Chapter Seven
__________
Anya
Whose idea was it to go live three times in one day?
Oh, right, the director and his over-the-top compensation. He had far too much money and the freedom to act spoiled rotten.
All the show’s participants had been live-streamed simultaneously. Viewers had complained about not having enough screens to watch everyone, but the director had merely pinned a comment suggesting they buy more devices.
Alessio had refused to do any more confessional interviews, which left Anya as the final participant. She didn’t mind, though; she thought it was a clever idea. The confessional felt like a mock therapy session and a chance to vent her feelings for free.
She’d been nervous at first, airing out her past for the world to judge, but as time went by, there was a sense of relief, almost like she had someone to talk to without giving her advice.
She didn’t want advice. She wanted someone to listen and then leave her alone.
Anya even found herself looking forward to the last live event as she sat at the dining table with the others.
Meryl would’ve called it team bonding if her husband wasn’t sitting in front of her like everything was fine and dandy.
He came a couple of days after the show began, but his arrival didn’t stir up the type of hype the director wanted. His presence blended in with the environment, but he was extremely kind to everyone. It was hard to miss him when he walked into a room.
During dinner, Meryl avoided her husband’s pleading eyes, which she dubbed “egg-dropped-soup eyes” because they looked divine but offered no real sustenance.
Anya suppressed a laugh, not wanting to disturb the calm, almost romantic atmosphere.
“Has anyone seen my confessional?” Clara asked as she swallowed her food and swirled her red wine.
Anya looked down at her barely touched food to avoid her critical gaze. She didn’t watch anyone’s interview, but Meryl did out of sheer nosiness. Everything she knew about these people was from Meryl, even the proudly admitted psychological warfare all three in the trio used on each other in the name of love.
She didn’t understand, but they wouldn’t have her blessings if asked.
Cosmo, seated beside her, physically patted himself on the back. “Oh, people loved my interview. I got so many messages about how inspiring I was. Guess honesty is a lost art.”
“I, too,” the third member of their trio chimed in, raising his hand. “It’s funny how people get so sensitive about being called out. I guess the truth does hurt, aye?”
“I watched yours,” Meryl’s husband said with a lovesick smile on his face.
Anya thought he had considerable emotional capability, but Meryl lived with him, so her opinion on it was more accurate.
“I did, too,” Meryl hissed, the fork clanking on her front teeth. “You have names for my toes?”
Anya tuned out his explanation, and she was honestly not in the mood to lose more appetite. She wasn’t hungry due to the excitement of finishing her confessional and feeling liberated again.
A soft graze on her hand below the table caught her heart in her throat as Alessio’s finger lightly curled around one of hers. They were in this foggy phase, a difficult halfway of absolute confusion as to what they were.
Were they distant friends? Close strangers? Fleeting glances? Steady hands? Lingering memories?
But not regrets. Anya would never regret Alessio.
“Be real with me here,” Clara uttered with an inconspicuous slur peppering into her voice. “Just between the two of us. We’re friends, right? Yes, we are. So, you can tell me, and I’ll keep your secret.”
Anya’s finger broke off from Alessio’s and turned her attention back to the woman who said nothing useful.
They’d only spoken a handful of times, and every conversation had been surface-level. Those three kept to themselves and were always out on dates. She was kind of interested in what part of First Love, Dearly Beloved fit into their relationship.
The director hadn’t vetted anyone’s romantic history.
Alessio certainly wasn’t volunteering information about his past relationships.
Did anyone even meet the show’s requirements?
The more time she spent here, the more she doubted it. The show’s goal was unclear as well. It was like the director wanted everything and nothing at the same time.
“She meant if you two are dating,” Cosmo clarified, wiping his lips with a napkin. “Or if you were in the past.”
“I want to say yes,” the other partner drawled, deliberately slow. “But I don’t want to be wrong. Then again, I’m never wrong. Come on, you two aren’t even hiding it. At least play pretend, yeah?”
A message notification saved her from the unwanted interrogation. She quickly excused herself from the table and took another glance at Meryl’s husband, whose eyes were shooting hearts at Meryl’s unreceptive ones.
Behind her, Alessio’s intense gaze burned into her back. She took deep breaths, but before she could collect herself, she heard him mutter a disturbingly courteous, “Excuse me.”
He caught up to her with long strides and guided them out of view from the dining area. The strength in his fingers branded his heartbeats on her skin and turned the touch into soothing restraints.
Under the gaze of a live camera streaming to millions, he leaned down and whispered in her ear like the taste of a devil’s tongue grazing her bravery.
“I’ll be watching,” he murmured, his voice a low hiss that sent shivers down her spine. “I hope I’ll finally know what made you leave.”
