Chapter 9

“Ah, miserable! I have never in my life heard such a pitiful, sordid story!” Lazzaro threw his hands up dramatically, his voice echoing over the ambient noise of the bar. “Don’t go, Dante. This is sincere advice from your dearest friend!”

That was the first thing out of Lazzaro’s mouth the moment he learned Dante still planned to go on his anniversary trip alone. Dante didn’t bother replying. He quietly took a sip of his beer and flipped his friend off. Despite that unmistakable signal to shut the fuck up, Lazzaro showed no inclination to close his mouth.

“Lord above, please let this poor soul come to his senses!” Lazzaro cried, casting his eyes toward the ceiling.

Lazzaro had once dreamed of becoming an actor and had even majored in theater. These days, he worked as a chef in a restaurant, but whenever he wanted to screw with his friends, he readily deployed that exaggerated, stage-ready acting style. Watching someone else suffer through it used to be hilarious to Dante. Now, being on the receiving end, he finally understood how infuriating it was. It made him want to punch the man dead in the face.

Fortunately, Lazzaro’s bullshit was cut short by Lucy, who had been silently nursing her beer beside them.

“Shut up, Laz. You’re loud,” she muttered, nudging him with her elbow. “Your projection is unnecessarily good, so everyone around us hears you whenever you open your mouth. It’s embarrassing as hell….”

Lucy and Lazzaro were the remaining fixtures of a life Dante had lived right after graduating high school, back when he briefly worked as an EMT. Because Lucy had belonged to the same hospital, she held the historical privilege—or misfortune—of witnessing Dante’s train-wreck dating life in real time. Lazzaro, meanwhile, had been a part-timer at the family restaurant Dante and Lucy used to frequent after grueling shifts. Over the years, he had transformed into a respectable sous-chef.

“But Choi!” Lazzaro protested, turning his dramatic fervor toward her. “As his friends, we have a cold, hard duty to stop Dante from doing something completely insane. This is what true friendship is about.”

“Then stop him quietly,” Lucy countered, raising her eyes in a sharp warning. “Don’t overact.”

Lazzaro clicked his tongue and instantly fell silent. He listened to Lucy remarkably well, mostly because he was just as weak to women as Dante was. No, scratch that—he was weaker than Dante. In fact, that shared trait was the very reason the two men had bonded in the first place.

Lazzaro liked women so intensely that he treated most men like idiots and actively kept his distance from them, meaning his social circle was almost entirely devoid of other guys. His bias ran so deep that even when Dante’s exes openly cheated on him, Lazzaro had once judged that Dante must have been the root of the problem. Dante knew, objectively, that human relationships were never one-sided and that he certainly wasn’t blameless, but wasn’t it basic decency to at least pretend to take your friend’s side? Lazzaro possessed none of that decency.

Because of his attitude, other men tended to reject Lazzaro. The fact that he was both exceptionally good-looking and well-built only drew further jealousy, leaving a trail of malicious rumors in his wake. Not that Lazzaro himself ever gave a damn.

“Fine. I get it. I’ll say it calmly then,” Lazzaro conceded, leaning over the table. “Dante, don’t go on the trip. If you go, you’re only going to suffer.”

Dante set his beer down. “Did it never occur to you that I might go and actually clear my head?”

At that, Lazzaro propped his chin on his hand and stared at him. True to his habit of always dressing to the nines when he went out, his reddish-brown hair was slicked back without a single strand out of place, and his pretty face practically glowed under the bar lights. The stark contrast with Dante, whose appearance had been utterly devastated by heartbreak, was deeply infuriating.

“Your room is a hotel suite,” Lazzaro pointed out mercilessly. “And because you said you didn’t care about historic ruins, didn’t you book nothing but crap like couples’ cooking classes? If you go there, you’re going to be the only one sitting alone….”

Lucy, who had been listening quietly, shifted her gaze to Dante as well. Under the heavy, suffocating weight of their shared look, Dante flared up.

“I didn’t only book cooking classes,” he snapped, defensively. “I booked a Vatican tour, too.”

“You’re not interested in that kind of thing,” Lucy remarked flatly. “Didn’t you add it on purpose because of Rhys?”

Dante lifted his chin. “I’m a cultured man.”

Lucy let out a sharp snort of laughter. Lazzaro quietly pulled up one corner of his mouth in a smug smirk. Dante, who had dragged his exhausted body out of bed expecting a shred of support and encouragement from his closest friends, felt deeply betrayed by both of them.

“You two are the worst. I shouldn’t have even come out,” he muttered, pushing his chair back slightly. “I’m leaving after this beer.”

He was already running on fumes. He had just woken up after passing out for half a day following a brutal, 24-hour weekend shift, and Lazzaro’s merciless reminder of reality only made his limbs feel heavier. Back when the first digit of his age had been a two, all-night duty hadn’t felt this punishing. Now that he was in his thirties, exhaustion clung to his bones and refused to leave.

