“Oh, hey. You’re back.” She turns on the lamp on the bedside table. Her curly hair looks freshly showered, her white shirt see-through enough to catch my attention.
“You’re not sleeping yet?”
“No.” She glances nervously away from me. “Too crazy of a day. My mind was racing.”
I unbutton my dress shirt and notice the uneasiness in her eyes as I crawl into bed and rest on the pillow beside her.
She doesn’t move to turn off the light or lie back down, and I can tell that something else is on her mind.
“What is it?”
She bites her lower lip. “Elena was crying all day. I tried knocking on her door, but she asked me to go away and give her some space.”
I flop onto my back, rubbing my eyes and wondering if she will resent me for the rest of her life after this.
“I’ll talk to her,” I say.
“Was she close to Marco?”
I freeze, emotion flooding me out of nowhere as I think about that scrapbook and my sister’s emotions. I feel like an idiot when I realize Elena was upset after my wedding because Vincenzo got hurt. But she never expressed being close to him. A gnawing loneliness that I experienced in childhood all the time creeps into my chest. Why would she keep all of this from me?
“I have no idea what to think about that. She told me she hated him, but now I’m questioning how she really felt about Marco and Vincenzo.”
“You didn’t get along with Vincenzo either?”
“No, he did whatever Marco instructed him to do. He didn’t have it in him though, the necessary cruelty to behave like Marco.”
A silence falls over the two of us, but she doesn’t turn off the lamp so we can sleep.
“I’m sorry you were so alone, Alessandro.”
“I told you I don’t want your pity,” I snap, before I can think twice about it—squeezing my eyes shut and bracing myself for the incoming fight.
But she doesn’t shout or aggressively roll away from me like I expect.
“So, what do you want me to do? Enjoy that you had such a horrible life? Laugh at you? Not care at all?” Her tone isn’tangry; she’s not trying to start anything. She’s genuinely asking, and that perplexes me.
“…Yes.” I know that’s an odd response, but I don’t like it when she’s empathetic towards me—it makes me feel like my chest is ripped open and exposed.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
She rolls onto her back and rests her head on her hands. “I wish you’d just let me in.” She sighs. “You know? I was looking forward to this marriage before I met you.”
“Are you serious?”
She shrugs, still looking at the ceiling. “I was excited to get out of the house. For my life to begin. And I just had this feeling that everything would all work out.”
“Well, that feeling was wrong.”
I don’t know why I said that out loud. I have a bad habit of stating the obvious when I should keep my mouth shut. It makes me look like a smart-ass when I’m really just an idiot. But she doesn’t take offense at this; instead, she laughs.
“No shit,” she gasps.
I think about the words she told me—that she was excited to get married. And that surprises me. I guess in this modern world,I would have expected a woman to dread an arranged marriage like this. Especially Sofia. She’s independent. Driven. She had to give up so many things to come here, like her coaching job, her family, and every other thing she was involved with.
“You really felt that way? Optimistic?”
