Chapter Three #2
Maybe...he only has a temporary role to play in my life.
"I need air," I say suddenly.
"Thea—"
"I just—I need a minute."
I stand up too fast, and my chair scrapes against the floor, and I leave my latte half-finished on the table and push through the door into the February cold.
The shock of it helps. The cold air, the sting on my face, the way my breath comes out in white clouds. I lean against the brick wall of the building and try to steady myself.
Santino Aleotti.
I finally know his name, and it’s so very fitting that his name, just like everything about him, isn’t in any way.
..common. Not John or Mike or Dave. But Santino, which is very Continental, and fully explains why he holds his fork the way he does and why he always seems a thousand more times more graceful and elegant than most other men I know.
Damian is probably the only exception, but.
..maybe that’s because they’re both billionaires?
Santino Aleotti.
The more times I think of his name, the more unreal it feels.
Not surreal, but completely unreal.
It’s just completely unreal that a man of his stature has been eating in our hole-in-the-wall cafe for thirty-plus days straight, and even more unreal is the fact that he noticed how I’ve been staring at him all this time.
In fact, he didn’t just notice it. He cared enough to count, and isn’t that the most unreal thing of all?
"Thea?"
Jolie's voice. She's coming out of the coffee shop, and she's got my coat in her hands, and she drapes it over my shoulders without saying anything.
"Thanks," I manage.
"You want to go home?"
"No. I'm okay. I just—it's a lot."
"Yeah." She leans against the wall next to me. "For what it's worth? I don't think he cares that you're a waitress. Or that you have bald tires. Or that you're twenty-one and he's thirty-four and you live in different worlds."
"How do you know?"
"Because he followed you home, Thea.”
Jolie’s matter-of-fact voice makes my heart start doing foolish things again.
“Men like him don’t do that unless they care.”
I want to believe her. I do. But there's this voice in the back of my head—the one that sounds like every guidance counselor and social worker and well-meaning adult from Kansas who told me I needed to be realistic, that girls like me don't get fairy tale endings, that my
father's choices meant I had to be careful about mine—
"Hey." Jolie bumps my shoulder with hers. "You want to walk? Clear your head?"
"Yeah. That sounds good."
We walk through town. It's the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday, so most of the tourists are up on the mountain skiing, and the streets are relatively quiet.
We pass the general store, the real estate office with its window full of listings we can't afford, the art gallery that only sells to people who summer here.
And then Jolie stops.
"Thea."
There's something in her voice that makes me look up.
And I see her.
Kimberly.
She's standing outside the general store, and she's everything I'm not—tall and blonde and polished in that way that suggests she was born knowing which fork to use at fancy dinners. She's wearing designer jeans and a white puffer jacket that somehow doesn't have a single
stain or scuff, and her hair is perfect even in the February wind.
She sees us. Smiles. Starts walking over.
"Hey!" Her voice is bright and friendly. "It’s been a while, isn’t it?”
“Um...yes.” I do my best to sound just as friendly even though I’m mostly confused. Kimberly has never given me the time of the day, so I’m not sure why she’s acting like we’re long-lost friends all of a sudden?
“I’m so glad to bump into you. I’ve been meaning to ask—that new guy at your café.
The one who comes in every morning?"
My stomach drops.
"I'm just curious. He's been around for a while, right? Do you know anything about him?"
“I’ve never asked for his name.” At least I can say that truthfully.
"Right. Of course." Her smile widens. "It's just—I feel like I've seen him somewhere before.
Can't quite place where." I hate to think this, but it’s pretty easy to tell that she’s lying.
“Anyway—” She checks her phone, makes a show of looking at the time.
"I should get going. But it was great seeing you guys! "
"You too," Jolie says.
Kimberly walks away, and we stand there in silence for a moment.
"That was weird," I say finally.
"Not really." Jolie watches Kimberly disappear around the corner. "She’s after him, and now she’s checking if either of us is competition.”
“That’s—” Crazy? Overkill? I’m still trying to make up my mind on how to take it all in when Jolie suddenly elbows my side, and that’s when I see...him.
Santino.
He's standing outside a store I don't recognize, and he's looking at his phone, and he's wearing the same charcoal sweater from this morning, and even from this distance I can see the strong line of his shoulders, the careful way he holds himself.
Kimberly hasn't seen him yet. She's walking in the opposite direction, already halfway down the block.
But he looks up.
And he sees us.
Sees me.
And for a second, the world goes quiet in that way it does sometimes when you lock eyes with someone and everything else fades into background noise.
Then Kimberly turns around.
She sees him.
Her whole face lights up—that bright, glossy smile that I recognize from commercials and Instagram posts, the kind of smile that knows exactly how beautiful it is.
She waves.
Big, enthusiastic, the kind of wave that demands acknowledgment.
He doesn't wave back.
He's still looking at me.
And I'm still looking at him, and I can feel Jolie tense beside me, and I can see Kimberly's arm slowly lowering as she realizes he's not looking at her, he's looking past her, at—
At me.
Kimberly follows his gaze.
Sees me standing there on the sidewalk with my secondhand coat and my
coffee-stained hands and my entire life written on my face.
Her smile dies.
Not slowly. Not gradually. Just—dies. Like someone flipped a switch, and all that brightness, all that confidence, just shuts off.
And in that moment, I understand.
For Kimberly to think of me as competition is not a good thing.
At all.
Kimberly doesn’t even bother to hide her displeasure. She’s used to being seen, but with Santino not even looking her way, it’s as if she’s invisible, and the irony is making me feel like hyperventilating.
I should be the invisible one, not her. I've spent my whole life being invisible. I've made an art of it. And now, standing on this sidewalk with Santino Aleotti's eyes on me and Kimberly's smile dying on her face, I'm suddenly, devastatingly visible.
And I don't know if I want to be.
Santino’s gaze is still holding mine captive, and my head is still reeling at the fact that this time...
It’s not just his name I know. It’s the fact that I also know who he is. And the kind of man that he is. And none of it makes sense. At all.
How can a man like him care enough to follow me home just to make sure my car doesn’t slide into a ditch?
He lifts one hand.
Not a wave. Just—a gesture. An acknowledgment.
I see you.
But somehow...I can’t make myself wave back, and instead I find myself quickly tugging at Jolie’s arm so we can walk away as quickly as possible.
I can feel Kimberly's eyes boring into my back, and it’s still not good.
At all.