The Opportunist

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.



“Yes,” I laugh. It was so nice to laugh.



“You know, Olivia. What you’re doing. It’s the right thing.”



“What? Being honest?” I take a nervous sip of my wine. There was nothing more uncomfortable than discussing my integrity, or lack thereof.

“No.”

I look up surprised.

“Going after what you love. Despite everything you’ve done, and I won’t sugarcoat, you’ve done some pretty lousy things, but you did it all because you love this single human being so much you couldn’t help yourself. There is an honesty in that,”

“Ha! There is no honesty in me, I assure you.”



“You’re wrong.”



I cock my skeptical head. No one in their right mind would call me honest, especially if they’d heard my story.



“I’ve never met someone who’s quite as honest about their bad deeds and who speaks with so much candor about their feelings. Are you a bad person, Olivia?”

“Yes,” I say easily.



“See. Your behavior is the problem. You allow yourself to act on every feeling rather than taking the time to be virtuous.”



“Virtue,” I repeat the foreign word, trying my hardest to concentrate on its meaning.



“It’s funny how your life keeps bumping into his,” he says, changing the direction of the conversation. “I mean what are the chances of his getting amnesia and then running into you twice in twenty-four hours?”

I shrug.



“—only to strike up a conversation with you, both times, and then ask you out to coffee?” he continues.



“I know,” I sigh, “I bought a subscription to irony the day I met him.”



“There’s something more there, that you’re not seeing.”



“What? Like a fate thing?” I hated fate. He was a bored little brat who couldn’t let people heal in peace.



“I don’t think so.”



“Then what do you think?” The space in between his eyebrows was puckered and his eyes were seeing something I was dying to get a peak of.

“I think that after the first time you give your heart away, you never get it back. The rest of your life is just you pretending that you still have a heart.”

“Okaay…”



“So, just think about that,” he shrugs casually. “He’s living, but he’s broken.”



“How do you know?” I ask. Caleb didn’t look broken to me. He appeared to have completely moved on.



“Because from approximately twelve hours of knowing you, I have decided that I will never forget you, even if we never speak another word to each other. You leave a very strong impression. I can only imagine how that poor bastard feels after so many years of keeping company with you.”

“It feels like a very hard blow to the head,” I laugh, but I am sadly serious. He stares at me for what seems like forever and then he says, “Fight clean. Be honest. That’s the way you’ll win him back. But, if you see that he’s truly happy, leave him be.”

“I don‘t know if I can do that,” I say honestly. “I’m not sure I’m capable of walking away.”

“That’s because you don’t know how to love.”

“Are you saying I don’t love him?” I am shocked. After everything I told him, I thought that my love was obvious. Who would fight this hard without love?

“I’m saying that you don’t love him as much as you love yourself.”

Silence.

I take several seconds to cultivate my anger.

“Why? Why do you think that?”

“He has carved for himself some semblance of a life without you. You are willing to uproot that, throw his life into turmoil once again. Have you thought about the fact that more than one person will be hurt? He belongs to Leah now, too, and what about the child that might already have come into existence?”

I flinch. I hadn’t thought about the baby.



“There is more to loving someone than just making yourself happy. You have to want him to be happier than you are.”



“He’d be happier with me,” I say confidently. “We were made for each other.”



“But he would have guilt. For abandoning his wife, his child, for missing out on years of your life. And where would the trust be? Do you think that he won’t remember what you’ve done?”

I bite back tears.

“We can fix it. Sure, there will be scars, but there will be love enough to cover them,” I was begging him to side with me now, for him to see what I saw. Caleb and I were supposed to be together. No matter how we tried to stay apart, something kept guiding us back together.

“Maybe, but are you willing to put him through the whirlwind for a broken dream?”

I sniff.

“Olivia,” he laid his hand on top of mine, “There was a time for you and Caleb. You chose and now it has passed. Until now, you have proven that you are capable of pretty much anything.” I flinch at the truth of his words. “Prove to yourself that you are capable of something selfless.”

I want to argue with him, beg him to understand that my life will be tasteless without Caleb.

“You are a very wise man, Noah,” I smile miserably.





After dinner, we share a cab back to my hotel. Noah steps out to say his goodbye before continuing on to his hotel.

I don’t know why, but I am terribly sad. I feel the burning of tears in my eyes.

And then I know without a doubt that if I were a whole person, Noah and I would have had a chance together. He is so wise and good, I would have been able to fall in love with him and we would have married and had a family. I saw it all in a flash second. Noah and I. Maybe he saw it too, because at that moment he leaned down and kissed me on the lips. It was a sad kiss, full of what ifs. When he pulls his lips away, my head is spinning and I feel like I have a gullet full of grenades.

“Good luck, Olivia,” he smiles, “Choose wisely.”

