Luce di Stella • Kenan Yildiz

Chapter 40: Dream House

🎶 Ghost Of You — 5 Seconds of Summer 🎶

The day after Kenan and Dilara's housewarming party, I made a plan. A plan to stay as far away from him as possible, to not engage in any conversations, and trying to blend him out at every event I had to attend with him there. And I thought it was really going well, I was already six weeks in and already felt so much better. I was focusing much more on my relationship with Dean, feeling free and happy.

That was until one day, Dean asked me to pick up some shirts he had gotten tailored and I agreed to do it as I had an appointment in the city anyways and he had an extra physio session because of some discomfort in his hamstring he had been experiencing for a few weeks now. I entered the familiar shop and smiled as I loudly said "Buonasera". A shop assistant walked up front, but froze when she saw me.

"Oh... um... Signorina Agnelli! What... a surprise! Um... Gianalberto currently has a client... uh... maybe you could come back later... erm... let's say half an hour?" the young man stammered.
"Oh, don't worry, I'm just here to pick something up, I'll go say hi quickly" I chuckled and walked through the shop, back to the room where Gianalberto usually served his clients. He was probably with some businessman I knew anyways, so it wasn't a big deal.

But it was. Because on the pedestals getting measurements, there wasn't some random businessman, but Kenan. His head turned quickly back to me as he saw me in the big mirror's reflection and also Gianalberto looked up, kind of confused.
"Bibi!" I heard a guy exclaim and saw Tarik, the only one of Kenan's friends (except for Dean) to ever like me. He walked over to me to hug me, but I was still frozen.

"What are you doing here?" I mumbled, not really knowing who I actually was talking to. But I didn't need to ask because my mind already did 2+2. He was getting his wedding suit made.
"Is it your wedding suit?" I asked, faking a nice voice and smile as I walked closer to Kenan. He just nodded, seemingly embarrassed by the situation we were all caught up in.
"It looks good" I said, really speaking the truth here. It looked like he was getting a navy double-breasted suit - and he always looked good, let's be honest here.

"Ok, expert opinion needed here: I think everything looks great here" Tarik said and waved his hands in front of Kenan's body. "Only the bride... maybe we could still return her and get someone else" he joked, but mine and Kenan's expression were the same unimpressed one. This really wasn't funny right now.
"Oh, come on. I was just joking... Lifting the mood and stuff!" Tarik defended himself.
"Just shut up, I don't even know why I brought you along" Kenan snapped.

"Beatrice, what can I do for you?" Gianalberto asked, hoping to attend to me quickly and getting this situation out of the way.
"I'm just picking up Mr Huijsen's shirts" I replied, letting out a breath I didn't know I was holding.
"Of course, I'll get them from the back and bring them right out to you" the man said friendly and I nodded at him before he disappeared. Thick tension was now lingering in the air as Kenan's and my eyes met. He was here getting his suit for his wedding to his fiancée and I was picking up my boyfriend's shirts. We had both moved on in life. It felt as if we were saying goodbye, even though there wasn't one word spoken.

"Here you go, it's just these three, right?" Gianalberto asked and laid out the three white shirts on his counter.
"Yes, perfect, thank you" I said to him as he wrapped them up. I took the bag and turned around to Kenan on the pedestal one last time.
"Goodbye" I spoke quietly and his eyes looked empty, maybe even sad.
"Goodbye, Bibi" he almost whispered. A cold shiver ran down my spine and after a curt nod, I disappeared as quickly as possible out of this shop.

As I rushed back to the parking I had left my car in, I felt a tear rolling down my cheek. There was one more thing I had to do to let him go completely. As soon as I had sat down in my Alfa Romeo Stelvio, instead of driving back home to my flat, I drove out of the city and up to the hills. I left Turin below me and arrived in a residential area with big villas and lots of green space between them. At one of them, I turned into the driveway and parked my car.

As I stood at the door, I scrambled around in the depths of my bag until I found the keys and opened the big entrance door. I shut it again quickly and closed my eyes as I rested my back on it and slid down onto the floor. Here I was - shortly before my graduation, I had found this house and fallen in love with it. This is home, I had thought when I first visited it with the realtor. Here, I imagined living with Kenan someday, raising our children, spending the rest of our lives. But on the evening I wanted to tell him, he left.

And since then, I had come back here regularly. Dreaming about the life I could have had with him. I had even delusionally set up some pictures of us in the living room. And his clothes that I still had from him, I had put away neatly into what would have been his closet here. This was psycho behaviour and I knew it, but I couldn't help it. The last time I had been here was before Kenan's presentation, in an effort to really let go. But I had never acknowledged until now, that I needed to sell this house in order to really do that.

And even though I wasn't ready for it, I needed to. I walked around the house again - the kitchen, where I imagined us learning new recipes together, the living room where I pictured us watching his game highlights on TV as we would cuddle up together on the sofas, the two or three nurseries upstairs for our potential kids and our huge bedroom in which we would make love every night. Yeah, I really needed to sell this house.

I sent an e-mail to an old friend of our family who owned a real estate agency and told her to come around sometime this week to let it get photographed and put it up in her portfolio. I added that I however insisted on showing the house myself. I just wanted to know that it was nice people living here in my dream house one day and I hoped that their dreams would come true, unlike mine.

When I returned back to my apartment that evening, Dean must have noticed the distraught look on my face. I had never told him about the house and definitely wasn't going to now.
"Hey... you ok?" he asked concernedly and patted the space on the couch next to him. He didn't deserve me like this. When the house is sold, I will let go and be all yours, Dean.
"Just a rough day... You feeling better?" I asked as I cuddled into him. He looked down at me with the most adorable smile and I melted at how perfect he was being, all day, everyday.
"I am now" he replied and kissed my cheek softly.

A week after the house had been listed on sale, the agency said that a new client had expressed interest and wanted to visit it. Fine by me, and through them, we arranged to meet on a Friday afternoon. I arrived at the house a bit earlier and tried to come up with a story as to why it was being sold, hoping to get rid of it as soon as possible. I couldn't live in a dream world anymore. Kenan was getting married and I had a boyfriend, for Heaven's sake.

The doorbell rang and I took a deep breath before opening up. But the person I saw, was the last one I had expected here.