Romeo called at exactly 11:47pm.
I knew it was bad before he said anything because Romeo didn't call that late unless something was wrong. He was a text person.
He always had been. A late-night call from Romeo meant he had moved past the point where typing felt like enough.
"Andrea's not answering," he said. "She went to a friend's place this afternoon and her phone's been going straight to voicemail for the last two hours. I've tried six times."
"Did you try the friend?"
"Don't have the number. Andrea never gave it to me." A pause with frustration underneath it. "I've got Luca trying to find it. Matteo's losing his mind. Elio's the only one keeping it together and I can tell he's barely managing."
I was already off the sofa. "Where does she live?"
"Upper East. I'll send you the address." "Can you go? I'd go myself but I've got—"
"I'm already leaving," I said.
I grabbed my jacket and my keys and was out the door before Romeo finished the sentence. The address came through while I was in the elevator. I looked at it once and put my phone in my pocket and kept moving.
The drive was nineteen minutes. I knew because I watched the clock in a way I don't usually do — tracking it the way you track things when the front part of your brain is occupied and the part underneath is doing something it won't fully explain to you. I wasn't panicking. Panicking wasn't something I did.
But there was something behind my sternum that had been there since the second Romeo said her name and it didn't move no matter how many times I told myself she was fine, phone died, happens all the time, this is not a situation that requires the feeling currently sitting in my chest.
I thought about all the things that could have happened and stopped myself each time and thought about them again anyway. That was where I was at. Someone who was fine at managing things was apparently not fine at managing this particular thing, and hadn't been for a while, and the drive across the city was just the part where I couldn't avoid knowing that anymore.
I took the stairs in her friend's building two at a time. The hallway on the third floor was narrow and quiet, one of those old New York buildings that smelled like wood and radiator heat, the kind that had been standing long enough to know it didn't need to impress anyone. I found 3C at the end of the hall, knocked, and waited.
The door opened.
Andrea stood there in an oversized sweatshirt and sleep shorts, hair loose, looking at me the way you look at something you weren't expecting to see. Behind her the apartment was warm and lit, music low in the background, the sounds of a normal evening that had nothing wrong with it whatsoever.
She was completely fine.
"My phone died," she said.
"I know."
"I charged it enough to call Romeo twenty minutes ago. He said everything was okay."
"He sent me before that."
She looked past me into the hallway like she was checking if I'd brought anyone with me. I hadn't. She looked back at me slowly. "You drove here."
"Yes."
"Because my phone died."
"Yes."
"Anthonio." She crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe. "I was at a friend's house. I'm eighteen, not eight. Why would you be worried about me?"
I looked at her standing there in that doorway, warm and unhurt and completely unbothered, looking at me with that look she had — the one that was already a step ahead of wherever I thought the conversation was going.
I was done.
Not done as in finished. Done as in I had run out of ways to keep the wall up and keep it looking like a wall. Done as in I had driven nineteen minutes across the city at midnight because her name came up in a phone call and something in me moved before my brain caught up with it. I had spent months telling myself I was managing this. Standing in that doorway at midnight looking at her completely fine face, I could not think of a single convincing argument for that anymore.
"Because it's you," I said.
She went still.
"I've been telling myself for weeks that I can do this. Keep the distance. Stay out of the rooms. Let it settle into something manageable." I stopped. "None of it is working. The second Romeo said your name tonight I got worried. And the whole drive here I kept thinking about everything that could have happened and I couldn't sit with any of it.
I couldn't think about any version of something being wrong with you and feel anything close to okay about it."
I looked at her. Really looked at her.
"That's your answer. That's why I was worried. Because somewhere in the last few months you became the thing I can't think about something happening to, and I don't know how to put that back where it was. I tried. I walked away in the garden and I meant it and I drove home and I still thought about you the whole drive. That's not something I can manage my way out of."
She was quiet for a moment. The hallway sat still around us, the building settled into its late-night quiet, just the two of us and the truth of it finally out in the open.
"You walked away," she said. "You said it wasn't safe. You said secrets don't keep."
"I know what I said."
"So what changed?"
"Nothing changed." I took one step toward her. "That's the problem. Nothing changed and I drove nineteen minutes because your phone died and I'm standing here and you're fine and I'm still not ready to leave.
I have never once in my life been able to do the thing where I stop. Not with you." I held her gaze. "The risk is already there. It's been there this whole time. I was using it as a reason to stay back and it stopped being good enough sometime around the third time I walked away from you and spent the drive home knowing I was going to have to do it again."
Something in her face shifted. The careful thing she kept in place came down.
"Your plan," I said. "Nobody knows. We're careful. We keep it quiet." I paused. "I should have said yes in the garden."
She looked at me steadily. "You're sure."
"No," I said. "But I'm here anyway."
She reached out and grabbed the front of my jacket.
And pulled.
I came through the doorway and my hands found her face and the kiss was nothing like the library. The library had been the very edge of something, it was so restrained. This was the other side of that.
She kissed me back like she had been waiting for me to stop being an idiot about it for weeks. Which she had. Which I knew. Her hands twisted in my jacket and I walked her back a step until she was against the wall just inside the doorway and my hands moved from her jaw into her hair and she made a small sound against my mouth that did significant things to my ability to think about anything rational.
The door was still open. Neither of us did anything about that.
She tasted warm and certain and real and like something I had been trying not to want for long enough that wanting it openly felt almost confusing. I kissed her like I had made a decision and wasn't going back on it. Like every wall I had spent the past weeks building had just become irrelevant. She kissed me back the same way — no hesitation, no almost, just her hands twisted in my jacket and her mouth and the warmth of her against me like she had already known this was where it was going and had just been waiting for me to catch up.
Which, to be completely fair, she had.
I pulled back eventually. Just enough to look at her.
Her eyes were open. Her expression was the most unguarded I had ever seen it — nothing managed, nothing performed, just her, just this, just the two of us finally on the same side of the thing we'd been circling for months.
"Nobody knows," she said.
"Nobody knows," I said.
She pulled me back in and I stopped thinking about anything else.
And for the first time in a long time I wasn't trying to stop it.