The Italian's Proposal

Two months ago:

Timothy Giannato was excited about the surprise he had prepared for his beloved Gia, a journalist he had been dating for over a year. He was the typical heartbreaker and Italian with a passion for racing cars. 

When Timothy finally heard the key in the apartment door, he stood behind the door of the room he shared with Gia every time he slept over there. His heart began to race, smiling as he watched the door slowly open. 

He was going to take a big step that night. He had been with her for a year now. Everyone at home adored the journalist, and he was sure he had found the woman to settle down with. 

On the bed, he had placed red rose petals in the shape of a heart with his hands that were only practical and skilled at driving and closing deals. On a small table, he had placed the champagne with which they would celebrate her yes.

It was then that he heard laughter and a voice speaking urgently. Gia seemed to have come with company. Timothy frowned at the surprise, but told himself that perhaps, after leaving the newspaper, his girlfriend had decided to have a few drinks at home. She had always been surrounded by women and men, who admired her for her work and her beauty. 

Timothy had thought twice before deciding to ask Gia for her hand. He had told himself that he was not ready yet, but his mother and father had a different idea. He was used to making them happy since he was a boy. He was their only son, and he didn’t want to give them a hard time. For that reason, even without being completely sure, he told himself that the best way to get to know each other was to get engaged and live together for a year or so. 

He had gone to close a deal in Spain, a week away from Manhattan and Gia, so he had decided to come back two days early and surprise her. He longed to see how her curls fell down her back and how her laughter spread joy and happiness wherever she was. 

That was one of the things he loved most about her—her way of taking life slow and relaxed and still doing a flawless and straightforward job. 

He heard a couple of voices heading into the room and stayed behind the door to surprise his girlfriend. He knew that his mere presence would make Gia’s friends leave. Half of them didn’t like him because they had thrown themselves at him in the past, and he had rejected them in the blink of an eye. 

The Giannatos were a family from Italy with pharmaceutical, marketing and advertising companies, and owners of a racing car tournament firm. He oversaw most of the business, as did his first cousin, Hamlet Giannato. They had grown up together, surviving the fame and business of both Giannato brothers. Hamlet’s brother had died in a traffic accident months earlier, and the family was just beginning to get used to not seeing him. He was also a race car driver just like Timothy. 

Time passed, and Timothy didn’t understand why his girlfriend was taking so long to come in. 

Minutes later, he heard something fall and the door open. He almost melted into the wall to avoid being hit by the door. 

Just as he was about to step out to surprise her, he was stunned at the sight of his almost fiancée. 

Gia was kissing a man. 

In her bedroom. 

Timothy couldn’t believe his eyes. They were so focused on enjoying their caresses that they didn’t notice someone watching them behind the door. 

The guy grabbed Gia by the waist, and she entwined her fingers in the man’s hair. 

In a matter of seconds, he began to feel sick. He thought he was going to vomit at any moment. His woman, the one he was going to make his wife, was standing in front of him about to sleep with another guy.

He was sure she wasn’t being forced to; she couldn’t be; she was enjoying every kiss. The man was unbuttoning her work shirt, a shirt he himself had recently given her for her birthday. 

Timothy stifled a growl.

At least he thought he did. 

The man laid Gia down on the bed, and they both looked over to where Timothy stood petrified from the pain and betrayal.

His Gia had blatantly betrayed him. 

“Tim,” she whispered and put her hand to her mouth.

“How could you?” was the only thing that came from Timothy’s lips, who had never in his life felt so devastated. 

His world had just collapsed. 

He who had never trusted anyone enough, who had been with the best and most giving women, models, journalists, businesswomen, dancers, and actresses. He had been a modern Casanova. But he had fallen in love.

Now there he was, almost on the verge of bursting into tears or breaking something. 

“Tim, what are you doing here? You said you were coming on Saturday.” She got out of bed and began to do her loose buttons. The man Timothy recognized as one of the fellows at the newspaper where Gia worked. 

Her lipstick was smeared across her face, and her eyes had that glint in them that he had seen so many times while they were making love. 

Timothy was a big, tall guy with a broad back and narrow hips. He spent a lot of time in the gym working out and took fairly good care of himself. 

“Sorry for coming back early!” he burst out as he walked out of the room. 

