How to Love an American Man (28 page)

More minutes pass, and I decide I either want to talk or kiss again. “Chris,” I ask quietly, “do you wonder what's next?”

“Kris.” He smiles, his eyes fixed on my lips. “Don't talk.”

“Okay.”

He can't appease my questions about the future because neither of us knows what's ahead. No man can determine my future . . . that was one of the first lessons Grandma wanted me to understand about being a woman my age. Chris touches his lips to my cheek and rests them there without kissing me. Oh my God, my heart. I try earnestly to remain silent . . . but there are things I want to know. “When did you feel this for me—”

“Kris.” He starts laughing, then his voice hushes again. “Always you want to use words. What would you do if there weren't any words?” I look up at him. He runs his finger along my smile line. “Hm?”

“Is that rhetorical?”

“Shhhh . . .” I rest my temple against his face. “Do you trust me?”

I pull away and look at him. Do I trust him? My gosh, I don't know. Does that mean I don't? I look at the grass, and then up at him again.

“Why did you pull away from that kiss?”

“I didn't.” The idea stuns me. “Did I?”

He nods, his hand resting on my collarbone.

Did I?

He searches again for my gaze. “There's a melancholy about you today.”

I separate my head from his. “A melancholy . . .”

“I knew you had something on your mind.”

“Yeah, I'll say! And you know you really—” But his lips are on mine again, making a loving woman of this chatty girl. He reaches the back of my neck with his hand and gathers my hair in his clutch. It's as if he needs me.

When we finally pull apart, my head is woozy from the happy dopamine that must be coursing through my veins, and I need to brace my arms with extra strength—I'm so elated they feel like they're floating. But I take his hand in mine and set it in the grass. “I've learned so much in the year I've known you,” I tell him. While he hasn't been
responsible
for the ways I've grown, having him in my life has been behind it. “And you want to know something?”

He tilts his head.

“I'm a better person now.”

He takes my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “For the first time in a very long time,” he says, “I didn't feel any competition with my work . . . and I didn't want to be unavailable . . . and I wanted to show you how much I cared.”

So all along I was giving him things he was longing for? I had no idea. “You showed you care how you could.”

“I want to know you completely . . . and I want to share me with you.”

Oh my God, finally, this is it! Grandma was right! I keep my eyes down and move into his cheek again. “That's what I want too.”

“You realize it just cost me six hundred dollars to kiss you?”

I shrug. “Well, hopefully I've just given you something much more priceless than that.”

“Yeah,” he says, running his finger down the inside crease in my elbow. “I know where I'd put your IV in an emergency situation.” I smile at him as he examines the blue vein making itself prominent from my right arm, and it turns me even weaker, until tears spring up. In different ways we both have ideas of how we could save each other's lives. I tuck my fingertips in the curve behind his ear and down his neck.

“Kris,” he says, “do you truly believe that God will make sure we meet again? Is your faith that strong?”

I look out over the lake, and the wind takes my hair. I peel a wisp of it away from my lips. “Yes. It has to be.”

“Do you
really
have that kind of faith?”

I look him square in the eye. “Yes. It's all I have.”

We don't know how the timing of this will work, the distance or the dynamic. But the uncertainty in my heart is met with an assurance in his gaze, and when we rise to brush the imprint of the grass off my legs and return up the beach's stone lane to my house, I wrap my arm around his waist.

“You're going to the hospital today to tell your grandparents goodbye?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Are you late?”

“Yes.”

“Will they be angry?”

“No.”

It crosses my mind to visit Grandpa's stone later, to sit quietly with him in celebration of what's just happened. I know he's part of this. I look up at Chris. “They want this for you, don't they?”

“Who?”

“Your grandparents.”

“They want what?”

I shrug. “Love.”

“Is this love?” he asks. He's pleasant, amused. “This is a precursor to love.”

“Yes.” I unwrap his arm from my waist and link my fingers through his. Carefully he lifts my hand to kiss the tendons that run from my knuckles to my wrist.

