CHAPTER 63

NELLY

I'm giving up on you, on us. Of everything.

The phrase echoes inside my head as I watch Gerald, the main character in the best romance film French cinema has ever produced, break down in tears, sitting in the last pew at his childhood friend's wedding, when she finally says yes to the only man in the entire hundred minutes of footage who took no notice of his stutter. I should be saddened by the outcome of the story, but I'm not. Giulia always prioritized her friend, giving him all the first places in her life, and he was never reciprocated, always bringing weak justifications for her shitty behavior. She got over it, though. So I woke up this morning and I couldn't forget the final sentence of the film, when the contents of the letter that Giulia wrote to Gerald before getting married are finally revealed. I had to rerun the film, which brings us to the present.

My eyes are swollen from crying, and I blame the accelerated pregnancy hormones hard, I can say with certainty that