The Reset
680 Words
~ Eleanora's POV ~
Valentina left on a Thursday.
By Friday morning the villa had swallowed the entire incident whole.
Not just her. Him too.
Vincenzo slid back into himself so neatly it was almost unsettling. Quiet dinners returned. The study door stayed shut again. Good morning became a nod from across the hall instead of an actual conversation. It was as though the terrace apology, the sunset, the honesty - all of it had been a momentary lapse he did not intend to repeat.
I told myself I did not care.
My thesis had become complicated enough to occupy most of my attention again. Taylor called every other evening. Giulia started leaving things outside my room without comment - slices of cake, books she thought I might like, once even a tiny pot of basil because I had mentioned missing my terrace in Milan.
The basil was dying slightly by day four.
Oddly enough, that made me like it more.
~ * ~
The professionalism was the part that bothered me.
Coldness I understood. Coldness had rules. This was different.
This was Vincenzo treating our marriage like another obligation on an overcrowded desk.
The following week he informed me - informed, not asked - that there would be a dinner in Milan with business associates and he would need me there.
"You'll need formalwear," he said from the library doorway.
"I gathered that from the word dinner."
His eyes flicked up briefly from the file in his hands. "We leave by eight"
"Fine."
A nod. Then he was gone again.
I stared at the doorway a little longer than necessary.
Back then I had expected nothing from him.
That had been easier.
~ * ~
I could not figure out why he was doing it.
At night I lay awake staring at the ceiling, replaying every conversation we had had over the last few weeks.
Men like Vincenzo did not do anything accidentally. Even his silence felt deliberate.
So why pull away now?
Why now, when things had finally begun to feel less rehearsed between us?
I never found an answer.
~ * ~
The crack happened on a Wednesday evening.
Small enough that someone else might have missed it.
I had been on the terrace talking to Taylor, laughing so hard my stomach hurt. She had attempted to cook jollof rice for a man she liked and somehow managed to set off the building alarm halfway through.
"The rice was BLACK, Nora."
"You told me it was slightly burnt."
"It fused to the pot."
I was still laughing when I walked back inside.
The sitting room door swung open beneath my hand and I nearly collided with Vincenzo crossing toward the hallway with a folder tucked under one arm.
We both stopped.
For a second he simply looked at me.
And his expression change slightly.
Not quite a smile.
But enough to make my heart beat fast.
"Sorry," I said, stepping back. "I didn't see you."
"It's fine."
He moved to go around me.
Then stopped.
"You used to do that in Naples," he said quietly. "Laugh like that."
The room seemed to sharpen around me.
"What?"
His eyes lifted to mine.
"You said Naples," I said carefully.
A beat passed.
Then the expression was gone.
"Milan," he corrected smoothly. "I meant Milan."
"No," I said. "You didn't."
His grip tightened slightly against the folder.
"You seem like the kind of person who laughs like that," he said evenly. "That's all I meant."
The explanation landed too quickly. Too neatly.
Silence stretched between us.
Then he nodded once. "Excuse me."
And walked out.
I stayed where I was.
You used to do that in Naples.
Not seem like someone.
Used to.
I replayed every conversation we had had about Naples - sfogliatelle, Via Caracciolo, sunsets over the water.
And suddenly none of them sounded the same anymore.
Like he had been remembering something instead of discovering it.
I shivered slightly
Not from fear.
Something closer to recognition.
Like noticing a locked door had been standing open all along.
- Writer
