Behind The Scenes

86. Anna

From the moment Hero said to me in August, "She kissed me," I knew immediately that those two would've teamed up. Not only in that sense, as a couple, but the chemistry they had from the beginning made everything easier.
They had known each other for barely 12 hours, but I saw how they looked at each other at that dinner. Perhaps it was curiosity, one wanted to find out more about the other, to push them to look at each other in that way. The next day I realized they found each other irresistible. She couldn't resist the magnetic gaze of his green eyes — sometimes blue — and he couldn't resist her glowing smile. I'm telling this in the past, because I'm talking about what happened during the filming period, but that doesn't mean I can't speak in the present as well.
Even now, that they are in this strange... relationship/non-relationship, they are two opposite poles that continually attract each other. They believe that the feelings are slowly fading away, but this is not the case, not even a little.
Jo is the most introverted, she doesn't often express how she feels but she manages to make you understand it with her body language, by now I've learned how she behaves when something troubles her. The only times she tells me how she feels are when she is drunk or when she is one step away from a love breakdown. These are the moments when she is truly sincere. She often pretends that everything is perfect and all right, even when it isn't. I have explained to her a thousand times that this is not okay, that it will drag her into an abyss without her noticing.
Hero, on the other hand, is quite different from her. When we are alone at home he sometimes takes advantage of the opportunity to transform me into a psychotherapist; I feel like those psychologists who waste hours listening to the often superficial dramas of some teenagers, the only difference is that I am not paid and that Hero is not a teenager. It is true, sometimes he complains about things that it's useless to complain about because they cannot be under the supervision of a human, but more frequently they're serious matters. He must have told me I don't know how many times that he loves Josephine more than himself — and he is one of those who would probably look at himself for hours in front of clear water on days when he looks beautiful, but when it comes to her... he would stay hours watching her (his words) — and I believe it when he says it. He proved it. Despite the disgust he had done in the beginning, he managed to earn forgiveness. A billion times he came to me to self-pity saying that he was a piece of shit, that he deserved nothing, that he had lost hope, that he was a failure, that he did a horrible thing, that he hurt those who would only deserve the better, not to be the perfect man for her, to be bad. On some things I agreed with him, but he was not bad, I did not allow him to say it even in a dream. He is one of the most kind and generous people I know. The things he has done for people are endless: he donates for people in need 24 hours a day and this is something about him that I admire infinitely, he has helped so many people. The things he did for Jo after that mess... what to say, he deserved forgiveness. Jo gave in right away when she saw him again after five days without hearing from him. That day they went upstairs to talk and after only a quarter of an hour they ended up in bed. But he really showed her what he felt and that he really wanted to gain her trust. He surprised her with the house. She was delighted when she told me, with her eyes sparkling. I didn't know anything, Hero hadn't mentioned it to me. He took care of her in a way that no one else could. He knew that on her menstrual days she is always unwell, so he was always ready with an enterogermina and, if necessary, hold her hair while she threw up. One evening he even made me cook chicken in the oven just for him — while the rest of us ate it fried — because, and I quote, "Jo is nauseous" and immediately afterwards he ran to take a shower to eliminate any smell of fried food. Surely he doesn't even care about these things, he probably doesn't even remember them, but it's the little things like this that make the difference. And when was there that tiny possibility that Jo had gotten pregnant? There he was just to admire. Another would have been furious and would have gone mad and would probably have dumped her like a coward. But he didn't. He would've been happy, he had told me, and that he would've done everything to be the father that his child deserved. Both had deluded themselves of that small chance that in the end, when they knew they weren't going to have a little Jo or a little Hero, they were upset. Let's leave out the other events, I would go too far into the details.
In recent months they have often seen each other at my house, or at their apartment but for a short time.
At the beginning of this "pause" they often filled the silence with awkward and nervous chatter. They were trying to pretend that nothing had happened in the past few months, or to make it unimportant, but how were they supposed to do? It's impossible to put aside a story like theirs in no time. Not even now, after two months, they've made it. I noticed how they are looking at each other right now, in this cab, he has his hand casually placed on her thigh and he just kissed her on the cheek. She doesn't stop trying to hold back a smile and I understand that she feels a swarm of butterflies in her stomach.
It's beautiful. They are falling in love again without ever having stopped loving each other.