I looked at his face. It was very, very pale.

“Caleb,” I said again. He looked so stunned I cringed. Sorry for being caught. His mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. The girl looked smug. I wanted to scream Her? Why her?

“I loved you,” I said and that was the first time I had ever said it.

His face crumpled with emotion. How cruel was I to tell him something he’d been waiting for, in the moment of his faithlessness? It was a low blow but this was a fight and I was ready to go down swinging. The little trampette on the table looked at us in amusement.

“You must be Olivia,” she said, hopping down from the desk. I felt revolted at the fact that she knew my name. Did they talk about me? A framed picture of me was positioned near where she had been sitting. My face was witness to their carrying on. I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t. She left the room in a swishing of skirts, leaving two broken people to face each other.

“I never meant for this,” he said when the door clicked shut.

“To be caught? Or to be cheating?” I tried to control the tremor in my voice but it was useless.

“Olivia,” he pleaded taking a step towards me.

“No!” I held up my hand for him to stop. “Don’t you dare come near me. How could you? There is nothing worse that you could do to me. Just like my father,” I spat.

“Your father and I are nothing alike. You have used his sins as an excuse not to love for far too long.”

I couldn’t believe he said that. I loved people, I loved lots of people. I just didn’t tell them.

“You make me sick,” I said. “You could have just been a man about it and told me that you didn’t want me anymore.”

“I’ll always want you Olivia. It’s not about not wanting you, it was about wanting you too much and you not wanting me back!”

I swiped at an angry tear that was ripping across my face and smiled venomously. “So, it’s about sex then?”

Caleb threw up his hands in exasperation and looked at me with more anger then he ever had.

“I think that I showed you time and time again, that it was never about sex,” his voice was low and menacing. “I loved you enough to put aside every one of my feelings to accommodate yours. What did I get in return? Coldness and emotional detachment. You are selfish and bitter and you wouldn’t know a good thing if it fell out of the sky at your feet.”

I knew what he said was true. I was all of those things and more, but he could have just left, he didn’t have to make a fool out of me.

“Well then, let the healing process start for you right now.” I left him standing in semi-darkness and walked calmly to the nearest exit.

You will not hurt, you will not hurt, you will not hurt….

I hurt like hell. I hurt so violently that I could barely walk down the stairs, so I sat. I sat and I shook and I wished for a meteor to fall to earth right at that moment and hit the spot where I was sitting. I felt raw and exposed like all of my insides had been turned out and I was bleeding all over the floor. How could this happen? Why? He was all that I had.

I heard the exit door a flight above me open and a burst of music followed the breeze down the stairs. Fearing that it was Caleb coming to find me, I hopped up and ran the four remaining flights not stopping until I was in my car.

I turned the key in the ignition with force and the car hiccupped to life.

Damn him. I could love. I had it all inside of me. If he knew so much about me, why couldn’t he see that?

If I didn’t love him, how could it hurt so badly? Nothing, gave him the right to cheat—nothing!

Instead of heading home my tires swerved right and I merged onto the 595 almost sideswiping a minivan. He had all of me, everything I had to give, and look what he did. I trusted him.

“No, no, no, no,” the tears started pouring in masses down my face. “This can’t be happening.” I pulled over, afraid I was going to kill someone with my driving. My mind was unhinging, my light was turning dark.

“Caleb, no,” I tasted salt seep into my lips. I hated myself, more than I hated him and more than I ever hated my father. I was a tragic mess. The ugliest kind of person. I started driving again. I couldn’t go back home, he would come find me. A hotel was still booked, just a couple of hundred miles north, I would go there.

Caleb tried calling my cell phone. I sent his calls to voice mail and turned up the volume on the radio, anything was better than the sound of my sobbing.

The hotel Caleb had booked for us was nice. I remember the fountains and frescos in the lobby and the way the employees greeted you with genuine smiles, but that night my eyes were blind to everything except Caleb’s betrayal. I checked in and carried my overnight bag up the stairs, to the room.