“Please, don’t leave. Let’s talk about this,” she begged him, running after him. 

“Fuck you, Gia. I was going to propose to you!” He slowed down and turned to face her. He didn’t even know what to do. 

“That meant nothing to me. It was nothing.” She had the finesse to start crying.

Timothy felt the desire to forget everything and forgive her, but the man his girlfriend had arrived with decided to show up at that moment.

“Didn’t it mean anything? You were going to fuck the guy!” He put his hands on her shoulders and shook her. “I thought you loved me! You lied to me! You took advantage of me and how I feel about you. You played with me, Gia.” 

“But I love you! I love you!” she cried out to him, putting her hands on Timothy’s face. “I love you. Forgive me; this really means nothing. I want to be your wife. I want to marry you.” 

Timothy took a step back and looked at her with all the hatred he felt. He felt betrayed. They had mocked him and his feelings. He had never given himself away in such a way that betrayal could be something important to him except with Gia. She had come to sink deep into his heart. 

“I know you’re furious right now, but let’s talk about it. Don’t walk away like this. Let’s work this out, honey.” She took a step closer to him. “Let’s work it out. You love me, and I love you. There’s nothing more to say.” 

“It was over between us the instant you brought that man into your apartment,” he started walking toward the exit and stopped. “You were so eager to have him inside you that you didn’t even notice the petals on the bed.” 

He closed the door. Even though he heard her calling him crying, he didn’t pay any attention to her. He kept walking as if the devil was chasing him. 

Was it only him? Was he the only one who had really fallen in love? 

He remembered as he rode the elevator down every moment with Gia: their birthdays, the activities she needed to attend, every outfit or debt she wanted or had, everything he had supplied for her. He had been her bank account for so long, and he hadn’t even realized she was just using him. 

Had she ever loved him too? Had she faked the burning desire she expressed every time they made love? Had it been a plan to get him to marry her? 

He had been so stupid to believe her bullshit. So weak. 

Now, he doubted everything. He no longer believed that their kisses were real nor that her orgasms were anything but faked.

Just like her love for him. 

She had ruined him.

The mornings were getting heavier and heavier for Melody, who kept throwing up everything she ate for dinner and something else each day when she woke up. She was tired of the sound her gagging made; she was tired of waking up her friend Lucy every time she threw up in the sink, which was inside Lucy’s room. Melody had never in her life felt as uncomfortable as she did at that moment.

It wasn’t just the fact that she had been living with Lucy for a week. Her friend was a sweetheart just for allowing her to spend time there. The apartment was tiny, and they barely had enough food for the two of them. Lucy wasn’t much of a shopper, and Melody didn’t have time to buy anything because when she finished her shift at the coffee shop, she went to clean and water the plants of a young couple who lived near the coffee shop. It was extra money, money she needed more than ever. 

When her mother told her that she wasn’t ready to be a real mother to the baby she was expecting, a woman capable of raising her unborn child well, she thought her mother was just being archaic and wanted to hurt and scare her. 

It was highly likely that those were her intentions, but Melody realized during that week away from her mother that it wasn’t going to be easy living alone. 

“Don’t come asking for help later,” was what her mother yelled at her as she packed her blouses and pants. 

“I won’t,” was all she replied as tears streamed down her cheeks.

“You’re destroying your life! You’re about to graduate. You only have three more quarters left. That happens right away.” Her mother approached her but did not touch her. 

From the moment she said she was pregnant, her parents had withdrawn like she was a leper. 

“I’m not destroying my life. I’m pregnant.”

“It’s the same thing. You’re twenty-two years old with a career in veterinary medicine ahead of you. Your father and I didn’t kill ourselves paying your education for you to come here and ruin it!” her mother yelled at her.

Melody told herself at that moment that she deserved her mother’s fury and her father’s silence. 

She had ended her parents’ dreams of an ideal daughter. They were a neurosurgeon and a schoolteacher, two productive and respected members of society, admired by all who lived in Norwood, for being united and hard-working. Her father, Charles Redford, born and raised in that small Bronx neighborhood in New York, was known for helping his neighbors and had put his two beautiful daughters through college without any of the rebelliousness typical of teenagers. Her sister was now a librarian and married with a beautiful baby boy named Anton. 

