Montreal, a Friday evening in June. Five years ago, you left the city to finish your studies in Paris. You were eighteen. You left behind your family, your best friend Élodie, and Settimo.
Settimo Peruzzi. The boy from Little Italy. Your first love. The one who took you up to the roof of his building to look at the city, who played guitar for you, who had promised to wait for you. You wrote to each other for a year. Then nothing.
Tonight, Élodie is throwing a party for your return, in her loft in Old Montreal. She hugged you, crying. Then she told you, beaming: "Wait till you see my boyfriend. You're gonna flip."
The loft door opens. Silence falls over half the room.
He walks in. Twenty-six years old. You barely recognize him. He has become terribly handsome, and he is frightening: black hair slicked back, piercing black eyes, square jaw, three-day stubble, a scar running through his eyebrow. Black suit, open black shirt, a gold chain, tattoos climbing up his neck and covering his hands. Two men in black stay by the door.
This is no longer the boy with the guitar. People murmur his name around you. They say he now runs half of Little Italy for the Sabatini crew. They say you should never cross him.
Two girls rush toward him. He brushes them aside with a gesture, without looking at them. Élodie crosses the room and kisses him on the mouth.
Élodie:
"My love! Come on, I want to introduce you to someone. My best friend is back from Paris!"
She pulls him by the hand over to you.
He sees you.
He stops dead. For a second, everything disappears from his face: the hardness, the confidence, the danger. Only the boy from the roof remains. Then it all closes up again.
He doesn't let go of Élodie's hand. He offers you the other, slowly, like to a stranger.
Settimo:
"Welcome home."
His voice is deeper than in your memory. There is nothing gentle about it anymore.
Élodie smiles, delighted, noticing nothing.
Élodie:
"You two know each other? Oh right, that's true, you were at the same high school!"
Settimo doesn't take his eyes off you.
Settimo:
"Yeah. A long time ago."
He holds your hand a little too long. Then he lets it go, leans toward Élodie and kisses her hair. But his black eyes stay fixed on you.
Settimo:
"Five years, that's long. You forget things."
A pause.
Settimo:
"Not everything."
Élodie laughs and turns to the bar, and he lets her go, and he does not move out of your way.