Two Chances With You

Book 2: The Rome Novels

by Federico Moccia, Antony Shugaar

Genres: Marriage & Divorce; Sagas; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

THE NOVEL THAT INSPIRED LOVELOCKS ON BRIDGES AROUND THE WORLD

In this second novel about the "deep, passionate romance that transcends time and age" (Booklist), Federico Moccia delights readers with an enchanting novel about making wishes, second chances at love, and following dreams.

 

After leaving Rome with a broken heart, Step Mancini returns from America two long years later. He’s told himself that he’s put his first love behind him, but now that he’s home, he can no longer deny his need to see Babi Gervasi again. So he’s completely blindsided when he finds himself trading flirtatious barbs with fledgling actress Ginevra Biro.  Bold, streetwise, and funny, Gin is everything that Babi is not.  She offers Step a new beginning, a second chance at the love of a lifetime.
 
But even his romance with Gin can’t completely erase the past.  Trouble still follows his friends, and he and his mother remain estranged.  For now he can outrun his problems as he and Gin discover Rome together, from Capitoline Hill to the Ponte Milvio bridge, where the pair attach a padlock to the lamppost  and throw the key into the Tiber River, ensuring that their love will last forever.
 
But forever is a very long time. And their love is about to be tested.
 

Release date: October 19, 2021

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 448

Sample

Chapter 1

I feel like dying.” That’s what I thought the day I left. When I caught the plane, that day just two years ago. I really wanted to end things. There was a thunderstorm, and everyone was tense and frightened. Not me. I was the only one still smiling. That’s right, the best thing that could have happened would have been an ordinary, unremarkable accident. That way, it wouldn’t have been anyone’s fault, I wouldn’t have had to live with the shame, no one would have had to delve into the reasons why…I remember that the plane lurched and jolted the whole way.

When you’re depressed, when the whole world looks dark, when you have no future, when you have nothing to lose, when…every instant is a burden. Immense. Intolerable. And you heave an endless succession of sighs. All you want to do is get rid of that load. In whatever way necessary. In the simplest way, in the most cowardly fashion, without putting off till tomorrow this thought: She’s not here anymore. She’s gone now.

And so, very simply, you wish that you were gone too. That you could just vanish. Poof. Without complications, without bothering anyone. Without anyone taking the trouble to say: “Oh, did you hear? That’s right, him, that’s who I’m talking about…You won’t believe what happened to him…” Exactly, that guy is going to tell the story of your end on earth, embroidering it with who knows which and how many lurid details, inventing absurdities, as if he’d known you all your life, as if he were the only one who really knew the depth and nature of your problems. How weird…

And to think that even you never had the time to figure out what they were. And there’s nothing you can do to stop this appalling word-of-mouth legend from spreading. What a pain in the ass. Your memory for all time will be a plaything in the hands of just any old asshole who happens along, and there’s nothing you’ll be able to do about it.

In fact, I wish I could have run into one of those strange wizards that day. They throw a cape over a dove that’s just made its appearance and, poof, suddenly it’s gone. It’s gone, and that’s that. And you leave the theater, delighted with the show. But one thing is certain. You’ll never again wonder what became of that dove.

But that’s not the way things work. We can’t disappear that easily. Time has gone by. Two long years. And now I’m sipping a beer. When I think back to how I longed to be that dove, a smile comes to my face, and I feel slightly ashamed.

“Care for another?”

A flight attendant stands next to his drinks cart, giving me a big smile.

“No, thanks.”

I look out my window. Pink-tinged clouds make way for the plane as it sails through the sky. Those clouds are soft, light, and infinite. There’s a sunset in the distance. The sun sinks with one last wink. I can’t believe it. I’m coming back.

A27. That’s my seat number aboard this flight. Right-hand row, just behind the wings, central aisle. A flight attendant smiles at me again as she walks past. A little too close. She leaves a faint trail of perfume; her uniform is perfect. Up and down the airplane’s aisles she goes, with that smile.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts.”

