Georgie was laying it on me as well. I was sick of people telling me how to mourn and when to move on. No one knew what it was like to lose Allie the way I did, what it feels like to watch, powerless, as death slowly robs you of the person you love most in the world. There was no clean break, no tragic accident, here one day and gone the next. No, I was there watching as she struggled for her last ragged breaths, crying and terrified. There was no closure. There was only the end.
No one could possibly tell me how to move on from that, not even Georgie. That’s why I had secluded myself for all these years.
“You’ll never have room for love as long as she’s there.”
“If you’re asking me to choose you over her, I won’t do it, Georgie. I can’t do it.”
She squeezed her eyes closed as if in pain. She had to know this was the case. I’d been nothing but honest with her from the start. Things were developing between us, but I couldn’t turn off my love for Allie.
“Get out of my room, please.”