“Nah, they won't be mad. I'll just tell Grandpa I was rolling around in the grass with some girl—”

“You were not!”

“Come on, it's a fishing story. It's nonfiction.”

“It's narrative nonfiction, and it didn't happen.”

His eyebrows raise mischievously. “But it could.”

“
If
this is love.”

He stops at the foot of my driveway and drops my hand from his grip to raise his fingers in a steeple to his lips. Then he closes his eyes and bows reverently, the way he'd rehearsed before his first trip overseas. “Yes,” he says. “
If
this is love.”

Afterword

“S
O
, G
RANDMA
, you know that in the past few months, I've gotten a little better at being discreet.”

She raises one eyebrow. “Have you?”

“Yes! Come on, Grandma. You've noticed.” She situates herself in the chair across the room as I log onto Grandpa's computer. “But, I do have to tell you: yesterday he called from the airport and told me that he's really happy about the talk we had. The talk.” I do bunny ears, indicating that there was a lot more than talking happening.

“Mm-hm . . .”

What's with that that mock-apprehensive, half-delighted look in her eye? How is she not satisfied yet? Everything she predicted is happening, for heaven's sake. “And there's a part of this e-mail I got this morning that I have to read you. Now
mind
you, I won't read the whole thing. But this part—” I put my hand over my heart; I already have the line memorized “—is so beautiful.”

She laughs, finally abandoning her pretend hesitation to get excited with me. “Go on then,” she says, urging me with a shake of her hand “Read.”

“So, he says he had a good flight and already had a big meeting . . . but here's the good part.”

There was this lovably earnest woman who took me down to her lake and kissed me gently. Could you give her a big, warm hug for me, and tell her that she hasn't left my mind.

I turn around slowly, not to disrupt the moment. “How gorgeous is that, Grandma?”

“It's lovely, dear.” She looks up at the ceiling. “But I'm confused,
you
kissed
him
?”

“No, Lord, no, Grandma. He definitely made the first move. And the second, and the third, and he kissed me by his car before he climbed in. It was all him. He knows that. With him it's always just semantics.”

“Ah.”

I wheel Grandpa's desk chair closer to her. “So, Glo? Come on, this is big! This is what you said would happen. You said, ‘
By the holidays
—' ”

“My dear, I remember what I said. And I would
like
you to find the kind of man who deserves someone as beautiful as you one day.” She holds up her finger in caution. “But it's possible that I'm wrong. And if he's not in your life by Christmas, or next year, or next century . . . please don't get stuck on it.”

“Because there's someone else.”

“Maybe, but Kristine”—my family only uses my full name in the most serious of conversations—“all your life, the only one you can
always
count on,
one hundred
percent of the time . . . is you.”

I gaze at her, comforted.

“Whether you're with someone, whether you're single. All this time we've spent together, all these days and nights and doctors' visits: it's not my job to tell you how you have to be if you want a man in your life. Right?”

My head tilts in an attempt to understand.

“You're a woman who's had goals, who always knows herself and what she wants. That's the most important thing for a woman to be in this life. And that, my girl, is what you have taught me.” She starts to tear up. “I can't tell you how much this has meant to be part of this with you.” She shrugs, pulling a tissue out of the cuff of her sleeve (another Grandma trick I've picked up). “So, you'll live your life. We'll all find out soon enough how it goes.”

“If this is love,” I tell her.

“If this is love.”

Acknowledgments

T
HANK YOU FIRST
to my two blessed grandmothers who have taught me what they know about our family and our faith.

To Janet Rosen and Sheree Bykofsky for your brilliant structural guidance and for being the first to spot the beauty and potential in this story . . . and certainly for finding me a home with the powerful team at HarperCollins, whom I have been so energized to work with.

To that HarperCollins team, including but certainly not limited to Amy Bendell, Lisa Sharkey, Cal Morgan, Jennifer Hart, Carrie Kania, Alberto Rojas, Mary Sasso, Maggie Oberrender and super-publicist Kateri Benjamin, the brains in design, the sales and marketing forces, managing editorial and production, and all the people who worked hard for every piece of this book to happen: I give massive thanks for your support every day.

