1. Cassandra
— ? —
Cassandra
The kitchen smells like too much garlic and Antonio’s cologne, which is not a combination I ever thought I’d find romantic, but here we are.
“You’re murdering it,” I tell him, hip-checking him away from the stove. “Garlic is supposed to be golden, not swimming in oil.”
“I had it under control.”
“You had it under a death sentence.” I tip the drowned mess into the trash and start fresh, aware of him hovering behind me like a very handsome, very useless sous chef. “Why did you even offer to cook?”
“Because I wanted to.” He slides his arms around my waist from behind, chin hooking over my shoulder. “Because I missed this.”
I go still for a second. He feels it, of course he does - and his arms tighten.
“I know I’ve been gone,” he says quietly. “I know it’s been…”
“A lot.”
“A lot.” His breath is warm against my neck. “But I’m here tonight. Right now, I’m here.”
And he is.
That’s the thing that keeps catching me off guard - the physical fact of Antonio Guerriero in our kitchen at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday when he should be on set for another four hours at least.
His face is currently plastered on buses across Rome, his schedule packed tighter than a sardine can, and yet here he is, standing in our villa with sauce on his shirt and something almost like hope in his eyes.
I’ve been married to this man for six years. I’ve spent the last twelve months learning how to sleep alone in a bed built for two.
“Okay,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say. Because I missed you too feels too vulnerable and where have you been feels too accusatory and we’ve had that fight so many times I’ve lost count. “Then make yourself useful and chop the tomatoes. Gently.”
“I know how to chop tomatoes.”
“You know how to smash tomatoes. There’s a difference.”
He laughs, this low rumble I feel against my back, and moves to the cutting board. I watch him out of the corner of my eye as I tend the garlic - the furrow of concentration between his brows, the careful way he handles the knife like the tomatoes might bite back. He’s trying.
He’s actually trying.
I’m thirty-two years old and I’ve been waiting for this for a year.
“Remember the first time you tried to cook for me?” I ask, keeping my voice light. “In that terrible apartment in LA?”
“The smoke alarm went off three times.”
“Four. You blocked out the fourth one.”
“I did not block it out. I have chosen to remember a version of events that reflects better on my culinary abilities.”
“Your culinary abilities set off four smoke alarms.”
“My culinary abilities got you to stay for dinner anyway.” He grins at me over his shoulder, and for a second he looks twenty-nine again - all dark curls and reckless confidence, the rising Italian actor who talked me into a coffee that lasted six hours.
“So really, the smoke alarms were part of the plan.”
“The plan to asphyxiate me?”
“The plan to keep you in my apartment long enough to fall in love with me.”
“I fell in love with you at the coffee shop. The apartment was just confirmation that you’d need supervision.”
His grin softens into something realer. “You fell in love with me at the coffee shop?”
“Don’t fish for compliments. Keep chopping.”
He keeps chopping, but I can see the smile still playing at the corner of his mouth.
This is what I’ve been missing. This easy back-and-forth, this rhythm we used to have before Italy and the fame and the trying that failed. Before I learned what it felt like to want something so badly your body turns against you.
Two years of ovulation kits and timed intimacy and hope that crumbled month after month. Two years of negative tests and doctor’s appointments and the slow erosion of spontaneous joy until every touch felt like a means to an end.
We stopped trying eight months ago. Stopped officially, stopped talking about it, but we never stopped grieving. We just stopped grieving together.
Tonight, though. Tonight feels like something.
“These are ready,” Antonio announces, presenting the cutting board with a little flourish. The tomatoes are actually chopped instead of pulverized, which I consider a personal victory.
“Look at you. Growing as a person.”
“I’m a constant work in progress.” He deposits the tomatoes where I point and then leans against the counter, watching me work. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
“About this weekend.”
My hands still on the wooden spoon.
This weekend is our anniversary. Six years since the wedding in Florence, seven since the coffee shop in LA.
I’ve been trying not to think about it, because thinking about it means acknowledging that he’ll probably miss it, that there will be a last-minute shoot or an emergency reshoot or some other crisis that takes priority over me.
“What about it?” I ask carefully.
“I want to do something. Just us. Nothing fancy - maybe that little place by the Spanish Steps, the one we went to on our first anniversary. You liked it there.”
“I loved it there.”
“Then let’s go back. Saturday night. I’ll clear my schedule, I’ll turn off my phone, and we’ll just… be us. For one night.”
I turn to look at him. He’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite read - hope, maybe, or fear, or some combination of both. Like he’s not sure I’ll say yes.
“You can clear your schedule?”
“I’ll make it happen.”
“Antonio…”
“I know I’ve let you down. I know I’ve missed things, canceled things, put the work first when I should have put you first. But our anniversary? I’m not missing this, Cass. I promise.”
The word lands heavier than it should. Promise.
He’s made a lot of those over the past year, and most of them have dissolved like sugar in water.
But he looks so earnest standing there, so genuinely determined, that I feel my resistance waver - the part of me that’s been bracing for disappointment starting to uncurl.
“Okay,” I say. “Saturday. The place by the Spanish Steps.”
His whole face lights up. “Yeah?”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
“I won’t. I swear I won’t.”
He crosses the kitchen and pulls me into a hug, lifting me slightly off my feet, and I let myself sink into it.
