Page 35 of Better Than Gelato (Ciao Bella #1)

Chapter Twenty-Three

I ’ve been trying my best not to mope, I know I should be grateful I get to go back to college at all.

My brain keeps making lists of possible career options, and my heart keeps pointing out how terrible all those options are.

It’s exhausting. An action movie is exactly what I need to forget about real life.

I meet up with Jake, Paolo, and Diego at a movie theater downtown. Carmen and Valentina are busy tonight, so it’s just me and the boys. We watch the latest Marvel movie, and it feels like all the other Marvel movies, but it’s funny and full of action and takes my mind off of things.

Afterward, we walk toward a pizza place we like, and I drop back to walk with Diego. He’s usually leaping around throwing punches after these movies, but tonight he’s especially quiet.

“When you’re a famous movie star,” I say, “do you want to be more like Star-Lord or Thor?”

Diego doesn’t respond. I look over at him, and his medium-brown skin looks as pale as mine.

“Diego, are you okay?”

He nods his head but then stumbles on a cobblestone. I reach out to grab his arm, and it’s slick with sweat.

“Diego—”

Before I can say anything else, he collapses at my feet, his head hitting the sidewalk with a stomach-dropping thwack.

* * *

The hospital is cold and smells like disinfectant. Paolo was listed as Diego’s emergency contact, so he got to go back with him. But Jake and I remain in the lobby, shocked and confused.

I’m frustrated that Jake, who’s practically a doctor, doesn’t know what’s wrong with Diego.

“I only saw him for a few minutes before the ambulance came,” Jake explains for the third time. “His pulse was faint but steady. That’s all I know.”

After an eternity, Paolo comes back and pulls a chair in front of us. He sits but takes a minute before speaking.

“Diego is sick. Leukemia. Stage 4.”

The words sink in slowly.

I ask stupidly, “How many stages are there?”

Jake takes my hand and squeezes. “Just four,” he whispers.

We both look at Paolo. He opens his mouth to say more, but then his whole face crumples like melting plastic.

He bows his head, and I watch his shoulders shake as he cries silently.

I put my hand on his shoulder, but I don’t think he notices.

After a minute, he collects himself, takes a breath, and tells us everything.

“Diego found out about a year ago. He’s been getting treatments at your hospital, Jake.”

“I saw him there,” Jake says now, and it’s hard to decipher the emotions on his face. Realization? Regret? “It was months ago. He said he was visiting a friend. I-I didn’t have any reason not to believe him.”

“He didn’t want anyone to know,” Paolo says. “For a while, the treatment was working so well, he thought he could just keep the whole thing a secret and get through it on his own.”

I think of goofy, smiling Diego trying to get through something like this on his own, and my heart breaks.

“Then five months ago, the treatment stopped working,” Paolo continues. “His body just stopped responding. The doctors don’t know why. That’s when I found out about it. I heard him throwing up early in the morning in Switzerland.”

Early in the morning. When Jake and I were kissing in the library. When the group came down and saw me and Jake doing the Floss dance and Diego laughed so hard.

“I made him tell me everything, and he made me promise not to tell anyone. He didn’t want the pity.”

Paolo sighs and rubs his eyes. I notice for the first time the bags under his eyes, the wrinkles crossing his brow. He’s been carrying this secret on his own and it’s taken a toll.

“They tried different treatment options, none of them worked,” Paolo says. “He…he made the choice to discontinue treatment.”

None worked. Discontinue treatment.

Jake clears his throat and asks, “How long?” His voice is hoarse.

“They said a month or two,” Paolo says. “That was a month ago.”

My brain refuses to understand what it’s hearing. “He was great on our Cinque Terre hike. He was smiling and laughing the whole time.”

Jake nods slowly. “A lot of patients do better after stopping treatment. Without the side effects, their body feels good for the first time in months.” He pauses. “But then the cancer progresses unchecked.”

I feel a sudden rush of anger. For the unfairness of cancer. For Diego’s decision to stop treatments.

“Well, then we check it. We fight this. We find some better treatments.” I pin Jake with an accusing look. “Isn’t this what you do with your mice? You cure cancer. That’s what you told me. So cure Diego, give him whatever you’re giving those mice.”

