just fall | ✓

32.

I really needed to stop letting Salvatore help me cope with my heartbreak or whatever the hell I was going through.

For the third or fourth time since the Illéans had arrived in Rome, I was drunk. Very drunk. Not so drunk that I'd recall nothing or that I wouldn't be able to control myself if need be, but drunk enough that my liver hurts just thinking about how much alcohol I'd had that night. I wish I could say that it helped or that at least I was enjoying myself or something, but honestly, I spent a good half of the time wishing I had something so I could do something drastic like, I don't know, bungee-jump off of the palace roof or something...which was why Salvatore hated bringing me up to the roof when I was drunk. Because drunk me liked the idea of jumping off of high things for literally no goddamn reason.

I'm not entirely sure why we decided to drink on the roof that night, but we did. Salvatore was more intoxicated than I was, likely a result of us learning that the Russians would be arriving the following day to spend three weeks with us, overlapping with the Illéans' stay for a week. We were both trying to drown our sorrows, and it hadn't worked.

We ended up leaving around one in the morning, and I walked Salvatore back to his room. He was swaying on his feet and insisting he was okay, but he hadn't slept in a day or two and hadn't eaten much at dinner, so I didn't think he could handle all of the vodka he'd had. Once I was certain that he was tucked in bed and unconscious (he'd fallen asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow), I shut him in his room and went to return to mine.

I stopped and tugged off my heels, choosing instead to carry them. My ankles and feet sighed in relief as they sank into the plush carpet, and I continued walking.

I didn't realize that my feet weren't carrying me to my room until I stopped in front of a door that wasn't mine and tiredly recognized it as a guest room. I had the weirdest sense that I understood exactly how he'd felt the times he'd visited me in my room, our roles reversed in the most unexpected way. 

My hand was raised as if ready to knock on the door; if I were sober, I would've done exactly as I had done every time I picked up the phone to call him: stared at it for a moment, heart and stomach in my throat, before putting it down and walking away with the ghost of tears pricking at my eyes. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't sober, so I found myself knocking softly on the door. After a few moments, it cracked open. The room itself was dark, so I couldn't see anything, but the door shut and I heard the deadbolt slide away, and then it reopened. 

Alexander blinked tiredly in the low light of the hall. His hair was messy, sticking up at odd angles, his pants hung low on his hips, and there were crease marks on his face and arms from the pillow and sheets. Even half-asleep, he looked better than me: my gown was rumpled from sitting on the roof, my hair was probably messy from the wind, my cheeks were colorless and my eyes were swollen from crying so much. I knew that I looked less awful than I did an hour ago, but I was sure that traces of it were still on my face. At least I hadn't been wearing makeup.

He rubbed at his eyes with one hand. "I'm not dreaming, am I? You're actually here right now?"

I laughed. "If this is the kind of dream you regularly have, you need a better imagination."

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug and when he looked at me again, he wasn't squinting. "Hard to come up with anything else when this is all I've wanted. To see you again." Well, that totally didn't hurt. "Why are you here?"

"I don't know," I said. Then, "I'm drunk."

He let out a small snort, already more awake than he had been. "That figures. I guess I'll only get to see you when you're drunk, then?" He shook his head and stepped back, motioning for me to enter. "Come on. I don't want my family to wake up."