Chapter 19
Twin Curses
The next morning, Vero Roseto’s popularity gets another shot in the arm when a glowing review of our B&B and winery publishes on Holiday, which is evidently an enormously trafficked travel website in the UK. Our old friend Mr. Cartwright came through! Ben, Ro, Paul, and I huddle around our coffees in the kitchen and flip through the review, calling out our favorite snippets:
“ ‘Mama Bianchi’s showmanship alone is worth the price of admission,’ ” Ro gasps, delighted, as Paul massages her back.
“ ‘The family that owns Vero Roseto still lives on-site after three-quarters of a century, bustling around you like delightful characters in a fairy tale,’ ” he reads.
I read, “ ‘The romantic and magical myth of the Wishing Rose is irresistible to even the biggest skeptics. Don’t miss your wish, but be warned: they do come true.’ ”
Oof. Hearing Mr. Cartwright echoing the warnings in my rose video reminds me just how seriously I’ve been taking this whole rose curse thing for so long. The longer I spend with Ben, the sillier that superstition has seemed. Still, superstition is good for business. Since that article was published, we sold over a hundred more tickets to the Rose Festival, which is bringing us dangerously close to a thousand.
“ ‘And don’t miss the local gardener,’ ” Ben reads with mock surprise. “ ‘What a piece of ass!’ ”
“Oh!” Aunt Ro balls up her coffee-stained napkin and lobs it at him, which he ducks.
“So annoying!” I laugh.
“What?” Ben asks. “I’m flattered and humbled and…”
“All right, a toast!” Ro raises her mug to Paul, Ben, and me, and we join her. She takes a moment to say anything, and I know why: Italians (and especially the Italians in this family) are very, very jinx-phobic and careful to phrase their toasts so as not to accidentally doom themselves or the family in a monkey’s paw–type situation. I mean, I’ve based my whole romantic life around such an error in wish-phrasing judgment. Finally, having decided on a path forward, she says, “To the four of us. We’re doing good. Keep it up.”
“KEEP IT UP!” We cheer, clinking mugs.
With his one review, published only four weeks before the festival, Mr. Cartwright has strengthened our myth. And the expectations.
The pressure isn’t new to me—in fact, pressure is where I thrive (professionally, not romantically). Unlike previous times I’ve put on a large, anticipatory show, I’m not going to follow the internet chatter on this one. That’s the last thing I need.
That afternoon, Ben and I take a walk to the back of Vero Roseto’s grounds near the pie stand. Here, where the high trees make you feel insignificant to nature, Mama Bianchi had built an ivory gazebo with a swinging bench. Happily, Ro kept this maintained over the years.
“Thank God this works. I don’t think I’d have the strength to rebuild a gazebo, too,” Ben says, swaying beside me on the bench, his leg draped carelessly over the armrest.
“Please!” I agree, sketching an outline of the rose garden on my tablet. The gazebo turned out to be a perfect brainstorming spot, with full views of both the rose garden and the freshly mowed plot where the sculpture garden will be reconstructed. The Wishing Rose is concealed behind high green walls, which used to feel like a magnificent, fantastical realm when it was covered in snarling vines and blooms. It was important that they were removed once they rotted, but something just as fantastical will need to take their place.
And I only have a few weeks left to make it happen.
The labor involved in design and creation looks less impressive than the construction of a deck, but it can be just as draining. I delete sketch after sketch while Ben peeks over my shoulder—never offering feedback, just calmly watching, his eyes bright with amazement. Every once in a while, he’ll mutter, “Wow,” and when I delete it five minutes later, he whines, “What was the matter with that? It was gorgeous.”
“But it’s not right,” I say.
“If you say so.”
My ex and I used to create art together, and the back-and-forth of our brainstorming was exhilarating. Do I want this for me and Ben? I want him to feel like I welcome his opinions, because this reconstruction is just as much his as it is mine. But it’s hard to tell what he wants, because Ben’s waters run deeper and calmer than anyone I’ve ever been with.
Except I’m not with him!
God, I could smack myself with this tablet. What I’ve grown with Ben is intimacy, not romance. Complicated, abiding friendship love, not romantic love. It will be more lasting in the long run, even if it’s not what I grew up wanting.
