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You had not seen Carmen Berzatto in almost five years.
That is not to say he had not consumed every waking and sleeping thought alike for far too long, he was a shadow in the corner of your room, on the side of the road, when you stopped by The Beef, when you went on dates, wherever you looked it was for traces of him. Traces that only appeared in news clippings and magazine articles about some young, brilliant chef from Chicago. All articles about his potential, how fast he was climbing.
None were about the boy who cheated off your math homework even though you were only marginally better than him. None were about the boy you had to beg to go to prom, only for you both to leave early and smoke in an alley two blocks from your high school, snickering about inside jokes you wish didn’t still mean something to you. None were about the man whose older brother still teased him like there was no tomorrow. None were about the man who had healed wrong, scarring bent and broken over his heart.
None were about the man who only kissed you for the first time the night of that especially disastrous Christmas.
That’d been in the aftermath of Donna driving that car through the wall, after the ambulances and police and cleaning up and no one knowing what more to do. There had been plenty of disastrous Berzatto family Christmas’, but that one, that one had truly taken the cake. What more was there to do than to find some place to smoke with him?
You’d gone back to that shitty apartment you were renting back then, and he tagged along, never one of you without the other back then was there? You’d been leaning against the balcony railing passing a smoke back and forth, not saying a word because what the hell did you even say after that sort of thing. He stubbed out the cigarette too soon and kissed you before you could even ask him “what the hell?”
And he kissed you like you’d dreamed of. He kissed you like he meant it. Like he’d been dreaming of it too. Like all those years of friendship had given way to something bigger than that. Something bigger than both of you. And then you were both stumbling back into your apartment. Then you were stumbling into your bed. And he kissed you everywhere, felt you everywhere. And you held his heart in your hands for a whole night.
And when you woke up the spell was cracking, not broken, just cracking.
You didn’t talk about the marks on your neck or the ache he left between your thighs as he told you he was going to New York. You pretended your lips didn’t still taste like him, and he pretended your touch wasn’t still searing across his skin.
He stayed in your bed for three more nights. And you never talked about it. Never said what it was, because it just was.
And then four days later you put him on a plane to New York.
And he hugged you too long at the airport.
And you should’ve known it was goodbye.
You have not heard from Carmen Berzatto in 3 years, 4 months and 7 days.
You heard from him a lot at first. Pictures of his cousin's place, text updates about how his job was going and about how his cousin’s husband still had to be gay no matter what he claimed, phone calls while he was walking home, facetimes at night from the spare bedroom he was staying in. None of which either of you used to talk about the few day span he’d spent in your sheets, pressing kisses to the back of your neck while you made breakfast despite him being the chef.
It was just something unspoken.
But then like everything in Carmy’s life, especially the good things, he started running from it.
Phone calls slowed and facetimes nearly stopped, still plenty of pictures and texts.
Then the facetimes stopped completely and the phone calls got slower and he texted you he was moving again. Not back to you but to California, to stage at The French Laundry and you even googled that place so you could talk to him about it. All while you pretended you were thrilled, that you didn’t miss him like a drowning man missed breathing, that his leaving hadn’t left some gaping hole in your heart and life where he used to be.
It got worse when he got to California, phone calls became few and far between until they stopped, texts became so infrequent it was more of a surprise when you got one than when you didn’t. And then one day, 3 years, 4 months, and 7 days ago to be exact, he sent you a picture of something he’d made, you asked him about it and told him it looked great, and that was the last you heard from him. You sent more texts after, what felt like hundreds, but really wasn’t even 15.
“Hey how’s work ??”
Four days later.
“What’d you cook today ??”
Six days after that.
“Carm ?????”
One day after that.
“Carm are you okay?”
So on and so forth.
He never responded and eventually you just stopped texting.
If he was busy, he was busy. But that didn’t stop the gnawing in your gut, how many of your calls had rung until his voicemail greeted you. He was ignoring you. Plain and simple. Knowing it didn’t make it hurt any less.