It was still early when I had taken my shower and dressed. I pulled out the dress I had bought just for this weekend. It was airport blue, with just a little bit of black lace on the waist—his two favorite things. I pulled it over my head and went to stare at myself in the mirror. I looked beautiful. I was so ugly on the inside though, what did it matter? I couldn’t stay here in this room by myself, I’d go mad. I grabbed my purse and ran to the door, trying not to see his hand on her thigh.

I knew what I was going to do, something that would hurt him more than he hurt me. That’s the way I fought, dirty. An eye for an eye.

I wandered the busy Daytona streets, staring blankly into store windows. I found exactly what I was looking for a couple of blocks away, Swig Martini Bar. It was subdued and desperate, just like me. I entered through the broad doorway and flashed my ID to the bouncer. A mixture of smoke and a sweet perfume hit me in the face. The smell reminded me of the night I went to Caleb’s frat party on a mission to win him back. How depressing. I crowded to the bar and ordered a whiskey sour. The bartender eyed me curiously when I downed it in one shot and asked for another. I saw him pour an extra shot into the second one—bless him. I took my second drink to a little patio outside where I secured a table facing the ocean. It was a good setting. Mysterious, alone, and looking thoughtful. It was a trick that the best of women knew. Separate yourself from the herd, look beautiful, and a man would wander over.

He did. Tall, blonde, and in dress pants with a tie pulled in disarray around his neck.

“Hard day?” he asked, leaning on the banister and looking out over the water.

“Yes. You?”

“Very.” He smiled at me and I saw by the yellowness of his teeth that he was a smoker.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he nodded toward my empty glass and I shook my head yes.

“A shot of anything.”

“Okay.”

He came back with two. Good. I thought. My travels to wasted land would go all the faster.

We drank for over an hour before I invited him to the dance floor. He was a mediocre dancer but what did it matter at this point? I ignored my disgust at the way he rammed himself into the back of me and kept moving, focusing on the swirling in my head. The night became thick with hasty kisses and liquor provoked fondling and by midnight we were skipping through the streets toward my hotel.

“Hold on,” he said once we were inside and he was lying on top of me. I remember seeing him pull a condom from his wallet. He slapped it in the palm of his hand like I had seen people do with cigarette cartons and then ripped the packaging open with his teeth. I cringed, disgusted.

And then I remember feeling nothing. I just lay there and he didn’t seem to care at all. So this is how I am losing my virginity. I remember thinking. To a stranger, not to Caleb. When it was done, he fell asleep. I laid awake all night, sick to my stomach and hating myself. In the morning he left early. I never got his name. I waited anxiously for the guilt to come but all I felt was numbness. I knew that if I searched hard enough for those feelings that were lurking beneath the surface, I would find revulsion, but I wasn’t ready to hate myself. I was too busy hating Caleb. Around midday I heard a fumbling outside of the door. I knew he would come. He obtained a key to the room at the front desk and let himself in. I was sitting at the window when the door opened, I hadn’t showered and my hair was a rat’s nest around my face.

He didn’t say anything when he saw me, his eyes roamed around the room looking for signs of my pain. The mess, my clothes tossed here and there. His eyes fell on the condom wrapper that was ripped and perched on the nightstand. His hand on her thigh—my condom wrapper. These two images are burned into both of our memories forever, reaching out as a stumbling block into future relationships.

Unbeknownst to me, Caleb would never again be able to look at a condom wrapper without feeling sick. I saw realization snap into his face. His hurt came in the form of a twitch and then a gentle draining of the light from his eyes. I took it a step further, because remember, I fight dirty.

“I took Jessica Alexander to get the abortion. I told her to do it.” It took him a minute to grasp what I was saying. I looked at the cars that were driving by. I pictured myself putting my emotions in one of those cars and then watching it drive away. Feel nothing, I told myself. Feel nothing like he felt nothing when he cheated on me.

