Chapter 17
“Are you really going to do this?”
Thor asked when I walked to the intercom.
“If you didn’t want to stay, you should have told me and I would’ve called Giulia,” I pointed out with disinterest. “Hello. Yes… Just give me one minute, please. I’m coming down.”
Thor hadn’t given up, nor was he backing down as I thought he would. A part of me respected that in him and was secretly happy he didn’t give up.
I wanted to be mature, to ease things between us for the sake of good coexistence and also because I was tired of this entire situation.
We needed to move on. But for that, I needed to forgive him.
And I did, with all my heart. This, however, didn’t mean I didn’t still hold hurt.
It was still too recent to heal. Maybe with time, I would overcome all that resentment.
But Thor wasn’t cooperating, so I gave in and accepted a dinner invitation from one of the company executives.
At first, I thought it was a good thing.
I was lonelier than ever. My past had carved out part of my present, and I was trying to move around it.
But even when I was happy, I was sad. And I was tired of being sad, of feeling alone.
Maybe all I needed was a different face, a new perspective that would bring freshness to my monotonous life.
“Ella, don’t do this,” he begged, stopping in front of me on my way to the door. His gaze almost as desperate as his voice.
“I didn’t ask you to stay, Heithor. You’re the one who wanted to.”
“You’re really going out with someone else?”
Thor had shown up and asked me to dinner. I refused and told him I had a date. I think he thought I wouldn’t have the courage to go out or that it was an excuse to refuse his request. He had been pissed when I asked him to stay with Lucca.
“You want me to stay home taking care of our son while you’re out there with another man?” he asked with a little more volume in his voice.
“Yes.”
“What the fuck are you thinking, Antonella?”
“That you’re my son’s father and you’re not doing anything, therefore you can very well stay with him since you keep pestering me every day.”
I looked at him, back in reality.
“I said I was going.”
His jaw clenched, fists closed at the sides of his tense body.
“Does it feel good, Ella? Is it that good to hurt me?”
“Tell me.”
“Fuck, woman, how long are you going to throw that in my face? Yes, I was stupid. That doesn’t mean you have to be too.”
My temper rose, and I breathed deeply, softening it.
“Not everything is about you or us, Thor. We’re over. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can move on and be happy.”
“Like you’re happy?”
“Yes, like I am.”
“Go, Ella.” He waved his hand with contempt, looking away with wet eyes, his face twisted in frustration, turning his back. “Go to your date and be happy.”
I looked at his rigid back, dying to go over there and hug him. I wanted to stay. Everything in me screamed to cancel the date and have the dinner he had suggested. Until I remembered that we were like this because he had been a tremendous bastard to me.
I went to my date and tried to enjoy Vicenzo Vitale’s company.
He had been introduced on New Year’s Eve through my father. Vicenzo was a handsome guy, twenty-nine, blond, not very tall. He had been at VCG since he graduated.
I truly tried to focus on him. But while I was there, sitting in the restaurant, listening to him talk about himself, I could barely wait to leave. The problem wasn’t Vicenzo. The fact that he was trying to get to know me and sounded genuinely interested irritated me.
My body was in the restaurant, but my head stayed in the apartment.
Why exactly had I bet all my chips on this date?
I couldn’t take a man seriously when he couldn’t even hold my attention. And I didn’t even like blond men. Or the suited types. Or the straight-laced ones.
Vicenzo was nothing I liked.
His way of speaking, very polished, his voice. His gestures. The modest smile. His almost pale skin. And those eyes too gentle for my taste.
He wasn’t… Heithor.
Hell. Fuck. Damn it. What a huge mess!
The date ended earlier than I would have considered normal, yet Vicenzo wanted another date. I refused. I was half crazy. Heithor had ruined me for other men.
Oh, I hated him. Actually, I wanted to hate and despise him… I just couldn’t.
I entered my apartment trying to put on my best mask of indifference. Thor stood from the armchair, his gaze fixed on me. It was the first time he looked at me with anger.
“Did you have fun?”
“Yes.”
“Did he treat you well?”
“Yes.”
“Did you kiss him?”
I refused to answer that.
“Was it worth it?”
“Yes.”
Heithor stared at me in absolute silence, the look on his face… I shifted my eyes away, unable to keep looking at him. I was in pain. Then he left.
***
My family was conspiring against me. The women really thought I had to get back together with Thor. Pietra and Martha also tried until I put a stop to it.
But how did I do the same with my very meddlesome family?
To them, Thor was the best guy I could have. A good man who was trying to win me back at any cost while I played ice queen. The fact that we had a son only reinforced their genius advice about happiness and blah, blah, blah.
