Love Thy Enemy

Chapter 6: In the Dark

The week goes by quickly. Saskia and Tommaso kiss at every turn, coming up for air only once a week, I am assuming. I finish the essay and Kiara stops nagging me about it. Valentino doesn't show up again. The last I heard from him he left a rose at my doorstep with a handwritten note that read "see you soon". But after a week of no show, I can only assume that he has lost interest. Veste and I haven't spoken since the incident at the bakery, we haven't even bumped into each other by mistake. I am guessing that he is actively ignoring me, and I am grateful for it. I apply another layer of mascara when a knock comes at the front door.

"You gonna get that?" Alessio asks, lifting his head from his IPhone when the person behind my front door delivers another knock.

"Give it a sec." Unfortunately the knocking continues. Whomever is on the other side of that door does not want to leave. I walk out of my room to open the door, hoping against all reason that Valentino is on the other side.

"Kiara?" She wears what could very well be a pajama with an obscenely angry expression plastered on her face. If this is about the essay, I am closing the door in her face.

"Where is Alessio?" She asks frustrated, tapping her foot where I would have shut the door in her face otherwise.

"Why do you ask?" I am not in the habit of giving out free information on my friends to almost strangers, no matter how angry they may seem or how many times they may ask.

"It's none of your business" She snaps crossing her arms over she chest.

"Since when do you have an attitude Ms. Clouds are Pink?" she ignores my title.

"Since always. Do you know where he is or not? He is not home and he is not at Saskia's" The shy girl long gone, I gear up.

"It's ten o'clock, why would he be at Saskia's?"

"She's having a party"

"And you assumed that a party would be the perfect place for a fight?" I laugh, eyeing her from head to toe with my nose up in the air. I don't care who she is, when a stranger shows up at my house demanding information on my best friends, I flash my canines.

"Kiara!" Alessio's voice echoes throughout the house before he comes rushing in.

"It's alright Ana, I got this" he places a gentle hand on my shoulder, motioning for me to reenter, which I do hesitantly. Once I am in my room, I open the window behind my bed to let some air in. I pick up the black heels parked neatly under my bed-stand and change into a pair of tight pink pants and a white V neckline t shirt, black heels on my feet. There is nothing about my outfit a mother, or Melina would approve of, but that's the whole point of tonight. In this outfit, no one I didn't want has touched me. In this outfit, I am pure, and fearless. Staring in the large mirror in front of my dresser I don't see a poor girl from the South. I see a girl from Florence or Milan. She lives in Monte Napoleone, right on top of Gucci or Armani.

In my room, staring at my new, make believe self, I am flooded by memories of the woman who raised me, Angelina Ancona. There was this one time my mom brought me to Milan. At the time I wasn't sure why, it all seemed so sudden. But I am no longer a child, and the answer to my question is plain as day. It was because of the Locals.

"Today is about us, le donne" she had said to my fourteen year old self as we sat in a small café waiting for our drinks to arrive. A spritz for her and a hot chocolate for me. Her light brown hair was held behind her head with a blue bandana that showed every other woman in the Galleria di Vittorio Emanuele II that we weren't from Milan. Her long, colourful skirt, my unkempt hair and cheap brown sandals, screamed "contadino". But she didn't care what people thought of her. She never did, and secretly that's what I most admired about her. When our drinks arrived, they came with an acquaintance.