The Weight of Normal
373 Words
Chapter Nine – The Weight of Normal
The office was alive with the hum of keyboards and clipped voices, but Isabella felt strangely detached, as though she were walking through someone else’s life. The soft glow of her computer screen, the endless stream of emails—these had once anchored her. Today, they felt meaningless.
She caught her reflection in the glass wall. To anyone else, she looked the same: composed, professional, untouchable. But behind her calm mask, her thoughts twisted in dangerous circles.
Every pause in conversation, every ring of her phone, made her pulse skip. As if she expected him on the other end. As if Matteo’s voice could slither past security and find her wherever she hid.
“Isabella?” a colleague leaned over the partition. “The report deadline—are you on track?”
She blinked, forcing a tight smile. “Yes. Almost finished.”
Almost finished. Almost sane. Almost free.
But she wasn’t.
When lunch break came, she pushed through the crowded street, clutching her bag as though it could shield her from her thoughts. Couples laughed at café tables, friends spilled stories over wine, and the ordinary beauty of it all made her chest ache.
Daniel should have been here. They should have been that couple, that laughter. Instead, he had texted a curt Working late. No apology, no warmth. Just absence.
And in that absence, Matteo lived.
She ducked into a quiet bookstore, the scent of old paper wrapping around her. Books had always been her refuge, a world where men like Matteo Ricci existed only in fiction. She ran her fingers along spines, searching for a distraction.
But even here, she found him. In the intensity of a line of poetry. In the ache of a love story gone wrong. In the shadow of her own reflection between the shelves.
Her hand trembled as she pulled a random book free, hugging it to her chest like a shield.
“I won’t let him in,” she whispered to herself. “I won’t.”
But the words rang hollow, because in truth, Matteo Ricci had already carved his name into her mind.
And the terrifying part was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to erase it.
- Writer
