21. Cassandra
— ? —
Cassandra
The atelier is empty except for us.
Solenne left this morning, after a whirlwind day of reunion - coffee at my parents’ house, lunch in town, an afternoon at the shop where she examined every piece I’ve made with the discerning eye of someone who knows fashion from the inside out.
She proclaimed the collection “stunning” and promised to send wealthy Sicilian friends my way, then grabbed my face between her hands and said, “You’re going to be magnificent, Cass.
You always were. You just forgot for a while. ”
Now it’s evening, and Antonio is here - helping me inventory fabric, which is the excuse, though we both know the real reason.
We need to talk. Really talk. The kind of conversation we’ve been circling for weeks, getting closer and closer to the center of everything without quite touching it.
“The call,” I say, not looking up from my notebook. “The one I overheard. On our anniversary.”
He goes still on the other side of the worktable. “What about it?”
“You told me you were talking to Marco about the shoot. About feeling lost. About everything feeling wrong.” I set down my pen. “But that’s not what I heard, Antonio. I heard you say the love isn’t there like it used to be. I heard you say you don’t know anymore.”
“I know what you heard.”
“Then tell me what you meant. Really tell me. Not the careful version you gave me that night - the version designed to keep me from leaving. The truth.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. I watch him struggle with it - the instinct to protect me warring with the need to finally be honest. The evening light catches the silver at his temples, the lines around his eyes that have deepened in the months since I left Rome.
He looks older than he did a year ago. We both do.
“I was talking about us,” he says finally. “Partly. But not the way you think.”
“Then explain it.”
“The love was there. The love was always there - I never stopped loving you, Cass. But the closeness wasn’t.
The ease we used to have. The way we used to talk for hours about nothing, the way we used to reach for each other without thinking.
” He runs a hand through his hair, a gesture I know means he’s struggling to find words.
“After the trying - after the second year, when it became clear it wasn’t going to happen the way we hoped - something broke between us.
And I didn’t know how to fix it, so I did what I always do. ”
“You ran.”
“I ran. Into work. Into characters who had simpler problems than mine. Into anything that let me avoid looking at the mess we were becoming.” He moves around the worktable, not toward me but parallel, pacing like the words are easier to find in motion.
“Marco called me out on it. He’d been telling me for months that I was self-destructing, that I was losing you, that I needed to actually talk to you instead of burying myself in the film.
That night, I finally admitted he was right.
That’s what you heard - me admitting that the closeness, the intimacy, the thing that made us us wasn’t there anymore.
And that I didn’t know how to get it back. ”
I think about the careful way he explained it that night in the hallway - the evasions, the half-truths designed to reassure me without revealing too much. The way he turned my question about Bianca into a denial of an affair I wasn’t even fully accusing him of yet.
“You lied to me,” I say.
“Yes.” The word comes out raw. “I lied. I was scared, and I lied.” He stops pacing and faces me across the table.
“You were standing there looking like your whole world had collapsed, and I thought if I told you the full truth - that I’d been grieving our failed trying by abandoning our marriage - you’d leave.
So I gave you the version that felt safest. The version where I was just tired, just overwhelmed, just temporarily lost. Instead of the version where I’d been checking out for a year. ”
“I left anyway.”
“I know.”
The silence sits between us, heavy with everything we haven’t said. Outside, the sun is setting again, painting the windows with gold and rose. The atelier smells like fabric and the lemon cleaner I use on the worktables and something that might be the last traces of Solenne’s perfume.
“The trying,” I say. “Tell me about it. What it was like for you.”
“Cass…”
“I need to know. I spent two years thinking I was the one failing, thinking my body was the problem, thinking you were just being supportive while I fell apart month after month. But you weren’t just being supportive, were you?”
“No.” He sits down heavily on the stool by the cutting table. “I wasn’t.”
“Then tell me.”
He’s quiet for a moment, gathering himself. When he speaks, his voice is different - lower, rougher, the voice of a man who’s been carrying something heavy for a long time.
“It felt like failure. Every month, every negative test. I know that doesn’t make sense, because it wasn’t anyone’s fault, there was no one to blame. Biology doesn’t care about blame. But I felt like I’d failed you. Like I’d promised you a family and then couldn’t deliver.”
“I never blamed you for that.”
“I blamed myself. And I didn’t know how to say it, because saying it felt like making it about me when you were the one going through all the physical stuff. The appointments, the hormones, the…” He gestures helplessly. “It was your body. It felt wrong to make my grief as important as yours.”
“So you didn’t grieve at all.”
“I grieved alone. In the middle of the night when you were sleeping. On set between takes. In the car on the way to places I didn’t want to be.
” He meets my eyes. “I should have grieved with you. I should have told you I was breaking too. But I was too proud, or too scared, or too stupid to figure out how.”
I think about all those nights lying awake beside him, feeling alone even with his body warm next to mine.
All the times I wanted him to say something - anything - about what we were losing, and he just…
didn’t. I thought he was being strong. I thought he was holding us together while I fell apart.
I didn’t realize he was falling apart too, just in a different direction.
“And the running into work - that was easier?”
“That was survival. Or what I told myself was survival.” He leans forward, elbows on knees.
“Work was the one place I knew who I was. At home, I was the husband who couldn’t give his wife a baby.
The man who watched her cry in the bathroom and didn’t know what to say.
On set, I was Antonio Guerriero, leading man, reliable professional.
I could be competent there. I could succeed. ”
“While I disappeared.”