“Hey if I did something I’m sorry”
You sent that one in the dark of your bedroom, too late at night to be awake, but worrying about him had a funny way of keeping you up like that.
He never did get back to you on that one, and it was the last one you ever sent.
You only found out he was back in Chicago working at Ever when you walked into The Beef and Mikey mentioned it off hand before handing you your sandwich.
When he said it you swore the floor had caved out from under you.
He was back in Chicago, he hadn’t called, hadn’t texted, hadn’t come back to that shitty apartment he spent three days with you in. He just existed in the same city as you in a completely different world.
Mikey at least had the decency to shout that he’d probably call soon when you ducked out the door.
You didn’t call Carmy demanding answers, you didn’t leave an angry voicemail, you didn’t show up at Ever, you just took the train home.
And Carmy never did call, you knew it was nothing more than a wishful lie when Mikey said it, but that never meant that you hadn’t hoped for it to be true.
He consumed your life without even being in it.
You kept up with magazines and newspapers and recipes. With Ever and Noma and then you found him in shadows and drunk nights and in old photographs you couldn’t bear to delete.
Carmen Berzatto had carved himself into your soul long before that night five years ago, long before you even recognized he had done it. He owned a bit of your heart and he hadn’t run off with it, instead he’d left it unwanted to rot inside your ribcage.
And now here he is five years later.
Not a ghost, not a shadow. Real, tangible, present, staring at the heavy weight of the band on your ring finger.
──── 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ 𓈈 ────
Exactly six months after finding out Carmy was working at Ever and hadn’t bothered to contact you, you met your fiancé.
It happened just like seeing Carmy again too. In that same subway station, at that same time of morning.
He’d run into you trying to rush onto the train, knocked your coffee right out of your hands and onto your shoes. If he hadn’t turned around spouting a flurry of apologies, and hadn’t turned around looking as good as he did, you probably would’ve been much angrier.
But he was sweet, he was handsome, and knelt right down and cleaned up your sneakers with a little package of tissues from his jacket pocket. And then he sighed when he realized he’d missed the subway. When you asked what he was rushing towards anyway he’d told you that he had been going to a job interview, and then strangely he smiled at you.
“Must not have been meant to be,” and then he looked over at you like you were.
And then he took you for coffee since he’d spilled yours.
And then he kept taking you for coffee, and for the movies, and for dinner.
And then he was making dinner in your apartment and you were keeping socks at his.
And then you didn’t renew your lease, and you spent Christmas with his family instead of the Berzatto’s.
And then he was down on one knee in front of you, asking you to marry him because he’d never been more sure that something was meant to be in his entire life. And you said yes because he’d made that rotting in your heart stop. He was the first man you’d looked at and not wished they were Carmen Berzatto.
──── 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ 𓈈 ────
But now, Carmy was in front of you, still wearing that ring you’d given him years ago on his pinky, saying your name like he’d been holding it in for years.
The whole world felt like it had slowed to a stop.
And then the coffee you were holding dropped and splattered across your shoes, and he’s moving towards you. When he reaches you, then and only then, does the world slam back into motion.
“Shit, are you okay—” And he’s kneeling down wiping off your shoes with some napkin from his pocket.
“What the fuck?!”
“I deserve that,” but he doesn’t stop till the napkin is sopping wet and he’s throwing it and the remnants of your coffee cup in the trash.
All you can do is stare until he walks back over.
“You’re back.”
“You’re married.”
You talk at the same time, the same levels of heartbreak aching in each of your voices.
“I’m engaged.”
“I took over The Beef.”
Your voices overlap, but you process what the other is saying all the same.
“I thought Richie was going to—”
“Mikey left it to me,” there’s some sort of snap in his voice, something subtle, defensive, and then his tone shifts, softer, pained, “you’re getting married?”
“Yeah,” you don’t know why that’s all you can say to him, why you can’t bring yourself to talk about your fiancé, how kind he is, how he makes you laugh, how he doesn’t leave you, how he doesn’t make you cry, but all you can get out is a pitiful “yeah.”