In truth, he would have preferred to stay in bed and rest. But he had already slept enough, and staying home only depressed him further. When he was dating Rhys, he had at least made a half-hearted effort to keep things tidy in case Rhys decided to drop by. Since the breakup, however, his apartment had dissolved into a disaster zone.

Piles of clothes overflowed near the laundry room, bills lay strewn across the dining table, empty beer cans scattered near the sofa, and a mountain of dishes clogged the sink. Just looking at the mess had made him feel physically ill, which was the only reason he had forced himself out the door. Yet here his friends were, instead of comforting his battered body and mind, showering him with curses disguised as advice.

“I don’t exactly agree with you being cultured, but… go if you want to go,” Lucy said, her tone softening slightly. “It’s your choice. Whether you’re in Rome or New York, you’re going to be thinking about your ex either way.”

“Choi has a point,” Lazzaro chimed in.

The exact moment Lucy offered a positive opinion, Lazzaro abruptly flipped his attitude. Dante genuinely wanted to hit him. Staring at Lazzaro’s shameless face, he asked himself for the millionth time why he stayed friends with a bastard like this.

Probably because of the food, he reasoned.

Lazzaro loved cooking by nature, and even after getting off his grueling shifts, he often whipped up incredible meals just to share them with Dante. For all his glaring faults, he was also a good listener when Dante needed to complain. In fact, Lazzaro alone held the pathetic secret that Dante had threatened to break up with Rhys exactly twenty-one times. Dante had never been able to be that brutally honest with Lucy.

“Anyway, it feels bad,” Lucy continued, her expression turning genuine. “This time, you guys really broke up, right? I’ve never seen you stay apart this long. Of course, we’ve never actually seen the guy, but….”

Though Lazzaro had pissed him off just moments ago, Lucy’s actual attempt at comfort calmed Dante’s frayed nerves.

“I keep telling you, humans aren’t worth trusting,” Lucy declared, veering into her usual philosophy. “Bring Lily home from that man’s place. Don’t waste your heart on people. Being with good, loving animals is the best. How about getting Lily a friend while you’re at it? Guinea pigs get lonely easily, so it’s best to keep at least two.”

Dante blinked at her. You are comforting me, right, Lucy?

“To be fair, Dante’s ex was always kind of suspicious,” Lazzaro added, chiming back in. “You dated him for that long, but neither Lucy nor I ever met him in person. Isn’t it basic courtesy to meet your lover’s close friends every so often?”

Lazzaro, of all people, had absolutely no business lecturing anyone about courtesy. Before Dante could object, Lucy cut in with a deadly serious expression.

“Honestly… I thought he was suspicious, too,” she admitted. “I’m only saying this because you broke up, but I wondered if that man had another lover. Maybe he hid you because if you met the people around him, too many eyes would be on him. I’ve seen tons of doctors like that at the hospital.”

Lucy had struck the exact, raw nerve Dante had always been deeply anxious about. Everyone Dante knew was well aware that Rhys existed, but not a single soul had ever met him in the flesh.

“Oh my God. Lucy, you too? Same here!” Lazzaro gasped, slapping the table. “Even when Dante showed us videos of the two of them together, I genuinely wondered if they were AI-generated. I only let it go because I knew Dante didn’t possess that kind of technical skill. Now, listen to me, Dante. In my opinion, you were the side piece. There’s a high chance your ex already had someone he was seeing—someone from the same Upper East Side world, while he kept you around as a distraction.”

Once Lazzaro joined the fray, the conversation began veering into entirely unexpected, toxic territory. Usually, neither of them had much to say regarding Rhys, yet now the words came spilling out like a broken dam, as if they had been biting their tongues for years.

“I think it’s good you broke up, Dante,” Lucy said bluntly. “You always said you were happy, but whenever that man disappeared every two months, you had a horrible time. It wasn’t easy for us to watch you go through that for four years, either.”

“Exactly,” Lazzaro agreed. “And every time, you clung to me or Lucy when we were slammed with work, begging us to meet up. You have no idea how annoying that was.”

Dante glared. “Lazzaro, you ask people to go drinking whenever you’re bored. I only do it sometimes. You do it every week and drive people completely insane.”

Lazzaro flashed a wicked grin. “I’m man enough to drive you insane? What an honor.”

Lucy naturally ignored Lazzaro’s nonsense and took a long sip of her beer. After wetting her throat, she swept back her short black bob and calmly continued laying out the thoughts she had harbored all this time.

“I’ll be blunt. Maybe I think this way because I’m not an artist, but what kind of work requires a person to vanish at such perfectly regular intervals? You two were practically about to move in together, and you still didn’t know his studio address. It’s too suspicious. To anyone looking from the outside, it seems like he deliberately wanted to hide you.”

Dante had always harbored those exact thoughts, but human emotions were a fickle thing. The moment someone else voiced his deepest insecurities, a stubborn part of him desperately wanted to deny them.

“But I met Rhys’s mother,” Dante protested weakly. “I see her every Thanksgiving.”