They Never Saved Me A Seat So I Built My Own Table Chapter 08
After I left, their lives fell apart with surprising speed.
The day they moved into The Arches, Matteo realized no one had booked the movers.
Nico thought Bruno had arranged it.
Bruno assumed Matteo had handled it.
In the end, the four of them stood on the curb with over a dozen boxes for two hours.
I had always been the one to handle things like that.
I would compare prices on Yelp, confirm the schedule, and number every box.
All they ever had to do was show up at the address I sent.
Later, they went out to eat and forgot Bianca was allergic to shellfish.
No one planned trips.
No one sent reminders about graduation paperwork.
The shared Google Photos album stopped updating the day I left.
All the order and ease they had taken for granted hadn’t just appeared out of thin air.
One night, scrolling through the family group chat, Matteo finally realized that for years, every birthday, holiday, and anniversary had only been remembered because I sent a reminder.
But his own chat history showed that my birthday had been forgotten for three years straight.
While organizing his computer, Nico found a folder labeled *The Five of Us*.
It contained over three thousand photos.
In every single one, the four of them were smiling, captured at every stage from their teens to graduation.
Almost all of them had been taken by me.
He scrolled to the very end but couldn’t find a single decent photo of me by myself.
As for Bruno, he found a dusty cardboard box in the storage closet of our old apartment building.
Inside were the matching cups and plates I had bought for our future, along with a handwritten checklist.
At the top, it said:
*Things for Two People Living Together*
Every line item had a price and the date I’d bought it.
At the bottom, in small, neat handwriting, was one more sentence.
[Once Bruno moves in, this place will finally feel like home.]
Bruno stared at that line for a long time.
That night, for the first time, he didn’t ask when I was coming back.
Instead, he sent:
[Alessia, was I really that wrong?]
I glanced at the message, then turned off the screen.
There was no point in asking that now.Â