Accidentally in Love, page 27
“And anyway, Brad Pitt’s not even in the scene I chose,” she murmured in his ear.
“What?! All this talk about him being naked and then nothing?” he joked cheerfully. “You disappoint me.”
“Don’t get distracted – pay attention.”
*
“I want you to get swept away. I want you to levitate. I want you to sing with rapture and dance like a dervish.”
“That’s all?”
“Be deliriously happy. Or at least leave yourself open to be.”
“Be deliriously happy’. I’m going to do my utmost…”
“I know it’s a cornball thing but love is passion, obsession, someone you can’t live without. If you don’t start with that, what are you going to end up with? I say fall head over heels. Find someone you can love like crazy and who’ll love you the same way back. And how do you find him? Forget your head and listen to your heart. I’m not hearing any heart. Run the risk, if you get hurt, you’ll come back. Because, the truth is there is no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love – well, you haven’t lived a life at all. You have to try. Because if you haven’t tried, you haven’t lived.”
*
After the scene was over, Sara pressed pause and turned to Ethan .
“Please don’t tell me you’ve got a whole pen drive full of this stuff!” he begged her in mock terror.
“Ethan, it’s just words,” she tried to reassure him. But he was in full on paranoid mode.
“Men hate words! We hate them! We prefer facts, by a long shot!”
“Calm down, calm down! You’ll have the facts too… Later, when we’ve finished watching these scenes I so carefully selected for you.”
“Why, what’s coming up next?” he asked, eyes wide open.
“Oh, just one of Ryan Gosling’s biggest hits,” she revealed with an innocent smile.
“Because now you’re going to tell me I look like Ryan Gosling…” he mumbled.
“Jeez, of course I’m not!” laughed Sara. “And anyway, I’m sorry, but nobody has pecs like Ryan.”
“Ryan? What, are you on first name terms with him now?”
“Well, that’s his name…” Sara answered casually. Sometimes it was so easy to cut men down to size. “Jealousy, turning saints into the sea, swimming through sick lullabies, choking on your alibis… ” she sang, making Ethan laugh. It was true that singing wasn’t really one of her talents – she was totally tone deaf. “You want me to keep singing or do you want to watch the next clip? ”
He gave her a dirty look. “Let’s watch the next clip. But only because it’s a sin to ruin a Killers song like that.”
She gave a burble of triumph and set the pen drive going again. “This is the finale of the masterpiece The Notebook .”
Ethan made a disgusted face, just like many men before him. They probably had their reasons.
*
“Well, that’s what we do. We fight. You tell me when I’m being an arrogant son of a bitch and I tell you when you’re being a pain in the ass. Which you are ninety-nine per cent of the time. I’m not afraid to hurt your feelings. They have like a two second rebound rate and you’re back doing the next pain-in-the-ass thing.”
“So, what?”
“So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s gonna be really hard. And we’re gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that, because I want you. I want all of you, forever, you and me, every day.”
“I’m warning you, you’re going to have to watch a lot of action movies to make up for this,” Ethan said to her with an incredulous expression. “This isn’t cinema, this is sadism. No guy would go around saying stuff like ‘I want all of you, forever…’ You’re not expecting any speeches like that yourself, are you? Especially because the only one of us who has actually expressed their feelings so far has been me!”
Pretending not to be listening, Sara started to play with a lock of her hair. “Ah, so you don’t want to hear that kind of stuff said to you?” she teased him. “That’s a shame, because…”
He cut her off by taking her in his arms more than a little passionately, then lifted her chin with one hand while with the other he caressed her cheek. “What are you trying to tell me?” he asked.
“I wanted to try and find an original way to tell you how I feel.”
“What, by making me watch ‘The Best of Hollywood Beefcake’?” he remarked.
“Yeah, okay, that wasn’t actually intentional, to be totally honest… It was more of a coincidence.”
“With you, nothing is a coincidence! But somehow, between one heap of saccharine and the next, I actually did understood what you were trying to get at, so now I’d like to hear the female protagonist speak for herself.”
Although she knew very well that the time had very much come, Sara still found it very hard to speak about her own feelings. There was something so definite about saying things out loud, and she was under no illusions about how hard it would be to free herself of Ethan once she had said the words he wanted to hear. He was like a weed – it was practically impossible to get rid of him, no matter how hard you tried.
“Look, before I go on with my confession, I would like to reiterate that I need things to go slowly. No rushing, okay?”
He nodded solemnly.
“Okay, then… I don’t even really understand why you’re making me say it, it’s totally obvious that I’ve got the hots for you, big time,” she confessed, her face going red.
