Flavia and Gianluca left the Drunk Teddy Pair and, without saying a word, walked the block that separated them from the parking lot. Under the light clothes they wore, the humidity of the air was not so annoying in the coolness of twilight.

They got in the car and Gianluca started the engine, heading to Villa Borghese. They hadn't exchanged even a single glance.

«How do you do it?» Gianluca broke the silence.

Since they had gotten in the car, Flavia had been resisting the temptation to turn on the radio. She had just given in and was about to reach out and press the switch when Gianluca spoke at that very moment. She wanted to turn around and look at him to understand what he was talking about, but more or less she thought she knew what he meant.

Gianluca understood her silence and repeated the question more in a more explicit form. «How do you manage to hide it from everyone?»

«It's easy...» Flavia lied, being the first one to smile at her own fib. «Just always tell the truth as if you were lying. So, when you tell a lie, nobody notices the difference.»

Gianluca caught the irony and dissipated the tension on his face by showing some teeth. «It doesn't sound easy at all» he disagreed, «especially for you.»

«Oh yeah? And why?»

«Because you are one of the most sincere people I know.»

Flavia pursed her lips and sighed. She felt uncomfortable with that compliment.

It was true that she had a desperate love for the truth. Desperate precisely because she found herself forced to live a fictional identity, and that was already at the limit of what she could tolerate. It was this gigantic lie that prevented her from being truly sincere. Or him.

She had played Claudia's life for almost five years. She had, once again, finished high school, she made it through, and it almost didn't seem real to her that she had, all in all, preserved her sanity.

She had formed a group of friends like she had never been able to before. There was little left, less than a year and a half, to the day that had turned her life upside down and that, most likely, she believed, hoped, and feared, would turn it upside down again.

«Don't be silly» she tried to deny. «Have you already forgotten my compliments on Peppe's beer?»

«Different strokes for different folks... That wasn't a real lie. You never said once "I like it", "I don't like it". I noticed it.»

«Ah!» Flavia grumbled. «You're incredible, you have an obsession! Not even Michela notices these things.»

The other didn't bother to reply and Flavia, with her arms crossed over her chest, felt again the urge to turn on the radio. She reached out and pressed the switch. Gianluca drove with calm, his gaze fixed on the road.

«You've always been in love with her, haven't you?»

Flavia was disarmed by that question. The sound of the radio and the traffic was all of a sudden no longer able to cover the silence between them.

A jolt heated her face, her eyelids froze and she ran out of breath, choked in a throat that seemed to squeeze towards here eyes tears that were impossible to push out.

She wanted to say, at least to herself, that it wasn't true, that she was madly in love with someone else, that, despite his own and her death, Claudia had always been the love of her life. But she realized that it wasn't like that anymore.

In almost five years, her feelings had become jumbled. They were now blurred, confused. She hadn't stopped loving Claudia, but she couldn't deny to herself that the feelings she felt for Michela went far beyond friendship. Because she had been by her side, all the time, with unconditional affection and devotion.

She had given her a friendship, a complicity and a support that she didn't feel she deserved. In fact, since she had snatched for herself the life of Claudia, Michela's true friend, Flavia believed she was the last person to deserve her affection.

Michela was an adorable girl and Flavia owed her a gratitude that she was forced not to express. Who in her place would have been able to keep their heart indifferent?

She tried to hiss a "yes" without finding the breath to do it. She clenched her teeth and tried to swallow the lump that she had in her throat.

Gianluca interpreted his friend's silence without suspecting the turmoil he had caused in her soul.

«I'm sure she didn't tell you, but it's almost certain that we're going to break up» he confided.

«That's how it has to go, I suppose» Flavia remembered, «but... why?»

«We've been together for more than three years...»

«Don't tell me there's no passion anymore... for goodness sake, you're not even nineteen yet!»

«And yet, in part, that's true. It's not like it used to be.»

«And you're fine with that? Goodbye and thank you very much?»

«Not me... I still haven't come to terms with this. That's why Michela is giving me some more time. But I know she's right, after all.»

