23. Cassandra
— ? —
Cassandra
The night is warm and the sea is silver.
We’re sitting on the beach near Antonio’s rental - not the childhood beach from weeks ago, but a smaller cove closer to town, the kind of place locals know about but tourists never find.
The sand is still holding the day’s heat, and the water catches the moonlight in a way that makes everything feel slightly unreal.
I can smell salt and wild rosemary and something else underneath, something that might just be summer in Calabria or might be the particular scent of possibility.
“You keep watching me,” Antonio says.
“I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
“About how strange this is.” I lean back on my hands, feeling the sand shift beneath my palms, still warm from the afternoon sun.
“Four months ago, I was driving away from our marriage with a suitcase in the back of my car. Now I’m sitting on a beach with you, pregnant, watching the moon and trying to figure out what comes next. ”
“Does it feel strange in a bad way?”
“It feels strange in a confusing way. Like I can’t quite trust it.
” I dig my toes into the sand, watching the grains scatter.
“We had a session with Dr. Ferretti last week where she asked me to describe what safety feels like. And I realized I couldn’t remember.
Not really. Not the kind of safety where you let yourself want things without bracing for disappointment. ”
Antonio is quiet for a moment, and I appreciate that he doesn’t rush to fill the silence with reassurances. That’s new - the willingness to sit with uncomfortable truths instead of smoothing them over.
“What did you tell her?” he asks finally.
“That safety used to feel like you. Before everything went wrong.” I turn to look at him, his profile outlined against the dark water. “And that scares me, because what if I’m just remembering wrong? What if I’m rewriting history to make what we had seem better than it was?”
“Maybe you’re not rewriting anything. Maybe it really was that good, and we just forgot how to maintain it.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s supposed to be honest. Which is what we agreed on, right? Honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable.”
He’s not wrong. The counseling has been helping us build new patterns - ways of talking that don’t spiral into defensiveness or silence.
Dr. Ferretti has this way of cutting through our careful politeness to the raw material underneath, and it’s exhausting and clarifying in equal measure.
Last session, she made Antonio describe what he was actually feeling when he used to leave before dawn.
Not what he was thinking, not what he was avoiding - what he was feeling.
He couldn’t do it at first. Kept defaulting to explanations and justifications until she gently stopped him.
Feelings, Antonio. Just feelings.
Scared, he finally said. I felt scared. Of not being enough. Of watching her hurt and not knowing how to help.
I cried in the car afterward. Not sad tears - something more complicated. Relief, maybe, that he could finally name it. Grief for all the months we’d spent not knowing how to reach each other.
“I brought wine,” Antonio says, reaching into the bag beside him. “Non-alcoholic. The shop in town had exactly one bottle, and the owner looked at me like I was asking for something obscene.”
“You bought non-alcoholic wine?”
“I thought it might be nice to have something to toast with. Since you can’t have the real thing.
” He produces two plastic cups - actual plastic, the kind you’d find at a child’s birthday party - and pours with exaggerated ceremony.
“I couldn’t find proper glasses. These were in the rental’s cabinet.
I think they’re from someone’s kid’s communion party. ”
“Very elegant.”
“I try.”
The wine is terrible, sweet and thin, nothing like the real thing. I drink it anyway, watching him over the rim of my communion cup.
“To what?” I ask.
“To our daughter.” He raises his cup, suddenly serious. “To the atelier. To the fact that we’re both sitting here trying instead of running.”
“To trying,” I echo.
We clink plastic against plastic, the most unromantic toast in history, and something loosens in my chest. This is different from who we used to be - the glamorous couple who drank expensive wine at industry parties and performed happiness for the cameras.
This is plastic cups and bad wine and sand between my toes and the terrifying honesty of two people who’ve seen each other at their worst and are choosing to stay anyway.
“Can I tell you something?” Antonio says.
“That depends on what it is.”
“I’m happy. Right now, in this moment, sitting on a beach with bad wine and the mother of my child - I’m genuinely happy.” He sets down his cup, turning to face me fully. “I don’t think I’ve said that out loud in years. Maybe ever.”
“You’ve said you loved me.”
“That’s different. Love is about the other person.
This is about me - about how I feel inside my own head.