And Amy, a special note to you—no editor could have been more inspiring or pleasurable to work with. Thank you for guiding me to take this story where I knew it could go, even when I wasn't sure exactly where that was. You have been my dream partner for my first book.

To Joelle Watt for your limitless vision, your time, your talent, and the incomparable bond our work has brought us to share.

To Bethany and David Johnson for being part of the cover concept's genesis—you are superstars.

To Bob Hanak and Matt Taladay, infinite thanks for helping me wade those early critical waters.

To the wonderful people who are connected to our family's business for your investment, belief, and interest in my work over the years.

To every teacher I have ever had in my life, with a special thanks to those who intensively nurtured my writing and my fascination with humanity: Mrs. Barbara Stephens, Sr. Kathryn Preston, Mr. Bill Wright, Mrs. Maureen Kane, Mrs. Star Young, Mrs. Mary Mike Sayers, Mrs. Lisa Blasdell, Mrs. Kathleen Kunkle, Mrs. Carol Korthaus, Fr. Ed Walk, Dr. Jacqueline Schmidt, Dr. Peggy Finucane, Dr. John Yost, Sr. Mary Ann Flannery, Dr. Nick Santilli, Dr. Denise Ben-Porath, Dr. Paul Thomson, Dr. Scott Bea, Dr. John Vitkus, Dr. Paul Levinson; to Mrs. Roz Pete for teaching me how to type (how very important that turned out to be!); to Mrs. Donna Chollock for taking me on my first trip to Europe, which is now my second home.

To my friends at YourTango.com, BustedHalo.com, and LimeLife.com, and to all the gracious editors who have given my work a home.

To the industry elites who first taught me about publishing: Suzanne Murphy, Bill Gaden, Carisa Hays, Martha Levin, Dominick Anfuso, and especially my dear Suzanne Donahue. Thank you for giving me such a prime foundation and fostering my love of this business.

To Aunt Eva, who so generously linked me with our relatives in our native Rome and Castelnuovo, Abruzzo. It was an event that changed my life and really catalyzed this story.

Alla famiglia Massimi . . . vi adoro!

To the Spaggiaris—truly my family,
grazie di tutto
.

To Eddie and Heather Tate at Luigi's and George and Kimberly Moore at the Treasure Lake Ski Lodge—you've been my hometown favorites for years, and I hope you don't mind that I've just told the world where to find you!

To Joel Weinstein for your direction in taking this story beyond the book.

To Katie Bressack for your eternal enthusiasm, for keeping me connected to friends in the biz like the beautiful Megan McKeever, and for your inspirational friendship.

To E. Benjamin Skinner, my friend and author of
A Crime So Monstrous
, for sharing materials that helped me prepare the book and for the incredible work you've done for women around the world.

To Marty Beiser who promised me that leaving New York on a year of adventure would not ruin my chances of getting published. (Marty, you were right!)

To Leslie Meredith, who first told me this book idea was worthwhile.

To Andrew Paulson for the hookup . . . you got things moving.

To Lynn and Alphie McCourt for sharing the article that set this book idea in motion (and to Ashley Davis for sharing Lynn, Alphie, and Allison with me!).

To my precious friends who have been such encouraging supporters of me.

To the men on whom the most enigmatic characters in this book may have been based—you've brought so much to my life, and I really have loved you.

To Sr. Kathryn King, who is magical.

To my brother for always keeping me real.

To my parents, definitely the two most loving people I know. You make the world a better place with your kind and endlessly giving nature. I know how much you've sacrificed for what I do. I love you.

And to God and Grandpa: without you, none of this would be possible. Both, kings in my heart.

About the Author

Kristine Gasbarre
is a celebrity interviewer and a culture and lifestyle contributor to women's print and digital publications. A graduate of John Carroll University in Cleveland and Fordham University in New York City, she holds degrees in psychology and media studies, and she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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