The weather was a safe topic, one that really didn’t hold my attention. My thoughts pinged between what was happening at the house and what Brando had told me.
“La curiosità uccise il gatto,” Brando said and then waved to one of our neighbors as we passed his place. His small beagle lifted his ears, gave awoof!in greeting, and then went back to sniffing around a fig tree.
“Curiosity killed the cat, ah?” I said.
“Dimmi.”
I sighed, not wanting to tell him, but too curious to keep it to myself. “You told me once, or twice, that you never felt the inside of a woman until me.”
“Vero.” He kept his face forward, giving me his strong profile. The sun was starting to sink, coating him in gold. The way the light hit his eyes made the color seem almost three-dimensional.
“True,” I muttered, reciting his answer. “I don’t—understand, though. How you could have not finished, er, coitus all those times.”
“Coitus.” He grinned. “Say that again.”
I gave him a hard look. He sighed.
“I finished, but by my own hand. Not inside. And I never had a woman without double protection. Triple the precaution.”
Ewww, I wanted to say, folding in on myself. But I was of a certain age, an age when a woman shouldn’t goewwand have her stomach turn at the thought of her husband touching someone elsebefore her.
Not that I wanted to think about it, but there it was. The impulse to peek into his past was too much of a temptation, though coming back with a wounded heart was a given. He was so much a part of me that thinking of him with another woman seemed traitorous.
“Oh.” I sucked in a breath, releasing it in small puffs. “I see.”
“Change the subject.”
We became quiet instead, though my thoughts were loud. I should’ve been disgusted by what he said, the picture it painted in my mind, but in some part of my heart, I was thankful. Though he hadn’t saved himself for me, in a certain way, he had.
I had something none of them ever had. His love. His trust. What mattered the most.
“All of me,” he said, confirming my unspoken thought. “You’ve had all of me from the beginning.”
In response, I nodded, nothing else to say on the matter. Our shoes crunched against the gravel as we traveled the streets around our neighborhood, mostly quiet, save for the occasional bark of a dog or a car starting.
“I wonder if that’s why Mick was leaving?” I said, glad to be discussing something else. “Because of Claudia and the baby?”
Brando nodded. “He told Violet he wanted to commit himself to someone who would love him fully. He loved Violet, always had, but he was never truly in love with her.”
I stopped walking. Our hands stretched before Brando came back to me. “Who told you that?”
“Mitch. The night we spent out by Mick’s tomb.”
“I don’t understand. Never truly in love with her?”
“It all goes back to the resentment between them. Mick wanted Mitch to love him, but Mitch had a hard time coming to terms with the difference in treatment. You’ve seen it, but here’s an example. Mitch had a bike once. His old man gave it to him. The first brand new bike he ever had.
“Mick cried and cried for the same kind, but they could only afford one. Sybil made Mitch give it to Mick, since he was the baby and couldn’t understand. Or so she said. He broke it on purpose after he got it. Just so Mitch couldn’t have it after he was done with it.”
Brando tugged at my hand, getting me to move again.
“Are you telling me that the only reason Mick fell for Violet was because he knew Mitch wanted her?”
“Something like that. Mick knew about the love between his brother and his wife. Then one day he woke up and realized he couldn’t live life the way he was. Locked in battle with his brother. It controlled his life as much as it controlled Mitch’s.
“That’s what started the fight that night. The culmination of a life lived with gasoline but no spark. The heat Mick felt that night must’ve overwhelmed him.”
I took a trembling breath in and then let it out in a slow push. “Do you think he broke the things Mitch loved because he wanted Mitch to love him instead?”
