Page 98 of My Dark Fairy Tale
We were meant to be together, and, climax-drunk, I could see no reasons why we shouldn’t be.
Chapter Twenty-One
Raffa
Life was better than it had been since I was a boy, too innocent and young to understand the cruelties of the world. Only perhaps it was better because now I was a man who knew just how cruel the world was and how to make myself cruel enough to defend against it.
And even then, I still fell in love with a girl who was made of starlight and sunshine.
That was the only way I knew how to define the feeling that overcame me whenever I was with her or thinking of her. As if a supernova was expanding in my chest.
Nothing had ever felt like it before, but I had read enough poetry to recognize that these symptoms spoke of love.
I had dated at Oxford and in London, beautiful, interesting women who knew nothing about my history, but there was no comparison.
Even though Guinevere did not know everything about me, specifically the nature of my business and the kind of man I had to be to do it, she still knew so much more than anyone else. From the very first, it was like she had sensed the shape of my soul buried six feet deep in the fallow field of my chest and carefully nurtured it back to life.
Her love of Italy lent itself to knowing me the way women before her had not. How could anyone love me without knowing of Italy? The country that had, for better or worse, carved me slowly and irrevocably into the form I took now. No number of years in Britain could rid me of that influence, and I realized, to my surprise, I was pleased by that.
I had been right at the start when I’d told Guinevere she could make me fall in love with my country again. I just had not expected her to make me fall in love with them both simultaneously.
Loving her was the less surprising of the two.
She was everything good I admired, shaded in just enough of her own unique darkness to be three dimensional and vibrant with complexity.
But the fact that she had made me fall in love with myself?
Shocking.
It was hard to look back at the last four years, no, thirteen including the time in England, and see how truly unhappy I had been. First cast out of my family with only infrequent, clandestine communication so that my father would not discover I was still in contact with my mother and sisters. Completely without the comforts of my culture—the only friends who knew who I was straight through to the bone were Martina, who moved to be with me after the death of her husband, and Renzo and Carmine, who visited whenever they could.
Then, when I returned to Italy, a bittersweet homecoming because I had to pick up the dirty mantle of a man I hated in order to safeguard the Romano women from the vultures circling in the wake of Aldo’s death.
Even as I adjusted to my new reality, it was with a resignation that tainted me through to the very marrow of my bones. Even as I grew to enjoy aspects of the work and the shadowed corners of my psyche that made me so adept at it, I could not fully rejoice in this new life because it had not been my decision to live it.
Loving Guinevere, though terrifying, seemed like the first decision I had made for myself since I’d left Italy, turning my back on my past to pursue my dream of Oxford and a civilian life.
I wondered what I would do to keep the dream of Vera alive too.
I stood drinking a glass of wine in the corner of the kitchen, watching her. She was laughing, hand on the forearm of her old Scottish friend, Fergus, as if she needed his support to hold her up. Bibi, the beautiful Black woman, flicked her on the nose and made her laugh so hard I could hear the faint strains of it over the music and the other general chatter of the San Lorenzo festivities. She had started to talk more with her hands, especially when she spoke Italian, and they fluttered through the air like pale birds.
It was impossible to look away from her radiance.
“You’re completely gone for her,” Martina observed as she sidled up beside me, leaning her hip against the counter so we were pressed together.
For someone who usually avoided physical touch, she sought it with Renzo and me whenever she could. I wondered if she was as touch starved as I hadn’t realized I was before meeting Guinevere.
I sighed, angling an annoyed look her way.
“Don’t sigh at me as if I’m some inaccurate nuisance. I am one of your best friends and, I’ll have you know, filled with deep wisdom.”
“I think you mean bullshit.”
Her elbow dug into my side, but I was ready for her, transferring my glass to the counter so I could pin her in a headlock.
Renzo appeared, blinking at us mildly. “Oh, are we reverting back to the age of eleven?”
“Don’t tease him,” Martina said as she squirmed out of my loosened hold. “Can’t you see he’s in love?”
