The Devil of DiRisio (18 page)

“What do you mean?”

“You are so sweet and innocent,” he said as he kissed my forehead had hugged me to his bare muscular chest.  “What she’s saying doesn’t make any sense.  If what she and David did is so serious that she could go away for a long time, then it would make no difference if she was 17 rather than 18.  Either way, she would still be tried as an adult.  They’ve tried 13 year olds as adults depending on the crime.”

“Really?
  But why would she lie about that?”  Will sighed.

“I know you love your sister and you want to believe in her, but she is really no good.  She probably wants your birth certificate and passport for another reason.  There probably aren’t even any charges against her.”

“But I heard her on the phone with David.  There is something going on.”

“Are you sure?  She could’ve been faking.  I’ll check the phone records today and see if there were any calls to the states in the last couple of days.”

“Thanks, Will,” I smiled as I looked up into his eyes.  “And if she is really in trouble, will you help me help her in any way you can?” 

Will sighed again and said, “I guess.  But only because I’m madly in love with you.” He kissed me and lowered me onto the bed.

“I love you, too,” I said as he climbed on top of me.  He kissed my neck slowly and lovingly then found my lips and let his tongue explore my mouth.

“I want to make love to you.”

“Let’s do it. Right now,” I said. And I was serious too. I was sick of waiting. I was probably the only virgin left in all of Rome.

“Have you thought about a date, yet?” 
he
asked breathlessly in between his deep probing kisses. “The paperwork will be done soon. We can have the ceremony any time after your 18
^th
birthday.” I think he could sense my
back stiffen
and my muscles tense.  I always got nervous and evasive whenever he asked about a definite date for the wedding.  We’d only been engaged for five days and he had already asked about a date 20 times.  He even started to talk about kids.  Kids!  I was seventeen.  I was not having kids anytime soon.  What about my dance career?

Will rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.  “You’re not ever going to marry me, are you?” He sighed.

“Of course I am.  I just want to turn 18 first.”  I reached over and tried to stroke his chest, but he grabbed my hand and pushed it away. 

Then he stood up and said, “Are you sure that’s the reason?  Are you sure there’s not something else or some
one
else?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.
  I’m taking a shower,” he said as he sulked off to the bathroom.

I ended up leaving for class while Will was in the shower.  I put a pair of sweat pants on over my leotard and tights and jogged to the Academy.  It turned out to be a nice little warm up before class.

At my 11:30 break, Will came to see me.

“She’s gone,” he said.

“Who?”

“Sasha.  All her stuff is gone.”

“She’ll be back.  She probably just went to
… ”
I kind of just trailed off.  Even I couldn’t think of where she would go.  The only person besides me and Will was Damian Karl.

“I looked for your passport and papers.  I can’t find them.  And she cleared out our US bank account too. You must have kept the account numbers and pin numbers all in the same place. She just transferred the money somewhere. All we have left is our Italian account and my trust fund. Thankfully, I hadn’t given you access to that.”  My heart sank.  “I told you not to trust her.  I knew it!”

Later, I found out the real reason she wanted my information.  She wasn’t in any legal trouble.  Not yet anyway.  If she continued doing what she was doing she was sure to go to jail one day, though.  Will immediately reported all of my documents missing, but Sasha had already applied and received several lines of credit in my name. 

The whole time she had been in Italy, she was just using me.  I thought she had come back to be the sister, confidant, and friend that I so badly needed, but she had turned on me yet again.  I could never forgive her for this betrayal.  As far as I was concerned, I no longer had a sister.

The day after my sister disappeared, I noticed a change in Will.  He started to be, well, cold.  He used to hug and kiss me every chance he got.  He couldn’t keep his hands off of me.  Suddenly, he didn’t want to be near me.  He pushed me off when I tried to cuddle with him on the couch or in bed and our morning goodbye kiss turned into a peck on the cheek.   

“Is everything okay, babe?” I asked when he came home from practice for the third day in a row grumpy and withdrawn.  “Do you want to talk about something?”

“No,” he mumbled as he stormed into the bathroom.  He stayed in there for the rest of the night.  Every hour or so I would go knock on the door and see if he needed anything.  He usually didn’t respond.  If he did, it was with an abrupt ‘no.’

I didn’t know what to think.  I knew something was wrong, but he wouldn’t talk to me.  Was he still upset that I hadn’t set a date for the wedding? Was he upset about the money Sasha had taken from us? But it was only a few thousand dollars. Nothing compared to what he had in his trust fund. And Will was never too concerned about money anyway. Maybe it had something to do with that singing slut.  Even though he assured me that he didn’t hang out with her anymore, there were still articles about them in the tabloids. They actually claimed that he was marrying me on the rebound from his relationship with Veronica. Maybe he had cheated on me and was now so drowning in guilt that he couldn’t function.  Maybe he found out I had kissed Damian.
But how?
Well, I wouldn’t put it past Damian to willingly reveal something like that.

All of this speculation was getting me nowhere.  The truth was
,
there were many problems in our relationship. I couldn’t help but wonder if we were doomed. After crying for a few hours, I decided to work out some of my anxiety by dancing.

The studio Will built for me in his house wasn’t to professional standards, but it was sweet of him to try.  He didn’t realize that the mirrors were on the wrong walls and that the bar was too low for me.  But it was good enough for practice.

I was working on a choreography assignment that Gretchen had given us.  I decided to fuse hip hop and ballet and was using
pointe
shoes for a rap song.  It was going pretty well.  I had really learned a lot from Damian.  For all his faults, he was an excellent dancer and teacher. 

I had just worked in a back walk over into an arabesque when I noticed Will standing in the doorway.

