I gather the rest of my things with shaking hands. Katrina and Priya are by the cashier, oblivious to the earthquake that just rocked through me.
Cristiano walked away like it was nothing. LikeI’mnothing. Like he didn’t just turn my whole body to static with a split-second touch. Maybe I am nothing to him now, and these four years of silence have been exactly what they seem. Indifference. Moving on.
But if that’s true, why is he always around?
I can see him outside the restaurant through the glass with his friends. I need to confront him now, while I’m still angry. Before I lose my nerve.
“I’ll just be a minute,” I call to my friends, and before I can talk myself out of it, I’m following Cristiano outside.
I find him leaning one shoulder against the wall, both girls from his group fawning over him. One is playing with her hair as she gazes up at him. The other is laughing too loudly atsomething he said. He looks bored, but tolerant, a king accepting tribute he didn’t ask for.
I approach from the side. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
The girls give me a look that could curdle milk.
Cristiano’s gaze lifts to mine, but his expression doesn’t change.
“Sure,” he says, pushing away from the wall. He follows me a few feet away without a word to the girls.
I round on him. “What are you doing?”
He tilts his head, hands sliding into his pockets. The posture is casual, relaxed, completely at odds with my trembling fury. “I thought you wanted to talk to me.”
“I mean, what are you doinghere? At Giodorno’s. What are you doing coming here all the time?”
“The pizza’s good.”
“Cristiano.”
He raises an eyebrow. Waits.
“You keep showing up,” I press. “Everywhere I go, there you are. I’ve seen you here three times in two weeks.”
“Malus isn’t that big.”
“It’s big enough. You never came here before.”
He considers this. “I’ve been branching out. Trying new places.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit.” His voice is reasonable and infuriatingly calm. “I went through a phase of only eating at the places my friends liked. Expensive restaurants. But the food’s better at places like this. More authentic.”
He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and I start to feel a little silly.
“So your sudden interest in cheap pizza has nothing to do with me?”
“Why would it have anything to do with you?”
The question lands like a slap. He’s not being cruel. His tone is genuinely curious, like he truly doesn’t understand why I’d think that. And why would he? I’m the housekeeper’s daughter. He’s the only son of one of the richest men in Malus. The idea that he’d rearrange his life around my pizza schedule is…actually insane, when I think about it.
“We haven’t spoken in four years,” he continues, his tone patient. “You asked me to stay away from you, and I have. I’m not sure why you’d think I’m suddenly following you to pizza parlors.”
I stare at him. He sounds so reasonable, and the worst part is, he’s right. He has stayed away. He’s barely spoken to me, hasn’t approached me, and hasn’t done a single thing I could point to as inappropriate.
Except show up. Everywhere. All the time.
But when I try to articulate that, it sounds paranoid. Like I’m the obsessed one, tracking his movements and reading meaning into coincidences.
