“Yeah,” I said. “I think I’m going to go grab a sweater.”
“I’ll bring you one back,” he replied. “I need to go up and pee.”
“Just look in the first drawer in my closet,” I told him, and he replied that he’d be back in no time, hurrying off.
Now Dante took the floor. “I think what marks you isn’t your first love, but the first time a person breaks up with you. The first time your heart’s broken.”
Angela agreed. “A breakup always stings, especially if you’re the one who gets left. I still haven’t gotten over Francesco dumping me in grade school.”
“The kid with the glasses and the lisp?” Catalina asked, giggling.
Our conversation turned toward innocence, first times, memories, confessions, and in the midst of it, Giulio announced, “There’s afamous phrase: ‘Your first love is the one you love the most, but the other ones you love better.’”
“I like that,” Catalina said.
I was struggling to listen along, and as everyone drank more, their words were becoming less coherent. Lucas was taking forever, too, and that was worrying me. I excused myself and went to look for him, climbing the stairs to the third floor. The light was on in my room. I peeked in and found Lucas sitting on my bed, elbows resting on his knees, my photos in his hands. The dresser drawer was still open.
My heart started pounding and I felt an abyss open at my feet. He looked up at me with an expression so frightening I took a step back.
“I told you to look in the drawer in thecloset,” I said defensively.
Lucas’s eyes were shimmering with anger. He stood and walked over to me, shaking the photos in my face, along with the documents Fyodora had found for me. “What is this?” he asked. “Why does the girl in the photos have your last name?”
“Give them back!” I reached for them, and he pulled his hand away.
“Why the fuck is Giulio with her?”
“It’s not your business.”
“It’s not my business? Bullshit, Maya. It sure as hell is my business. It means you’ve been lying to me since the moment you showed up here.”
“I never lied to you.”
He walked past me in fury, dropping the photos on the living room table and grabbing his pack of cigarettes. He lit one. I could feel the rage coming off of him in waves.
“I didn’t lie,” I repeated. “I just left some things out.”
“Same thing,” he said.
“No, it isn’t. I told you what you needed to know to rent me the room.”
He kept sucking in more and more drags as though his life depended on it.
“Maya, I can’t deal with lies, and even less with liars. Lies hurt people. They make people suffer. They ruin people’s lives. A lie can destroy you!” he shouted.
I felt myself shrinking. Did he hate me now? Was that it? He was comparing me with Claudia. I could see it in his eyes, and it hurt me that the thought came to him so easily.
“Why should I have told you?” I asked, confronting him. “I didn’t know anything about you, and I’m supposed to tell you something so personal? This is my issue. It belongs to me. No one else, OK?”
“Well, what about now?” he growled. “You know everything about me now. You don’t think after fucking me for all these weeks you could have found the time to be honest with me about these fucking photos?”
“Who are you to be placing demands on me?”
“You used me.”
“No!” I shouted, on the verge of tears. “How can you even say that?”
I saw the anger in his eyes, but behind it was desperation and fear.
