Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [89]
“Okay.”
So, surefooted and strong, my legs like sculpted stone from a month of climbing around these Alps, I lead Pete Rutledge up the path to the ridge above Schilpario. I kneel and watch him as he looks at the field of bluebells for the first time. The hum of the bees drowns out the way my heart is thumping from the climbing (or, more likely, from my nerves). I catch my breath.
“God. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“And look. Look. Goats.” I point to a far ridge, where goats mill around a pasture and a boy herds them from the edge. “Doesn’t that look like something out of the Bible?”
“It does,” Pete says, squinting.
I want to tell Pete about Karen Bell, but I can’t. If I tell him that, he’ll think Jack is terrible, and I don’t want him to think that. I want him to think that I am going home to a husband who cherishes me. A husband who worked hard all summer and missed me every night and dreamed of the sex we would have upon my long-awaited return. A husband who can’t look at other women because none of them measure up, not even the young ones or the beautiful ones or the ones who flirt madly. A husband who wants sex only with me, even in his fantasies. A husband who pictures my face when he’s putting up a Sheetrock wall and finishes the job perfectly in my honor. A husband who, when I have fantasies about another man, dismisses it as healthy, normal, and good for our relationship. A husband so dutiful that I could treat him badly and he’d love me anyway. A husband who doesn’t expect me to put up a fight when I go ahead on vacation without him, as though he’s a blow dryer I accidentally forgot to pack.
A clean, cool breeze ripples through the bluebells as one perfect white cloud hangs overhead.
“I want you, Ave Maria.” Pete doesn’t look at me when he says this. Instead, I study him. The breeze musses his hair, and his eyes, as they narrow in the sun, are the very color of the bluebells.
“You have a way of saying things that …”
“That what?”
“Unglue me.” I roll over and start rolling down the hill like a child. Pete tucks and rolls beside me. Finally, we stop and I crawl back toward him. We’re laughing so hard, I swear the goatherd, who must be ten miles away, looks in our direction with disgust for disturbing this perfect pastoral setting.
“Pete. You don’t want me.”
“Why shouldn’t I want you?”
“Because I can’t handle anything.”
“What can’t you handle?”
“Haggling. Grief. Lust. My husband’s midlife crisis. You name it. I can’t handle anything. I just run. Find a brave girl to love. That’s what you need.”
“I don’t think you’re the best judge of what I need.”
No one has pursued me or wanted or needed me in this way in ten years. How new it all sounds. When I first heard words like these from Jack, I couldn’t believe it. I love the first moments of discovery with a man. When he tells you that you’re beautiful, and that there is no one like you, and that you’re the only person in the world he can really talk to. What a feeling of connection and purpose!
“Why did you bring me up here?” Pete wants to know.
“I wanted you to see the bluebells.”
“I’ve seen bluebells before,” Pete says in a way that makes me laugh.
“Not like these.”
“No. Not like these.” He looks at me. “You asked me why I came back. Now can I tell you?”
“I owe you forty-seven dollars.”
“No jokes.”
“Okay. No jokes.”
“When you left me at the hotel in Bergamo, I had a rough night. That’s why I didn’t come up to Schilpario again. I wanted to shake the idea of you and me. And I couldn’t. I had to see you one more time.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason you had me climb this mountain. You want this too.”
I don’t answer him. We lie on our backs, talking up into the sky just like the flowers. Pete rolls over onto me. I move my leg so I can grip my boot into the earth to slide out from under him, but he hooks his leg around mine and I can’t move. I could say something like “get off of me,” but I love the way he smells and the feeling of his breath on me and the way his leg hooks around mine. He slides his hands under my back and lifts me off the