And he just stuffs his hands in his pockets and nods while you stare at him, your mind is somewhere between hugging him so tight you never lose him again and throttling him in the subway station.
“Fuck— wow, uh, congratulations,” and Carmy tries, really tries, to keep that deep ache he knows you’ll catch out of his voice, but he just can't help it.
“Yeah he’s good— great, he’s great,” and you try not to sound like it hurts to say it, it shouldn’t hurt to say, you don’t know why it hurts so fucking much to say.
“Good,” he drags his hand over his mouth and chin, “that’s good, yeah.”
In the strained silence that follows his eyes drift to your sticky and now slightly stained shoes, “I’ll buy you another coffee, or I can, if you want.”
For a second you see your fiancé in front of you, offering you the same thing almost two years ago now, smiling at you like you’re meant to be his. Then the spell is broken, your vision shifts back to Carmy, your Carmy, standing in front of you, hands tucked into his pockets, smiling awkwardly, unknowingly.
And something in your heart sees him and starts rotting again, telling you “this is what’s meant to be,” you shove that down, so far down you can pretend you don’t hear it.
You really mean to say no, to say you’re alright and be on your way, but your mouth moves before your mind does, “okay.”
“Okay?”
You tell yourself to ignore that hopeful look in his eyes, “yeah, I mean, about time we caught up.”
──── 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ 𓈈 ────
The ride on the subway is quiet, not really, there’s plenty of life, noise and chatter around you, but not between the two of you, there doesn’t need to be, neither of you make the effort to.
Carmy isn’t like your fiancé, he doesn’t tell you where you're going. He doesn’t have to of course, you already know it’ll be the same coffee shop your cup was from, the one you’d been going to with and later without him since you were 16. The one you never go to with your fiancé, like it’s some sacred ground you can't bring anyone to, except Carmy. It belonged to the two of you first after all.
Carmy isn’t like your fiancé, he doesn’t try to fill this long, tense silence. He sits with it, observes it. Tense, but not uncomfortable. Too comfortable in fact. Tense, but not unfamiliar. Too familiar in fact. Tense, but not the right kind of tense, tension with longing. Too much goddamn longing.
His eyes don’t stray from you or that goddamned ring.
And your eyes stay on him even as people move past shoving and bumping into you both, prattling on about nothing and everything. Nothing and everything is in front of you holding the subway pole opposite of yours with one hand, white knuckled with his grip, not smiling at you, just looking.
Unbeknownst to the two of you, a young couple sits on the opposite side of the train car, pushed together, hand in hand, legs entangled, giggling between whispers to each other.
“Okay, okay, now them.”
“The ones who haven’t looked away from each other since they got on?”
“Yes, c’mon what do you think they are to each other?”
“Lovers, obviously, too easy, c’mon pick someone else.”
“No, no, look, he’s got a ring and the other doesn’t. Maybe they’re family, cousins or something, who haven't seen each other in a long time.”
“If they’re looking like that at each other and they’re family, there’s a big fucking problem, and a bigger problem with you if you think cousins look at each other like that,” and they fall into a fit of hushed giggles neither of you even look up to see. “No, look, maybe they loved each other once and it didn’t work out and they ran into each other on the subway.”
“How romantic, but that doesn’t even work, they got on together, idiot,” another fit of quiet giggles.
“Okay, well maybe they ran into each other in the station. There, that more accurate for you?”
“Maybe he’s having an affair with him.”
“Don’t you think he would’ve taken off his ring for that?”
“Maybe he’s shameless.”
“Maybe,” they scoot even closer together, “but I like my story better.”
And both their eyes fix on the two of you.
“Yeah, I like your story better too.”
──── 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ 𓈈 ────
The owner of the coffee shop gushes when Carmy steps inside, eagerly demanding where he’s been, how he’s been; his whole life story over the past five years.
