A New Life

fifty eight.

"That was a lot, even for me...and you handled it very well."

Danielle's POV

Thursday, April 2nd

"I'll get it!" I hear Abby call from the living room when there's a knock at the front door.

"Ciao, bella!" Stefania's voice sounds when Abby opens the door.

"Hi!" I hear Abby respond. "Danielle's ordering food in the kitchen right now."

The pair walk into the kitchen while I'm on the phone ordering takeout. I smile when Stefania makes eye contact with me, and she walks around the counter and pulls me in for a short kiss.

"Hi, yes, delivery for Danielle Savre please," I speak into the phone when the restaurant picks up.

When I finish ordering our dinner, I make my way out into the living room where Stefania and Abby are sitting on the couch and trying to find something on the tv to watch.

"Hi baby," I say quietly, sitting down in between Abby and Stefania.

"Ciao bambina," she smiles and leans in to kiss me softly. "How did today go?" She asks, looking at both Abby and I. I look over at Abby as if to ask permission to talk about today, and she nods her head slightly.

"It was alright," I breathe out. "A little overwhelming I think, but we're pretty much all prepared for the hearing," I place my hand on Abby's leg. "Macey has a very good feeling about this, and I trust her since she's been doing this for so long."

I think back to after Abby finished reading through all of Macey's notes, when Macey asked her to write any additional information down that may be useful, and being able to see Abby get physically uncomfortable and glance over at me nervously before writing anything down broke my heart. I knew there were probably instances that she had yet to tell me about, but I swear I could actually feel my heart drop to my stomach when I saw what she was writing, and the fact that she was scared to write things that she hadn't yet told me.

"What should we watch until the new episode starts?" Abby asks as she flips through the channels with the remote.

"Do you want to just put on Friends or something?" I ask, directing the question at both of them.

"Yeah, sure." Abby replies, pulling up the show.

"Stefania? Are you good with that?" I ask, looking over at her to make sure she's okay with that. "Baby?" I ask again when I see she didn't hear me and is looking down at her phone with a worried look on her face. When she doesn't answer again, I reach out to touch her arm, which finally causes her to look up.

"Hmm?" She questions.

"Are you good with that?" I repeat.

"Good with what?" She asks me, and I raise my eyebrows at her.

"With just putting Friends on until the episode starts?" I remind her of what we were just talking about.

"Oh," she replies, looking back down at her phone and beginning to type aggressively. "Yeah, that's good." I don't say anything else and just let out a sigh, trying to brush it off and not read too much into why Stefania's acting like that. She did this earlier today while we were on set as well. She ran off to take a phone call while we were in the middle of a conversation, and then came back upset but wouldn't talk to me about it.

After a few minutes of the three of us just sitting on the couch and watching Friends, Abby gets up to go get some water from the kitchen. I use this opportunity to try to talk to Stefania.