“I wanted you so badly that I connived and manipulated to get you. I stalked you for months. I knew every girl you dated. I knew every place you took each one. I planned it all out.” He still said nothing but I could feel his silent raging somewhere behind me. It was building and rolling off his body in waves.

“I always loved you. From the moment you first spoke to me.” Still nothing.

“I had sex with a stranger, to hurt you.” Those words sucked the air right out of the room. I felt my lungs constrict as the weight of what I had done started pressing down on me. Oh god, oh god, oh god…..

I heard a thud and I turned slowly to see Caleb, on his knees, his face fallen into his hands. I could see his body shaking, from tears or anger I did not know. He made no sound; there were just those silent convulsions that I would remember forever. My body stared to tremble as I realized what was happening. Everything was gone now. Me, him—us. We were forever changed. I didn’t want to live. I considered hurling myself out of the window so I wouldn’t have to face the agony of it all. I had hurt the person I loved the most, the only person I had. All to avenge myself. And in the end, I had destroyed myself. Minutes passed, then an hour. I wanted to go to him, to beg him to forgive me, to tell him that I would kill myself if he didn’t, but I couldn’t. I had too much cold in me for that. Why didn’t I see it before? The person I really was. How had I never known that I was an empty hole incapable of loving?

When he stood up, I looked away.

“I’m sorry, Olivia, for hurting you,” he said hoarsely and my heart heaved in my chest. Why was his voice so gentle? Why wasn’t he screaming at me? I was the one who did the hurting. It was me. My fault. My sin. My mess.

“You will never see me again after today.” He paused and his next words struck me so deeply I would never recover from them. “I will love again, Olivia, you will hurt forever. What you’ve done is…You are worthless because you make yourself that way. You will remember me every day for the rest of your life because I was the one and you threw me away.” And then he left.

Chapter Nineteen

Noah was waiting for me outside of the restaurant when my cab pulled up. Before I could reach for my purse, he pulled a bill from his wallet and handed it to the cabbie, motioning for him to keep the change.

It was a hundred euro.

“You look ravishing,” he says, kissing me on the cheek.

“Thank you,” I take the arm that he offers me and we float into the most charming restaurant I have ever seen.

I am in Italy.

“So, how do you like Rome so far?” he says.

Driving here in the cab, I had seen a city both old and new. Crumbling buildings defiantly stood where they were placed thousands of years before, right in the midst of brand new architecture. It seemed like magic every time you turned your head and get a glimpse of forever ago, like the past was rising up out of the ashes and reminding you she was still there. And then there were the motorbikes and the scooters and the teeny tiny cars that careened and swerved and honked hysterically at everything in their path. The laundry that fluttered merrily on almost every balcony and the way as people walked down the street you heard music drifting out from here and there, providing Italian life with a continuous soundtrack.

“I wish I never had to leave,” I admit. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Noah nods and waits for me to be seated before he seats himself.

“The first time I was here, I thought the whole place looked like a ghetto. It took a couple of days for me to fall in love, but ever since then, I find myself craving this place when I’m home in America. I do everything I can to come as often as possible.”

I could see that happening to myself. No wonder Leah wanted to make her baby here. She must have visited before. All rich girls made a pilgrimage to Rome at some point in their lavish lives, for shopping of course.

When we both had a glass of wine in front of us and the waiter was walking away with our order in his head. Noah turned to me with a concerned look on his face.

“Did you see him? Your Caleb?”

“From a distance,” I laugh because he was so far from “my Caleb” it was ridiculous. “I was five floors below, spying on their hotel window.”

“Do you know what plan of action you are going to take yet?”

I shook my head.

“Not a clue, but I have to do it. I’ll figure it out…I have a couple of hours to come up with something.”

“An honest something?” he teases, cocking his head in a way that made his hair fall attractively into his eyes.