A person.
“You okay?” My father’s voice, low enough the others won’t hear.
I glance at him. He’s watching me with that look he gets. The one that sees too much.
“Fine.”
“You don’t look fine. You look like you’re somewhere else.”
I am somewhere else.
I’m in a courtroom watching a woman climax while she tells the truth about me.
I’m wondering where she is now. If she’s scared. If she’s okay. If she thinks about me the way I can’t stop thinking about her.
“I’m fine,” I say again.
My father doesn’t look convinced, but he lets it go.
Later, back at my place, I pour myself a drink I don’t want and stand in my kitchen staring at nothing.
The container’s still on the counter.
The one she sent the cookies in. Plain tupperware, nothing special. But she’d written on a piece of tape on the lid in neat handwriting: For Dario.
The cookies are long gone. My crew ate most of them. I had three, rationed them out over two days like an idiot.
They were perfect. Rich and sweet and made with the kind of care that tasted like time. Like she’d stood in her kitchen thinking about me longer than she should have.
I open the container now. It’s empty except for a few crumbs.
I should throw it away. Should have thrown it away days ago.
Instead, I grab the bag of biscotti from the bakery down the street. The good bakery, the one that’s been there forty years. I fill the container, snap the lid back on.
Sit at my table. Open it again. Take one.
It’s fine. Good, even. The bakery knows what they’re doing.
But it’s not the same.
Not even close.
I eat it anyway. Close the container. Leave it on the counter.
Tomorrow I’ll see it and think about her again.
The woman who noticed me. Who sent me cookies. Who came while she told the truth.
The woman who’s gone now because of choices I made in a restaurant on a Tuesday night.
I should let it go.
Let her go.
Move on like she never existed.
But I keep the container.
