Chapter Text
A little over a week later, Betty lies awake in bed with Gio snoring lightly beside her. She rolls toward the French windows, turning her pillow to the cooler side and focusing on the blurry image of the moonlight on the floor in the hopes of inducing sleep.
She performs a breathing exercise, and when that doesn’t work, she tries to follow the pace of Gio’s breaths. The satin sheets are soft beneath her, with the man a warm mass next to her. After a while of that, she lurches out of bed.
She grabs her glasses and staggers to her suitcase, careful not to make too much noise as she zips it open. In one of the outside pockets, she finds the photo book she’d packed in case she found herself in a situation like this.
Gio was lucky he’d gotten over his jet lag without problems. He boasted something along the lines of his circadian rhythm being attuned to the “Italian way of life.” In reality, he’d only visited once when he was thirteen years old to attend a distant aunt’s funeral. A round-trip plane ticket didn’t exactly come cheap to someone who funneled most of his money into his sandwiches, leaving him to rent out a flat with two of his cousins. But for whatever reason, Gio acclimatized to the time change effortlessly, while Betty wrestled herself to sleep each night, only to wake up four hours later feeling as if she’d shut her eyes for mere seconds.
She steps out onto the balcony, clutching the aged wood of the door to ease it closed. The railing must be as old as the building itself, as she can feel particles of rust chip away under her nails. At this hour, the silhouettes of domes and steeples stand imposingly in the distance. There are still some tiny cars zipping through the golden trails of the city, scampering around like hamsters in a mess of tube tunnels.
A couple passes directly below her, clinging to one another and wailing some old Italian song. She watches them stumble down the street until they take a right and disappear.
What she wishes for the most now, she thinks as she thumbs through the photo book, even more than one decent night of sleep, is her family. She’s aware she made this decision on her own, and that although her dad eventually came around, he initially advised her against going. But she also knows that she needed to do this, for herself, and maybe a little bit for the cute guy who was bold enough to invite her. That doesn’t change the fact that she’s never been away from her family for so long, or at such an unimaginable distance.
There’s a picture of Justin in a baby hatch, swaddled in a white sheet and a white cap, and another of Ignacio hugging him tight with tears in his eyes. The next one is Betty’s favorite, with her mom and her preteen self gathered around Hilda on the hospital bed while she held her newborn son in her arms. Rosa was arguably more of a mess than her daughter, red-rimmed eyes evidence of her uncontrollable sobbing beforehand.
The memories unfurl before her like long-winded letters containing the smallest details, the ones that were getting harder to remember. Like the time Justin wept for the mauled piñata at his third birthday party, or afternoons when Hilda and Santos would share a can of Coke on the stoop, before he ditched her and his child altogether, or how Betty used to lie on her mom’s lap to watch TV upon coming home from school.
There’s another one that she’d forgotten, and she’s hit with the sensation that she hasn’t opened this book in years. Hilda had probably snapped it out of boredom, because the image is shaky and the flash peeks out from the bottom right corner. In the background, Betty is fast asleep on the sofa, but her parents seem to be swaying in the middle of the living room, dancing close, probably without music so as not to disturb Betty.
When she went through her camera roll to get them developed, she didn’t think much of it at the time, but she must have liked it enough to have it printed and placed in her book. But even in the dim lighting of the picture, Rosa’s thinning hair is visible. It was probably taken a few months before she had to have it shaved. She’d bought those wig caps in every pattern and color, and wore each one like a crown atop her head.
Betty shuts the book before she reaches the later part. She tells herself she’s tired of squinting in the scant light of the half moon, but she knows better. She can’t be blamed for not wanting to relive the years that were spent in and out of hospital waiting rooms, doctors’ offices, and at her mother’s bedside, praying to a higher power for some remedy, anything to help her Mami heal.
She would’ve loved Rome. Maybe that’s what has been keeping Betty up. Sure, she’s made plenty of phone calls to rave about her travels to Hilda and Papi, but it’s a different kind of longing to want to talk to someone who literally, physically, and irrevocably cannot be reached. Rosa hadn’t even had the chance to see the Grand Canyon, and here was Betty, living it up on the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean.
It might as well have been another planet. Betty found herself crash-landed, like an alien having its first glimpse of human civilization. Everywhere around her were people speaking a language that was only vaguely intelligible to her, and signs that contained letters she could recognize, but whose meaning was ultimately inaccessible. Even the weather was new. The air was balmy, not an extreme heat like New York in the summer, but composed of languid winds that smelled of brine.
Betty wonders if that’s what her parents felt, making it all the way to New York after having seen little beyond the barren landscape of their childhood. The constant rush of people, rude citizens hardened by one too many inhospitable winters, flashing lights, the din of blaring car horns and music from ghetto blasters. That New York, Betty’s Queens, was her home. It couldn’t have been less than terrifying for Ignacio and Rosa.
But they had each other. That was the most important thing. They resolved to flee from Mexico, to stick together despite their untimely union, to settle down and start a family they could call their own. It was a hard move to make (not that they really had a choice), but they lived out the rest of their days how they wanted. Nothing was going to compromise that.
And Betty? She had…
The door creaks open behind her, as if cautious.
“Betty? What’re you doing out here?”
