27. Alessia
— ? —
Alessia
Now - Our Anniversary
Euridice climbs into the back of the town car beside me in a gold dress, and before I can say anything, she drops an envelope in my lap.
“You need to read this.”
I know his handwriting from across a room. The slant of his letters, the way he loops his A’s, the particular pressure he uses when he’s writing something important. My whole body goes cold and then hot, and I have to press my hands flat against my thighs before I can do anything at all.
“I don’t want to.”
“I know. Read it anyway.”
“Euri-”
“Alessia.” Her voice is sharp enough to cut.
“I’ve listened to you cry yourself to sleep on my couch for months.
I’ve watched you take that ring out of your coat pocket fifty times a day and put it back.
I’ve watched you punish yourself for loving someone who hurt you, like the loving is the crime. ”
She taps the envelope with one manicured nail.
“Read it. Then decide. But stop living in the middle.”
So I read it.
All twelve pages, while the city slides past the tinted windows.
The buildings blur into streaks of light, and the words blur too, through tears I can’t seem to stop.
He doesn’t make excuses. He doesn’t try to justify what he did.
He just lays it out, ugly and complete, and by the end I’m crying so hard I can barely breathe.
I read it twice.
The second time, I catch things I missed the first time.
The way he describes turning around on that balcony and seeing me.
The way he writes about Sunday dinners - the guilt, the self-loathing, the way he’d hold me afterward and hate himself for what he was doing.
The way he describes the morning of the arrest, driving to the station to stop it, arriving too late.
I chose too late. I know that. But I chose.
When I finish, I reach into my clutch and take out the other letter. The thirteenth envelope from the bottom of the tin box, the one I opened alone on Euridice’s couch and haven’t shown anyone.
The paper is yellowed with age. The handwriting belongs to a sixteen-year-old boy who pressed too hard with a cheap pen, leaving grooves I can feel with my fingertips.
Alessia. I got your letters. All twelve.
I’ve read them so many times I don’t have to open them anymore.
I can’t write back, because your dad said he’d ruin my uncle if I did, and he’s all I have.
You said goodbye in the last one. I’m not going to say it back.
I’m going to say wait for me instead. I’ll come back when I’m old enough that nobody can make me leave. Wait for me. Anthony
I hand it to Euridice without a word.
She reads it, and her hand goes to her mouth.
“He never sent it,” I say. My voice sounds strange, hollow.
“He was sixteen and terrified.”
“He came back.” I’m laughing, which is the wrong thing entirely, and I can’t make myself stop doing it. “He came back exactly like he said he would. And then he lied about everything else.”
I press my palm flat against the window, feeling the cool glass against my skin.
“Both of those things are true, Euri. I don’t know how to hold both of them.”
“Maybe you don’t have to hold them.” Her voice is gentle, the gentlest I’ve ever heard it. “Maybe you only have to decide which one you want to wake up next to.”
The car slows. Through the window, I can see the hotel rising up ahead of us - the same hotel where Anthony found me on the balcony all those years ago, where I cried into his shirt and believed fate had brought us back together.
The photographers are already gathered on the sidewalk. The red carpet stretches toward the doors. Through the glass, past the cameras and the crowds and the whole ballroom full of people who’ve been whispering about me for weeks, I can see the far wall of windows.
I can see a man in a black tuxedo walking out alone onto the balcony.
Even from here, even through glass and distance and a month of nothing since that corridor, I know the set of those shoulders.
I know the way he holds himself when he’s bracing for something.
I know exactly what it costs him to stand there in full view of a room full of people who’ve read every headline, waiting for a woman who might not come.
I feel something, a new sensation in my chest. Not forgiveness - not yet - but something that feels like a key turning in a lock that’s been rusted shut for a very long time.
I fold both letters into my clutch.
“Wait here,” I tell Euridice.
“Ally-”
“I need to do this alone.”
I reach for the door handle, then stop. Turn back to look at her - my cousin, my best friend, the woman who has held me together for four months without once asking what it was costing her.
“Thank you,” I say. “For the couch. For the tissues. For not letting me disappear.”
Her eyes are bright, but she doesn’t cry. Euridice never cries where anyone can see.
“Go,” she says. “And Ally?”
I wait.
“Don’t let him off easy. Make him earn every inch of it.”
I step out of the car and into the flash of cameras, and I walk toward the hotel without looking back.
The photographers shout my name. Questions hit me from every direction - about my father, about Anthony, about whether the rumors of reconciliation are true.
I don’t answer any of them. I keep my eyes on the glass doors ahead, on the ballroom beyond them, on the balcony where a man in a black tuxedo is standing alone in the cold.
The same balcony. The same hotel. Our anniversary.
He came back, I think. Exactly like he promised.
And then he lied about everything else.
But he also tried to stop it. He drove to that station on the morning of the arrest with every intention of pulling the case. He was too late, but he went. He chose - too late, but he chose.
Both of those things are true.
Maybe Euridice is right. Maybe I don’t have to hold both of them. Maybe I only have to decide which truth I want to build a life on - the lies he told, or the choice he finally made.
I push through the glass doors and into the noise and light of the gala, and I start walking toward the windows.