Chapter 14
Annamaria
Eighteen years old.
My hands tremble as I stare at my phone and see that every message I sent since my birthday last month has been read.
Each one is time-stamped, right there in black and white, telling me that Raffaele spent most of the night inside my head, reading every thought I had emptied from my tormented soul.
I am beyond mortified.
The only thing worse than someone who has already told you they no longer want you in their life is having them read such vulnerable words and be met by such stark silence.
Though I can’t condemn his apathy. He made his position clear.
I’m the fool who shouldn’t have ever sent those messages out into the world in the first place.
How could I have believed they were safe in the ether? In the black hole of my own desperation? How could I have taken such a gamble, believing my innermost thoughts would never be pulled out of the void and laid bare before eyes and ears that never deserved to know them?
What was I thinking?
I wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking at all.
All I knew was that by doing the exercise of expunging the darkness, I was healing something deep inside me, a pain that had begun to fester.
Raffaele was never meant to read those thoughts. He was never meant to know my heart, my mind, my suffering.
“I’m going to be sick,” I hurl, the phone slipping from my hand as I rush to the bathroom and drop to my knees over the toilet.
I am sick. I am physically sick with what I have done.
When I’ve thrown up all the contents in my stomach, I lean my head against the tile wall, as hot tears begin streaming down my face at my own idiocy.
If Raffaele thought I was pathetic before, then he now holds the proof of how true his assessment of me is.
It takes inhuman strength for me to pick myself up from the floor, so I can wash my face and brush my teeth. Since I don’t have the energy to face the world, I crawl back into bed.
I’ve never been so thankful that I’m no longer sharing my room with Stella. If she saw the state I’m in, there would definitely be questions.
The only one who pops her head into my room is my mother, wondering why I didn’t come down for breakfast. I lie and tell her I’m feeling too unwell to eat anything, and that she shouldn’t worry too much about it, since I’m sure it’s just a stomach bug and I’ll be right as rain in no time.
It’s only half a lie. I am unwell. My soul has been sick for quite some time now, and Raffaele learning about it only adds to my torment.
I’m not sure how long I just lay there in bed, but I must have fallen asleep through my tears, since I’m woken up by the familiar sound of a notification. I hold my breath as I slip my hand beneath my pillow and pull my phone out to see a new message from Raffaele.
I don’t dare read the preview, wanting to give myself time to prepare for the worst. For some hurtful text meant to humiliate me. Every cruel joke and malicious remark crosses my mind before I find the courage to unlock my phone.
But when I do, I have to read his text twice to make sure I am not imagining things.
I lift myself up and lean back against the headboard, staring at a familiar quote, plucked from one of my favorite poems by Sylvia Plath, “Morning Song.”
Rafe: “Love set you going like a fat gold watch.”
To say that I am perplexed that Raffaele would send me such a thing is an understatement. Not everyone understands what Plath meant by a line like that.
Sometimes human resilience is not a superpower meant to vanquish your darkest thoughts, but simply the ability to keep going, just as life does. You cannot stop. You just have to keep moving, even if only for your loved ones.
That kind of hope is not loud or triumphant. It is mechanical, steady, ongoing, much like life itself. And by doing so, maybe, just maybe, life begins to make sense again.
I always liked that poem since it doesn’t sugarcoat sadness or depression.
It does not deny how exhausting it is to feel such emotional distance from everyone you care for.
Plath’s hope for better days is neither naive nor a quick throwaway reassurance that everything will be fine.
It is a reminder that life still ticks, and that sometimes all you can do is tick with it.
It is beautiful in its raw honesty, the truth of an agonized soul.
Tears well in my eyes knowing that Raffaele heard my pain and cared enough to remind me of such a simple truth.
Still, his previous words and absence left scars.
And though this verse touched me immensely, what kind of woman would I be if I simply accepted it as an apology for all his past bad behavior?
Me: Thank you for the quote. It was very thoughtful of you.
Me: But it still does not excuse what you have done.
I watch as the blue bubbles bob on the screen, waiting for some lame explanation meant to excuse why he did what he did.
Rafe: This was not an apology. Nor a request for forgiveness. I am not worthy of one from you. I know that.
My forehead creases at his reply, and I immediately text back.
Me: Does that mean you’re not going to apologize? At all?
Rafe: What would a word like sorry even measure against the pain I have caused? No, Anna. Sorry does not even come close to the guilt I feel for hurting you. I am beyond redemption for that sin. I know that. All I can do is atone for it now.
My mouth slackens at his words. This does not sound like Raffaele at all.
I was expecting a joke or a deflection, something silly, like a little meme where he pretends that everything between us is fine.
That it has always been fine. Instead, what I get is something quieter, more restrained, more subdued.
Me: You sound older.
He reads my text but doesn’t respond.
Me: It wasn’t an accusation. I just…
I trail off. I just what?
The truth is, I wasn’t expecting him to reach out today or any day for that matter. Much less send me that quote or offer me his willingness to atone for the pain he caused me. I was not expecting this Raffaele at all.
Rafe: How are you?
Those three simple words carry far more weight now that he knows what has been running through my head.
Me: I’m still here.