A threat was wedged deceitfully in his voice, and it made her question why it came so naturally to him.
Small bells of fear trickled to her ear, building a fortress to ward off his voice, and threw blockades around her heart. It was sudden yet primal, the way her body protected itself despite her brain feeling nothing.
“We’ll move on afterward,” he said, resolute and commanding, his tone embracing serenity.
Then he let her go, leaving her alone in the hall with muddled thoughts.
A staff member she didn’t recognize appeared moments later, dutifully guiding her to the confessional room. Wordlessly, Anya followed, her mind spinning like pudding left to curdle in the sun.
She settled onto the same loveseat as before, her thoughts a chaotic jumble as the interviewer and commenters eagerly waited for her to deliver the final chapter of her story—the Dearly Beloved ending.
* * *
TWENTY
Anya bought yarn and a crochet hook at 7:29 PM, and Alessio asked what happened to the all-purpose cleaner over a text with no punctuation.
He was responsible for getting take-out from the restaurant on date nights while she was on shopping duty for household items—two birds with one stone.
She told him the cleaner was out of stock, so she bought other things instead of leaving empty-handed. He met up with her outside, his car coming to a rolling stop in front of her at the perfect moment, and he took her cold hands into his to warm them up when she got in.
He didn’t see anything wrong with holding up traffic and kissed her, unfazed, after an infuriated car horn blared behind them. The vehicle flashed its high beams, but he pretended not to notice.
Over the next few days, she made a nest on the couch with the TV showing professional archery matches. She did her thing, and he rewatched the matches to learn more.
She had asked him once, when they hung laundry on the balcony after the dryer malfunctioned, if he was planning something nefarious because he was on a streak of watching bowhunters.
“To hunt you down if you leave me,” he said.
She gave him a goofy, crooked crochet animal for his key fob as revenge. He looked awfully proud every time he unlocked his car in public.
It took him until Christmas Eve, two full months, to tone down his preening.
“I don’t preen ,” he would say into the crook of her neck.
She’d wipe the pout from his lips with a kiss when midnight struck on Christmas, but he managed to deny he was pouting against her smiling lips.
It was their third Christmas together, and the third time was the charm for miracles.
As a tradition, they went to see Christmas lights downtown. Couples walked with arms linked, fingers intertwined, and hair static from snuggling.
Anya pulled him to the massive, decorated tree. It smelled of life, passion, and happiness as she wrapped her arms around him, burying her nose in his arm while his coat grazed her grinning cheeks.
She wanted to try the Whimsy Winterland minty drink, so she left him by the tree with him supporting a wounded expression.
Anya came back with two steaming cups of the drink, raising them proudly over the heads of passersby.
Fireworks roared in the sky. Sparks reflected off the Christmas decorations, and the unusual skidding sound was drowned out by cheers and colorful bursts of lights.
There was a scream and a bump on her shoulder before she lost sight of him amid the terrified crowd. She couldn’t move, being packed and carried with the motion. When her feet touched the ground, someone tackled her with the force of an 80-kilogram wrestler.
Everything was chaotic. The screaming and stomping magnified her headache.
A woman in a trench coat, unfitting for the negative-five-degree weather, groaned in distress as she lay on Anya’s lap.
She was pushed away rudely as Alessio knelt and frantically patted her body for injuries. He cupped her cheeks, the tremors wreaking havoc under his fingertips, and her heart was the same.
He pulled her into his arms as they wrapped around her shaken body. It was tight, suffocating even, but she greedily inhaled the collar of his coat for comfort. Anything to stop her mind from wandering to the worst when she saw the wreckage over his shoulder.
An angry crowd surrounded the car that hit a streetlight and demolished the metal base. Relief caught up to her as she realized she could have been crushed if it wasn’t for the woman who tackled her.
The crowd shouted over each other, demanding answers from the driver, who stumbled out of the smoking car, and the first punch ignited a brawl.
Alessio never looked back at the chaos.
He carried her to their car and headed straight to the emergency room just seven minutes away. They made it to the hospital before the ambulances returned with patients, so she was checked on quickly.
She didn’t want to stay overnight. Alessio was not happy about it, but he still took her home.
Neither of them talked about the incident, though it left an unmistakable trace on him.
They went on with a temporary fix, like a bandage, without treating the actual wound. It healed, but there would be an ache every now and then.
* * *
TWENTY-ONE
The change happened inside her, not Alessio.
Being with him had been nothing but perfect, and the escape she lived in morphed into small shards of reality. Too tangible, too real.
He would rub her ring finger absentmindedly, as often as it took her to understand its implication. She imagined it: gold, silver, diamond, her birthday stone, heirloom, a custom piece—all beautiful and weighed the same as the noose around her neck.
He had gotten more protective, cynical, and paranoid .
