My handwriting in the margins. Spiky. The handwriting of a woman who was holding a pencil too tight.
Must be honest at all times. No games.
I had written that on the first page. I had drawn a small underline beneath it, twice, and Pietro had drawn a third underline below mine in his pencil and written in his neat handagreedwith no qualifier.
Lower down the same page:
No sleep deprivation as punishment. I like sleep.
I had been so afraid, writing that. I remembered the moment exactly. I had been at his kitchen table in a borrowed sweater that smelled like him and I had just admitted, out loud that I had touched myself the night before in his guest bed and not asked permission, and the shame of it had been so total that the act of writingI like sleephad felt like a small radical confession.
Pietro had read it and his mouth had done the thing. The small private thing where the corner of it lifted half a millimeter.
He had written, in his pencil, under mine:agreed. you will sleep. text me anytime, even at three in the morning.
And I had written, under his:you can wake me if you need to.
I read those two lines now, side by side, eight months later, and I felt my throat close.
He was watching me read.
“Look at her,” he said.
He meant me. Eight months ago me.
“I know.”
“She was so scared, baby.”
“I know.”
I turned to the last page. There at the bottom, on the line he had drawn for me, was my signature from that night.Angela.One word.
Below it, neat, even, his:Pietro Scordato.
“And look at him,” he said. Soft.
“I see him.”
“He countersigned and walked to the guest room.”
“I know.”
“He thought he was being decent. He was being a coward.”
“Pietro.”
“No, let me. He was being a coward. He could not let himself touch her because he did not believe he was allowed to want her. He thought wanting her was a thing he had to earn over months. He thought the contract was a way of building a cage around himself to keep her safe from him. He did not understand, yet, that the cage was the gift she had been asking for. He thought he was offering her structure. He was offering her his own fear in a folder. She was generous to sign it.”
I looked up.
His face was steady. The dark eyes were on mine and they were giving me nothing they did not mean.
“Those two people,” he said, “are not us anymore.”
“No.”
“She has a family. She has the work she was built for and she has it back. She is not afraid of being seen.”
