Chapter 256: Yvette Alcantara
He stared at her.
"Julian Vale?"
The name of the voice landed before the face did. Then both arrived at the same time, and Julian stood very still for exactly two seconds.
"Let me call you back," he said into the phone. He didn’t wait for a response before putting it in his pocket.
He looked at her.
"Yvette." The name came out flat with surprise. "Yvette Alcantara."
"Yes." She pressed a hand briefly to her chest like she needed to confirm it herself.
"In the flesh." A short laugh escaped her, the same laugh he remembered, the one that arrived before she had decided if something was funny or just shocking. "Oh my God."
She moved toward him with her arms already opening and Julian took a half step back and extended his hand instead. Clean, clear, deliberate.
Yvette looked at the hand. Then she looked at him.
Then she rolled her eyes in a way that suggested some things had not changed at all in however many years it had been, reached past the outstretched hand entirely and pulled him into a hug.
Julian stood with his arms at his sides. She stepped back anyway, unbothered.
"Still stiff as a board," she said pleasantly. "Good to know."
"What are you doing in Verenza?" he asked. She raised an eyebrow. "What do you think I’m doing? Stalking you?"
Julian looked at her evenly. "Are you?"
Yvette stared at him for a second and then laughed a real one this time.
"Unbelievable. Three years, and that is your opener?" She shook her head and sat back down, gesturing at the chair across from her like this was her café and she was doing him a favour.
He looked at her properly now. three years. She had been, what, twenty-three, twenty-four when he last saw her. Young and loud and completely, exhaustingly certain about everything, including the fact that she was in love with him.
She had never made it particularly a secret. He had never addressed it directly because addressing it directly would have required him to stop ignoring it, and he had been very committed to ignoring it.
She had grown into herself since then. The impulsiveness was still there; that hug had confirmed it, but there was something steadier underneath it now.
"I had a crush on you for five years," she said, settling back in her chair with the air of someone discussing the weather.
"Five years, Julian. And you never looked at me twice." She picked up her cup finally. "Always going on about this girl. This irreplaceable girl you were in love with." A short sound. "I have some dignity, you know. Eventually, even I can take a hint." She looked at him over the rim of the cup. "So yes. I moved on."
Julian said nothing.
"You do still look incredibly handsome though," she added, without missing a beat, "I’m not going to lie to you about that. Some things are just facts." She set the cup down. "Are you still completely devoted to this irreplaceable person or..."
Julian lifted his left hand off the table.
Just enough.
The ring caught the light briefly and sat there making its point without any help from him.
Yvette’s eyes dropped to it.
She was quiet for exactly one second.
"Julian Vale is married." She said it slowly, like she was reading something in a language she mostly understood. Then she looked up at him. "Interesting."
"Is it."
"Very." She folded her arms lightly. "Who is she? Who finally managed to make you..." she gestured vaguely at all of him, "...do something as human as get married?"
Julian looked at her steadily. Yvette’s expression shifted.
Just slightly. The amusement is pulling back at the edges to let something more complicated through.
"Why her and not me?" she asked instead, like he hadn’t spoken. But her voice was different now. Lighter on the surface in the way people make their voice light when the thing underneath is not light at all. "I’m just asking."
"Yvette."
"I’m serious. Five years is a long time to wonder." She looked at him. "Was I really that far off?"
Julian held her gaze. He had always been honest. It was one of the things she had once told him she hated about him.
"You were never in the running," he said. Simply. Not cruelly. Just true.
Yvette absorbed that. Nodded once, slowly.
"Right." She exhaled. "Well." She picked up a spoon and turned it in her fingers for a moment. "At least you didn’t pretend."
The café moved around them quietly. Someone ordered at the counter. The couple by the window laughed again.
Julian waited.
"What are you doing here, Yvette?" Julian asked again. Differently this time. Less surprised, more focused.
Yvette leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other, the purple dress settling around her.
"Not for you, obviously," she said, with the particular ease of someone who had made their peace with something.
"I was here on a business trip. And then my water broke, early, completely out of nowhere, so I gave birth here." She shrugged one shoulder, like premature labour in a foreign city was a minor inconvenience.
"And well. I seem to like it here. So I stayed."
Julian pulled the chair across from her and sat down properly this time, leaning forward slightly with his elbows on the table.
"You got pregnant," he said. "And gave birth."
Yvette looked at him.
"What," she said flatly. "You can’t picture me as a mother?"
Julian said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
"You are exactly like stupid Leo," she said, pointing at him briefly.
"That was his reaction too. Stood there looking at me like I’d told him I’d grown a second head. He actually told me, to my face, that he thought I was lying." Her jaw tightened slightly at the memory.
"Can you imagine?" She shook her head. "Anyway. I heard he’s also here in Verenza somehow. Small world."
Julian had been listening with half his attention on her and half on something at the back of his mind, a thread, loose, beginning to pull.
Yvette paused.