But Melody always had a competitive and free spirit. So free that she had dated the worst guy in college, a guy who was only around when there were car competitions, the kind with rich, pretentious billionaires. She hadn’t realized how in love she was with him until one night, after leaving a college party, he proposed to her in his car, and she gladly accepted. She wasted her virginity and ruined her parents’ dream. 

Her life was going perfectly well. She was getting straight A’s in college, and her father had the place lined up for her to start her own vet shop. They had a lot of plans, and because of a little miscalculation, she was having a baby. 

Twenty-two years old and pregnant.

“Pay attention to me, please. Listen to me.” This time, her mother anchored herself to her arm and forced her to look at her, wiping away the tears she had uselessly let escape. 

There was no use crying anymore. 

Her father had given an ultimatum: Abort or leave home.

It didn’t take two seconds for the decision to be made. 

She would move out. She would raise her child alone. Many young women had done so and had turned out well; she would be no different. 

“Mely,” her mother begged for her attention again. “Look at me, girl.” She hated to be the cause of so much pain and unrest in her mother. But things were the way they were because she and her father had decided so.

“Tell me, Mom. No matter what you tell me, I am not going to have an abortion. Don’t you understand what you are asking me to do? Don’t you realize that you are asking me to kill my child?”

“That thing is still a fetus!” her mother shouted.

“Stop calling it a thing! It’s a baby. It’s my baby.” She released her grip on her hand and shoved everything faster into the bag. “He’s not a thing. He’s my son. It’s your grandchild.” 

“It hasn’t been fully formed. It doesn’t feel anything. It’ll be like appendix surgery, only you won’t have a scar to show for it.”

“Are you listening to yourself?” Melody walked out of the room that had been hers since she was born. She had always lived there. 

Now, she had to leave. 

The night before she had contacted her friend. Lucy didn’t have any problem accepting her into her tiny studio apartment. She just gave her the disclaimer that the place was small.

“Melody, please,” her mother pleaded again. She couldn’t bring herself to give her one last look. She couldn’t look at her mother with the rage she felt at that moment, the fury coursing through her veins. She couldn’t burst out and say things she would surely regret sooner rather than later. 

“See you later, Mom. Let me know when yours and Dad’s inhumanity wears off.” 

And she left without looking back.

Now she was there annoying her friend. She hadn’t made any kind of comment, but poor Lucy worked all night in a call center, customer service, and toothpaste sales. She came in late every night, past three in the morning. Lucy was a twenty-four-year-old orphan who was also studying veterinary medicine at the university, but she hadn’t gotten pregnant by a stupid guy like Melody’s ex was.

Officially her ex. 

From the moment she had it confirmed that she was expecting a baby, she had called him immediately, scared to death. Richard was a jerk who just told her that it wasn’t his problem, that she had been a fool to get pregnant. 

As if she had planned it!

“Mel? Everything okay?” Lucy stood in the bathroom doorway watching her. 

“I’m fine. It’s only normal.” Melody pulled her hair back and kept her grip on it in case she threw up again.

She never knew when they were going to stop. There were mornings when she would stay for more than thirty minutes at the sink or at the toilet’s bowl. 

“They’re getting worse.”

It was a fact. 

She was very thin. She was a shadow of what she had been three months before. She had lost a lot of weight as she had no desire to eat anything, nor could she keep anything in her stomach as she threw up everything. 

“I didn’t think it was possible,” Lucy told her worriedly. “Are you sure that’s normal? I mean, I don’t have a lot of experience with pregnancy and boys, or even family. But you’re getting thinner. That can’t be normal. You’re all bones.”

“Wow, thanks for your support. I really couldn’t feel any better without you.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic. It’s the truth. I’m worried that when you get to give birth, it won’t turn out well. There are animals that die because they don’t have the strength to give...”

“Are you comparing me to an animal? I can’t have this conversation right now. I’m sorry, Lucy. I’m sorry to wake you up at six in the morning. I’ll get ready in a minute to go to work.” 

“Don’t apologize, Mel. I know it’s a lot for you to take in.”

And her friend had no idea. 

She was annoyed by everything, irritated even by her own breathing. She was trying to control her temper with her friend, but it was quite difficult. 

“I’m going to lie down. Let me know if you need me.” 

Melody nodded just before she felt another retch coming on. 

She was going to have a hell of a day.