Carmy gives awkward, but not unkind responses, spending most of their conversation sheepishly laughing as she makes you both the same drinks you’ve been ordering for over a decade. Even without seeing him for five years she still remembers exactly what he orders. He makes a joke about what if he had wanted something else, but she rolls her eyes when she presses the cup into his hand and tells him she knows he wouldn’t, and he laughs because she's right, he wouldn’t.
When you step back out of the shop into air so cold it nips at your fingers, it’s you who breaks the silence, “you never came here when you worked at Ever?”
“You knew I worked at— nevermind,” he rubs the back of his neck, “it didn’t feel right coming here without you, I guess.”
You just nod as you guys keep walking, not towards the subway station, no direction in mind, anywhere is good as long as it was together, “yeah, yeah I get that.”
“You bring your fiancé here now?” Carmy doesn’t bother to ask his name, he doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want a person behind the silhouette he’s so unreasonably angry at. As if it was this man that came between you and not the impossible distance he created.
“No, no I don’t.”
“You don’t?”
“Didn’t feel right bringing anyone else,” and you don’t bother giving your fiancé a name to Carmy, you leave him as he is, some ambiguous figure, an imposing wall forever separating the two of you.
Even if you did name him that’s all he’d ever be to Carmy anyway, so you don’t bother. Or maybe it’s because you don’t want to give him the opportunity to blame someone else for where the two of you have ended up. Or maybe it’s because you don’t want to think about him right now either.
You walk to nothing but the sound of sipping and frigid wind till you break the silence again.
“How’s The Beef going?”
And that actually makes him laugh, not a happy one, but a laugh nonetheless, “it’s going.”
“That bad huh?”
“Worse.”
And you hum softly, taking another drink, “you’ll figure it out.”
“They need to—” he sighs, “I’ll figure it out.”
“You will.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I am.”
And that makes him laugh, a real one this time, a fond, happy one, “you always were, weren’t you?”
And there’s something wistful in his voice that makes you stop talking again.
Neither of you talk again till his hand instinctively finds the small of your back, “it’s icy here, be careful.”
And you pull away like he burned you.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Still.”
The howls of the wind envelop you again.
It’s him who breaks the silence this time, “freezing out huh?”
“Bet you didn’t miss that?”
“I didn’t miss a lot of things,” his head whips to you when he says that, “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine, Carm—”
“No, no, I missed you,” he trips over his own words, “I did, I missed you.”
Hopelessly you mumble, “I missed you too… a lot.”
He dumps the remnants of his coffee in a trash can and breathes into his hands to try to warm them, “are you hungry, we could go to The Beef, I could cook you something?”
“Aren’t you closed on Sundays?"
And he smiles at you, lopsided and nervous, “I can make an exception.”
──── 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ 𓈈 ────
You’d only been to The Beef a handful of times after Mikey told you Carmy was working at Ever, and you hadn’t been back since Mikey’s death.
It’s the same but different.
It smells the same, looks mostly the same and is still plenty familiar.
But it’s different too, cleaner, heavier somehow, like the building’s been steeped in a grief no one has quite found a way to move on from yet.
“It’s cleaner.”
“You could say that again.”
He doesn’t move with the same confidence the owner at the coffee shop had. He doesn’t feel sure about you anymore. He knows you still, knows the little expressions on your face, what they all mean, he still knows how silence feels with you, when to let it sit and when to fill it, but he’s missing all these little things and little moments in your world. He can’t confidently say your favorite song or movie anymore, he can guess, see if they stayed the same, but there’s no confidence in it.
“I mean, I don’t have everything prepped since we’re not open today,” he’s rummaging around looking for food he can cook quick, he’s holding up ingredients “do you still like—”
“Yes.”
Again and again this happens as he shows various foods and lets you nod until you finally stop him.
“Carm, my entire taste in food didn’t change while you were gone.”
He pauses and nods as he lets out a breath dropping the ingredients onto the counter, “yeah, yeah that makes sense.”
