Rêveuse

Chapter 21

Present

Coming home to my apartment had never felt so lonely. I loved my apartment, it was my own little space and it was the first time in a long time I had felt like home. I had made it my home, and yet when I walked in on the evening I came back from Corsica, it felt too empty for me. I felt lonely.

My plants were kept alive, my mail was on the counter and Giulia had baked me a pie and left it in the fridge for me. That lovely woman. I had a bottle of wine in the fridge that I immediately opened. I ordered pizza and I had a lazy evening with my sketchbook, trying to think about the whole Charles situation.

He had a ring. He had my mom's ring. She gave it to him to propose to me with and he didn't. She never told me, he never told me, and when I thought about it, Carla and Charlotte knew about it too. How many people know and didn't tell me about it? I guess they didn't want to pour salt into an open wound by telling me. And also, what would I have done with the information before this point.

I have come to be thankful for the way my life turned out after Charles. I've seen places I probably wouldn't have seen otherwise, I've met people I probably wouldn't have met, I've dated people who have given me more experience and I have stories for a lifetime. In just over two years I've transformed myself into someone I really like. I have some parts of me I would still like to change, but I think everyone does, and I know that they're what makes me who I am so I can't really hate them.

I'm independent. I live by myself in another country and I have my own life here. I'm not being influenced by other people, I just live the way I want it. My life is good. Would bringing Charles back into it bring myself back to a place I don't want to be?

Considering we didn't break up because we stopped loving each other, but because we wanted to live differently, I'm not sure. He says he wants me back, but does he know that it means I still won't be around to just look good for him? Nothing has changed from before. I still won't be an accessory to him. If we get back together I want a change, and I want to see him more and I want him to make an effort to actually spend time with me when we see each other. If he wants me to go to something with him, and I'm sitting there with him, then I want him to actually talk to me and not to everyone else but me.

The Ferrari PR team is not going to run my relationship. If he doesn't agree with it, then there's no point because it'll just end up like last time.

For days I kept going on with my life, going to the dance studio to work with students, taking online meetings, helping Giulia with her grocery shopping and going to the gym. Every free moment I got, I was trying to understand what was going on. What I was going to say to Charles, how it was going to work. I tried to imagine Charles in my life again. All the traveling and cameras. All the comments on social media. I tried to picture him in my apartment. I tried to picture life with him. And it made me happy, but it would take a lot to get there.

I told him I would take a few days to think, and after a few days, I still hadn't called. I didn't know what to say, how to initiate the conversation. Would we really talk about it on the phone? I realized I had taken too long when it had been over a week, and he would be going back to racing eventually, and we were running out of time to talk without interruptions from his non-stop schedule. I texted him asking when he'd be free, but he just ended up calling me immediately.

"Salut," I answer the phone, walking immediately up to the fridge to get a bottle of wine out.

"Salut," he replies, sounding happy and nervous at the same time. "Je commençais à penser que tu n'appellerais pas." I was starting to think you wouldn't call.

"Désolé, J'avais beaucoup de choses à penser..." Sorry, I had quite a lot to think about...

"Alors?" So?