The Explorer's Apprentice

57:DeRossi

Eleanor Brown

“Was that an iceberg?”

They stare out at the ocean for a few seconds, watching the white giant slowly disappear. The walkway echoes with peals of laughter.

Eleanor and Fabrizio share the bench outside the ballroom, arms entwined, cheeks pressed together as they share a single sheet of paper. They talk about nothing, and talk about everything. She strokes the pendant around her neck sometimes, as if she can’t believe it’s there, her nails fitting perfectly in the immaculate curves of the dolphin. Occasionally one will take the pencil from the other one and murmur, “No, no, this’ll go there…” and add something new to the drawing.

It’s dark already, Eleanor realizes, how much time has passed? But she’s not willing to leave Fabrizio’s arms, not even to check the time. “It needs a path,” she says, sketching a curvy line. “For people to walk up.”

What they’ve created is a restaurant, if it can be called that. A building no doubt, but one of epic proportions, something that only appears in dreams. Room after room juts from its sides, and plenty of windows to let in the light, and lots and lots of flowers.

“No, love, it’ll be right up against the sidewalk,” he rumbles in his low voice, like liquid gold. “People will walk by the windows and smell the food and go right on inside.”

The moon bathes them in a silvery light, and Eleanor can’t help but imagine the pair of them with white hair and pale skin, old and in love, years from now and still sharing a bench.

“Your turn,” he adds.

“Right. Okay hon, what is… your favorite place in the world? If you had to live there forever, where would you pick?”

“Let me see,” Fabrizio muses, and stares up at the sky. “Um…”

I love the stars, Eleanor thinks, nestling into the crook of Fabrizio’s shoulder. She brushes her face against his neck, the perfect line of his jaw. They’re even brighter out here, on the ocean. The stars are the net of some giant fisherman, and the moon is the fish he will never catch.

“Um… You’re making it hard to concentrate…”

Eleanor laughs and hugs him tighter. She adds a signpost above the front door of their restaurant. “Well, where will it be?”

Fabrizio kisses her as he takes the pencil, and into the blank square fills in his last name. It’s a silent agreement they made. De Rossi… Eleanor likes the sound of it. Yes. Beautiful.

“Right here,” he says, as he finishes the last dot on the “i”. “I want to be here.”

Eleanor loves his eyes. His bright green eyes, every shade imaginable. They flit from her face to the paper, and back again, and she knows he’s embarrassed.

“I like it here too,” she says, and they both blush.

“So you should… you should come with me… You should.” Eleanor turns so she can see him better. “You should come with me. And we will build it together.”

He kisses her forehead, and Eleanor feels as if she might just die of bliss.

“I love you.”

And Eleanor freezes.

Her heart screams yes. Her soul screams yes. Every vibrating, popping, thriving fiber of her being tell her yes. But Fabrizio vanishes before her eyes, and all Eleanor can see is her dying poppa. She sees herself standing before him, a menacing, ungrateful, hateful creature—an ugly creature. A selfish creature. She sees herself telling him, “I don’t love you anymore, poppa. I don’t love you anymore, or momma, and I don’t care about all you’ve done for me. I love someone else now.”

And she can’t do it. I can’t do it… I can’t do it… I can’t do it… I can’t stand in front of him and say that… I can’t do it… I can’t do it…

Her mind reeling, four little words slip out of her mouth, before she can stop. “I can’t do it.”

“You can’t?”

The look on his face shreds her to bits. The pain in his eyes tears her apart. But Eleanor’s mind is elsewhere, torn between two things she loves. Her mouth works independently from her body, betraying her, destroying her as it whispers, “I can’t…”

“Fabrizio!” Tommy suddenly appears in front of them. His hair is disheveled, and his shirt half-out of his pants, as if he just woke up. “What the hell are ya doing, we need ja down there!”

“Down where!”

“Getcher head out the clouds, lad, the boat is sinking!”

Suddenly the bench beside Eleanor is cold, a gaping hole where Fabrizio used to be. I blew it. He told me he loved me and I just sat there and told him I couldn’t. I blew it. I blew my chance at love.

“Stay here, Ellie,” he says, squeezing her hands one last time. “Stay here until your aunt comes to get you.” He purposely turns his head away, so she can’t see his face. So she can’t see the pain etched into it.

“But—what about you?”

“Do not worry about me, I will be okay! Stay here, okay!”

“Fabrizio!” she shouts, but he’s gone.