Page 130 of Casanova LLC

“Three. Months?”

“That’s how long it took for the first thought I had in the morning not to be her.”

And I thought three days would be enough.

“Did you two ever…”

He shook his head. Then: “Well. Once. We were each other’s firsts. But never since.” He cringed. “She did not get my best.” He coughed a laugh. “I need an amaro.” He walked around me,pressed open the door to the sala, and went through it. I followed him into the bedroom and right to the bar. He lifted the bottle in my direction.

“No, thanks. Are you okay?”

“Are you?”

He walked past me, back into the sala, and to the window seat. He climbed up and sat with his back against the mirror. I stayed standing but leaned against the wall.

After a moment, I went ahead and said it. “Did you ever not want to do this?”

“You know the answer to this. Many times we talked about th?—”

“No, not, like, I don’t want to go to work today, I want to go fishing instead. I mean, did the thought of being inside yet another woman ever make you physically ill?”

Perhaps I didn’t have a bento box for a brain, after all.

Was Claire right? Could I not give the woman I wanted love while obligated to give other women the love they wanted?

“How did you do it?”I asked.

He looked out into the grand sala, seemed to take it all in. His carpenter-eye roaming the ceiling, the walls, the floors. All the work he’d put in over the decades.

Of course, it was the house. His answer was the house. That was his life’s work. “What no one tells you about caring is that you are never done. There is always something to do. Something to fix. Fix one problem, create another.”

“Understood. But how do you forget her?”

“Forget her? Her beauty? Her intelligence? Her curiosity and joy and laugh and that little dimple?—”

I spun away, trying to physically avoid his words. “What are you doing?”

“You cannot forget her. You want to know what I would have told you if we had this conversation before? If we had both been able to admit the truth? I would have said that you must be prepared to live with the wound. The cut heals, but the scar remains. The scar is regret.”

I exhaled slowly; looked at the floor. “Do you honestly think we help women?”

“I could not have done this if I didn’t.”

“By setting a standard even we couldn’t meet for longer than three days?”

“We show them what is possible.”

“What we show them is one in a million.”

“No, more. It is priceless and worth everything if you find it.”

I looked up at him. “For everyone except us.”

He stared at me. “Dimmi. Who are you if you are not this?”

I heard Claire’s voice in my head: I want to be with Alessandro Vianello, my favorite painter and the man I love. I don’t want to be with Casanova.

“I am an artist. I could have that life.”

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