34. Alexander
— ? —
Alexander
Two months after I moved to Florence, I found myself living a life I’d never imagined.
It wasn’t perfect. Sophia and I still argued about schedules, about the way I left my work spread across her dining table, about my apparently pathological inability to put cufflinks back in their designated box instead of leaving them scattered across every available surface.
“I found one in the refrigerator,” she announced one morning, holding up a small silver cufflink. “The refrigerator, Alexander. How does that even happen?”
“In my defense, I was very hungry.”
“That’s not a defense.” She set it on the counter with deliberate precision. “I find them in the bathroom cabinet, the laundry hamper, on top of the fridge, and now inside it. I’m beginning to think you do it on purpose.”
“To torment you?”
“To slowly erode my sanity through accumulated domestic irritation. And you’re smiling, which proves it.”
“I find you entertaining. Your suffering is incidental.”
She threw a dish towel at my head.
But the arguments didn’t scare me anymore. They were normal, everyday friction, the kind that came from sharing a life with another person. They didn’t mean we were broken. They meant we were real.
I’d found a rhythm in Florence that surprised me.
Working remotely turned out to be easier than I’d feared, and the trips back to Paris for essential meetings became opportunities rather than obligations.
Henri had stepped into his expanded role with enthusiasm I hadn’t anticipated, and Whitmore Maison was thriving without my constant supervision.
“You look happy,” Henri had said during our last video call. “It’s unsettling.”
“Thank you for that assessment.”
“I’m serious. I spent thirty years watching you perfect the art of looking slightly constipated in every photograph. Now you’re smiling in candid shots. It’s frightening the relatives.”
“The relatives will survive.”
“The relatives are concerned you’ve been replaced by a pod person.” He’d leaned closer to his camera. “Blink twice if you need rescue.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Love you too, brother.”
Sophia’s atelier had become a second home.
I spent afternoons there sometimes, working on my laptop while she sketched at her drafting table, and the easy domesticity of it still caught me off guard.
We’d never had this during our marriage.
We’d never been in the same room for hours without one of us being distracted by a crisis that demanded immediate attention.
Now the only crisis was usually my inability to keep track of my cufflinks.
It was during one of these quiet afternoons that I heard her say it.
Juliette had stopped by to discuss a commission, and Sophia was walking her through the design specifications.
I was pretending to focus on financial reports while actually listening to their conversation, because Sophia’s voice when she talked about her work was one of my favorite sounds in the world.
“The proportions here need to feel organic,” she was saying, pointing at a sketch. “Not forced. The gold should follow the natural curve of the stone.”
“What about the setting?” Juliette asked. “Traditional prong, or more modern?”
“Neither. I want it to float. My husband used to say the setting should breathe, not hold.” Sophia gestured at the drawing.
“I didn’t understand what he meant at first, but now I think about it constantly.
The best settings aren’t visible because they’re busy holding.
They’re present because they’re allowing. ”
She stopped mid-sentence, clearly realizing what she’d said.
Juliette’s eyes flicked to me, then back to Sophia. “Your husband?”
“My… I meant Alexander. I don’t know why I said husband.” Sophia’s cheeks flushed a deep pink that spread down her neck. “Force of habit, I suppose. From before.”
“Of course,” Juliette said smoothly, and the conversation moved on.
I pretended not to have heard. Buried my face in my laptop screen and didn’t look up until Juliette had left and Sophia had retreated to her drafting table.
But the word stayed with me. Husband. She’d called me her husband, even if only by accident, even if she’d immediately corrected herself. The syllable echoed in my head for days, attached itself to thoughts I’d been carefully avoiding, refused to be ignored.
I’d wanted to marry Sophia again for longer than I would admit.
It wasn’t a rational thing. We’d built a new life, a better one, and I refused to spoil it by pushing for more than she was ready to give. Marriage had nearly destroyed us the first time. The word itself carried weight that I wasn’t sure either of us could bear.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About what it would mean to be her husband again. About the possibility of standing across from her and making promises we might actually be able to keep this time.
The first time I’d proposed, I’d been nervous in the way young men are nervous about important things, certain of the outcome but anxious about the execution. I’d planned every detail, rehearsed every word, and then promptly forgotten all of it the moment I saw her face.
