Authors: Love Rehab

Jo Piazza (21 page)

“HELP!” I yelled with everything I had. All I did was startle the birds, who decided to stop falling for their fish around the jetty because the squawking lady was ruining their dinner.

“HELP, HELP, HELP. Anyone, please help.”

But they were all laughing and drinking and partying indoors, and they thought I had gone to bed. No one was going to help.

But maybe there was hope.

There was a light bobbing up and down in the distance. It was a boat. I kept screaming, the salt water stinging the back of my throat. I tried to jump up and down but didn’t want to lose my footing, so I did more knee bends and waved my arms like one of the Village People doing YMCA.

A white fishing boat with a small blue light on top captained by a portly man with a shock of dark hair pulled alongside the jetty that had become just a couple of rocks in the open ocean.

“Buonasera
,
signora. Ciao, ciao. Come stai?”

What was an Italian fisherman doing off the coast of Mexico? Not that I cared. I took his outstretched arm and climbed onto the little ledge of his boat. Under the blue light he took a better look at my face.

“Sophie,” he said with a smile.

“What?”

“
Si era Sophie
. Sophie and Joe.”

What was happening? Maybe I had passed out on the rocks and fallen into the ocean and drowned, and this was some weird limbo or heaven or hell or a fantasy world like Wonderland, except instead of a Cheshire Cat I had this large Italian gentleman to lead me on my journey.

“
Mi chiamo Pippo
,” he said, drawing out the Pip like Peep. Pippo. Pippo? How did I know that name? Joe! I knew it because of Joe. Joe told me the story about Pippo, the cuckolded fisherman. Now Pippo was on his cell phone speaking in rapid-fire Italian. He handed me the phone.

“Joe,” he proffered.

I grabbed it.

“Joe?”

“Sophie! Why are you in the middle of the ocean? Are you OK?”

“I just took a walk. I climbed out to the jetty and then the tide came and I got stuck and then Pippo came. Why is Pippo here?”

“Sophie, you’re breaking up. I can’t hear you. Come to shore.”

Joe would be on the shore when I went back. That was good, and exciting. Of course, he may believe that I tried to drown myself, but I could explain all that away.

Pippo looked me over again. “Sophie,” he said with a smile.

“Pippo,” I said, smiling right back.

When we reached the sand, Joe was standing on the shore with a towel. I ran over to him.

Pippo stayed on the boat. Joe waved and yelled out what I assumed was a thank you in Italian.

He threw his arms around me.

“Sophie, why did you go out there?”

I couldn’t help it; I buried my head in his neck and soaked in the smell of him.

“I just took a walk and then I saw the pelicans and I couldn’t stop watching them. I think you’re wrong not to want to be like a pelican. See, they aren’t afraid of falling hard. They know what they want and they dive and they get it. I want you. I want to dive for you. I want to fall for you and I don’t care if I get hurt. I love you.”

I didn’t know what he was going to say. But I didn’t hold my breath and my stomach wasn’t doing the knotty flip-flops. Whatever the answer was I was going to be fine, but he had to know how I felt.

He leaned into me.

“Sophie, I already fell. You’re my fish. The best one.”

And then he kissed me and it’s cheesy and corny to describe it like this but it was like no other kiss I had ever felt in my life. It was the kind of kiss you read about and the kind that old-time movie stars did in black-and-white films before getting on planes and leaving each other forever to be with some deadbeat spouse they didn’t love.

When we finally broke apart after what had to be ten minutes, I looked up at him again.

“Pippo?”

He smiled. “Is my date for the wedding and the very first client of Love Rehab South.”

“He’s a client?”

“He is. He’s part of a group of ten who will do the first love retreat after the wedding. What you did for the women—I think we can do that for a lot of people. Everyone is fucked up when it comes to love and romance. If we can only realize that we’re all messed up in the same way, then we can get better.”

“Do you think I’m better?”

“Do you think you’re better?”

I got quiet. I wanted to be honest.

“I think I’m a work in progress.”

He smiled again, and I knew I would never get tired of that smile.

“I think we all are, Sophie.”