Gio’s voice is groggy from sleep. She lifts her glasses to wipe the tears from her eyes before turning around to face him.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she says.
He simply yawns, running a hand through his hair as he sidles up next to her. He drapes his forearms over the railing and looks out onto the city, staying silent.
His dark hair has grown out a considerable amount since he shaved it off, not enough to rival its former glory, but the stubble on his chin must feel as scratchy as it looks. The moment she notices this, the moment she becomes conscious that she’s beginning to retain the little things about him, is also when she starts to panic. But her mind won’t let her backtrack now.
His hands aren’t nearly as calloused as her father’s, but they’re firm and reassuring. She knows this intimately, from hours spent grasping his hand around Italy, whether in the city or the countryside, from his almost instinctive seizure of her waist when they encountered someone new.
He’s not in a rush. He’s made this clear to Betty many, many times. When they checked into their room only to discover it was a single, complete with a king bed in the center, he insisted on setting up camp on the couch with spare sheets and pillows. Betty would never have allowed that. He gave in, but remained as far from her on the bed as possible, rarely facing her as he fell asleep.
A part of Betty—not that she would ever acknowledge it—wished that Gio would live up to the assumptions she previously held of him. But, of course, he had to keep proving her wrong.
“I don’t want to be the rebound guy,” he told her months ago. “I want to be the guy.”
This statement was contrary to his behavior earlier that day, when he’d taken her face in his hands and kissed her out of nowhere in the deli. She climbed up the stoop after Gio’s proposition, thinking that she might actually enjoy seeing him try. But Henry still occupied a heavy presence in her heart.
Maybe it was the complete change in scenery, the power she attained by making her own decision, but her ex-boyfriend ceased to cross her mind as often here. It’s true that occasionally the thought passed through her, a meek voice wondering what Henry and Charlie could be up to in Tucson with their baby, but the pain was fleeting and nowhere near as debilitating as it used to be.
Now she sort of waits for the morning that she’ll wake with Gio pressed behind her, an arm grazing her stomach and crossing over her wrist. It has yet to happen. Most mornings she opens her eyes to an empty bed and the sound of the shower head already running.
“I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come.”
“Huh?” she says, pulled from her thoughts.
He sighs. “I’ve been thinking. I might have been resentful if you hadn’t.”
“Wow. That’s, um, nice to hear.”
“I’m sorry. I know I keep bringing up shit that I shouldn’t, but I need to be honest with you.”
Betty takes a breath to respond, but Gio jumps in quicker.
“Resentful of myself, that’s what I meant. If you had gone with Henry, had actually gone through with marrying him, I’d be stuck wondering what I did wrong. What I could’ve done differently to make you choose me.”
“Choose? You’re making this sound like a love triangle scenario from some telenovela.”
Gio chuckles. “Wasn’t it, though?”
“Not really. No offense, but if I really had to choose, like a matter-of-survival kinda thing, I would have chosen myself. I happened to join you because you made a more compelling case.”
He inhales, letting that soak in.
“Obviously I came for you, Gio,” she revises. “I wanted to see if there was something worth exploring here. And I’m not just talking about the Pantheon.”
She pauses, formulating the words in the proper order, in a way she didn’t have the courage to express before. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t here for myself too, but that makes me feel selfish. I can’t be expected to forget everyone I left behind. Henry was hurt when I turned down his proposal, and my family is worried sick about me being so far from them. I can’t even imagine what Daniel’s gotten himself into since I left.”
“That’s just it, Betty!” He straightens himself up, an incredulous rise in his tone. “You’re so caught up in everyone else’s problems that you never have time to think about what you really want.”
He brings his voice down, resting his hip against the railing. “I don’t know why I’m getting worked up. All these things you’re telling me, they’re what made me fall for you in the first place.” He looks her in the eye, smiling forlornly. “It’s just not fair that someone who cares as much as you do feels like she has to prove it to everyone she meets. You’re better than that, B, and you should recognize it. Like I do. Like I always will.”
He has this expression on his face; Betty can’t quite read it. But in that second of confusion, a matrix of distant realities reveals itself to her.
She’s smearing frosting from a tall, white wedding cake on his nose and lips. With her braces no longer a threat to either of them, that ensuing kiss tastes like pure sugar. In the same instance, there’s spit-up on his wrinkled T-shirt and baby food on his jaw. His hair grows long, and it glistens auburn in the midday sun, as crow’s feet form on the corners of his eyes and the smile lines deepen around his mouth. Thousands of dusks and a million dawns; Gio cooking, Gio fighting off a fever, Gio whistling a tune while she washes dishes and he unloads the drier. Right now he’s standing in front of her, but already she envisions him on one knee.
“I think I—”
Betty stops herself, hesitant for once, to be the fool who always rushes in. He purses his lips expectantly, and that’s all it takes for her to be certain of her five-year plan.
“Do you want to go back inside?”
Gio’s grin is lopsided, a dimple appearing on the left side of his face.
Some time afterwards, the sun embarks on its venture over the city. The hills on the horizon seem backlit by a red-hot fire, vast and only growing brighter by the second. Its first rays find the articles of Gio’s and Betty’s pajamas discarded around their room. They crawl stealthily up the bedposts, the disordered sheets, until at last washing over the couple’s bare skin like a benediction.