Page 15 of Valentino

My hands aren't quite steady when I type back.

Palazzo Grimaldi. Saturday, 8. I know it's not exactly your scene. Rich people in nice clothes pretending to like each other.

The three dots appear immediately.

I'll pick you up at 7:30.

I stare at it.

He said yes, and my stomach erupts with little bird wings and my heart takes off in my chest. My eyes sting, which is ridiculous. It's a party. It's nothing. It's a man being polite, probably, doing a favor for Vittoria's friend because that's the kind of obligation people like him take seriously.

I type Perfect and then delete it because it sounds too eager. I type Great, thank you and delete that because it sounds like a work email. In the end I send back the one true thing I can manage to keep light.

Wear something that isn't black. Live a little, Conti.

The reply comes back fast enough that I know he's still holding his phone, somewhere across this city, in whatever room a man like him sits alone in at midnight.

No.

That's all. and I'm grinning at my screen like an idiot.

I set the phone on the nightstand and lie back against the pillows, heart doing… God, it's doing so much, I can't identify it.

I shouldn't have done that, but I'm so fucking glad I did.

The phone buzzes again before I've even let go of it, and for one stupid, soaring second I think that he's changed his mind.

It isn't him.

Mom.

I know what it'll be before I read it, the way you know the ending of a movie you've seen a hundred times.

Hi sweetie. Just checking. Are you okay? Haven't heard from you.

I laugh because crying is not going to help right now.

Three days ago I told her I'd landed the campaign of my life. The thing I've bled for. The thing I built out of nothing but stubbornness and a good eye and two years of people telling me no. And she sent me a fucking thumbs-up emoji.

But this—a check-in, a "sweetie," a worried little question mark—this she can manage. Because this costs nothing. This is the maintenance text. The one you send so you can tell yourself you're a good mother.

I know exactly what it is. She read some article on a flight, probably. How to Stay Connected With Your Adult Children. And somewhere over the Atlantic she set a reminder, and the reminder went off, and here we are.

I roll onto my back and hold the phone above my face in the dark.

I’m fine, I type.

My thumb hovers.

Then I think about something I haven’t let myself think about in a long time.

I was maybe six when I asked them for a sister.

I remember being very serious about it. I had a whole speech. I’d made a list in my head of all the things a sister could do. She could share my room. She could play with me when the nanny was on the phone. She could be there when they weren’t.

I didn’t say that last part.

Even at six, I knew not to say that last part.