"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 s.e.x 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 G.o.d, oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d.....

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 pa.s.sed, 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 hoa.r.s.ely 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 gla.s.s 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, c.o.c.king 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 a.s.sure you."

"You're wrong."

I c.o.c.k 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 b.u.mping 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 s.p.a.ce 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 pa.s.sed. 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 Trinita dei Monti, the beautiful church built by Saint Frances of Paola and I stand looking up at the Obelisco Sall.u.s.tiano. 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.