The woman is struggling beside me. And she’s not struggling in silence. “Darn it, I never seem to be able to find the seat belt in these planes.” Observant, with a cheerful smile, her eyes are hidden behind the thick lenses of her eyeglasses.

I help the woman to find it, as she’s literally sitting on top of it. “Here you are, signora, it’s right down here.”

“Thanks, even if I can’t imagine what good it would do. It’s not going to be able to hold us in place.”

“Ah, certainly not, it can’t do that.”

“I mean, after all…I’m just saying, if we crash, it’s not like being in a car.”

“No, not like being in a car, certainly not…Are you nervous?”

“Very nervous, deathly nervous.” She looks at me and appears to regret using that phrase. She seems so worried.

I take a long slurp of my beer while I notice, out of the corner of my eye, that she’s staring at me.

“Please, just tell me something.”

“Exactly what, signora, what do you want me to tell you?”

“Distract me, don’t make me think about what could…”

She grips my hand tightly.

“You’re hurting me.”

“Oh, excuse me.” She loosens her grip, but she doesn’t let go entirely.

I start to tell her some story. Little jumbled flashes from my life, as they occur to me. “All right, do you want to know why I left Rome?”

The woman nods. She can’t seem to talk.

“Well, okay, but it’s a long story…” I feel as if I’m talking to a friend, with my old friend…“His name was Pollo, okay. Strange name, right? I mean, Chicken, what a name.”

The woman doesn’t seem to know whether to say yes or no.

“Right, so he’s the friend I lost more than two years ago. He was inseparable with his girlfriend, Pallina. She’s just incredible, a great person, bright eyes, always laughing, hilarious, sharp and funny and really witty…”

She listens in silence, her eyes curious.

Sometimes you feel more comfortable with a person you don’t know at all. It’s easier to talk about yourself. You really open up. Maybe because you don’t care about how they judge you.

“Whereas I was with Babi, who was best friends with Pallina.” I tell this stranger everything. How I met Babi, how I started to laugh, how I fell in love, how I lost her…

You can only see the beauty of a true love after you’ve lost it. I think while I speak, with little pauses every so often.

The woman is amused and curious, more relaxed now. She’s even let go of my hand. She’s forgotten about the impending airline disaster. She’s taking an interest in my own personal disaster. “So this Babi, have you talked to her since?”

“No. Every so often, I talked to my brother. And now and then, my father.”

“Did you feel lonely in New York?”

I answer with something vague. I can’t bring myself to say it. I felt less lonely than I did in Rome. Then, inevitably, I make a reference to Mamma. I just plunge right in. My mother cheated on my father. I caught her in bed with the guy who lived across the street from us.

The passenger can hardly believe it. The airplane? She doesn’t even remember that she’s riding in an airplane. She asks me a thousand questions. I practically can’t keep up with her. Why on earth do people love to wallow in other people’s misery so much? Spicy topics, forbidden details, obscure acts, salacious sins. Maybe because, when you’re just listening to them, you don’t get dirty.

The woman seems to relish and suffer at every twist and turn of my story. So I tell her everything, and I do so without reluctance. My violent assault on my mamma’s lover, my extended silences at home, the fact that I never told my father or my brother a thing about what happened. And then, the trial. My mother sitting there, right in front of me. She sat in silence. She never had the nerve to admit what she’d done. She could have used her betrayal as a justification for my rage and violence.

The woman stares at me, mouth agape. She understands. Suddenly she turns serious.

So I try to cut the drama. “As Pollo would say, I don’t give a flying fuck about The Bold and the Beautiful!”

Instead of being scandalized, she laughs. “And then what happened?” she asks, itching to hear the next installment.

I explain to her about the reason I went to America, why I wanted to run away and bury myself in a graphics course. “And seeing how easy it is to run into each other, even in a big city…so much the better to move to a new one entirely. Only new experiences, new places, new people, and most important of all, no memories. A year of the challenge of conversation in English, with the aid of the chance presence of the occasional passing Italian. All of it quite amusing, a reality filled with colors, music, sounds, traffic, parties, and new things.