And then he’s cooking, and you see the precision and efficiency he learned in his years away. He’s so exact with the way he cooks, careful, but still quick. He doesn’t speak to you while he prepares lunch. For a moment your vision shifts again and your fiancé is in front of you, cooking dinner in the apartment you share’s little kitchen. Your fiancé laughs and talks to you over his shoulder, his movements languid and carefree; he moves nothing like Carmy, who persistently has some fire lit under his ass.
You blink and your fiancé is gone, replaced by Carmy plating a sandwich in front of you.
The two of you eat in a careful, suspended quiet, listening to the sounds of the restaurant, the fans, the stove, the occasional drip of the faucet.
“I—” Carmy takes the chance to actually swallow the bite of food in his mouth before speaking again. “I don’t think I realized how fucking annoying that drip is.”
And for some reason that’s what breaks you, what makes your face split into a smile and a laugh spill out of your lips in a huff, “I mean, I wasn’t gonna say anything—”
“God, that’s terrible,” and he’s looking back at you, laughing too, “I really need to get that fixed don’t I?”
“You really do.”
And the laughs fade back to the quiet again. Not as comfortable this time, like there is some thick, taut tension lingering in the space between your shoulders as you sit at the counter.
“I,” and he hesitates, “I haven’t seen you in here since I took over.”
You draw in a breath like you knew this was coming, “I haven’t been in since Mikey,” and you can’t even say it.
And he nods like he gets it, but it doesn’t mean it hurts any less.
“I didn't even know you took over.”
“I know.”
“It’s not about you or,” you pause, the word tastes sweet and rotten on your tongue all at once, "what happened.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I do,” and he hates the way there’s some strained snap in his voice when says it, one that makes him sigh and run his hand down his face, but not one that makes him apologize, “I do, I know.”
Silence falls over you both again, you stare at your sandwich before you take another bite, you let another couple minutes pass before you work up the courage to speak again.
“Carm?”
“Yeah?
You draw in a long breath, “I am so fucking sorry about Mikey, I—” you run a hand through your hair.
He says your name.
“I didn’t know if I should call or text or anything, so I did nothing—”
He says your name again, tighter this time.
“But Carm, I am so fucking sorry—”
Your name leaves his lips with a shout that startles you into silence before his voice goes quieter but no less tense, “just… just shut up, it’s fine, it’s fucking fine…”
He sighs and runs his hand down his face again, “not like I called either.”
You sit with that, chew on it for a second, the silence is tenser, even more strained than earlier.
“Carm?”
“Yeah?” His voice is far off, distant.
“Carmen.”
That snaps him back to you, “yeah?”
“Why did you…” and when you look at him, bright blue eyes boring into yours, and you’re not even sure you’ll be able to get the words out. “You stopped calling and texting.”
And he sighs like he knew this was coming, but was hoping it wouldn’t, “I did.”
And his words validate and infuriate you all at once, your own come out in a heated rush, “yeah, you did, why?”
“I don’t know,” he’s shrinking in on himself, shutting down.
“Carm, please don’t do this, it’s me,” there’s strain in your voice, exasperation, a plea, “Carm, did I do something, did something happen—”
“No—”
“Then why the fuck did you just fucking stop contacting me?!”
“I don’t know—”
“What the fuck do you mean you don’t know,” you’d wanted to be calm, but you feel it, all of that frustration, anger, heartache and confusion welling up all at once, “Carmen, there had to be something—”
“I don’t know, okay?!” His own voice is cutting in with yours, overlapping, his own emotions from the past few years mixing with yours, “I don’t fucking know—”
“So you cut me off for nothing?!”
“No—”
“Then what the fuck was it?!” And you hate yourself for how your voice cracks and breaks then, and you hate him for noticing.
“I don’t…” his voice has softened, quieted, he’s still shutting down and you can see it, he looks away from you, “do you still smoke?”
“What?” Your words, though quieter now, fade back into exasperation and frustration, “Carm, please just fucking talk to me—”
But he cuts you off, “do you still smoke?”