“That was a great move,” he said solemnly.  It didn’t seem like a compliment.  It was more like an admission, like something he didn’t want to say but had to.  “I’m headed out,” he said showing me his suitcase.

“What?  Where are you going? It’s one o’clock in the morning.”

“I have a tournament in Sweden.  I’ll be gone for about a week.”

“But your plane doesn’t leave for like five hours.  Will, what’s wrong?  Why won’t you talk to me?”

“I can’t, I just
… ”
  Will shook his head dejectedly and walked out the door.  I felt like we were breaking up and I had no idea why.  I guess he just didn’t love me anymore.

I couldn’t stay in that house for a week by myself.  I didn’t even feel like he wanted me there. So, I packed up and went to my dorm room.

A few days later, Anna Marie sat with her usual stack of tabloid magazines glancing over at me every three seconds.  I could tell she wanted me to translate something, but she was afraid to ask.

About the fourth time she looked at me then looked away I said, “What is it Anna Marie?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly.
Too quickly.
  I looked over at the magazine she was reading.  There was a picture of Veronica
Valerio
on the cover as usual.  I was so sick of that woman.  I didn’t want to read anything else about her, but Anna Marie’s behavior piqued my interest.  I leaned over to read the title and it said, loosely translated, ‘Who’s the Daddy?’ 

Oh, so the stripper with a microphone had gotten knocked up. 
Gotta
say, I felt no pity for her.  That’s what she got for throwing herself at men.  Wait a minute; she threw herself at my Will, too.  I leaped up and snatched the magazine from Anna Marie.  She had been staring at a page trying to make heads or tails of it.  I knew immediately what it was saying.

The article outlined three men as the possible fathers for the unborn baby.  For each man, they listed evidence in support of their accusation.  For my Will, they had two pictures of him leaving her villa on dates around the expected time of conception. They also had one picture of them holding hands and another picture from three days ago of them kissing on a balcony in Sweden.

I had trouble breathing.  I thought I was going to pass out.  Anna Marie sat me down and ran to get me glass of water. 

“It’s probably not true,” she said optimistically.  “You know how they exaggerate and make up stuff.”

“They have pictures.”

“Just talk to him.  I’m sure there’s an explanation.  He loves you.”

For the life of me I couldn’t think of any reasonable explanation that he could give me.  Why would he be at her house after midnight?  Why did he keep getting linked to this woman? Why was he kissing her? What was so alluring about her?  Well, that was a stupid question.  There were two very alluring things protruding from her body.  I guess the better question was
,
what did he ever see in me?

When I went to class the next day, there were reporters waiting outside the studio like vultures wanting to devour any remnants of self-esteem I had left.  I had to fight through them while being pelted with questions in three or four different languages. 
Are you still going to marry him?  Do you think it’s true?  Will he try to get custody of the baby? Have you forgiven him?

I thought Alejandro would yell at me for attracting the paparazzi, but he was actually excited for the attention it brought the company.  He had the audacity to ask me to go out and make a statement.  Instead, I went out the back door and escaped.

I wandered around the city for a few hours, but everywhere I went I saw another magazine with the story of the year plastered on the front.  I felt like everyone knew who I was.  I felt like people were staring at me.  I had finally gotten the fame I wanted, but not how I wanted it.  Instead of being known for my artistic ability, I would forever be known as the jilted lover of El Matador.

Soon my curiosity got the better of me.  I stopped at a roadside stand and began reading one of the tabloids.

“Reading that trash is not going to make you feel better,” I heard from a familiar voice.  I turned around to see Damian Karl.  Today his eyes weren’t fiery, they were just warm. I collapsed in his arms and starting bawling.  He held me tight and let me cry on his shoulder.  It was just what I needed.  People were staring again.  I was making quite a spectacle, but I didn’t care.  I actually wanted the paparazzi to be there.

I wanted a picture of me hugging Damian Karl to be on the front page with the headline: “Fiancé of El Matador finds solace in arms of another man.”  I knew that was a little long, but whatever.  I wanted Will to see that I could cheat on him too.  I didn’t have to sit around and take his infidelity.  But it wasn’t even really infidelity.  We weren’t married … yet. Maybe he needed to get this out of his system before we got married.

For some reason, I let Damian take me back to his hotel.  Maybe I wanted to make Will jealous.  I didn’t know how far I would go to hurt
Will
the way he had hurt me.

“Can I get you something?”  Damian asked once we were in his hotel suite.  I shook my head.  Once again, I just wanted to sleep.

I slept for so long that when I awoke the sun was about to set.  Amazingly, Damian hadn’t tried anything the entire time.  He didn’t crawl into bed with me. He didn’t try to undress me.  He hadn’t tried to force himself on me in anyway.

“I ordered room service,” he said when I emerged from bed.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You need to eat something and keep your strength up.”  I sat down and started to nibble on a piece of bread.  I looked at my cell phone every ten seconds to see if I had missed a call from Will.  He didn’t call.  Why didn’t he want to talk to me and offer some sort of explanation?  Why wasn’t he begging for my forgiveness and telling me how much he loved me?

“He will call,” Damian said after I glanced at my phone for probably the fifteenth time.  “I’ve been in his position plenty of times before.  He will call and tell you she means nothing and that he loves only you.  And you will forgive him and everything will be back to normal for a while until another woman catches his eye,” he said with cold resignation.

“Will’s not like that.  This whole thing is a mistake,”
  I
said even though I wasn’t convinced myself.  “Why do men do this? Why can’t you be happy with one woman?  Why am I not good enough?”  I started crying again. Damian sighed and came to hug me.