And then he lowers himself into the cab and is driven away with all my thoughts trailing after him. I stand on the sidewalk and watch the tires of his cab spray up the day’s rain. It is drizzling outside, but I don’t care. I like the rain. I decide to walk, and as I do, I think about what to do. Surprisingly, there are no thoughts of plotting revenge. I am thinking about my own inner decay and about how selfish I have always been. I count the times I have made good decisions in my life and come up with only five. Deciding to go on that first date with Caleb, telling him the truth about what I’d done, becoming a lawyer, breaking up with Turner, and coming to Rome and meeting Noah. Five good decisions. It seems like such a shabby number. But, my pitiful handful represents a small possibility. Noah saw something in me and he took the time to nurture it. Now, I had to imprint truth in my heart. I was not going to repay evil for evil. Leah had won him and she deserved to keep him.

I wander, wet and shivering, to the Trinità dei Monti, the beautiful church built by Saint Frances of Paola and I stand looking up at the Obelisco Sallustiano. This is where I make my final decision, in front of a building that represents goodness. You better get home before it’s too late. This time the sky was not red. I was sidestepping trouble, saying a final goodbye to it. I wonder if I can make a habit out of doing the right thing and then I smile because I know what a long journey that will be for me.

When I feel ready, I head back towards the De La Ville where Caleb and Leah are staying.

The quietness of the streets speak of the lateness of the hour. I stand looking at his window once again but this time my mind is made up. I am saying goodbye. I think about Caleb as a father and I smile to myself. He would be great at it, like he was at everything else, and then I think of Jessica Alexander. He would have been a dad already, if it wasn’t for me. I suck my lungs full of the sweet Italian air.

“In a sense I’m so far gone, I don‘t know what to say,” I begin. “I love you so much, and there are so many things that I didn’t get to tell you. I was so scared of the way that you loved me, Caleb.” I swipe at a tear that is leaking from my eye and continue. “You changed everything. I was so frightened of losing you that I did everything in my power to drive you away. I thought that if I didn’t, eventually you would see that you were wasting your time with me and leave anyway. I miss you. No, not just miss you, my heart aches every day because you’re not there. I am so sorry for what I did. All of it. Please, please don’t forget me, because the possibility of that hurts more than anything else.”

“I never forgot you.”

I get chills. It takes a minute for the impossibility of the situation to sink in.

“Caleb,” I sigh his name as I turn around to face him. I do not feel terribly surprised at irony’s latest joke. There is something about my life that is scripted with his. We keep crossing—no, crashing together. Caleb is standing a few feet away from me with a plastic shopping bag in his hand. I can see a bottle of wine poking out over the top.

“What are you doing here?” he asks shaking his head in amazement.



“I came to find you,” I say honestly. “To tell you that—” I glance up at his window to indicate the point of my speech.



“You weren’t going to say it to my face?”



“No.”



“It’s a very far way to travel to say something that important to my hotel window.”



“I had no right to come,” I admit, shrugging. “I’m sorry. I broke into your house and found out you were here.”



He squeezes his eyes shut and it looks like he wants to laugh.



“Cammie help you?”



I nod.



“I’m glad you came,” he says softly, “I was just thinking about you.”



I jerk in shock. “You were?” He smiles at the look on my face.



“Sure. I think about you all the time.”



I bite hard on my bottom lip to keep from crying. I am so confused I don’t know what to say.



“Let’s walk,” he says, and I fall into step beside him. “I never forgot you,” he says again.



“Well, you did for a while,” I say, studying the ground.



“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I never had amnesia. I faked it.”



I stop walking.



“You did what?”



“Olivia,” he stops and looks me in the eyes. “I faked my amnesia.”



I feel like the world is falling out from beneath my feet. Caleb and I are in Rome. I am in Rome. He never had amnesia. He thinks about me all the time. He never had amnesia.



“Why…what…why?” I want to grab him by the shirt collar and shake the answer out of him. Instead, I stand with my hands clenched at my sides.



“After everything happened with you and me, I tried to heal. I knew that I needed to forget you and move on. I hurt so much; everyday felt like a death sentence. I mourned you like you were dead and then, I met Leah. We were set up on a blind date and I remember feeling hope that day. It was the first day in a year that I felt hope. We took our time getting to know each other, I bought her a ring.” He shot me a look to see if I remembered the iceberg.

“And then, all of a sudden I missed you again. I mean, I never stopped missing you, but this time it hit me hard. I couldn’t go to sleep for a single night without seeing you in my dreams. I compared everything Leah did to everything I remembered about you. It was like the old wound opened itself up again and I was bleeding out my feelings for you.”

I close my eyes at his words. Words that I want to hear badly but that are making my heart ache so terribly I can barely breathe.

“I went on that business trip to Scranton and I was glad to get away from her for a few days. I needed to think and sort things out before I gave her that ring. Then the accident happened. I woke up in that car with the person next to me dead and I didn’t know who I was. My amnesia was induced by massive stress and the concussion to my head. By the time I reached the emergency room, I remembered everything. I lay on that bed in the hospital and I kept thinking, if only Olivia were here.