Let myself remember what it felt like to trust him completely.
The sauce is probably a lost cause behind me but I don’t care, because Antonio is here and he’s holding me and for one moment the last year of distance dissolves into nothing.
“The garlic,” I mumble against his chest.
“Forget the garlic.”
“I’m not eating charcoal for dinner.”
He laughs and releases me, and I turn back to the stove to rescue what’s left of our meal.
We finish cooking together, bumping elbows and stealing tastes and arguing about whether the sauce needs more basil (it does) or more salt (it doesn’t).
We eat at the kitchen island instead of the dining room, which is too big and too formal and makes us feel like strangers playing house.
The pasta is mediocre at best, but I clean my plate anyway because he made it with me and that matters more than flavor.
After dinner, Antonio reaches into his pocket and pulls out something small - a brass token, tarnished with age, stamped with the logo of a coffee shop that probably doesn’t exist anymore.
Our coffee shop. The one where he slid this across the table like a promise and said keep this, so you remember where we started.
I’ve seen this token a hundred times. It lives in his wallet, has lived there for seven years, and every time I catch a glimpse of it I find myself reaching for his hand without meaning to.
“Dance with me,” he says.
“There’s no music.”
“There doesn’t have to be.”
He pulls me close, one hand warm against the small of my back, and we sway together in the kitchen with the dishes still in the sink and the garlic smell still in the air.
The brass token presses between us, cool against my skin through the thin fabric of my shirt.
When the song in his head ends, he presses it into my palm.
“Keep it,” he says. “It belongs with you now.”
I curl my fingers around the worn metal, feeling its weight settle into my hand like it was always meant to be there.
“I never showed off for anyone before you,” he says quietly. “I never wanted to. And then there you were, this beautiful woman who wouldn’t give me the time of day, and I thought - I have to make her laugh. I have to make her see me. The real me, not the version I put on for cameras.”
“You were very persistent.”
“You were very worth it.”
I rest my cheek against his shoulder and let myself feel it - the warmth of him, the steady beat of his heart, the familiar smell of his cologne.
This is the man I married. This is the life I chose.
And for a few minutes, swaying in our kitchen with no music, it feels like we might actually be okay.
“Saturday,” I say.
“Saturday,” he agrees. “I’ll be there. I promise.”
***
Saturday comes wrapped in more hope than I’ve let myself feel in months.
I spend the afternoon preparing - not just the external stuff, the hair and the makeup and the green silk dress I bought specifically for tonight, but the internal stuff too.
The decision to be present. To let myself enjoy this.
To stop bracing for disappointment and just be with my husband for one evening.
The reservation is for eight. By six-thirty I’m ready, which means I spend an hour wandering the villa in heels, checking my phone, rearranging flowers that don’t need rearranging. The house feels different when I’m waiting for him - bigger, emptier, full of echoes.
Seven o’clock. Seven-thirty. Seven forty-five.
At eight, my phone buzzes. A text from Antonio: Running behind. Start without me?
I stare at the message for a long moment. Start without me. At our anniversary dinner. At the restaurant where we celebrated our first year together, where he promised to show up and be present and put me first for once.
How late? I type back.
Hour maybe. Two at most. I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you.
I cancel the reservation.
There’s no point sitting alone at a romantic table for two, watching other couples enjoy their evenings while I wait for a husband who may or may not show up.
Instead I change out of the green dress and into sweats, pour myself a glass of wine, and eat leftover pasta at the kitchen island where we danced four days ago.
The brass token is still in my jewelry box upstairs. I don’t go look at it.
Nine o’clock passes. Then ten. Then eleven.
I’m half-asleep on the couch when I finally hear the front door open - the click of the lock, the creak of the hinges, footsteps in the entryway. I check my phone. 11:47 p.m.
He doesn’t come to find me.
I hear him moving through the house - keys on the console, shoes by the door, footsteps down the hall. I wait for him to look into the living room, to see me lying here, to apologize or explain or at least acknowledge that tonight happened.
But the footsteps pass right by.
The study door closes.
I lie there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, something cold settling in my chest. He’s home. He’s finally home, and instead of coming to find his wife on their anniversary, he’s closed himself in his study like I don’t exist.
I get up. His personal phone is still on the console where he dropped it - I grab it to plug it in for him, a small wifely gesture that feels hollow even as I do it. And then I hear his voice through the study door. Low. Muffled, but definitely his.
He must be using his laptop.
I should go back to bed. I should wait for him to finish whatever work emergency dragged him away tonight, and then we can have the conversation about how he missed our anniversary and what that means and whether his promises mean anything at all.
That’s the mature thing to do. The reasonable thing.
My feet are quiet on the hardwood as I move through the dark house.
The study door is closed but not all the way - there’s a crack of light at the bottom, and his voice carries through the gap. Not the words, just the tone. Low. Tired. The sound of a man who’s been carrying something heavy.
I should go back to the couch.
I should give him privacy.
I should trust that whatever this is, he’ll tell me about it when he’s ready.
Instead I stop outside the door, close enough to hear, and I tell myself I’m just checking. Just making sure he’s okay. Just…
“The love isn’t there like it used to be.”
My heart stops.
“I don’t know anymore.”