You want to scream in his face, purely from how utterly defeated you feel, but you don’t instead you sigh and breathe out, “yeah, yeah I still smoke.”
And pulls his pack out of his pocket and nods to the door. You feel your mouth twitch like a part of you wants to drag him back, make him talk even if it ends up in more screaming. The other part of you, however, is tired, so fucking tired, of him, of this, and just wants to go home, to your apartment, to your fiancé, to your quiet life away from Carmen Berzatto and all of his noise.
In the end, you don’t listen to either part of you, you listen to that wretched, rotting heart of yours and follow him right outside.
──── 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ 𓈈 ────
The brick is cold as it digs into your back, if Carmy heard the way your breath hitched when he leaned over to give you a light, he doesn’t say anything about it.
The wind nips at the tips of your ears and the wind rustles through your hair. Carmy inches till his shoulder is barely a centimeter from brushing yours and you call his reasoning the cold. You don’t watch him as he smokes, not like you used to. Both of you keep your eyes fixed straight ahead watching as the smoke you breathe out swirls into one cloud.
He doesn’t apologize for not calling, or for not having any explanation as to why. You wished it bothered you more, but instead it just feels expected.
He doesn’t speak till you're both one cigarette deep and have burned halfway through another.
“You don’t wear your pinky ring anymore,” it’s not a question as to why, just an observation.
“You still wear yours,” and your head tilts to its side to look at him finally, eyes zeroing in on the faux silver.
“I never take it off,” you want to punch him for bringing up that stupid promise.
You’d bought them as a graduation gift, two little pinky rings, you’d gotten him one that had a bear paw engraved on the head. And at age 18 you’d promised each other to never take them off, a child’s promise not fit for the complications of an adult's world.
“Didn’t feel right to wear it anymore,” you look at the band on your ring finger now, you feel the weight of Carmy’s eyes on the metal.
And he winces, physically winces when you say that, but what had he expected? To not contact you for years and for everything to be the same? Your coffee order hadn’t changed, your taste in food hadn’t changed, but you had, well not really you, but what was between you. Maybe he’d changed too much or not enough. Maybe you’d changed more than he was even realizing at this moment. But you were still you and he was still him, and he hates himself for the way it got more complicated than that.
There’s an aching softness in his voice, some vulnerability he can’t shove down or mask, “do you still have it.”
“Somewhere I do,” and you say that like you don’t know that it’s tucked carefully away in the drawer of your bedside table.
And he nods along to your words, but he knows, even with all those changes he can still read you well enough to know that you know damn well where that ring is. He doesn’t say anything but that understanding hangs between you both.
“I wore it to Mikey’s funeral,” you don’t know why you tell him that, maybe because you’re so sure he knows that you’re fully aware of where that ring sits in your apartment. Maybe because you can feel the ghost of it on your finger even now, like it’s some scar, some seared on burn buzzing under your flesh.
“You went?”
“Course I did,” you still remember sitting in the pews. You remember how unreal it felt. Micheal Berzatto just gone. Just like that. It’d been long enough since you’d seen them, but you sat among Richie and the Fak’s like no time had gone by at all, reunited in grief. And you broke that pinky ring back out, like it would bring you back to a simpler time. It didn’t. But when you slipped it on in your bedroom, there was a moment where you really thought it would.
You don’t say what hangs between you, that Carmy did not go to Mikey’s funeral. That you looked, waited, held your phone open on his contact after the service. That you went home and couldn’t explain this history to your fiancé, couldn’t explain that your entire life was entangled with these people, this family, because if you did that would mean explaining Carmy. Explaining this ghost of a man that haunted your eyes sometimes.
Your fiancé took to Carmy the same way Carmy took to your fiancé. Made him a figure he wanted to know as little about as possible, some invisible enemy. He knew he was an old friend, suspected more, refused to ask for sure. He wondered sometimes if you ever looked at him and saw Carmy, you didn’t, not then.
You were worried you would now.