None of what people talked about to you had anything to do with Babi, none of it could evoke her, bring her back to life. Useless days in an attempt to bring rest to my heart, my stomach, and my head. The total impossibility of retracing my steps, finding myself in the blink of an eye downstairs, looking up at Babi’s apartment, or running into her on the street. No danger of that in New York.

No room in New York for Lucio Battisti and his melancholy music. “And if you hark back in your mind, it’s sufficient just to think that you’re not there, that I’m suffering pointlessly because I know, I know it, I know that you’ll never come back.”

The woman smiles for one last moment. Stah-tuh-thump. A flat, metallic noise. A sharp movement and then the plane lurches ever so slightly.

“Oh my God, what was that?” The woman seizes my right hand.

“It’s the landing gear, don’t worry.”

“What do you mean, don’t worry! Does it have to make so much noise? It sounds like the landing gear fell off…”

Not far away from us, the flight attendant and the other crew members all sit down in the unoccupied seats, as well as a few odd side seats next to the exits. The passenger does her best to distract herself. She lets go of my hand in exchange for one last question. “So why did it end?”

“Because Babi found another boyfriend.”

“She did what? Your girlfriend? After all the things you told me?”

It seems like now she’s enjoying herself, sticking her thumb into my psychic wound. The airplane and the imminent landing procedures have faded into the background. And in fact, now she’s pelting me with questions, right up to the very last moment. Caught up in her excitement, in fact, we’ve exchanged names and moved on to a first-name basis. And she’s not holding back. “Since you broke up with her, have you had sex with any other women? Would you get back together with her? Is forgiveness an option? Have you talked about it with anyone?”

Either the beer is having quite an effect on me or it’s her and her questions that are making my head spin. Or else it’s the pain of that not-yet-forgotten love affair. I’m confused at this point. Utterly bewildered. I can only hear the roar of the spinning jet engines and the backthrust of the landing maneuvers. The woman looks out the window, frightened at the airplane and its wings that seem to brush the ground and wobble indecisively. She seizes my right hand and glances out the window again. Then she slams her head back into her headrest and jams her legs against the footrest with all her might, as if she were trying to use her own feet on the brakes of the plane. She digs her fingernails into the flesh of my hand. With a few gentle bounces, the airplane touches down. Immediately, the plane’s turbine engines go into reverse thrust, and that enormous mass of aluminum and steel shivers crazily, including all its seats and the woman beside me. But she doesn’t surrender. She squints and shudders, taking it all out on my hand.

“This is the captain, ladies and gentlemen. I’m pleased to inform you that we have landed at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. The temperature outside…”

A ragged attempt at a round of applause rises from the back of the plane, dying out almost immediately.

“Well, we made it,” I say.

The woman sighs. “Thank God!”

“Maybe we’ll fly together again someday.”

“Oh, I hope so. It was a real pleasure to speak with you. But are all those stories you told me really true?”

“As true as the fact that you held my hand.” I hold up my right hand and show her the fingernail marks she left.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t think twice.”

The occasional cell phone starts ringing. Nearly everyone stands up to open the overhead bins, pulling down shopping bags full of gifts brought back from America, collections of items that are all more-or-less useless, ready to file up the aisle and reach the exit as quickly as possible. After the hours of sitting, immobilized, in the airplane, where you’re forced to consider the balance of all the years of your life that have passed thus far, we return to the hasty rush of not thinking, fake thinking, the race to the last finish line.

“Arrivederci.”

“Thanks, buonasera.”

Flight attendants say goodbye at the airplane door. Then I head down the steps.