“Oh, come on! Women don’t say ‘I’ve got the hots for you’!” moaned Ethan, sounding disappointed.
“Women say much worse stuff than that, believe me,” countered Sara.
“It’s not very romantic. Come on, say it another way.”
“God, you’re so demanding…” she puffed. “Okay, shall we try with ‘I like you’?”
His expression grew angry. Very angry. “What are you, nine?!”
“Ok, ok, I give up! I’m in love with you,” she confessed in a quiet voice, putting her arms around his neck.
He punched the air in triumph. “I feel like I just won the Super Bowl,” he said, sounding almost emotional. “Wow, a genuine from the heart, tormented declaration of love… For a moment, I almost forgot your heart was made of steel.”
“Don’t worry, I’m human, just like everybody else. That’s why I work so hard to try and protect myself. But when I do something, I go all in.”
He got up from the couch and headed towards the bedroom, still holding Sara in his arms. “You know you’ll never be allowed to choose a film again for as long as we live, right? All you’re going to be watching are Rambo and Rocky.”
She kissed his neck and heard him sigh ecstatically.
“That, my dear, remains to be seen…”
“You play dirty,” murmured Ethan in a hoarse voice.
“Of course I do!” she laughed, unable to lie.
In any case, neither of them would be watching a film for a long, long time to come.
Because, after all, there were much more interesting ways of spending the evenings.
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This book is dedicated to Carla and Franco, my in-laws, who have always been ready to lend a hand in the event of some organizational disaster (like our son suddenly getting sick, public transport strikes, school strikes…). Although I only discovered over the years that when you marry a man, you also marry his family, I know I’ve been very lucky and I’m deeply grateful for all the help they’ve given us.
Thanks Marija for killing spiders for me over the years. Even the ugly, hairy ones. Since I got married, Alex and I have taken turns, because neither of us is brave enough to be on the front line.
Heartfelt thanks to all the (apparently pretty devoted!) readers who have taken the time to write to me. It’s always very nice to get to know, even slightly, someone who has picked up one of my books.
Sincere thanks to all the literary blogs that support readers and do the very precious job of talking about reading.
I owe a lot to my friends Rossana and Nicoletta, my beta readers, who provided me with valuable ideas for the story while I was writing and editing it.
A big thank you as ever to Alessandra Penna, without whose help my books would be much less readable and full of slightly overly British constructions and words. It’s probably time I stopped only reading books in English, if only because I’m worried I might have got addicted to it. Oh well, each to her own.
I am also very grateful to all the Newton team for their excellent work: Raffaello Avanzini, Maria Galeano, Gabriele Anniballi, Giovanna Iuliano, Martina Donati, Carol Gullo, Clelia Frasca and all the editorial staff.
And to finish off, a little trivia: the wine bar-spa in the Plaza actually exists and they really do offer a package for couples. I absolutely must find a way to convince my husband that trying out first hand the things I write about would be of enormous help to me while I’m drafting my novels…
About Anna Premoli
ANNA PREMOLI was born in Croatia and lives in Milan, where she graduated in economics at the Bocconi. She has worked at J.P. Morgan and, since 2004, for a private bank. Mathematics has always been her strong point; writing came by chance, as an 'anti-stress method' during her first pregnancy. Love to Hate You stayed at the top of the bestseller lists for months and won the 2013 Bancarella Prize; the film rights have been bought by Colorado Film.
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A Letter from the Author
Dear Reader,
If you are intrigued about how I started writing, the true is…I have no idea. I’ve got a “fancy” degree in Finance and I’ve been using it for the last fifteen years: I’ve worked in Asset Management, spent a lot of years in Private Banking and am now challenging myself with a new role in a participations’ holding. The positive thing is that I (usually) know a lot about economics. The not so positive thing is that I write when normal people sleep. But sleeping is overrated, right?
Apart from having now two jobs, I’ve got a wonderful husband who I met in high school. He behaved a lot like a modern Mr Darcy, so of course I had to marry him even if I’ve never considered myself a great “romantic”. Plus, he proposed with a gorgeous ring… We are living our own happily ever after, raising a crazy smart kid and challenging ourselves to become better people.
I love hearing from my readers! The best way to contact me is to write an email, but you can also check my website and Instagram. Just follow the links below.
With love and thanks!
Anna
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Addictive Fiction
First published in Italy in 2017 by Newton Compton
First published in the UK in 2018 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Anna Premoli, 2017
The moral right of Anna Premoli to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (E) 9781788543903
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Anna Premoli, Accidentally in Love