“When are you getting married?” His question happens abruptly, draws you back from your thoughts, shifts the conversation away from him, his dead brother and the pit in his stomach, he shifts it to the pit in chest, an easier grief to deal with.
“Few months from now, in the spring, or well we hope it’ll be spring by then.”
He stiffens again, this time when you say “we,” speaking on behalf of both you and your fiancé, something about the idea of you acting as some sort of unit with someone else makes his skin crawl. He doesn't tell you that though, just says, “cool, cool, hope it’s warmed up for you by then.”
Silence stretches between you as you hesitate, even as you think it, it feels like a horrible idea, one that you still speak into existence, “you could come… if you want.”
You hate how there’s that small bit of hope in your hesitancy, you hate that pitying look he gives you because he can hear it.
“I can’t.”
And you sigh when your heart sinks, even if you knew it was coming, “why?”
Carmen Berzatto cannot go to your wedding because he used to dream about it, and even if he would never admit it, there are plenty of nights he still does. He dreams of you and your smile, in some suit, something that compliments your eyes. He dreams of you standing at the altar, fidgeting with your hands all nervous, then looking across from you and smiling, your shoulders always relax and there becomes some ease about you, ease like you’ve waited for that moment your whole life. But, never once in all of those dreams did he see you from the rows of seats, he was always right up there with you, smiling back, speaking vows in his dreams that he can’t breathe into the waking world, kissing you when the officiant says it’s time, so deeply and so true that all of your friends and family can tell he’s been waiting for it the entire ceremony.
But he couldn’t tell you any of that anyway, let alone with you being someone else’s now.
“Carmen?”
Your voice draws him from his thoughts, “yeah?”
“Please.”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
“No, I can’t,” there’s an intensity about his gaze when he looks at you, face barely over an inch from yours, some old, painful longing reflecting back at you, you can’t tell where that look ends with him and begins with you, “I can’t watch you… it’s not like I can ask you not to go through it with it—”
“Don’t do that, don’t fucking do that Carmen—”
“Do you ever think about it?”
“About what,” you push off the wall rubbing your temples but he follows right after you.
“About, I don’t know, what we—”
“There’s no we Carmen—”
He’s grabbing your wrist, not forceful, just holding, feeling, and you’re turning back towards him, “there was, I fucked it up, but do you ever think about it—”
“No, don’t do that,” his chest isn’t even an inch from yours, your breath is mixing with his, “don’t fucking ask me that—”
“Then please, please don’t ask me to do something fucking impossible.”
“Fine, fuck, okay,” anger dies on your tongue before you speak again, you tear your eyes away from his, breaking the spell, “can I ask you to try?”
“Yeah,” his hand slides down his chin and he turns away, “yeah, I’ll try.”
It sounds like such a pretty lie to your ears.
“I should go home.”
Carmy’s mind screams at that, “I’ll walk you back.”
“You don’t need to—”
“At least to the station, at least let me walk you to the station.”
And you say yes because it sounds like a plea.
──── 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ 𓈈 ────
The walk back to the station is long and silent. Except for the wind rustling between the two of you, a soft whistle wrapping you both. Your hands brush once, you shove yours in your pockets, he does the same.
The subway station feels like a rift between worlds opening when you get to the stairs, wordlessly you both hesitate by them for a second. You go first and Carmy follows, as if him following you here means he can get on that train with you and follow right back into your life.
“You taking the train too, or…”
“No,” he rubs the back of his neck, “I should go back to the restaurant and prep some stuff for tomorrow.”
You nod a couple times and you both think it as you hear the train start to roll in.
This feels like goodbye.
The subway stops and people start to file out of the cars, flooding the space between you both, bumping into you and jostling your shoulders.
“I’ll see you around, come by The Beef soon, yeah?”
“I will, yeah.”
“You,” he talks like it pains him to say it, “you should bring your fiancé too.”
“I bet he’ll love it.”
When he starts to turn around your voice comes out in a rush, terrified of losing him in the crowd, “I do think about it.”
He’s turning back around in an instant, “what?”