Warm wind. September. Sunset, it’s just eight thirty in the evening. Right on time. It’s nice to walk again after an eight-hour flight. We all climb aboard the shuttle bus. I look around at the other passengers aboard. A few Chinese travelers, a big, heavyset American, a young man who hasn’t once stopped listening to one of those Samsung digital audio players that I’d seen all over New York. Two girlfriends on holiday together who are no longer speaking, perhaps thoroughly sick of their extended cohabitation. A happy, loving couple. They laugh, constantly chatting about matters of only minor interest. I envy them or, really, I just enjoy watching them.

My traveling companion, the woman who now knows everything about my life, walks over to me. She smiles as if to say, Well, we made it, didn’t we?

I nod. I almost regret having told her so much. Then I relax as I realize that I’ll never see her again.

Passport check. Here and there German shepherds on short leashes pace nervously back and forth, in search of a modicum of cocaine or grass. Frustrated dogs on endless rounds look up at us with kind eyes, probably exhausted from the relentless training to which they’re subjected.

An immigration officer distractedly glances at my passport. Then he focuses in. He skips a page. Then he turns back and gazes more carefully. My heartbeat accelerates slightly. But then, nothing. I’m of no interest to him. He hands me back the passport, I shut it, and I put it back in my backpack.

I go to the luggage carousel. And then I walk out of the airport, a free man, back in Rome. I spent two years in New York, and it feels as if I left just yesterday.

I walk briskly toward the exit. I cross paths with people dragging their luggage, a guy running breathless to reach an airplane that he may be about to miss. On the other side of the partitions, relatives await someone who doesn’t seem to be arriving. Beautiful young women, still bronzed from the summer, stand waiting for their sweethearts.

“Taxi, do you need a taxi?” A fake taxi driver comes hurrying toward me, pretending to be the real deal: “I’ll give you a low price to the city.” I say nothing. He realizes I’m not a good prospect and turns away.

I look around. Nothing. No one. How stupid. But of course. What else did I expect? Who am I looking for? Is this why you came back? Then you haven’t understood a thing. I feel like laughing, and I feel like an idiot.

*  *  *

“He should have landed by now…”

Concealed behind a pillar, she speaks to herself under her breath. Maybe it’s just to cover the pounding of her heart, which is actually racing at two thousand miles a minute. Then she gathers her nerve. A deep breath, and then she emerges from behind the pillar. “There he is. I knew it, I knew it!” She practically jumps up and down, though both feet remain firmly planted on the floor.

“I can’t believe it…Step. I knew it, I knew it, I was sure he was returning today. I just can’t believe it. Mamma mia, no doubt about it, he’s lost so much weight. Still, he’s smiling. Yes, it seems as if he’s doing well. Can he be happy? Maybe he had a good time living abroad. Too good of a time.

“What’s the matter with me? I let myself get swallowed up by jealousy. After all, what right do I have? None. Well? Look at what a mess I am. Seriously, I’m just a wreck, a complete wreck. I mean, I’m just too happy. Too happy. He’s back, I can’t believe it. Oh my God, he’s looking this way!”

She quickly dodges back around, hiding behind the column. A sigh. She shuts her eyes, squeezing them tight. She leans back, her head resting against the cold white marble, hands splayed against the column. Silence. A deep breath. Exhale. Inhale…Exhale…

She opens her eyes again. At that very instant a tourist walks by, glancing at her in bafflement. She tries to put on a smile in order to reassure him that all is perfectly normal. But it’s not. No doubt about it.

“Oh, crap, he spotted me. I can tell. Oh, God, Step saw me. I’m sure of it.”

She sticks her head out again. No one’s there. Step went by as if he hadn’t seen a thing.

“Oh, of course, what an idiot I am. And after all, what if he had?”

*  *  *

Here I am, back again. I’m home. I walk toward the exit. The glass doors slide open, and I emerge onto the sidewalk. Right at the taxi stand. But at that exact moment, I have a strange sensation. I feel as if someone’s watching me. I whip around. Nothing. No one. There’s nothing worse than thinking you’re going to see something…and nothing’s there.

Chapter 2

Stefano!” Right in front of me, in the middle of the road, is my brother.

