26. Alexander #2
She didn’t wait for me to respond. Just turned and walked back into the restaurant, leaving me standing by the entrance with wine on my shirt and lies in my mouth.
I made it outside before the regret hit me.
The night air was cold, and I stood on the sidewalk trying to remember how to breathe normally while the worst conversation of my life replayed in my head.
She’d asked if I was dating, and I’d said yes.
She’d asked if it was serious, and I’d said “a few.” She’d looked at me with what might have been pain, and I’d let her believe I’d spent three years moving on when the truth was I’d spent three years waiting for a door that was never going to open.
I’d panicked. Seeing her with someone else had cracked me open, and instead of being honest, I’d hidden behind a lie that protected my pride and destroyed everything else.
The door opened behind me. I turned, expecting Henri, and found Sophia instead.
“You’re lying,” she said.
“What?”
“About the women. The dating.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re lying, and I want to know why.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You’re absolutely lying. I know your tells, Alexander.
I spent eleven years learning them.” She stepped closer, close enough that I could see the anger in her eyes.
“You adjust your cuff when you’re nervous.
You look slightly to the left when you’re not telling the whole truth.
You did both of those things when you said you’d been dating. ”
She was too close. Close enough that I could smell her, that specific warmth of her skin that no perfume ever quite covered, and my pulse stumbled, undignified.
I kept my hands at my sides through an act of physical restraint.
If I touched her I wouldn’t stop, and we were standing in the middle of my family’s event with a roomful of people pretending not to watch the CEO’s ex-wife take him apart.
I hated that anger looked like that on her. Flushed and bright and alive. I hated that my first instinct, watching her chest rise and fall too fast, was not apology. It was appetite.
“Maybe my tells have changed.”
“They haven’t.” She pointed at my arm, at the sleeve that still covered the tattoo I’d gotten two years ago. “You’re standing here telling me you’ve spent three years with other women while wearing a design I drew the day we met on your skin.”
I went still. I hadn’t realized she’d seen it. The photograph, probably. An image online that caught the tattoo in the frame.
“It’s not that simple.”
“It looks pretty fucking simple from where I’m standing.” Her voice cracked on the profanity, the anger stripping down to raw hurt. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Did you think I wouldn’t see?”
“I didn’t think about what you would or wouldn’t see. I got the tattoo because I wanted it.”
“Why?”
“Because you left it behind. Because I couldn’t finish it for you.
Because some part of me wanted to carry it even if you didn’t want to carry me.
” The words spilled out, honest in a way my earlier lies hadn’t been.
“I got it because I’m not over you, Sophia.
I’ve never been over you. I’ve spent three years trying to become someone worthy of the love I lost, and the tattoo is a reminder that I still have work to do. ”
Her expression crumbled. For a moment, she looked exactly the way she had when I told her I wondered if our life would have been easier with someone else. Like I’d confirmed her worst fears about herself.
“Then why did you lie?”
“Because you were having dinner with another man. Because you looked happy. Because I’ve spent three years imagining you building a beautiful life without me, and seeing the reality of it was worse than imagining it.
” I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching for her.
“I lied because my pride couldn’t handle the truth. ”
“Which is what?”
“That I haven’t touched anyone since you. That I go home to an empty apartment every night and fall asleep reading journals I’ve filled with letters I’ll never send you. That the life I’ve built is successful and hollow and completely devoid of anything that matters.”
The anger drained out of her face. “Alexander…”
“Go back to your date, Sophia. Go back to Luca and your beautiful life in Florence. I’ll be fine. I’ve gotten very good at being fine.”
“You don’t look fine. You look exhausted.”
“I don’t sleep well.” I said it to the floor, not to her. “I haven’t since you left.”
“That’s not healthy.”
“No. But it’s honest, which is more than I’ve been for the last ten minutes.”
She stared at me, her eyes searching my face for a reason to believe me, and I hoped she’d find one. I didn’t know what to say that would fix this, that would undo the lies and the jealousy and the three years of silence that had built a wall between us.
“I have to go,” she said finally. “Luca’s waiting.”
“I know.”
“But Alexander?” She paused at the door. “I’m glad you told me the truth. Even if it took you a while to get there.”
“So am I.”
She went back inside. I stood on the sidewalk until my fingers went numb from the cold, then finally walked home through streets that had never felt emptier.