Before Emanuele can defend herself or even react, Thabata's flattened hand goes straight for her face.Or almost.Strongly holding the hand of Joshua's crazy, possessive girlfriend, Jhonny says:"You've got to have gone crazy."Thabata growls at him."Stay out of it, brat. This is a reckoning.""No. This is pure and utter madness. What did she do to you that you could attack her like that?""None of your business, kid. Let go of my soul now." She starts to try to pull away, but the boy won't let go.Emanuele takes two steps back, and ends up bumping into a girl who was dancing. She apologizes, but realizes that she didn't even hear her. Like other people, she noticed Thabata and Johnny, who were now clearly very angry with each other."That boyfriend stealer is going to get what she deserves," says the madwoman, making a monumental effort to break free of Jhonny's iron grip. He doesn't budge."She doesn't give a damn about your boyfriend, Thabata. You're the one who's crazy, insecure,

Emanuele almost drops the cup. She looks incredulously at Johnny, who continues to stare at his hands.The girl opens her mouth, but realizes that they cannot make any sound. He obviously hated her, and made no effort to disguise it. I wonder."Does Joshua know?" she finally manages to verbalize something."I don't see why he wouldn't know. It was never a secret."Johnny sighs and continues:"They started dating about five months after we broke up.""But... When... How?""Yeah, she deceives people pretty well. It's just that I could never completely believe what she said, you know? And that was way before she met the guys.""Why did you guys break up?"He looks up at the bright stars above. "She manipulated me into cutting off a long-standing friendship. She made me blind and stupid as a mule. I didn't even give that person a chance, I just cut her out of my life."Emanuele says nothing immediately, waiting for him to conclude his thoughts."When I realized what exactly she was, what

Emanuele didn't know why her face was buried in Joshua's body, nor why she was hugging him so tightly. She just felt, deep in her soul, that he desperately needed a hug.How would it be for him, a man of integrity who took his duties and relationships seriously, to hear from more than one person that his girlfriend was not exactly a good person? And what about after three years of being with this person?Joshua didn't say much about him. All she knew so far was that he had a problematic girlfriend, that he was the older brother of the real owner of the apartment, and that he was a physical education teacher. Oh, and supposedly the sick relative that Alexandra went to visit was of no concern to him, which in itself was kind of strange.Well, Emanuele said almost nothing about himself either. It was only fair that they both chose to withhold information, after all trust is something that is earned little by little.But... There she was.At that moment, the girl didn't reflect on being i

Johnny arrived quickly. Much faster than Emanuele could have even imagined.The girl was still in her pajamas and her eyes were swollen from crying when the doorbell rang. She had told the floor and apartment number in the call, but completely forgot to mention that the culprit was not the current owner of the apartment.When she opened the door, the first thing Jhonny did was to evaluate her from top to bottom. He was wearing jeans, a black shirt and a matching jacket. Then the boy held up both her hands and said:"Thank you for calling me. Did he do something to you? Or was it Thabata?"Before she could thank him for his kindness and the speed with which Johnny came to answer her, Joshua's bedroom door made a small click. The knob moved and the door opened, revealing the figure of the big man in shorts and still shirtless."What's going on here?" he asks."Excellent question." The newcomer's voice is deep and slightly louder than is acceptable."Please, Jhonny, calm down. He has not

After the old lady left, both Johnny and Emanuele agreed to go away and take a short walk. They needed some fresh air. The little card was still in the small town girl's hand, her fingers trembling.As soon as she got to the cramped quarters, although she didn't know when, since Thabata would probably be there "talking" to her boyfriend, she would hand it over. And probably ask questions, if her sense of sense was particularly unregulated.Walking at a leisurely pace along a long, quiet sidewalk that led into one of the neighborhood parks, Emanuele was eagerly debating who that woman was and who she was talking about."Something horrible has happened. Not just with Joshua, but with Alexandra too." "And apparently Alexandra has forgiven the person who did that horrible thing.""Which turns out to be a member of their family.""That."They both get lost in their own thoughts for a few seconds, trying to put together pieces of a confusing and seemingly incomplete puzzle. The girl asks: