My Ultimate Gacha System-Chapter 338 - 12: Three Weeks

Tuesday, June 6, 2023 Isabella’s Apartment, Florence 9:14 AM

He was in the kitchen making coffee when the message came through, and his phone was face-up on the counter because Isabella had asked him to stop leaving it face-down everywhere like he was hiding something.

The notification was from Sophia.

I have the yacht for the week in Monaco. Want to come? No pressure. Just... time away from everything.

He read it twice.

He hadn’t heard from her since the thank you text two weeks ago, and she hadn’t replied to that either, and the silence since had been the kind that could mean anything depending on which direction you read it from, and the message on his screen now was the kind you didn’t send unless you’d thought about it properly first.

He poured his coffee and stood at the kitchen window and looked out at the Settignano rooftops for a while.

Then he typed back: Which day should I come?

Her reply arrived in under a minute. Wednesday. I’ll send the port details.

Wednesday, June 7, 2023 Port Hercule, Monaco 3:48 PM

The train from Florence went to Nice and a car met him at Nice station for the forty-minute drive east along the Corniche, and when Monaco appeared around the last headland before the principality the specific vertical quality of it was immediate — high-rises climbing the cliff face directly above the port, the palace on the Rock in the distance, and below all of it Port Hercule with its 700 berths and the specific concentrated luxury of a marina where the boats were serious and the people who owned them generally were too.

Sophia had sent the berth number and the yacht was where she said it was — an 85-foot Sunseeker in cream and navy moored stern-to along one of the outer pontoons, the crew of four moving around its deck with the quiet efficiency of people who knew exactly what they were doing without being asked, and Sophia was standing on the aft deck in sunglasses and a linen shirt with her hair pulled back when he came down the pontoon with his bag.

She looked down at him from the deck.

"You came," she said.

"You asked," he said.

She smiled and the deckhand extended a hand to help him aboard, and when he stepped over the transom and onto the teak deck she stepped forward and put her arms around him briefly and he put one arm around her and for a moment neither of them said anything.

"Welcome to Monaco," she said when she stepped back.

"I’ve been to Monaco," he said.

"Not on my yacht," she said.

"It’s your father’s yacht," he said.

"He lets me borrow it," she said, and she was already moving toward the companionway below, and he picked up his bag and followed.

The interior was what he expected from a vessel that cost roughly what a small house in Florence cost per week to charter, which was clean and considered and specific without performing luxury — white and cream throughout, oak joinery, a main saloon with a long curved sofa and a coffee table bolted to the deck and a television mounted to the forward bulkhead, and a dining table that would seat eight but currently held only a bowl of fruit and Sophia’s laptop and a hardback book face-down at the midpoint.

She showed him the guest cabin aft of the main saloon and then said nothing further about sleeping arrangements, and he set his bag down and changed into shorts and when he came back to the deck the crew had already cast off and the yacht was moving slowly through the port exit under engine power, and Monaco fell away behind them while the open Mediterranean opened ahead.

She was sitting on the aft sun pad with her legs stretched out and her sunglasses pushed to the top of her head and a glass of water in one hand, and she patted the cushion beside her without looking at him.

He sat.

"How was Florence?" she asked.

"Good," he said. "My mother has a flat."

She looked at him. "You did it?"

"Closed in two weeks pending paperwork," he said. "Settignano. She walked through the kitchen twice and stood at the window and I told Marco to make the offer."

Sophia was quiet for a moment. "She cried?"

"She tried not to," he said.

"But she cried," Sophia said.

"Yes," he said.

She looked out at the water ahead where the coastline of the French Riviera stretched east toward Italy and the afternoon light was the specific flat gold of early June when the humidity was still low enough that the air was clean rather than heavy, and the yacht had cleared the breakwater and the crew were raising the mainsail on the hydraulic furler while the engine noise dropped to a murmur.

"How are you?" she asked, and the way she asked it meant something more specific than the question itself.

"Overwhelmed," he said, because it was still true and probably more true than he’d admitted to anyone except possibly Luca. "Transfer stuff, England camp in five days, the house for my mother, the car — it’s all arrived at the same time and I haven’t processed most of it properly."

"Which is why you’re here," she said.

"Which is why I’m here," he said.

