Adriana Trigiani - Very Valentine

I survey the line at pickup. Families, friends, and chauffeurs wait for us, looking us over from head to toe as we search for familiar faces from our side.

Roman waits with my parents. Mom is wearing a red sundress with matching sunglasses and waves a small Italian flag. Nice touch. Dad stands next to her, waving plainly with his human hand.

Roman stands tall over them, in jeans and a blue Brooks Brothers button-down shirt. He looks handsome. He always does, which makes hellos and good-byes sweet. When our eyes meet for the first time in a month, my heart races. I really missed him, and as angry as I was with him, I love him. My nose stings as though I might cry.

I kiss my father and mother, and then Roman. He takes me into his arms, and my parents and Gram vamp about the trip, as if they don’t notice that he can’t let go of me. This ought to be an interesting car ride. Roman takes the luggage cart from me and pushes. Mom and Dad and Gram follow. I fill him in on Costanzo and what he missed on Capri. We go through the doors to the parking garage.

“Honey, we’ll take the bags. You go with Roman,” Mom says.

“I drove, too,” Roman says.

“Oh, two cars. Great. Okay. You can take my bags. I never want to see them again.”

Dad helps Roman load up the back of his Olds Cutlass Supreme with the bags I lugged through Tuscany and farther south. I lift my carry-on out of the car and hold it in my arms. “Precious cargo,” I tell Gram. “The shoes. I want to keep them with me.”

“Of course,” she says.

They climb into Dad’s car, while Roman opens the front door of the passenger side of his car for me. I get into his car, and shiver, even though it’s almost June. I remember the first winter night I sat in this car, and how happy we were. He climbs in and pulls the door shut. He turns to me. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

“You’re beautiful,” he says and kisses me.

“It’s the Capri sun.” I shrug, deflecting his compliment that sounds sincere. I don’t know what to believe. When it comes to Roman, all I know for sure is that things are constantly changing. “You want to stay over?” he asks quietly.

“Sure,” I tell him.

With my quick answer, Roman, like all men, is satisfied that all is forgiven. He believes what I tell him, and why shouldn’t he? I don’t want to overthink our reunion and turn it into a monster discussion of our future and our relationship. We’ve got years for that, or do we? When it comes to love, this is where I’m weak. I don’t fight for myself or what I want. I’m perfectly happy to pretend that we’ve moved past my hurt, Italy, and all the unpleasantness. Now I’m home and all will be well. We can pick up where we left off.

Roman talks about the restaurant-review night, and how the pressure was on. When he tells me Frank Bruni of the Times gave him three stars, I throw my arms around him. I act excited for him, giddy even, and I’m all the things he needs me to be: supportive, interested, and utterly on his side. When he asks me about Italy, I give him the broad strokes, but I don’t explain how I think I’ve changed, and how the people I met had such an impact on me. I begin to tell him about the old lady’s brooch, but it sounds silly, so I change the subject and switch the conversation back to him.

I look at his face, and his glorious neck, his hands and his long legs, and I get stirred up. But it isn’t stirred up of the deep variety; it’s a fashionable fake of the real thing. This is the part of me that loves being in a relationship. I like the stability and being part of a couple. Never mind our problems, we’re together, and that’s enough. More than enough. Roman Falconi might be the Chuck Cohen of love, the knockoff, whereas I’m looking for a couture label, but he’s mine.

I’m going to his apartment and I’m probably going to make love to him, but it’s not going to mean what it would have meant a month ago, or even a week ago. Then, we were building on a solid foundation. Now, doubt has seeped in and I’ve got to find what I saw in the beginning. I only hope that my feelings will all come rushing back just as they were the first time he kissed me. Maybe then our relationship can begin anew, and I can figure out how to be in a relationship with Roman and his restaurant.

“Someday, we’ll go back to Capri together,” he promises. Gratefully, the traffic on the LIE gets thick and he has to keep his eyes on the road. In this moment, I try to believe him. But somehow I know he’s just saying it because he thinks that will keep me focused on the future, and out of the present, where our problems with each other are alive and well.

“That would be great,” I tell him. It’s not a lie. It would be great.

The next morning, I wake up in Roman’s bed, buried deep in the warm comforter. I slept soundly, exhausted from the drive to Rome and the flight back to New York. I look over and see my overnight bag by the door, and my carry-on with the Bella Rosa inside.

I get up and go into Roman’s kitchen. There’s a pot of coffee and a bagel on the counter with a note: “Went to work. So happy you’re home.”

I pour the coffee. I sit down in his kitchen and look across the bright, sunlit loft, and instead of seeming masculine and romantic, as it did before Italy, in full daylight it appears to be unfinished, bare, in need of things. Temporary.

TODAY IS THE DEADLINE FOR THE DELIVERY of the shoes for the competition for the Bergdorf windows. I get off the subway at Columbus Circle, holding the shoe box containing the Bella Rosa in the crook of my arm, like a newborn baby. Let’s face it, this is my version of precious cargo. Some people give birth to babies, I give birth to shoes.

In my backpack is the sketch of the Rag & Bone gown. For fun, I photographed the shoes, reduced them to scale, and put them on the feet of the model in the sketch of the wedding gown Rhedd Lewis sent to us. I also included my original ink-and-watercolor sketch of the shoes, the photograph of my inspiration-Gram at her wedding-and a photograph of Costanzo and me under the Capri sun, giving him credit as the cobbler who built my design.

I push my way through the revolving door at the side entrance and walk past the specialty handbag section to the elevator. I look around at the customers, wanting to shout, Pray for me, but I imagine the only soul connection these ladies experience is the Zen that comes during a microdermabrasion facial. I don’t believe they light candles to Saint Crispin for spiritual guidance.

When I get off the elevator on the eighth floor, it’s not the serene waiting area I remember from our appointment months ago. It’s packed, full of people and loud, like the subway platform at Forty-second Street, except no one’s waiting for a train. They wait for Rhedd Lewis. It seems that all the major shoe labels are represented in flashy, attention-getting ways. Donald Pliner has wedding shoes dangling off a tabletop palm tree; a delivery boy from Christian Louboutin carries a tray of cookies, upon which is a wedding shoe filled with candy; an actual six-foot-tall Amazon model, dressed as a bride, wears what look like Prada shoes. A publicist carries an enormous blow-up of a Giuseppe Zanotti wedding shoe with a phrase in French staggered across the poster. Alicia Flynn Cotter’s signature patent leather pumps are hanging artfully in a small-scale hot-dog stand turned wedding wagon. It’s a madhouse. I work my way through my competitors to the receptionist.

“Rhedd Lewis please,” I tell her.

“You here with a shoe?” she asks as she types.

“May I speak with her assistant please?”

Without taking her eyes off the screen, she says, “She’s on her way out for Craig Fisse. And I’m just a temp. You can leave your submission on the pile.”