Jake shakes his head. “We’re years away from clinical trials. Our research is promising, but it’s still in the early stages.”

I feel like we’re wasting time. We need to be doing something about this.

I stand up suddenly and my chair falls over, clattering loudly, breaking the oppressive silence of the lobby.

The noise feels so good I stalk over and kick another chair.

And then another, each one crashing to the ground with a satisfying clang.

I want to hurl a chair through the window, light the ugly gray sofa on fire, burn this whole building to the ground.

I feel arms wrap around me. I hear Paolo’s low voice.

“I know how you’re feeling right now,” he says.

I look in his eyes and see pain, anger, and defeat shimmering behind a veil of tears.

“We can fight this,” I say again, but with less conviction.

“Diego’s been fighting this a long time,” Paolo says gently. “He’s ready to stop fighting.”

With those words, all the fire in me dies out, replaced with a hopeless sadness I’ve never known before.

* * *

The next two weeks go by in a blur. Jake flies Diego’s mom out and pays for a hotel by the hospital. Paolo and Jake take turns visiting Diego every day and give me updates.

Carmen and Valentina and I go to visit him on Sunday afternoon.

His mom is there, a tiny woman with dark hair and bags under her eyes.

Did Diego keep this from her too? I don’t know.

We tell her we’ll stay with Diego for a few hours if she wants to go back to the hotel for a nap. She gratefully accepts.

Diego is asleep. He doesn’t look peaceful, like people do in movies. He looks exhausted, broken, small. It’s hard to reconcile the boy in the bed with the yappy puppy Carmen described the first night we met. We stay for two hours, but he doesn’t wake up.

A week later, I go back and visit him on my own.

I sit in an aggressively uncomfortable chair holding Diego’s hand and sort through all the things I’ve learned about Diego in the last two weeks.

His dad died three years ago, and he came to Milan to work and support his mom and two younger siblings.

He worked at a hotel, which I knew about, and picked up extra shifts at a bar, which I didn’t know about.

The pain of losing him is combined with the regret of not being a better friend.

Why didn’t I ask Diego about his home? His family?

His work? Because I was too caught up in my own drama, fretting about my own dreams. What about Diego’s dream?

I know making it in Hollywood was always a longshot, but doesn’t he at least get to try?

He squeezes my hand, and I nearly jump out of my seat.

“Diego!”

He gives me a weak smile, and I can see how much he hates this. Being here. People seeing him this way. So I shove down all the words of sorrow that are fighting to spill out. I give him a smile and shake a finger at him.

“If you didn’t want to get pizza, you could have just told us, instead of collapsing.” I shake my head and try to sound annoyed instead of anguished. “Diego, Diego, so dramatic. You actor types are all the same.”

His smile goes from weak to grateful. He gives my hand another light squeeze, and I prattle on about nothing.

About Isa and her latest shenanigans. About my twin nephews who escaped my sister’s house and ran around the neighborhood naked.

We ignore the fact that we’re sitting in a hospital room. We ignore the fact that he’s dying.

“How’s the food?” I ask.

Diego makes a face.

“It could be worse. They could make you eat Valentina’s cake.”

Diego laughs, which turns into a cough that wracks his whole body and contorts his face in pain. When he’s through it, he says, “You distracted her with that video, and saved me from her cake.” His voice is soft and raspy.

“I did,” I say.

I want to tell him that I’d sing and dance and juggle and tightrope walk if it would save him from this. Instead, I squeeze his hand and tell him a joke that Isa told me about a goose and a fox.

Two days later, he’s gone.

* * *

The funeral service is being held in Chile. Diego’s mom flew home yesterday with his body. We have our own memorial service of sorts at Paolo’s house. There’s a lot of crying, but there’s laughter too.

We share our favorite memories of Diego.

Line dancing at Calypso. Sledding into the bushes in Switzerland.

Telling our gang the plot of every single Spiderman movie over pizza one night.

Building that huge sandcastle at the beach at Monterosso.

His terrible ghost stories. By the end of the night, there’s a feeling of gratitude for Diego and the time we had with him.

We didn’t know it would be this short. But looking back, I see we filled it well.