Giancarlo placed his hand on the small of her back and guided her into the seat with a firmness that brooked no argument. The words left his mouth before he could catch them, raw and unguarded.
"She doesn't deserve..." He stopped. Swallowed. Rearranged the sentence like a man defusing a bomb he had accidentally armed. "She won't mind. She has the best temper of anyone I know."
I heard it. The first two words. The ones he tried to bury beneath the correction. She doesn't deserve it.
Salvatore heard them too. His expression darkened, a muscle jumping in his jaw. He slammed his own car door shut with enough force to echo through the concrete chamber, his fury directed not at the insult itself but at the fact that Giancarlo had spoken it first, had claimed the right to diminish me before Salvatore could position himself as the kinder man.
Both engines turned over. Both cars idled, ready to pull out into the fading afternoon light. It was only then, in the same shared moment, that they realized I was still standing on the concrete, alone, between their taillights.