Page 46 of Valentino

I don't say anything.

He hangs up.

The five faces drop one by one until the screen is black.

Luca looks at me across the table.

"Coffee?" he says.

It's the first word out of his mouth since he walked in.

"Yes," I say.

Amanda

My mouth tastes like metal.

My tongue feels too big, and my mouth feels stuffed full of cotton. Water. I need water before I need anything else, before I can even start the impossible math of where I am and how I got here and why my body feels like a stranger's.

I push up onto my elbows. The room spins, and I have to stop. Breathe through it with my eyes shut. When it settles, I try again, slower this time, and the world mostly holds still.

My legs work, technically. I get them over the side of the bed and stand, and my knees do a quick negotiation about whether they're going to participate. They decide, grudgingly, that they will. I keep one hand on the wall and shuffle toward the gap of light under the door like a woman three times my age. Dignity is a thing I'll reclaim later. Right now I'd trade it for a tap.

The hallway is short and dim, plaster scarred down to the brick in places. I follow the light and a faint smell of coffee until it opens into a small kitchen. A scarred wooden table and two chairs sit in front of a window with the shutters cracked just enough to slice the morning into thin gold lines across the floor.

Elio is standing by the counter. He sees me, and he takes a step toward me, hand already coming up like he's going to steady me or hold me.

"Don't."

The word lands flat and hard from somewhere to my left, and Elio freezes mid-step like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

I turn my head, which the room punishes me for.

Valentino. His eyes do a quick inventory of me.

He crosses the room and his hands close around my arms. Firm enough to hold me up, careful enough that I notice the care.

"What do you need," he says.

The fog in my head, the careful way he's holding me, and Elio standing three feet off with an apologetic expression covering his entire face… it's a lot to take in on an empty everything.

I open my mouth and nothing useful comes out for a second. "Water," I finally manage. My voice sounds odd like sandpaper and gravel. "I need water."

Elio's already moving before I finish the word. Cabinet, glass, tap. He's got it filled and is holding it out toward me in the time it takes me to blink. There's something almost desperate in how fast he does it. Like this water is a payment on a debt I never agreed to accept.

Valentino takes it without looking at him.

"Slow," Valentino tells me, and presses the glass into my hand, keeping his fingers over mine until he's sure I've got it.

I drink. It's just tap water, lukewarm and faintly metallic, and it is the single best thing I have ever put in my mouth. It hits my throat and spreads through my chest like something waking up. I tip the glass back, desperate for more, but Valentino's hand comes up under it, slowing me .

"Slow," he says again, lower this time, almost gentle, and for some reason it’s that gentleness that makes my eyes water. Not the pain on my cheek I can feel now that I'm awake. Not the gaps in my memory I'm not brave enough to fill in yet. The word slow, said like I'm something that might break if it's rushed.

I drink slower. Half the glass. My hands are shaking, and I hate it. Hate that they can see how vulnerable I am, so I wrap them around the cool glass tighter until they stop.

Elio is still standing there. He wants to say something. I can feel it. Everything we haven't said, filling the room.

"Where are we," I ask. My eyes go to Valentino because he's the one who'll actually answer, or at least the one I'd believe.