I would be happy if Olivia were here.

And then the doctor asked me if I knew who I was and I said no. I just said no. I made that decision in a split second because I didn’t know who I was without you and I knew that I had to try to find you. I lied to Leah, my family, and none of it mattered to me because my amnesia bought me time and an excuse. I went everywhere I knew you would go. The day you saw me in the music store, I knew you would be there; I had this feeling. I was still shocked, not because you showed up, but because you came right over and pretended that you hadn’t seen me standing there before you came in.”

I smile. He saw through me even then.

“But why didn’t you just tell me, Caleb? What could I have said after everything I did to you?”

Scenes were flashing in my memory like a jerky movie. Caleb calling me Duchess accidentally. Caleb bringing me my favorite flowers the night Leah crashed our dinner date. Caleb saying “I never forgot you” in the courtroom on the day of my birthday.

He pursed his beautiful lips.

“Because I wanted to go back to the beginning. I wanted us to have a clean start. And then you left—”

“And then I left,” I repeat. I wasn’t going to tell him about Leah, about how she pretty much drove me out of town. That was pointless and it would only hurt him.

“So, why did you find me again to be her lawyer? What in the world possessed you to do that?”



He laughs.



“I wanted to torture you. I wanted you to pay for leaving me a second time. I only ended up torturing myself, of course.”



“No, I was pretty tortured,” I smile. “And just think, I could have her in prison right now, with you all to myself.”



He looks at me in amusement.



“So, you still love me?” he teases, reaching out and tucking my hair behind my ear.



“More than anything,” I say. “I was waiting for you—for years. I didn’t live. I just waited for you to come back.”



He squeezes his eyes shut and I know that he is thinking what I am thinking. What if?

He pulls me to his chest and holds me there.

“I love you too, Olivia. More than I could ever love another soul. There hasn’t been a single hour in seven years that I haven’t thought of you.”

I cry into his shirt. If only I could die right now, then I would never have to live without him, I would just be gone.



“Don’t cry,” he says, gently lifting my face to look at him.



“You will forever be loved first, nothing will change that.”



“But what does it matter if I can’t be with you?” I wail. “I can’t live without you.”



“But you have,” he smiles, though it is a sad smile. “You have and you will.”



I nod bravely because it’s true. Life always keeps moving even if it has to drag you along, kicking and screaming.



“Don’t forget me either,” he says. I laugh now at the ridiculousness of that.



“That would be impossible.”



“Okay,” he smiles and then he leans his head down and kisses me. It is the last real kiss of my life. I forever cling to that kiss. It was goodbye and I’m sorry and I love you so much. When it is done, he presses his forehead to my own one last time and then he is gone.

I am broken.





Epilogue

How did I get here? Where have the last ten years of my life gone? I feel like a piece of paper, taken by the wind and blown in every direction. I am a victor in a way—a survivor. Because I fought the monster in myself and I won. But what have I lost in the process?

I do not deceive—not anymore. Truth is important to me. How sad that something of such worth only became a priority when it was too late. I altered the course of my life, because I was afraid. I am still afraid. Caleb was like a hurricane that swept through my life, stirring up things inside of me that I never knew existed. He is a longing I will never cure.

At thirty years old I am sitting in the Bridal chamber in my wedding gown. I haven’t a clue as to who I am, because who I was before was a bad person and who I am now is undecided. I lost myself, but yet I had never found myself. I am very saddened by the fact that I wasted so much time. I know that it is not too late to figure things out, to find what I love, and who I am. But, then again, I am not sure that I want to know. I am afraid that I missed who I could have been. Yes, I still love him with all my heart. But I fought and I fought and I tore into pieces what should have been protected and nurtured. Life balances itself on a precarious ledge, we can stay safe up high or propel off the edge. Noah tells me that all the time. Noah, who has taught me to be good, gentle, and has shown me so much truth about myself. I changed for Noah, because I didn’t dare hurt another person who loved me. I will have a good life with him. I adore him. But he doesn’t have my heart. You can only give your heart away once, after that, everything else will chase your first love.


I have finally accepted that there are consequences to every action. I earned them and they are rightfully mine. There is no time to make bad decisions. Every step is precious. The definition of living is mine.

And so, I think once more of him before I leave the room because, after today, I have to send him away as well. He is happy and I am satisfied with that because I have finally learned to love someone more than myself. I hear the bridal waltz— my cue. I stand in front of the closed doors of the church and for a second, as they swing open, I see Caleb. He is at the altar waiting for me. I blink twice and things are back as they should be. Noah is beaming at me. Cammie is crying. I take my first step and then my second and right before the door closes, I look once more over my shoulder. Caleb is still under the tree, he winks at me, and I smile.