“Joe?” I asked tentatively. “Are you really leading me to believe that what happened tonight actually, really, and truly was just a hilarious misunderstanding?”

Joe belly laughed so hard he had to put his hands on his knees.

“There go your rules. You are living in a romantic comedy right now.”

I was falling hard. It was both romantic
and
comedic.

It can happen, OK?

But I had to hit rock bottom before I was ready to do it. That was the part they never show you in romantic comedies, the picking yourself up after it all falls apart, when everything sucks for a good period of time.

I’ll spare you the details. I don’t want to be that person who gives anyone false hope or a practicum guide for how falling in love should and will work. Needless to say, Joe and I walked off the beach that night and had what can only be described as a year’s worth of pent-up and rehabilitated orgasms.

Katrina and Tito blended Jewish, Mexican, and Mayan traditions into their ceremony, in addition to some things that were simply Katrina.

She asked that all the guests do a labyrinth walk before convening on the beach where they would be married by Rabbi Scheilman, who had flown down from the Upper West Side.

The labyrinth on the property was composed of stones laid in the sand. I watched my newfound friends, women and men whom, for the most part, I hadn’t known at this time last year. They had all come into my life in varying states of disarray, most of them a little bit broken. But together we had healed one another. And I had been a big part of making that happen. I smiled as I watched all of them wend their way through the maze of stones, shoes mostly in hand, knowing they would more easily be able to wend their way through the twists and turns of life.

From the outside it looked like a maze, but once you walked into it you realized that it was just a single path that led to the center after a series of twists and turns had led you close and then farther away from your goal.

As Joe and I walked it hand in hand, I couldn’t help but think that the labyrinth was like any relationship. Just when you think you’re getting close to something, all of a sudden a twist or a turn can put you right back where you started. And that had to be OK, or you would never get to the good stuff.

Joe might be my soul mate; he might not be. But I was in love and I was happy and that was perfectly good enough for right now. I had serenity.

Acknowledgments

Authors like to lament the loneliness of their working life. Writing
Love Rehab
wasn’t lonely at all for me. This book was inspired by more than a decade’s worth of stories my girlfriends have told me about their love lives. While none of the characters are representative of any particular person I know, all of the characters are composites of people I love, so I felt as though I was surrounded by friends throughout the writing process.

So many people read early drafts of this novel. I want to thank a few of them (and for those of you that I leave out, I will buy you a cocktail or set you up with my cute single cousin sometime in the near future): Emily Foote, Ursula MacMullan, Leah Chernikoff, Leah Popowich, Samantha Prestia, Jackie Cascarano, Megan O’Brien (who insisted that I actually name a character using her real name), Tre Miller, Cooper Lawrence, Paula Froelich, and Christine Ryan.

Special thanks to my girlfriends from high school: Rebecca “Becky” Prusinowki, Andrea Pasquine, and Julia Fisher Nastasi, all of whom participated in many a late-night drive-by of one or another Holy Ghost boy’s house when we were sixteen, and actually watched my high school boyfriend’s
90210
video tape collection with me.

I dedicated this book to all the boyfriends who have inspired me to behave in ways unbecoming to a lady. I have a special place in my heart for each and every one of them, except for that one guy who cheated on me with thirty-seven women. I hope he got herpes.

I drank a lot of wine while writing this book, so I really want to thank the kind people at Wine.com for your impeccable service and moderately priced, full-bodied California reds.

I also aged a little bit throughout the process, so I want to thank Dr. Michael Reed for his laser focused Botox.

Of course, thanks to my wonderful editors: Jen Pooley, who never ceased to tell me that the book was awesome even when I felt like it wasn’t anymore, and Nicole Passage, who knows that I do not know, where commas, should always, be.

Jane Friedman, Tina Pohlman, Rachel Chou, Mary Sorrick, and Libby Jordan from Open Road totally believed that I could write a novel and because of that, I actually did it.

And as always, John and Tracey. Thanks for messing me up just enough to have something to write about. Love you guys.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Mimi Bark

ISBN 978-1-4532-8761-3

Published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com