For a while, everyone was an enemy. The most he gave people was a side glance—a common thing he did when sharp words were flat on his tongue—and degraded patience. But it never came because she’d held his hand and said his name so softly it’d fade with the wind if he didn’t listen closely.
The turning point was a Tuesday. Alessio had left overseas to attend a meeting with his family’s close acquaintances, and it forced her to remember he was from a different world.
Even as the scary revelation resurfaced, she hadn’t experienced any tormenting emotions.
Neither had the news of her parents in the plane wreck.
She didn’t tell him, or anyone, in fact. She just got up, went to class, aced the pop quiz, and wished the professor a nice day.
Anya left her phone to ring until a voicemail was finished recording. She listened to it twice. The details lingered until the sympathetic voice stopped, and the second time, lightning struck her memories to pieces.
Whatever happened to the rushed funeral preparation, she hardly recalled a single moment as she had not been coherent enough to care. When was the last time she talked to Alessio? Who was at the funeral?
The wake, she was told, was the first time she saw that many strangers from her parents’ side. Second cousins, great aunts and uncles—just so many people.
They paid their respects and stayed briefly, but she was drifting through the day.
When she went to her parents’ house, she felt alive, like a breath of crisp air in her burning lungs, that she was finally free of the toxic fumes from their hostile relationship.
She sat in her dusty yet organized childhood bedroom and realized how much she craved solitude.
Then Alessio showed up thirty minutes later, standing outside the room, carrying all her favorite convenience store snacks and nothing on his face.
Handsome but unreadable.
He didn’t say anything, no scolding or empty sympathy. He found out what had happened somehow, but Anya felt too weak and dizzy to search for answers when his scent covered her.
Silent comfort , she supposed idly, as he draped an arm around her shoulder and put her head on his thigh.
He even bought her that green drink, which he called radioactive waste.
* * *
TWENTY-TWO
She was healing, slowly but surely.
Life moved on, seasons went, and new memories came. They were going stronger, four years, and graduation was around the corner.
She began to sleep like the dead. Sometimes throughout the day and night, maybe the next day if Alessio didn’t wake her.
They still woke up with a clockwork routine: his arms around her, her face above his heart, and the luminance of morning cast through the curtains.
He’d wake up and make breakfast for them while she slept for fifteen more minutes. Then, classes, lunch, home, dinner, and winding down for the night. Weekend dates, spontaneous gifts, and surprise affection.
He gave her normalcy, something he ruined with his bare hands.
He confessed to her under the sky, shattering her walls of denial, and she wished he never said it so devotedly in her ear.
She pretended the split second of broken sanity in his eyes wasn’t there or the strength behind his hands when he stroked her cheeks with perilous care.
That night, they slept with backs turned, but familiarity found its way home when she woke up in his arms and his lips on her hair.
The sky was almost white as the fuming afternoon sun eradicated early daybreak.
His arms tightened, and she muttered the ending of their relationship.
He was awake the whole time, and Alessio kissed her hair once more before letting her go in all meanings. She didn’t know whether to be glad he didn’t put up a fight or be upset that he gave up on them so easily.
She was the one who gave up.
Dissonance tore her apart, yet numbness stretched thinly into threads that sewed her together like a tattered doll. He still wished her a good morning, for the last time, with utter gentleness when her eyes closed again.
* * *
TWENTY-FIVE
Alessio’s sponsorship was plastered all over. It happened whenever he had a new sponsor, so it felt like he never left her life.
She tried not to search for him online. It didn’t help because Meryl was an influencer, and she was her assistant.
Though she didn’t have to specifically look for information, his updates were fed to her from every direction.
That was the treatment of geniuses. Smart, attractive, and talented ones got the most attention. He made a name for himself in the archery field many years ago but took it more seriously after their breakup.
A photo of him carrying a fishing pole on one of his fan pages blew up and set her home feed on fire. Fans thought he was changing careers, but his manager clarified it was simply a case of him forgetting it in his car during his break and that his boss didn’t fish.
The running joke for the month was fishermen catching everything but fish.
* * *
TWENTY-EIGHT
They met again under unusual circumstances and a funny coincidence.
Her heart sang and danced for him, just as it had always been when he looked at her with just enough obsession to burn a single thread of her safety net.
And she still didn’t know what she wanted in life.
She didn’t have ambition, goals, or even a plan for the next five years. She didn’t find it alarming because life was unpredictable, so she wanted to live life day by day. Life couldn’t get the element of surprise on her if there was nothing to look forward to.
But Alessio broke that streak with his steadfast devotion and unpredictable landmine of emotions.
“ Anya.”
He called her with a deep baritone, splintering her resolution, and pushed her into the endless maze he built for her.