«Right about what? I can't imagine what you could have done to piss her off...»

«Oh no!» Gianluca smiled. «She's not upset... if that were the case, it would be easier to accept things. She says that it's not the same between us anymore, and she's right. She said we're too young to not go on and make more experiences, that we have everything to live and explore.»

«It's true, she's right...» Flavia noticed.

«Yes.»

«All right then, good friends as always.»

«Yeah, even more than good friends.»

«I envy you... not even nineteen and already thinking about making "more" experiences.»

«From the wisdom of your twenty years, we must seem like precocious kids to you» Gianluca teased her. «Who knows, I think you can have a clear field with her now.»

«I deluded myself with it, I dreamed that one day we could be more intimate. But I knew it wouldn't happen» Flavia confessed. «We both know Michela, we both know that she could never be interested in a girl, interested in...» Flavia hesitated, she found it hard in that moment to define her own identity to any degree of accuracy, «someone like me.»

«I know. Same way I always knew that someone like you would never be interested in a guy, in someone like me. If I hadn't accepted it, I would never have fallen in love with Michi.»

«I'm sorry for how I behaved in the early years of high school. I should have treated you differently. I didn't realize I was leading you on.»

«No... it's true that it hurt, but I understood that some things make no sense... the only consolation you have left is to dream them.»

Flavia sighed. She clenched her fists on her legs uncovered by the shorts, struggling against a tiredness that had been smoldering for five years. «Sometimes, reality is so wrong that dreams are the most sensible thing there is in life.»

Flavia envied Gianluca even though she realized she had no right to do so. He was also among those whose lives she had messed up.

Gianluca smiled. «You hurt me with that kick, earlier» he said.

«I'm sorry, really, I didn't mean to.»

«Nah... I asked for it, I was about to make a mess for you» Gianluca admitted. Taking advantage of a traffic light, he turned up the volume of the radio.

The interview that was being broadcast easily caught their attention.

«Look, there's that rocker Charly Urso...» Gianluca remarked.

«"That rocker"? Have you ever listened to his music? He's brilliant!» Flavia stated.

The host of the program seemed to look for the courage to sink his gossip jabs.

«...these three women have never met, it's certain that they couldn't have conspired, don't you think?»

«I'm not saying they conspired» the musician clarified, «I'm just saying they can't make such demands of me.»

«But if you're the father of the unborn, then they have every right to demand that you take responsibility...»

«I don't consider myself responsible, they knew from the moment we met that I wouldn't be a father to their children...»

«You must have told them explicitly...» the interviewer insinuated, sarcastic.

«There was no need» Charly Urso laughed.

«What do you mean?»

«My refusal for paternity was obvious. I always insisted on using condoms in casual encounters.»

«So how do you explain the pregnancies?»

Charly Urso laughed again loudly on the microphones.

«You don't have to ask me, I'm not the one who got pregnant...»

Flavia let herself go to a sympathetic laugh. «Serves those cunning women right. Charly has already been too accommodating and they're just trying to take advantage of him.»

«But how can you defend him? He's behaving like a jerk!» Gianluca exclaimed with astonishment and indignation.

Flavia shrugged. «They complicated their own lives. They should have been more careful.»

«Easy for you to criticize them! You're not interested in men...» Gianluca pointed out.

«What do you mean? What does it have to do with anything?»

«To them it probably seemed like they had found Prince Charming and they gave him everything. With and without a condom.»

Flavia raised her hands heatedly. «I can't believe you're so sexist!»

«Me? You're the one who's defending that chauvinist pig!»

«Just because a woman feels the desire or the need to be with a man doesn't mean that she's a subnormal unable to use her brain because of hormones!»

«How can you take sides with that guy... I really don't understand you.»

They had arrived and Gianluca had stopped the car at the entrance of the Reflections. Flavia realized that on that topic, at that moment, she had no way of reasoning with him.

She shook her head and opened the door, turning around with a smile before getting out of the car.

«You would understand me, if you had more respect for us women.»