It is the only truth I can manage when my nerves are this shot and frazzled.
Rafe: I am glad.
Is he? Or is that just something people say when confronted with that question, and the only acceptable answer is ‘I’m fine’?
I don’t text back. Instead, I shove the phone back into its hiding place, lie on my bed, and stare up at the ceiling.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t imagined the day I would speak to Raffaele again.
Sometimes, in my mind, I picture myself yelling at him, cursing him, hitting him.
Other times, I imagine falling into his arms and crying until there was nothing left.
But most often, when I imagine us alone together, I see myself staring at him in silence as he slowly fades from view, like smoke thinning into the air.
As if he were never real to begin with. Almost as if I had conjured him into existence, born from a young girl’s need for a friend.
As I lie in bed, replaying our exchange, I wonder if my recent melancholy did not conjure him up a second time. As if he somehow knew I needed a friend now more than ever. The question is whether I can trust his intentions or if they will turn vicious once again.
The next day, I awake in the middle of the night to another notification from Raffaele.
Rafe: “Out of the ash, I rise with my red hair.”
It is another verse from Plath’s collection of poems, this one from “Lady Lazarus.” The poem frames survival as rebirth rather than recovery.
It shows how hope can be fierce, angry, and alive.
It does not need to be gentle in order to be real.
It is just as powerful as the verse he sent me yesterday, and just as thoughtful.
Instead of acknowledging what he is trying to do with each quote, I send him a teasing text, hoping it will bring back the lighter side of Raffaele—the version of him I was more comfortable with.
Me: I’m surprised. I never thought you read books, much less have some sort of kink for Sylvia Plath.
Rafe: I like to read since it’s the closest way to understand the human experience without having lived every part of it yourself.
My eyes widen as I read his response again.
Me: Are you saying you’ve never felt sad before? Lonely?
I know he has. If he says otherwise, he’s lying.
Rafe: I’ve felt all those emotions and more. Still, I am incapable of living someone else’s pain or fully empathizing with it if I’m always comparing it with my own.
A lump forms in my throat, forcing me to swallow dryly just to push it down.
Me: Is this your way of calling me selfish?
Is that what he’s saying? That I’m self-centered? Is that what he’s taken away from listening to my most personal thoughts?
Rafe: I’m calling you human. Everyone hurts, Anna. Everyone carries pain. Some people use that pain for sustenance. Others let it break them. Neither is more than the other. Pain is pain. Suffering is suffering.
I can’t help but reread his text once, twice, three times, and still find myself unable to form an appropriate response.
Raffaele sounds deeper now, more mature, as if he’d become a completely different person.
Did our time apart affect him, too? Could that be the cause of this emotional growth?
I shake my head. No. I’m not conceited enough to believe my absence had any effect on him whatsoever.
The more plausible explanation for this sudden change is his time in the Cosa Nostra.
I can only imagine the misery he’s seen up close.
That kind of exposure changes a person. It definitely changed him. But did he change for the better?
Raffaele once had such joie de vivre, and now it feels as though that light has been extinguished. There’s no boyish charm in his texts anymore, just a grown man who’s seen too much, done too much.
A part of me misses the way he used to be. So free. So animated. But this Raffaele speaks to my soul somehow. As if we share the same language now. Though I’m not sure that’s a good sign for either one of us.
I take a deep breath and tackle the elephant in the room. The one topic we’ve been circling around.
Me: It helped, you know. Being able to send you all those messages, even knowing you would never see them. I think it was the only thing that carried me through my darkest hour.
I chew on my bottom lip as he starts typing, then stops and rewrites whatever he was about to say.
Rafe: How are you?
There it is again, that same question. This time, instead of deflecting it, I answer honestly.
Me: The fat gold watch still ticks.
Rafe: I’m glad.
That’s all he says. That he is glad. But somehow, it feels like he’s saying more.
For the past few weeks, I’ve become accustomed to Raffaele texting me in the middle of the night.
So much so that I don’t dare close my eyes when I go to bed.
Instead, I just lay there in the dark, waiting impatiently for the phone to vibrate with a notification from him.
Tonight, his quote is taken out of “Invictus.”
Rafe: “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
A smile crests my lips as I read it. It’s a well-known verse from William Ernest Henley’s poem about perseverance, emotional control, and moral strength through life’s trials.
Me: What? No Plath tonight?
Rafe: I didn’t want you to think I had a Sylvia Plath fetish.
My cheeks warm, embarrassed that I even suggested such a thing.
Me: I do enjoy a good poem, but I feel Henley didn’t leave much room for the woman’s experience in his writing. His worldview feels distinctly male, as if a white man’s experience of life were meant to be universal.
Rafe: So you don’t like his writing?
Me: It’s not that I don’t like it. It just doesn’t speak to me on an emotional or intellectual level.
Rafe: I’ll remember that and send you only feminist poets from now on.
I don’t know why the thought of Raffaele rummaging through his literature collection, trying to find the perfect quote for me every night, makes me smile, but it does.
Rafe: How are you?
Again, those three words that would have filled me with dread if spoken by anyone else.
Me: The fat gold watch still ticks.
Rafe: I’m glad.
That’s all he says.
And it’s enough.