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Her life hadn’t been small because she lived in a small town, her life had been small because she had been crushed in her parents’ fists.
She knew a shiver of fear as she tried to imagine living life with Luca. Yes. There was a scenario wherein she could see herself being crushed.
But she didn’t have to be. She could keep talking to him. Especially if he kept listening.
She walked into a couple of clothing stores and looked at the offerings. She loved all the beautiful clothes in the city. But unfortunately, considering that she was about to change and expand in several different ways, there really was no point in buying fashion.
She thought wistfully for a moment about what could’ve been. That life in Milan. At the fashion house, where she would undoubtedly be getting free clothing as part of her job.
All she could muster up was wistfulness. There was no sadness. There was no regret.
She hadn’t been as happy doing that as she had thought she might be. And really, the day she had taken the pregnancy test, everything changed.
She hadn’t realized all the ways it had changed yet, but it had.
She was different.
Her future looked different.
Maybe, if she was going to be living in Milan a single unencumbered girl without a baby on the way, that job would’ve been perfect.
You would’ve had to have never met Luca.
She sighed heavily.
Yes. She would’ve had to have not met Luca. Because meeting him had changed her life. Forget sleeping with him.
There was something about him. Something that had grabbed hold of her and refused to let go the first moment they had met.
He was just so singularly him.
And on paper, all the things he was should be mainly annoying.
She walked out of the boutique, and continued down the street. And then, through one of the reflective windows, she spotted a little red car.
It was a toy store. There were teddy bears and a large, magical-looking tree positioned in the window. A little village. And that red car.
It called to her. Because it spoke of Luca.
Yes. He could be infuriating. Yes, on paper, he was a disaster of a boss, and not much better as a man.
But he was also a boy once. A boy who had loved cars. Until his mother had died and all he had been able to care about was how to keep someone else from experiencing that kind of pain.
His whole life had been consumed in that pain. And he had let go of that thing that he loved most. In order to give himself over to his mission.
She found herself walking into the toy store without thinking. Because she wanted to see to him. The way that she had as his assistant, but something else, something deeper.
She asked to see the car, and turned it over in her hands. Yes. She needed to get this for him. Her chest felt tight as she paid, and had the car put in a little box, and gift wrapped.
It occurred to her then, as she walked out of the store with the car in a jaunty yellow bag, that she did know how to care for him.
She had been doing it for five years. All those things that people were so quick to call ridiculous, she recognized were integral to him.
Like when she had gotten angry at the flight attendant for not understanding why he needed his notebooks.
They mattered to her. As they mattered to him.
They weren’t inconveniences. And they weren’t him being particular. Not really. It was what he needed. Nobody else was him. So why did other people get to make proclamations about what he should change, what was important, and what was an incidental?