I had intended to spend a pleasant Sunday at my grandparents’ mansion. If I had known everyone would be scheming against me, I wouldn’t have shown my face.
Why couldn’t they do what Pennelope did and mind their own business?
“Love, you’re not happy. We’re worried.”
I breathed deeply, controlling the impulse to roll my eyes at the repetition, and fought not to let my annoyance escape in my voice and gaze.
“I’m fine, Mom. No one is happy twenty-four hours a day.”
“Being unhappy twenty-four hours a day isn’t normal either,” she replied, displeased.
“That boy needs his father, to grow up in a real home,” Donna said.
I stood, furious, very shaken by the irony of those words.
“With all due respect, nonna, I am Lucca’s home. I am not depriving my son of living with his father, but I will not get back with Heithor under any circumstances. He isn’t the saint you all think he is. Heithor is closer to hell than you think.”
I was going to leave before…
“You shouldn’t speak that way about your son’s father,” Selena reprimanded.
“No? Why? It’s true. You have no idea what I went through to keep holding prayer circles for us to get back together. That isn’t happening. I don’t need Heithor to be happy, to be a good woman or a good mother. Don’t interfere… Please…”
“You aren’t happy,” mamma pointed out, as if that justified everything.
I ran my hand through my hair, breathing… It wasn’t helping…
“You’re making me unhappy.”
“Heithor, he…”
“Is a bastard, Mom. A huge son of a bitch!” I shouted in a fit of rage.
Everyone went silent, looking at me shocked and with mouths hanging open. Even my uncles, my nonno, and papà came out of the next room to see what was happening.
Selena stood and tried to approach.
“Love…”
I raised my hand. “I’m grateful for the help you gave me, but I didn’t come back so you could dictate what I should or shouldn’t do.
If you think that because you helped me, it gives you the right to interfere in my life, I have news: it doesn’t!
I’m tired of being told Heithor is this and that, as if I choose to suffer for pleasure. ”
“We didn’t say that, doll,” Gio objected.
I shouldn’t have spoken, and yet my tongue seemed to have a life of its own. “Actions are enough, Aunt. What you saw in Malibu was one big lie!”
“No, it wasn’t. I know what I saw. Two people extremely in love.”
“It’s true, darling,” Pennelope said. “You can’t deny that, not when we saw it with our own eyes. There were no deceptions there. It was love, and the good kind.”
I laughed with anger, my damned eyes filling with tears.
“A person in love wouldn’t leave me rotting in a hospital. Wouldn’t despise and humiliate me when I needed comfort and protection.”
“What are you talking about, Antonella?” papà and mamma asked quietly.
“Oh, you don’t know? The bitch who worked with him pushed me down the stairs when I was still pregnant.
I almost died. Lucca was born through an emergency C-section.
I was in the damned hospital, completely broken, for longer than I care to remember.
Do you have any idea how important this Christmas and New Year were to me?
” I looked at each person present, panting and tearful, and stopped on my mother.
“Am I not fair? Do I have to think about Heithor? I don’t remember him having the same courtesy when I was unjustly accused of causing the fall and trying to harm my baby.
And because of that, because Heithor thought I was a danger to Lucca, I didn’t have permission to touch my son until I left the hospital.
“Do you know how I met Lucca? Through a photo! Do you know when I nursed him? When I could hold him without being watched like a criminal and when I wanted to? Don’t talk about what you don’t know.
I didn’t joyfully decide to come back. I ran.
Is that what you wanted to know? Here is the big secret!
I ran because I was desperate. He was going to leave with Lucca, the baby I hadn’t bathed, hadn’t taken to the pediatrician, hadn’t shared anything with, all the first times lost. I lost a period of my son’s life that will never come back.
None of you has any notion of the humiliations I had to go through just to remain in the same space as my son.
So stop interfering in my life as if you have the formula for happiness and I refuse to follow it out of ignorance!
I’m sorry if my unhappiness bothers you.
I’m doing my best to be okay. And none of you is helping at all! ”
A series of curses and exclamations in Italian echoed through the room.
“Why didn’t you say so before?”
Rocco growled. “I’m going to kill him!”
I looked through the tears of humiliation, sadness filling my words. “Say what, Mom? That I’m so stupid I didn’t want you to dislike him? That I thought of Heithor even though all he did was hurt me?”
I was weak with pain, my legs soft.
I collapsed. It seemed that was my fate, always collapsing. Papà caught me and rocked me, and then I broke one more time.