On my tablet screen, I’ve drawn and redrawn the Wishing Rose bush a dozen times. What could I do with that space that’s fantastical, but different and new? Something that speaks to me and Ben. Our mud fight replays in my mind. Laughing with him again, freely, for the first time since our dreadful fight at Grandma’s wake. The streams of water hitting him as he danced in my spray. The fountains, which Ben said not to fill because still water brings mosquitoes. Memories flutter, all the way back to the origin of my curse. All the tears they caused.
My eyebrow lifts.
Water. It’s all about water.
Running water from the fountains. Cleansing sprays. Streams of tears from wishes that didn’t go right, or wishes that ended a lifetime later in a funeral home, surrounded by grandchildren.
Invidioso e Grato. Love can’t be appreciated until you’ve known the pain of being without.
“We need to surround the Wishing Rose with a fountain,” I say, my heart racing with new ideas. Ben straightens against me, unseated as I lean deeper into my tablet, my electronic pen tracing streams of bright blue across the ground. “The fountains won’t be those old-fashioned stone ones. We’ll build a running river through it, kind of like a Zen garden, and it’ll lead to the Wishing Rose. We’ll put underlights in the river to make it reflect against the walls.”
My hand whirls across the screen until the doodle is complete.
Two large streaks of blue run down from the rose bush. Ben makes an interested sound. “It looks like the Wishing Rose is crying.”
“Exactly.” My voice is clear. Energized. “It’s love. Happy or sad, you always pay in tears.”
“That’s metal as hell.” Ben snatches my tablet to get a closer look at the new concept. He turns to me, blinking heavily. “Who’s building that?” Guiltily, I sputter laughter into my hand. “Aw shit, me?! Forget I said it was good.”
“Nooooo! You and me together!” I thrust a tickle fit into his belly, and he squirms on the bench so much, it bounces on the gazebo’s hinges.
“Okay, okayyyyyy! Stop tickling, I don’t like it.”
Instantly, I throw up my hands in surrender.
As Ben’s laughter settles, he faces me, folding his legs on the hanging bench. “Since we’re friends again, can I ask you something?”
Yes, you can kiss me.
“Sure,” I say, shrugging as carelessly as I can manage with this much care in my body.
My heart has decided to stop beating until it knows how Ben will proceed.
I’ve been here before, deep in the bowels of the wine cellar, the Devil listening, waiting for my hand to fall lovingly on his wrist before he destroys me a second time.
“Is there something wrong with me?” Ben asks. I expel a wheezing laugh. “Don’t answer yet! I’m just…you know how much I’ve dated and how quick my relationships are over.”
“Well, I just assumed you were trying not to get tied down before you went back to Edinburgh…” My breath slowing, my eyes drift up. “Right?”
“Maybe. I don’t really know what I want after this. Tending these grounds has been the biggest gardening project I’ve ever had to deal with. Maybe…if my dad’s health stays all right…Going back might be the best place to keep up my skills?”
There it is: the future. Ben’s thinking about it, and I have to, too.
The summer will be over soon, just like all those beautiful summers before they ended, and I have to be ready with my next step, just like Ben will be ready with his.
“But back to the guys thing,” he says, tapping his lips. “It’s like…when I’m with someone, and it’s going fine, he’s cute, we’re vibing, but then…” Ben tosses his hands. “Meh. Two or three dates later, maybe four, he starts bugging the shit out of me, and my interest just floats away.”
Ben turns his attention to the chain-link cord holding up our bench. He plays with it instead of looking at me—even though my eyes are far from judgmental.
On a pained laugh, he says, “I keep hurting people. It’s like I can’t stop. I want to get serious. I want to keep liking someone, but I can’t. Then I see someone I want again and…the cycle starts all over.” Shaking his head, he finally looks up. “What kind of person does that, knowing they just mess guys up?”
Now is not the time for touch. Or for romantic mixed signals. It’s time for connection.
“You’re not a bad person,” I say. “You’re just…not feeling it.”
“It feels like I’ve got a curse, too.”
I don’t laugh. I know how serious it is to feel this way. “I’m cursed to never find someone who stays, and you’re cursed to always leave.”
He smiles weakly. “Good thing we’re friends, then.”
“Yeah.” The word “friends” should feel like a hundred arrows to my chest, but there’s a new lightness in me—a balance—where this doesn’t upset me. Ben and I are rebuilding, slowly, like Vero Roseto, and soon, who knows? Maybe something happens.