I smile. “Ciao, Pa.” I’m happy to see him. I’m almost touched, but I manage to keep it from showing too much.

“Well, how are you? You have no idea how often I’ve thought about you.”

He hugs me tight. He gives me a squeeze. For a fleeting second, I remember the last Christmas we spent together. Before I left.

“Well, here you are…Did you have fun down there in America, huh?”

He takes one of my suitcases out of my hand. Naturally, the lighter one.

“Yes, I had a great time in America. But why do you refer to it as ‘down there’?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a manner of speech.”

My brother, using manners of speech. No doubt about it, things have changed. He looks at me happily. He’s relaxed. He actually does love me. But we don’t look a bit alike.

I take a closer look at him. Dressed to the nines, a new shirt, perfectly pressed, a pair of lightweight trousers, brownish in color with cuffs, a checked blazer, and finally…

“Hey, Paolo, what happened? Did you misplace your necktie?”

“No, I just don’t wear a tie in the summer. Why, does it look bad?”

He doesn’t even wait for an answer. “Here we are, this is the car. Look at what I got for myself…” He waves his hand, showing off what constitutes, to his mind, a magnificent new vehicle. “Audi A4, the latest model. You like it?”

How could I say no in the face of such unbridled enthusiasm? “Very nice, not bad.”

He pushes the button on the remote in his hand. The alarm stops after a couple of beeps, and the double blinkers disappear. Paolo opens the trunk. “Come on, put your suitcases in here.”

I toss in the two duffel bags, next to the small one that he’s already neatly placed. “Hey, take it easy,” my brother warns.

His warning immediately sparks an idea. “Hey, can I try driving it?”

He looks at me. His expression changes. His heart is clearly torn. But his brotherly love wins out. “Sure, of course, here.” He makes a small effort to smile and tosses the keys to me. Crazy. You should never trust a brother like me. Especially not if that brother asks you for an Audi A4 like that one.

I get behind the wheel. It smells new, an impeccable car. I turn the key in the ignition, and the engine turns over.

“Just think. I’m still breaking it in…” He looks at me with some concern and fastens his seat belt.

And I, maybe because of the fact that I’ve just come back to Rome, my desire to shout, oh, I don’t know, the fact that I’d like to free myself of these last two years of silence, of my rage, living so far away, I suddenly jam my foot down on the gas. The Audi screeches, fishtails, protests, rebels, and screams, its tires sliding against the hot asphalt.

Paolo clamps both hands tight on to the handle over the car window. “There, I knew it. I knew it! Why does it always end up like this with you?”

“What are you talking about? I only just got in the car!”

“I meant that a person can never relax around you,” my brother says.

“Okay…” I downshift, taking the curve, and I jiggle the steering wheel just enough so that I’m practically grazing the guardrail. “How’m I doing now?”

Paolo leans back, adjusting his blazer.

“Come on, you know perfectly well I was just needling you. Don’t get so damn worried. I’m different now. I’ve changed.”

“Again? Just how changed are you?”

“That I can’t say. I’ve come back to Rome to find out.”

We drive in silence.

“Okay if I light a cigarette in here?” I ask.

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

I stick a cigarette in my mouth, and I push in the lighter.

“Wait, what are you doing? Lighting it anyway?”

“It’s the ‘rather you didn’t’ that screwed you.”

“You see? You’ve changed. For the worse,” he says.

I smile and look over at him. I love my brother. And maybe he’s changed, too, come to think of it. He seems more mature, more of a man. I take a drag on the Marlboro Medium and start to hand it to him.

“No, thanks.” In response, he cracks his window open. Then he cheers up again. “You know what? I’ve got a girlfriend.”

My brother is seven years older than me. It’s incredible, there are times when he seems like a little kid. He likes confiding in me, and it’s a delight. I decide to give him the satisfaction. “So what’s she like? Is she cute?”

