Chương 7 - THE FIRST DATE AFTER THE DIVORCE
They met at a coffee shop.
Public.
No driver waiting directly outside.
No private room.
Elena arrived first.
Dante hated that.
Not because he wanted control.
Because she had always been late before marriage.
“You’re early.”
“I've grown.”
“Suspicious.”
They talked for two hours.
Nothing about Richard for the first forty minutes.
That was deliberate.
Elena’s work.
Dante’s company.
A restaurant they once loved that had closed.
Her terrible skiing.
His equally terrible attempt to learn piano.
Then Elena asked:
“Did you ever hate me?”
Dante looked at his coffee.
“Yes.”
She blinked.
“I thought you’d lie.”
“You asked.”
“When?”
“Second year.”
“Why?”
“Because I still loved you.”
That hurt.
He continued.
“I would stand outside your room and think: If she hates me this much, why won't she leave?”
Elena’s eyes filled.
“Why didn’t you ask?”
“Same reason you didn’t tell me.”
“Fear?”
“Pride.”
“Same thing sometimes.”
“Yes.”
He looked at her.
“Did you hate me?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Sometimes I tried.”
“That sounds insulting.”
“It should.”
She smiled.
Then became serious.
“I was angry.”
“At?”
“You.”
“Why?”
“Because you made it so easy to believe you could kill my father.”
Dante looked away.
Fair.
“I hated that protecting you required protecting Dad from you too.”
“Yes.”
“And I hated you never pushed harder.”
He looked back.
“What?”
“I know that’s irrational.”
“Very.”
“But some part of me kept waiting for you to knock on my door and say, ‘Enough. Tell me what happened.’”
Dante laughed sadly.
“I thought respecting your locked door was the only decent thing I was doing.”
They stared at each other.
Three years destroyed by two people interpreting silence as love.
Elena reached across the table.
“Maybe we were idiots.”
“Definitely you.”
She pulled her hand back.
Dante caught it.
Then immediately loosened his grip.
She noticed.
“Keep holding it.”
He did.
That was their first date after divorce.
No kiss.
No promises.
Only coffee and a hand held between two cups.
They did it again the next week.
Then dinner.
Then a walk along the river.
Dante never asked where it was going.
Elena noticed that too.
Three months later, she kissed him.
In his kitchen.
The new one.
He froze.
Elena stepped back.
“Problem?”
“No.”
“You look terrified.”
“I am.”
“Dante Moretti.”
“Be quiet.”
She laughed.
Then kissed him again.
This time he touched her face.
Gently.
Asking with the pause before contact.
Elena leaned into his hand.
Three years earlier, she had trained herself to stiffen whenever he touched her.
Now she had to unlearn it.
Not for him.
For herself.
Sometimes she still flinched.
Dante never took it personally.
At least not aloud.
May you like
They worked on that too.
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