It should be comforting. Instead, it feels like speaking a foreign language I’ve forgotten how to use properly.
“Carlo,” Crystal says after a while, setting down her wineglass and moving closer. “Are you alright? You seem... distant tonight.”
Distant. That’s one way to put it. How do I explain that I’m here but not here, present in body but with my heart and mind trapped in a basement ten streets away?
“Sorry,” I say, forcing myself to focus on her face. “Just tired.”
“Maybe I can help with that,” she murmurs, leaning in to kiss me again.
This time the kiss is deeper, more insistent. Her hands slide up my chest, fingers working at the buttons of my shirt. Everythingabout her touch should feel good. Should remind me of pleasure, of connection, of all the reasons I enjoyed her company before.
Instead, all I can think about is how wrong it feels. How different her hands are from the ones that touched me with such reverence, such desperate tenderness. How her kiss tastes like nothing but wine and lipstick, not like sweetness and sleeping pills and years of accumulated longing.
I try to respond, try to lose myself in the familiar dance of seduction, but my body won’t cooperate. Every touch feels hollow. Every kiss feels like a betrayal. Like I’m breaking wedding vows I never meant to take.
“Stop,” I say suddenly, pulling away from her.
Crystal blinks in surprise, her hands still resting on my chest. “What’s wrong?”
Everything. Nothing. The fact that she’s not Ginni, will never be Ginni, can never make me feel the way he did with just a glance across a room.
“I can’t do this,” I say, standing up abruptly.
“Can’t do what?” Crystal’s voice is confused, hurt. “Carlo, what’s going on?”
“You should go.”
The words come out harsher than I intended, but I can’t take them back. Can’t explain that sitting here with her feels like cheating on someone who probably hates me. Can’t tell her that every moment I spend pretending to be normal feels like dying a little bit more.
“Excuse me?” Crystal’s confusion is giving way to anger, which is fair. I’m being an absolute bastard, and she doesn’t deserve it.
“I’m sorry,” I say, but I’m already moving toward the door, desperate to get her out of here before I say something even worse. “I just... I need to be alone right now.”
“Are you serious?” Crystal follows me, her heels clicking on the hardwood. “You invite me over, pour me wine, let me thinkwe’re having a nice evening, and then just... what? Kick me out because you’ve decided you’d rather be alone?”
“Something like that.”
She stares at me for a long moment, and I can see her trying to understand what’s happening. Trying to figure out when the man she’s been casually dating turned into this hollow, distant stranger.
“There is someone else,” she says quietly. “Isn’t there?”
The question hits like a physical blow. Is there someone else? Is Ginni someone else when he’s probably locked away somewhere, when our marriage was never real, when everything between us was built on madness and desperation?
“No,” I lie.
“Bullshit.” Crystal’s voice is calm now, resigned. “I don’t know who she is, but whoever has you this twisted up... I hope she’s worth it.”
She grabs her purse and heads for the door, pausing only to look back at me with something that might be pity.
“For what it’s worth, Carlo, you look miserable. Whatever happened with this woman, maybe you should try talking to her instead of drinking yourself stupid and treating everyone else like garbage.”
The door closes behind her with a soft click, leaving me alone in my perfectly appointed house that feels more like a mausoleum than a home.
I sink back onto the sofa and reach for the whisky bottle, but my hands are shaking too badly to pour properly. Because Crystal was right about everything. There is someone else. I am miserable. And I am treating everyone like garbage because I can’t admit what I really want.
I want Ginni. I want my beautiful, broken, dangerous menace. I want his voice in my ear and his hands on my skin and hisabsolute devotion wrapping around me like armor against the world.
I want the only person I can never have.
