Page 126 of Valentino

“No.” He wipes his mouth with the napkin. “Why do you ask?”

I want to know if you are still in love with Giovanna.

“I don’t know.” I shrug, feeling stupidly needy. “I just wondered if you had someone in the wings before me.”

“No.” He picks up his knife and fork. “I haven’t been in a good place.”

“For a relationship?”

“Ahh, let me think.” He fake thinks. “The person I loved like a brother betrayed me and then murdered my girlfriend in cold blood.”

I take his hand over the table, his gaze stays locked on to them.

“It’s so messed up,” I whisper.

“It is.”

“It’s behind us now.”

“It’s not.” His eyes rise to meet mine. “It won’t be until he’s caught.”

“Just let the police handle it,” I plead. “They’re looking for him; they’ll catch him and hopefully he’ll go to prison for a long time for what he did.”

He pulls his hand away from mine and goes back to eating, and for a long time, we stay silent and we finish our meal both lost in our own thoughts.

“You know, I was thinking of something today.” He stands and takes his plate to the sink.

“What?”

“How come you never introduced Carlo to your family?” He picks up my plate too.

“We weren’t like that.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I never….” I shrug. “It didn’t even cross my mind to be honest.” I wipe my mouth with my napkin. “Maybe on some level I knew all along. I mean, I must have.”

“Knew what?”

“That we were never going to work out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Even if what happened never happened, looking back on it now, I can see clearly that Carlo and I would have eventually broken up on our own anyway.”

“What makes you say that?” He sips his wine, acting uninterested but failing miserably.

“He was.” I twist my lips. “How do I say this without sounding like a bitter scorned woman?”

“Just say it.”

“Self-absorbed.”

A smile tugs at his lips. “That’s a good way to put it, actually.”

“You know what I mean though, right?”

“I do,” he agrees. “I get it. I lived it.”