“I was ready back then, for you, for us,” the confession tastes like betrayal, like sin, “I wish you had been ready too.”
“God fucking damnit,” he looks raw, exposed, like your confession agonizes him, “I’m ready now.”
“I can’t,” even if you wanted to, that ring means it’s far too late.
“I know, I know…” he swallows, “he treats you right? Better than I did?
“Yeah, he does, he’s a good man, Carmy, a better man.”
He flinches slightly when you say that, makes himself speak like jealousy isn’t consuming every bone in his body. “Good,” and his hand drags down his chin, “you love him?”
“I do.”
“More than me?”
“That’s not fucking fair—”
“Please, just between me and you, do you love him more than me?”
“Yes, yes Carmy, I love him more than you.”
And he nods like that settles it, “come by soon, okay?”
“Okay.”
And he disappears into the crowd as you step onto the train.
You sit down leaning your head back against your seat, your eyes barely catch him, he’s still in the crowd just watching the train, he doesn’t even move towards the stairs when it pulls out of the station, he just watches.
You watch him disappear from your vision as the train pulls you to the opposite side of town, pulling you away from each other, out of each others’ lives. You make yourself smile because this is closure, this is your new, quiet life away from Carmen Berzatto and his constant noise.
In your apartment that night it’s quiet, peaceful, just like you said you wanted.
When your fiancé sees you coffee stained sneakers he laughs and tells you he hopes there’s not some other man vying for your love after spilling coffee on your shoes.
You laugh, but not without stiffening, while kissing his cheek you tell him that even if there had been you’d choose him every time.
And even as you say it, that horrible lie you told Carmy in the station twists in your gut.
──── 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ 𓈈 ────
Three Months Later
Spring didn’t come quick enough, the air was still bitter and cold,
You fidget with your hands as you stand at the altar, your vows said and done. Your soon to be husband’s too, he said you two were meant to be in his, and you smiled and teared up when he did, even if a little voice in the back of your head disagreed, you wanted it to be true. The officiant is close to wrapping up. But you can’t hear him, not over the thundering in your ears.
Your eyes scan over the crowd again, waiting to catch on blonde curls and blue eyes, but like the seven times you’d done so before he’s not there. He hasn’t slipped in late and sat at the back, he simply didn’t come.
You wonder as you look out how many times he’d turned his late invite over in his hands before he threw it away. Or if by some miniscule chance he had it stuck to his fridge still. Or if maybe he’d stuck it in some bedside drawer like your pinky ring sits in, folded it in half so he didn’t have to see your husband. Or maybe he hadn’t even opened the envelope at all, trashed it immediately when he recognized your name and handwriting on the back.
Your eyes drift back across from you, back to your almost husband, he’s smiling at you and you smile back, let your shoulders relax just a tad, but not fully. You don’t even register that the officiant has said that you may now kiss till he’s leaning in and you're scrambling to do the same.
Your husband kisses you happy and eager and you match him, because you are happy, you are. You love him, you do. And this is proof. You chose him, you married him.
You will make this meant to be.
You can hear the hoots and hollers of friends and family as you walk hand in hand down the aisle and out the door onto the steps of the venue. He kisses you again, softer this time, slower. And you melt into it, savor it, and you think “this is it, this is meant to be,” willing it to be so.
And you’re both smiling as you pull away, laughing like school boys and then you see a car driving off behind him. And you just know. When you look back at your husband your smile falters for a second. For just a second your vision plays tricks on you and your husband looks like what you really want. Something blue staring back at you, the eyes of Carmen Berzatto beaming. Your breath catches and you stop.
“Are you okay?” And his voice makes you snap back to the reality in front of you, that wasn’t real. It’s not you and Carmy, that’s not how it’s supposed to be.
“Yeah, sorry, I’m just so happy,” and the lie sounds so sweet that he starts smiling again.
And as your friends and family come out and surround you both and you fall back into the infectious joy around you, you can almost believe the lie you told yourself.
That the rotting of your heart ever did more than merely slow.