Maybe he’s the one who stays. Maybe I’m the one he stays for.
That whole last summer, I was with Hutch, but my true connection was with Ben. I just didn’t know Ben could’ve liked me. Until suddenly, he was with Hutch.
Ben taps my ankle with his shoe. “So, you don’t think I’m some lost cause monster?”
My usual desire to hurl shade doesn’t come. Instead, I shake my head. “All relationships go away…until they don’t. You wouldn’t tell me to give up, would you?”
“Oh, you should give up.”
I sweep his legs off the bench. “Aaaaaaasshole! I take it back! Monster. Beast.”
Laughing, Ben throws his arms around me so quickly, I have to lift my tablet so it won’t get crushed. My ex–best friend—now regular friend who’s sort of flirty—rests his shimmering red head on my chest. Muffled, he says, “Thank you. I’ve been holding myself back for a while, but all this talk about taking chances and blah, blah, blah mushy stuff was starting to make me feel like…like I needed to start fresh, too.”
I squeeze him tighter.
One day it will happen.
We both need time to rebuild, that’s all. And when it happens, I could get my fairy-tale ending after all. I had the boy this whole time, from when we were kids. The failures, the rejections, the curse…All that was just to keep me free, so when Ben was ready, I’d be here.
The tears weren’t meaningless. They served a purpose.
That night, after the last Mama Bianchi tour, the B&B guests settle in to watch the stars on the deck. I stand in the parlor, watching the view—and the guests—behind the screen door. A smattering of elderly couples clink glasses of chilled Invidioso, while the other couples enjoy full glasses of Grato. Demon Twink swims gracefully through the pool as the night lights turn on, casting flickering shadows of blue against the garden walls. Just as they will in the rose garden when we finish my installation.
“How long is Freddie going to be in that pool?” asks Demon Twink’s mother. “This view! He’s missing it. We have a pool at home.”
“Kris, take it easy,” her husband says, leaning across chairs to peck her cheek. “We wanted a nice staycation, so let’s try to just enjoy it.”
I snort to myself. Valle townies trying to break up their doldrums. Vero Roseto really is back to its glorious roots.
Aunt Ro sneaks up behind me. She’s recently changed out of her Mama Bianchi frock and into a bunchy magenta sweater. She sighs happily and watches the stars. “I can’t believe we’re actually doing it,” she says. “The view from this door has been depressing for years, and now people are paying us to look at it!”
“Next stop, Rose Festival,” I whisper, nudging her. Her smile falters. “Don’t worry. Ben and I came up with some exciting stuff today. Just gotta track down a few more places where we can buy the installations, but I promise you’re gonna be blown away.”
Beaming, she tugs my earlobe. “You and Ben together again.”
“Ahh, slow it down—”
“Okay, okay—”
“One step at a time—”
“I know! It’s just nice. I like it. Keep it up, you two.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
After Ro returns to the kitchen, my smile doesn’t last long. Ben crosses the deck, but doesn’t turn toward me in the parlor. He keeps walking…toward the pool…toward Demon Twink. Freddie. Ben kneels at the pool’s edge, and Freddie breaststrokes toward him, his long, swimmer’s legs pushing him gracefully.
Demon Twink emerges like a mermaid, torso out, arms folded along the pool edge as he gazes dreamily—blue eye-edly—up at Ben.
“So, uh, I’ve been thinking about what you asked this morning…” Ben says. My ears prick to catch every syllable. “And, uh…here. Call me.”
Ben produces a scrap of paper. Freddie takes it slyly, a smirk crossing his handsome face. “Glad you changed your mind. I’ll call you tomorrow, Rose Boy.”
“Ben.”
“Ben.”
Freddie places Ben’s number under a neon-teal beach towel and then pushes himself from the edge in an elegant glide.
Horrific realization crashes over me. Ben wasn’t asking about his curse because of me. Some townie guest hit on him, and he wanted my permission to make his move.
Ben prances away from the pool and down the deck, looking every bit like the trickster he is. Before disappearing, he turns back to me at the screen door and flashes crossed fingers.
Smiling, I show him my own crossed fingers.
Wish me luck.
Luck. I wouldn’t know it.
In the parlor, another oil painting of my great-grandmother—strong, imperious, and hiding within the petals of the Wishing Rose itself—laughs at me.
The curse is permanent. You can try, but alone is what you asked for. Alone is what you get.