Page 62 of The Lies We Play

This place taught me how to be lonely without dying from it.

This city didn’t save me.

It stayed.

There is a difference, and I have learned to respect it.

I learned how to make dinner for one. How to laugh at myself before the ache swallowed the whole room. How to live with my own name after theirs stopped being attached to it.

I'm not healed.

I'm not ruined.

I am, unfortunately, awake.

And somewhere inside me, Creed Lafontaine has said one word in a dream, and every careful wall I have built across an ocean has tilted toward the sound.

My apartment is small by New York standards and perfect by the standards of a woman who moved to Florence eight years ago with one suitcase, a body full of damage, and no interest in living anywhere large enough for grief to have its own room. The bedroom has pale walls, a narrow wardrobe, a chair that collects clothes with the devotion of a museum curator, and one window overlooking a courtyard where Signora Bellini grows basil, fights with her sister, and feeds a cat she insists is not hers.

The cat, naturally, knows better.

Once I pour hot water over my wrist, I begin to move it.

Left first.

Then right.

Breathe.

One. Two. Three.

Bella eases, not enough to disappear, just enough to become manageable. That is usually all I ask of my body now. Not perfection. Not obedience. Just a minimum level of cooperation during working hours, social encounters, and moments when I am holding objects older and more valuable than most people’s retirement accounts.

My phone buzzes on the sink.

Moises.

Buongiorno. Coffee before lab?

I stare at the message.

Moises Bazán Bravo is a good man, which is a wildly inconvenient thing for him to be. It would be easier if he were careless. If he loved badly. If he treated me like a temporary Florence story with good cheekbones and a tragic backstory, he could frame it in a flattering light.

But no.

Moises loves practical verbs.

Coffee. Walk. Eat. Rest. Let me carry that. Did you sleep?

He knows which mornings my hand is worse. He knows not to mention it in public. He knows I hate being treated like porcelain, so he has perfected the art of helping me without making it look like help.

He knows many things.

He doesn't know the names.

Creed.

Halston.