Giovanna drove slowly.
Rain hammered the windshield, and the wipers swept back and forth in a rhythm that matched nothing—not the traffic on Consolação, not the low music playing on the radio, not the noise inside her head, which was too loud for anything to compete with.
Her wrist stung. The tattoo throbbed beneath the plastic wrap, hot and alive, as if the sentence had a pulse of its own. Giovanna held the steering wheel with her left hand and kept her right resting carefully in her lap, as though she were carrying something fragile.
She stopped at the light on Paulista. Red flickered across the rain-slick windshield. Giovanna looked at her wrist. She couldn't read the words beneath the plastic wrap—she could only see the dark outline of the letters, blurred like a promise that hadn't dried yet.
I spent ten years wanting to see you, Gi.
She closed her eyes. Opened them. The light turned green.
The apartment in Pinheiros was on the sixth floor of a gray-fronted building Rafaela had chosen because it was close to the law firm. It was a beautiful apartment—a spacious living room, a custom kitchen, a balcony with a fern. Everything in its place. Everything clean. Everything chosen with the methodical care of someone who organized her life the way she organized a case file: with logic, deadlines, and a predetermined outcome.
Giovanna parked in the garage. Turned off the car. She sat in the dark for two minutes, hands on the steering wheel and engine off, listening to the silence.
Then she pulled her sleeve down to cover her wrist. Picked up her purse. Went upstairs.
Rafaela was in the kitchen.
The smell of garlic and olive oil reached her before the sight of Rafaela—and then there she was: her back turned, stirring something in a pot, dark hair pulled into a loose bun, wearing the oversized T-shirt from a marathon she'd run in 2023. Rafaela cooked barefoot. Always barefoot. She said she could feel the floor better that way.
“Hey, love.” She didn't turn around. “I thought you'd get here earlier.”
“Traffic. Rain.”
“I made risotto. The mushroom one you like.”
“Thanks.”
Giovanna dropped her purse on the couch. She went to the kitchen. Stopped behind Rafaela and rested her forehead against her back—a gesture she always made, automatic, meaning I'm here without needing any more words. She felt the heat of Rafaela's body through the T-shirt. Smelled soap and seasoning. Felt her solidity—that thing Rafaela had, the ability to be whole, to always be there, never wavering.
And at the same time, she felt a distance so vast it seemed impossible to be touching someone and be so far away.
“Everything okay?” Rafaela turned. She held Giovanna's face with one hand, the spatula in the other. Her dark eyes were alert. Rafaela always noticed. “You look like you've been crying.”
“Allergies. The rain.”
Rafaela looked at her for another second. Then let go and went back to the risotto.
“Sit down. It's almost ready.”
Giovanna sat at the table. Pulled her sleeve down again to check. The plastic wrap was hidden. The sentence was hidden. Everything was hidden.
They ate in silence for a while. Rafaela talked about work—a complicated tax case, a client who lied about his revenue, the partner who wanted to hire another intern. Giovanna listened. Nodded. Responded in all the right places. Did everything a present fiancée did.
But she was at the studio. She was on the rolling stool, with Grazielle's hand holding her wrist, with the buzz of the machine, with the smell of ink. She was hearing I spent ten years wanting to see you, Gi and feeling the ground disappear beneath her.
“Gi?”
“Hm?”
“I asked if you confirmed with Denise. The caterer. She needs the final guest count by Friday.”
“Oh. No. I'll confirm tomorrow.”
Rafaela set down her fork. Looked at Giovanna with that expression Giovanna knew so well—it wasn't irritation, it was something worse. It was patience. The careful patience of someone who had already realized something was wrong but had decided not to push.
“You don't have to solve everything tomorrow,” Rafaela said. “But we do need to deal with it. The wedding's in December, Gi. Three months from now.”
“I know.”
“You know.”
Silence.
Rafaela reached across the table. Took Giovanna's left hand. Gave it a gentle squeeze.
“Hey. I'm here, okay? Whatever it is.”
Giovanna looked at Rafaela's hand over hers. A firm, warm, steady hand. A hand that had never failed. A hand that held without squeezing, that was there without demanding, that offered without expecting anything in return.
And she thought of the other hand. Grazielle's hand—gloved, stained with ink, holding her wrist with a firmness that wasn't professional, that was something else, that was ten years of longing concentrated in five fingers.
“I know,” Giovanna said. “I know you're here.”
Rafaela smiled. A small, genuine smile that reached her eyes. Giovanna felt a pang in her chest that wasn't love—it was guilt. Guilt for sitting there, eating mushroom risotto with a good woman, a woman who truly loved her, while carrying on her right wrist a sentence that belonged to someone else. A sentence that was a kiss. A sentence that was a door Giovanna had just opened and didn't know if she could close.
After dinner, Rafaela went to take a shower. Giovanna heard the shower turn on. She went to the hallway bathroom and locked the door. Rolled up her sleeve.
The plastic wrap gleamed beneath the white light. Giovanna carefully, slowly peeled back the edge, and there it was—the sentence, in black ink, in Grazielle's handwriting. The letters slanted to the right, the s's resembling upside-down musical notes, the steady stroke of someone who knew exactly what she was doing.
I kept the taste of rain in my mouth for when you came back.
Giovanna lightly ran her finger beside the sentence. The skin around it was red and sensitive. It hurt. But it was a good pain—a pain that proved it was real, that it had happened, that it was no longer another dream she'd have and forget when she woke up.
She covered it again. Pulled down her sleeve. Looked at her own face in the mirror.
She had dark circles under her eyes. Her eyes were swollen. She was twenty-three years old with a fiancée in the shower, a wedding in December, and an entire life built carefully, brick by brick, to look right.
And she had Grazielle. Again. After ten years. Grazielle with the nose piercing and tattoos on her arms and the voice that said go away, Gi but meant stay.
Giovanna rested her forehead against the mirror. The glass was cold.
“What do I do?” she whispered. To no one. To the mirror. To the sixteen-year-old girl who still lived inside her and had never stopped chasing Grazielle Moreira, even when her body stood still.
The shower in the other bathroom shut off.
Giovanna dried her eyes. Pulled down her sleeve. Left.