“Cute? She’s gorgeous! She’s tall, a honey blonde. You’ve got to meet her. Her name is Fabiola, she’s an interior decorator, she only likes to go to certain places, and she has great taste…”

“Okay, got it. I understand, sure, sure…”

“Okay, okay. That response from you is an obvious wisecrack. In fact, it’s a dumbcrack. You like that? It’s something she always says!”

“Sounds a little dubious, don’t you think? She needs to be careful, when she says it. Anyway, now I understand why you two get along so famously.”

“Yeah, no doubt about it. We’re really in tune.”

Very much in tune. But what is that even supposed to mean? Being in tune is something that has to do with music. Love is something else, when you can’t breathe, when you miss her, when it’s beautiful even if it’s off tune, when it’s all madness…When the sheer idea of seeing her with someone else would be enough to drive you to chew your way across the ocean.

“Well, if you’re really in tune, that’s the important thing. And then there’s another thing…” I try to give it a good final flourish. “Fabiola is a pretty name.”

An obvious, unremarkable conclusion. But I couldn’t come up with anything else. Fundamentally, I couldn’t care less, but Paolo needs everybody else’s good opinion. Which is the stupidest thing a person can do. And after all, who do you mean by everybody? Not even our parents were one hundred percent in favor of us.

He seems to practically read my mind: “Plus Papà has a girlfriend. Did you know that?”

“How am I supposed to know that if nobody told me?”

“Her name is Monica, and she’s a good-looking woman. She’s turned his apartment upside down and inside out. She’s made it look less old-fashioned. She’s spruced the place up.”

“What about Papà? Did she do the same for him?”

Paolo laughs like an idiot. “That’s just great, too much.”

My brother and his enthusiasm. Was he like this before I left? When you get back from a trip, everything seems different.

“They’re living together. You have to meet her.”

What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t have to do anything. I jerk the steering wheel to one side to get around a car. The driver doesn’t seem to feel like getting out of the way. Move it, buddy! I flash my lights, but nothing doing. I hit the gas; I upshift. The car screeches to the right to get around him.

Paolo pushes both feet into the floorboard and grabs the armrest between the two of us.

Then I ease back to the left and reassure him. “It’s all okay. In America, I could never drive like that. They’re always clocking you to the last inch.”

“So, you came back here to have fun with my new car, is that it?”

“How’s Mamma?”

“Fine.”

“What do you mean by fine?”

“And what do you mean by ‘how is she’?”

“Oh, what a pain in the ass you’re being. Is she happy? Is she seeing anyone? Do you talk to her? Does she see Papà? Does she talk to him?”

I can’t bring myself to ask him the last, unasked question: Has she asked about me?

“She asks me about you all the time.” It’s the only question he answers. “She wanted to know if I’d talked to you on the phone from New York, how your classes were going, and so on and so forth.”

“So what did you tell her?”

“I told her the little I did know. That your classes were going well, that strangely you didn’t seem to have gotten into any fights with anyone, and then I invented a few other things.”

“Such as?”

“That you’d been dating a girl for two months, but that she’s Italian. If I’d said she was American, she would have figured out immediately that I was making it up because you wouldn’t have been able to understand each other.”

“Ha, ha. Let me know when it’s time to laugh. Was that one of your ‘dumbcracks’?”

“Then I told her that you were having fun, that you went out every night, but you weren’t doing drugs, and you had a bunch of friends down there. In other words, you had no intention of coming back but that you were doing fine. How’d I do?”

“More or less.”

“Namely?”

“I dated two American girls, and we understood each other perfectly.”

He doesn’t even have a chance to laugh, I downshift and veer off to the right, down the exit ramp. Off the beltway, I accelerate into the curve as the tires screech, and an old car honks behind me. I continue into the curve nonchalantly, and I pull into the straightaway.

Paolo sits upright again. He pulls his jacket down and into place. Then he tries to point something out. “You forgot to use your turn indicator.”

“Right.”

I drive for a while in silence. Paolo looks out the window fre. . .