Chapter 6 #3
I can see him outside the restaurant through the glass with his friends. I need to confront him now, while I’m still angry. Before I lose my nerve.
“I’ll just be a minute,” I call to my friends, and before I can talk myself out of it, I’m following Cristiano outside.
I find him leaning one shoulder against the wall, both girls from his group fawning over him. One is playing with her hair as she gazes up at him. The other is laughing too loudly at something he said. He looks bored, but tolerant, a king accepting tribute he didn’t ask for.
I approach from the side. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
The girls give me a look that could curdle milk.
Cristiano’s gaze lifts to mine, but his expression doesn’t change.
“Sure,” he says, pushing away from the wall. He follows me a few feet away without a word to the girls.
I round on him. “What are you doing?”
He tilts his head, hands sliding into his pockets. The posture is casual, relaxed, completely at odds with my trembling fury. “I thought you wanted to talk to me.”
“I mean, what are you doing here? At Giodorno’s. What are you doing coming here all the time?”
“The pizza’s good.”
“Cristiano.”
He raises an eyebrow. Waits.
“You keep showing up,” I press. “Everywhere I go, there you are. I’ve seen you here three times in two weeks.”
“Malus isn’t that big.”
“It’s big enough. You never came here before.”
He considers this. “I’ve been branching out. Trying new places.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit.” His voice is reasonable and infuriatingly calm. “I went through a phase of only eating at the places my friends liked. Expensive restaurants. But the food’s better at places like this. More authentic.”
He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and I start to feel a little silly.
“So your sudden interest in cheap pizza has nothing to do with me?”
“Why would it have anything to do with you?”
The question lands like a slap. He’s not being cruel.
His tone is genuinely curious, like he truly doesn’t understand why I’d think that.
And why would he? I’m the housekeeper’s daughter.
He’s the only son of one of the richest men in Malus.
The idea that he’d rearrange his life around my pizza schedule is… actually insane, when I think about it.
“We haven’t spoken in four years,” he continues, his tone patient. “You asked me to stay away from you, and I have. I’m not sure why you’d think I’m suddenly following you to pizza parlors.”
I stare at him. He sounds so reasonable, and the worst part is, he’s right. He has stayed away. He’s barely spoken to me, hasn’t approached me, and hasn’t done a single thing I could point to as inappropriate.
Except show up. Everywhere. All the time.
But when I try to articulate that, it sounds paranoid. Like I’m the obsessed one, tracking his movements and reading meaning into coincidences.
“I…” I trail off, suddenly unsure of myself.
God, what am I even doing? I sound unhinged. I followed him outside to accuse him of what, exactly? Eating in public?
Cristiano watches me struggle, his expression unreadable. Like he’s giving me time to hear how crazy I sound.
“Mina.” He says my name gently, almost tenderly. “I’m not following you. I promise. But if it bothers you that I come here, I won’t anymore.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t come here,” I whisper, desperately backpedaling. My face is burning. I can feel the girls watching us, probably wondering who this nobody is who’s confronting their golden boy and making a fool of herself.
“It’s okay. If my presence makes you uncomfortable, I’ll stay away.” He shrugs, like it’s nothing. “It’s just a pizza place. There are others.”
I don’t know what to say. I came out here ready for a fight, and he’s defused it all with a few calm words and an offer to accommodate me.
I take a shuddering breath. He sounds sincere. He looks sincere. And I feel about two inches tall.
“Haven’t I always done what you asked?” he adds quietly. “You told me to stay away. I stayed away, Mina. I think I’ve earned a little credit.”
“Okay,” I hear myself say. “Okay.”
Cristiano gives me a smile, almost boyish, like the fifteen-year-old who used to wait for me at the school and carry my backpack on his shoulder.
“It was good to see you, Mina,” he says. “Take care of yourself.”
And then he walks away, hands in his pockets, rejoining his friends like nothing happened.
I stand on the sidewalk, watching him go, my heart still racing, feeling like an utter fool.
“What was that about?” Katrina appears at my elbow, Priya beside her, both of them looking between me and Cristiano’s retreating back with undisguised curiosity.
My face is burning. It’s too embarrassing to admit even to my friends that I just accused Cristiano Montoni of being obsessed with me, and I came off sounding like I’m the one obsessed with him.
Any second now, Cristiano’s friends are going to break into peals of laughter when he tells them what I said, and they’ll all turn to stare at me.
I hurry toward the parking lot where Priya left her car. “Nothing. Let’s go. I need to get out of here.”