“While you disappeared.” His voice cracks.
He meets my eyes. “We’ve talked about this - the colors, the fading.
But there’s something I haven’t said plainly enough.
I knew I was checking out. I knew it at the time, not just in hindsight.
And I told myself I’d deal with it later, and later never came, and you paid the price for my cowardice. ”
Something shifts in my chest - not anger, not quite forgiveness, just the ache of finally hearing the whole truth without softening.
“I’m not going to disappear again,” I say. “Whatever happens between us. Whatever we build or don’t build. I refuse to become invisible in my own life.”
“Good.”
“I mean it, Antonio. If we try this again - if we try to be something real - it can’t be because of the baby. It can’t be because we’re already married and it’s easier than divorce. It has to be because we actually want each other. The real versions. Not the performances.”
“I want the real version.” He stands, moves closer but still keeps the worktable between us.
“I want the woman who tells me when I’m being an idiot.
Who builds beautiful things with her hands.
Who looks at a sunset like it matters. Who wore red because she wanted to, not because anyone told her to. ”
“And I want…” I stop, not sure how to finish.
“What do you want?”
“I want to believe this is real. I want to trust that you’re not going to disappear into work again the moment things get hard.
I want…” I take a breath. “I want us to actually talk about things. Like adults. Like partners. Not avoid each other until the silence gets so loud we can’t hear anything else. ”
“The baby isn’t proof that we work,” I add. “Biology doesn’t care about blame, like you said. It doesn’t care about redemption either. The only proof is what we do - sustained, over time. Not grand gestures. Just showing up.”
“We could do that.”
“Could we? Because we said we could before. We said a lot of things before.”
“I know.” He doesn’t flinch from the accusation.
“I know I’ve said it all before. I know my promises have been worth less than the air they were made of.
But I’m different now, Cass. Not because I’m suddenly a better person, but because I finally understand what I lost. And I’d rather spend the rest of my life proving I’ve changed than spend another day being the man who let you disappear. ”
“Pretty words.”
“I have a lot of them. Occupational hazard.” The corner of his mouth quirks up, just slightly.
“But I’m also offering something more concrete.
Counseling. A real therapist who can help us communicate better.
Scheduled time - actual blocked hours when we’re together and present, no phones, no work, no distractions.
I’ll put it in writing if you want. I’ll put it in a legally binding contract. ”
“You’d sign a contract to spend time with your wife?”
“I’d sign anything you asked me to sign if it meant you’d give us another chance.”
I study his face, looking for the performance - the smooth movie-star mask he used to wear when he was telling me what I wanted to hear. But it’s not there. What I see instead is raw and vulnerable and terrified in a way that makes my chest ache.
“I don’t have any music,” I say.
He blinks at the apparent non sequitur. “What?”
“You asked me to dance once. In our kitchen in Rome. There was no music.”
“I remember.”
“There’s no music now either.”
Understanding dawns in his eyes. He holds out his hand - not demanding, not assuming. Just offering.
I come around the worktable and take it.
He pulls me close, one hand on my waist, the other still holding mine. We sway together in the fading light, no rhythm except the one we create between us, and I rest my head against his shoulder, breathing him in - the warmth, the familiar shape of his body, his heartbeat steady against my ear.
“I still have the token,” I say quietly. “The brass one from the coffee shop.”
“Do you?”
I reach into the pocket of my work apron and pull out the small brass disc. Tarnished with age, worn smooth from years of handling. The logo of a coffee shop in LA that probably doesn’t exist anymore.
“I almost threw it away a dozen times,” I admit. “After everything fell apart. But I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was ours. Because it reminded me of who we were before we forgot how to be those people.” I press it into his palm. “You gave it to me that night in Rome. When you were trying so hard to show me the man you used to be.”
He looks down at the token, then back at me. “You kept it.”
“Of course I kept it. It’s the only proof I have that we were real once. That we were happy.”
“We can be real again.” He closes his fingers around the brass, holds it for a moment, then presses it back into my palm - returning it to me, where it belongs. He lifts our joined hands, the token warm between our palms, and presses a kiss to my knuckles. “We can be happy again. I believe that.”
“I’m not saying everything is fixed,” I tell him. “I’m not saying I’m ready to move back in or cancel the separation paperwork or pretend the last year didn’t happen.”
“I know.”
“But I’m saying…” I take a breath. “I’m saying I want to try. Really try. With the counseling and the scheduled time and the actually talking about things.”
“That’s all I’m asking for.”
“And if it doesn’t work - if we try and it still falls apart…”
“Then we’ll know we did everything we could.” He pulls me closer, and I let him. “But I don’t think it’s going to fall apart. I think we’re stronger than we were. Both of us.”
“You really believe that?”
“I believe in showing up. Every day. That’s the only proof that matters - not words, not promises, not…” he gestures vaguely at my midsection “-biology. Just sustained, boring, daily effort.”
“Boring effort. Very romantic.”
“I’m saving the romance for after I’ve earned it.”
I laugh despite myself. “You’re impossible.”
“I’m hopeful. Novel experience for me.”
We sway together in the quiet atelier as the last light fades from the windows. It’s not forgiveness - not yet, not completely. But it’s something. A door cracked open instead of slammed shut. A beginning where I thought there was only an ending.
“The apron is digging into my hip,” Antonio murmurs.
“Suffer.”
“Gladly.”
I smile against his shoulder and let myself believe, just for a moment, that we might actually be okay.