The fact that Giulia didn’t love me came to me as no surprise. I could tell that her ex had gotten the wrong idea about us: there was nothing serious going on between Giulia and I. We weren’t exclusive. Heck, we weren’t even dating, exactly. At that point Giulia probably saw me as nothing more than a friend with benefits. And I’ve known for a while that Giulia had a bit of a crush on her straight friend, Beatrice, so that too wasn’t really news to me.
The idea that Giulia could be in love with Beatrice, though, that shocked me more than I cared to admit. So yeah, maybe I had gotten my hopes up, and maybe I had this timid little idea of someday asking her to become my girlfriend, but this changed everything. If Gigi had those kinds of feeling for someone else, romantic feelings, then there was no way I could ever tell her about my own feelings.
I’ve never had unrequited feelings for someone before. It hurt.
Giulia cried for hours. I couldn’t bring myself to sleep at all. At some point I got up from the bed, leaving Giulia asleep under the sheets, and went outside for a smoke.
“Fuck…” I sighed, leaning on the parapet. I took my phone from my pocket and flipped through my contacts list. I was going to call the one person I knew I could talk about this at three in the morning and not get yelled at.
I waited for a moment, before I heard a familiar sleepy voice coming from the other side.
“Hello,” he said.
“Zack, I’m in trouble. Get up and get some coffee, I need to talk to you about something.”
“Seriously, Val? It’s like, almost four. The sun isn’t even up yet. Can’t this wait until the morning?”
“Nope,” I said simply.
“All right, give me a minute.”
I heard Zack yawn, then the line went silent. I feared he might have gone back to sleep. Still, I waited as I had been told.
“Back,” he told me, after a couple of minutes. “Now tell me, sis, what’s the problem? Are you in jail? Need me to bail you out?”
I chuckled. “I wouldn’t be calling you from my phone if I were in jail, Zack. It’s… Giulia.”
Zack yawned again. “What about her?” he asked me.
“I’m in love with her.”
There was a moment of silence between us.
“Well,” said Zack, finally, “good for you, sis. Have you told her yet?”
“I haven’t and I won’t,” I told Zack, in a very matter-of-fact way. Then I took a deep breath, before telling him the rest. “Giulia loves someone else.”
“Really?!” he exclaimed. “How did you find that out?”
“I heard it from her ex.”
“Her ex? How did that happen?”
I sighed. “We… kind of ran into her, yesterday. She and Giulia had an argument of sorts. It seems that her ex is still in love with her, and wants them to get back together, but Giulia has this crush on her straight friend and so they can’t be together. And fuck, Zack, this feels awful. I’ve been with so many girls before, it never really mattered to me whether they had feelings for me or not. So why is it that the one time I’m actually head-over-heels for a chick, she’s in love with someone else? That’s not fair, bro.”
“Well, have you actually asked the girl herself? Maybe it’s a misunderstanding.”
“I wish it was, Zacky.” I felt desolate. The image of Giulia crying herself to sleep came back to my mind. Tears began to well up in my eyes, and I fought them back as best as I could. “She’s asleep in my bedroom right now,” I told him. “I have no idea what to tell her once she wakes up. What do you think?”
“Me?” Zack sounded surprised. “Well, look, I’ve never been in your situation before. But I’m gonna be quite honest with you here, Val. I think you should come clean to her. Tell her you like her.”
Zack’s proposition sounded absurd to me, at best. “And get rejected?!” I exclaimed. “No way, bro.”
“Well,” said Zack, “if everything you’re telling me is true, then you’re as good as rejected already, aren’t you? I mean, the girl’s not into you like that, so you might as well get some closure.”
“I don’t want closure, Zacks.”
“Look, sister, if you were going to ignore my opinion, then why the heck did you call me so late at night? I don’t know, Val. You’re the one who has to figure a way out of that situation. I’m just a sleepy guy in pikachu pajamas.”
“Why are you wearing— you know what? Never mind, I don’t wanna know. Good night, bro.”
“Night, Val.”
I turned off the phone and went back to my cigarette. I don’t even know why I still smoked that thing. I started it as an excuse to get away from people in parties, but nowadays it’s become a sort of nervous habit. I should quit. Nothing good was going to come from smoking this thing, anyway.
I sighed.
Nothing good was going to come from being with Giulia either, was it?
I kept staring at the dark clouded sky, losing myself in thought. Zack wasn’t entirely wrong: it was obvious that Giulia didn’t love me, so I really should try and get some closure. Maybe once I did I could put all of this behind me, focus on the music, and just… not be in love with someone who doesn’t love me anymore.
A tear ran down my right cheek. Easier said than done, wasn’t it?
A voice came from behind me.
“Um… Valerie?”
I wiped the tears quickly, put on a fake smile and turned around to look.
“Oh, hello Gigi. What are you doing awake at this hour?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” she told me.
“Me? I’m just cooling off in the night air. This season’s too hot for me, and I’m a bit of a night owl anyways. I like being on my own.” Oh damn, what was I saying? My own words were going to make me cry again. That was one moment of my life where I most definitely did not want to be on my own. I wanted Giulia. But she didn’t want me. “What about you, Gigi? Had trouble sleeping?”
“Something like that,” she said, sounding somewhat lonely. “I woke up and you were gone, so I came looking for you. I was worried.”
I felt a pang in my chest. Did Giulia seriously not notice what her words did to me?
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just… Haven’t been able to sleep very well, these last few days. Lots of pressure about the new album and stuff. Are you feeling better now?”
Giulia nodded, with a saddened expression on her face. “I’m fine,” she said.
“You know, Gigi, I’m always here for you in case you want to talk, okay?”
She seemed surprised by that. I mentally slapped myself. What was I even thinking? She loved someone else. Which meant that I had to start putting some distance between us. So what’s with this ‘I’m here for you’ bullshit?
“…as a friend, of course,” I added, looking away.
“Oh…” said Giulia in monotone. “Right… Thank you, Val.”
We didn’t talk much more after that. Giulia and I went inside. I made us tea, and we drank in silence for a long time.
“I’m getting sleepy,” she told me, after a few minutes. She got up and placed the empty mug in the sink. “I’m… gonna go back to bed now. You coming?”
“Um, sure,” I said, not at all sure. “I’m just going to finish my tea, okay? I’ll be with you soon.”
“All right,” said Giulia, before walking into the bedroom.
I didn’t actually want tea. But it worked to calm me down, and it gave me something to do so that Giulia and I didn’t have to make conversation in such an awkward situation. She had been crying so much, it really hurt me to see her like that. But what hurt me the most was what her ex had told me, about Giulia being in love with her friend. I’m horrible at keeping my thoughts and feelings to myself, it only ever took me a small bit of distress to start blabbing about it to anyone within earshot, and I had the feeling that if Gigi and I were to talk about this whole thing, I might have ended up telling her about what I felt. Silence was a blessing.
Chamomile tea did indeed calm me down to the point where I started to feel sleepy, for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours. I absentmindedly considered sleeping on the couch, and leaving the bed to Giulia for the night, but I realized that this made no sense. We might not have been in a serious relationship, but we were still sleeping with each other, both in the literal and the figurative sense. It would be weird for me to not sleep in the same bed as her, especially in my own house. And it would be suspicious too.
So, quietly, I put away the half-empty mug of tea and walked back into the bedroom, where I proceeded to lay down on the bed beside Giulia. We didn’t touch. I was afraid to, and she was probably asleep anyway.
“I’m sorry, Gigi,” I whispered to the girl sleeping beside me. She didn’t answer.
I’m sorry for falling in love with you, I thought to myself.
Comments (3)
See all