Falling Back to the Way Home

Five years into my relationship with a Godfather-to-be, I realized Cicio Russo had fallen for someone else. And I decided that the choice should be his. I laid the options right in front of him: break up with me, or send that someone else far away overseas.

Cicio Russo stood outside my windows all night, down there with the coldness of the night cutting through him and fogging his breath. By morning, Cicio told me that he'd decided. His choice was me.

Or at least - that was what I was made to believe.

Surprise came on the very day of our wedding, a strange little boy ran straight down the aisle that was supposed to be mine to walk.

“Daddy,” he cried at Cicio and Cicio’s face of stony indifference, “What about me? You have left mommy already. Are you going to abandon me, too?”

The ring slipped from Cicio’s hand and hit the carpet with a muted thud.

He turned his back on me and walked away without even looking back.

I pulled off the white veil. And I snatched the microphone from the host.

“If you take one more step,” I screamed into the microphone, “if you leave, I will give all this up. And you, too. Do you hear me? I will give you up.”

He froze.

For only one second.

Then he stepped away anyway.

The day I realized Cicio Russo had taken a liking to another girl behind my back, I spent the whole night thinking without much agitation.

The final conclusion I reached? He was all I cared about. And I still couldn’t let him go. So, at my insistence, Cicio left that girl.

Well, to be more exact, he sent her away. And our relationship seemed to have returned to what it had been before all the drama and betrayal. But I knew it hadn’t.

Over the past three years, the time Cicio Russo spent alone with me had grown shorter and predictably shorter. He would rather stay in the grand study, where he dealt with all his family business, facing those dull shelves with bulky books, than come home to be with me and my everlasting warm company.

The meals I reheated again and again, the lights that stayed on night after night—it all felt like they were telling me: He was not coming back.

One night, Cicio came home late and paused for a moment when he stepped through the door.

He probably hadn’t expected to see me in the living room, because normally at this hour, I would have been asleep; he knew that.

I got up from the sofa and took the coat from his hands. Then I fumbled slightly, untying his tie for him with a hint of unfamiliarity.

I should've known that because ever since that girl had left, he hadn’t let me touch him at all.

“Go take a shower first. I've got something to tell you.”

In recent years, Cicio had less and less