” He pauses, and I can see him choosing his words carefully.
“Dr. Ferretti said I should practice noticing when I’m happy.
That I have a tendency to skip over the good moments and fixate on problems. She called it emotional avoidance disguised as responsibility. ”
“That sounds about right.”
“You don’t have to agree so quickly.”
“I’m just validating your therapist’s professional opinion.” But I’m smiling, and so is he, and the warmth in my chest is spreading despite my best efforts to stay guarded. “I’m happy too. Not all the time. Not about everything. But right now? This is good.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late. My head is enormous again. Swelling at an alarming rate. Doctors are concerned…”
I shut him up by kissing him.
It’s not a planned thing. It’s instinct, muscle memory, the natural response to his ridiculous face and his even more ridiculous jokes and the way he’s looking at me like I’m something precious.
His hand comes up to cup my cheek, gentle, and I lean into him and let the kiss deepen.
He tastes like bad wine and salt air, and his fingers are warm against my skin, and for a moment I forget about all the reasons this is complicated.
“Cass,” he murmurs against my mouth.
“Don’t talk.”
“I just want to make sure…”
“I’m sure.” I pull back just enough to meet his eyes. “I’m choosing this. You. Not because I have to, not because of the baby. Because I want to.”
“Even after everything?”
“Especially after everything. We’re not the same people we were four months ago.
We’re not even the same people we were before everything started going wrong.
” I touch his face, feeling the familiar angles of his jaw, the slight roughness of stubble.
“I spent so long being afraid that you’d disappear again.
That one morning I’d wake up and you’d be gone, back to work, back to the version of yourself that didn’t have room for me. ”
“I’m not going back to that.”
“I know. That’s the thing - I actually believe you now. Not because you promised, but because I’ve watched you change. Day after day. Session after session. You’re doing the work, Antonio. You’re actually doing it.”
His eyes are bright in the moonlight, and I realize he’s close to tears. This man who spent so many years hiding behind performances and perfect smiles, undone by the simple acknowledgment that he’s trying.
“Let’s go inside,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
“Ask me that one more time and I’m throwing you in the ocean.”
He laughs - a real laugh, surprised and delighted - and helps me to my feet. We gather our things and walk back toward his rental, hands intertwined, the sand cool now beneath our bare feet. The night wraps around us like something soft and forgiving.
***
Inside, with the windows open and the sound of the sea drifting in, everything slows down.
Antonio shuts the rental’s door with his heel and turns to me in the half-dark.
Salt air pushes the white curtains inward like soft hands.
Somewhere along the waterfront a restaurant is playing guitar, the melody thin and sweet.
I can still taste the terrible non-alcoholic wine on both our mouths.
This is nothing like the panicked reconnection in Rome - no frayed nerves, no flower-and-guilt apology staged after a bad dinner.
Tonight I chose him on a beach with plastic communion cups, and my body already knows the difference in the way my pulse has steadied instead of spiked.
“Come here,” I say.
He does, careful of the swell of my belly between us, hands settling at my hips as if requesting a visa stamp.
I lift his shirt over his head and toss it toward a chair.
My own dress follows, a soft cotton thing that puddles at my ankles.
Cool tile kisses my bare feet. His gaze drops to the curve of my pregnancy and stays there, reverent and hungry at once, pupils blown wide in the moonlight.
“Like what you see?”
“I’m worshipping.” His palms cradle the sides of my belly with a gentleness that makes my throat ache. “May I kiss her?”
“She’s kicking. She says yes.”
He sinks to his knees on the cool tile and presses his mouth to the place where our daughter shifts, murmuring something soft in Italian against my skin - promises, nonsense, prayer, I can’t tell.
The tenderness almost undoes me more than lust would.
Then his mouth travels lower - over the soft hair above my underwear, along the crease of my thigh - and tenderness acquires a filthy edge that makes my knees weak.
“Tell me if anything feels wrong,” he says, looking up, chin almost resting on my mound. “Angle. Depth. Pressure. Temperature. I’ll adjust in a heartbeat. You’re the director of every inch tonight.”
“I know.” I card my fingers through his dark hair. “I chose this on purpose. Stop negotiating like a lawyer and start undressing me the rest of the way.”