This was different. This time the fear had nothing to do with whether she’d say yes, and everything to do with whether asking at all would damage what we’d rebuilt.
I started looking at rings.
It became a habit. Late at night, after Sophia had fallen asleep, I’d open my laptop and scroll through jewelry websites, studying cuts and settings and trying to imagine which one might feel right on her hand.
The irony wasn’t lost on me: a man who ran a jewelry empire, secretly browsing other companies’ engagement rings because designing one himself felt too presumptuous.
There was one ring in particular that kept catching my attention.
A modest diamond in a delicate gold band, the setting designed to let light pass through the stone rather than trapping it.
Every time I looked at it, I imagined sliding it onto her finger.
Imagined the weight of it, the way she might turn her hand to watch it catch the light, the expression on her face when she understood what it meant.
I was doing exactly that, staring at that same ring for probably the hundredth time, when Sophia walked into the bedroom and caught me.
I slammed the laptop closed so fast I nearly broke the hinge.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice carefully neutral.
“Nothing. Work, financial projections.”
“You were looking at a page you didn’t want me to see.”
“Email. Just email.”
“Alexander.” She crossed her arms. “I saw the screen.”
I could feel the panic rising in my chest, tightening my throat. This was exactly what I’d been trying to avoid, exactly the pressure I didn’t want to put on her. She’d agreed to let me move in. She’d chosen a future with me. I wasn’t supposed to be pushing for more before she was ready.
“I was looking,” I admitted, because lying would only make it worse. “I wasn’t planning anything. I was just… looking.”
“At engagement rings.”
“Yes.”
She didn’t say anything. Her expression was unreadable, and I couldn’t tell if she was angry or surprised or bracing to bolt.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know we haven’t talked about this. I wasn’t going to bring it up. I was just…”
“Looking.”
“Yes.”
“For me?”
The question made my heart stutter, my chest constricting around the answer I’d been carrying for months. “There isn’t anyone else, Soph.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed, still watching me with that careful expression. Her hands were clasped in her lap, her fingers intertwined, and I recognized the posture. She was processing, working through her reaction before she let me see it.
“Why were you looking?” she asked finally.
“Because I want to marry you again.” The admission came out raw and honest, stripped of all the careful explanations I’d rehearsed.
“I’ve wanted it for a while now. But I wasn’t going to say anything, because I didn’t want you to feel like our relationship was inevitably leading back to the thing that once hurt you most.”
“So you were secretly browsing engagement rings while hoping I wouldn’t notice?”
“That sounds worse when you say it out loud.”
“It sounds exactly as absurd as it is.” But her voice had softened slightly, losing its edge. “Were you planning to propose?”
“No. Not yet. Maybe not ever, if you didn’t want it.
” I set the laptop aside, unable to hold it anymore, needing my hands free even if I didn’t know what to do with them.
“I was trying to figure out whether I could even imagine asking without making you feel pressured. Whether you might want marriage again someday, or whether I needed to make peace with never having that again.”
“And what conclusion did you reach?”
“That I have no idea what you want. That I’m terrified of assuming.
That the last time I made assumptions about our future, it nearly destroyed us both.
” I ran a hand through my hair. “I keep thinking about how badly I got it wrong the first time. How certain I was that I knew what we needed, and how completely blind I was to what you were actually feeling. I can’t do that again.
I can’t push you toward marriage because I want it, without knowing if you want it too. ”
Sophia went still, watching me. Her eyes dropped to my hands, to the fidgeting I hadn’t noticed I was doing, to the way my fingers kept reaching for a cuff that didn’t need adjusting.
Then she reached over and opened my laptop, turning it so she could see the screen.
The ring I’d been looking at was still displayed, the image filling the browser window. She studied it in silence, her expression giving nothing away.
“This one’s nice,” she said finally, pointing at the screen. “Simple. Classic. I’d probably say yes to this one.”
My breath stopped. “What?”
“I’ve thought about it too, Alex.” She looked up at me, and her eyes were steady. “Marrying you again. What it would mean. Whether I want it.”
“And?”