She looked at him with her sunglasses still pushed up and her expression had the directness she brought to most things. "We should probably talk about us at some point this week," she said. "But not right now."

"Not right now," he agreed.

"Good," she said, and she put her sunglasses back on and lay back on the sun pad and reached for his hand without looking at him, and he let her take it, and the yacht moved east toward Menton while Monaco’s cliff face receded behind them.

Wednesday Evening — At Anchor, Cap d’Ail

They anchored off Cap d’Ail for the night in water that was calm enough that the hull barely moved, and the crew made dinner in the galley while Sophia and Demien sat on the foredeck in the last of the light and talked about nothing that required resolving — her father’s company, the Miu Miu campaign she’d finished, a restaurant in Milan she kept meaning to go back to, a film she’d seen twice on a flight that he hadn’t seen at all.

The sky went from gold to the specific deep blue that happened in the Mediterranean fifteen minutes after the sun dropped, and the lights of the Riviera came on along the coast in a continuous line from Monaco east toward Menton and beyond.

He didn’t check his phone once.

Thursday, June 8, 2023 French Riviera — Under Sail

They spent Thursday moving along the coast toward Antibes under sail with the engine off, and the wind was consistent enough from the southwest that the yacht moved well and the crew had little to do beyond trimming, and Sophia sat in the cockpit with a coffee and her book while Demien lay on the foredeck with his eyes closed and his face to the morning sun.

At some point around ten she appeared beside him and sat cross-legged with her book open on her knee.

"How long has it been since you’ve done nothing?" she asked.

"Define nothing," he said without opening his eyes.

"Lying still with no phone and no tactical footage and no transfer news," she said.

He thought about it. "September," he said. "Before the season."

"That’s nine months of something," she said.

"That’s football," he said.

She turned a page. "England camp is Monday."

"I know," he said.

"And after England camp is the decision," she said.

He opened his eyes and looked at the sail above him and the sky behind it. "After England camp is the decision," he said.

She didn’t say anything further and he closed his eyes again, and the yacht moved south of Antibes under sail while the morning went on around them.

The private beach she’d arranged was outside Antibes — a section of shoreline accessed through a contact her family had used for years, and the water was clear enough that you could see the bottom from the boat before they swam in, and the sand was the grey-white of the French Riviera rather than the bright white of brochure beaches further east.

They swam out and back twice and ate lunch on the beach from a cooler the crew had packed, and Sophia took two photos — one of the boat at anchor in the cove, one of the two of them from behind looking at the water — and posted the first to her story with a sun and wave emoji.

He saw the second on her phone screen before she decided whether to post it.

"Post it," he said.

She looked at him. "You sure?"

"Post it," he said.

She hesitated for one more second and then posted it, and within ten minutes the comments were moving faster than either of them could read, and she looked at the screen once and then put the phone face-down on the towel beside her.

"That’ll be everywhere by tonight," she said.

"Let it," he said.

Friday, June 9, 2023 Monte Carlo

The shopping was her idea and his tolerance for it was limited, but she knew that and so she had a plan — two hours maximum, specific stops, no browsing without purpose.

They walked through Monte Carlo from the port in the morning before the heat built, and the streets were the ones that appeared in photographs of Monaco — pale stone buildings, wide pavements, the casino in the background, the kind of place where the shops didn’t have prices in the windows because anyone who needed to check couldn’t afford it anyway.

The Gucci store was on Avenue des Beaux-Arts and she’d called ahead, and the floor manager met them inside and Sophia did most of the talking because Demien’s relationship with clothes was functional rather than considered, which she had observed over the time they’d known each other and had clearly reached a point of constructive frustration with.

"When did you last buy a suit?" she asked him while the floor manager produced options.

"I haven’t," he said.

She turned to look at him. "You’ve never bought a suit?"

"The club provides travel suits," he said.

"Demien," she said, and her tone had the particular combination of affection and exasperation that she deployed when something he’d said was both understandable and genuinely inadequate.

The floor manager appeared with two options — a dark navy in a light wool, and a charcoal grey in the same fabric — and Demien tried both while Sophia sat on the small sofa near the fitting room and gave direct feedback, which was that the navy was better because the grey made him look like a substitute at a press conference rather than the person who’d scored a hat-trick in a cup final.

He bought both anyway.