After a few trips around the lake, the fountain in the middle spraying water and creating a rippling effect, I went back and forth with myself about her predicament, the maybe(s) of what could be done about it.
Then it hit me how smart she was.
Cilla, for as young as she was, was a master manipulator. Her mind worked in ways that most didn’t. It worked along the same lines it did when she had suggested that I make Aniello jealous to see if he’d lose control and react. She knew he would but had given me the idea to find out for myself.
“She’s not going out with him for fun,” I muttered to myself, stopping. “She’s going out with him to make Joey jealous!” I spun around, as if facing the condos would make her appear, and screamed when a man suddenly appeared behind me. “Aniello!” I hit him on the chest. Hard.
He grinned at me and took my hand in his, bringing it up to his mouth. He placed a kiss over the hammering pulse in my wrist. “You always talk to yourself, Rosalia?”
“Say that again.” I put a hand behind my ear, pushing it toward him. “I can’t hear over the attack my heart is having!”
Bambina wagged her tail at him. He had said she needed a real name. I was about to start calling her Lil’ T, for Little Traitor.
“You always—”
He was really going to repeat himself. “I heard you!” I said. “I don’t always talk to myself, but if you keep scaring the shit out of me, I’m going to start answering myself too!”
A breathless noise escaped my mouth when he turned me around. I hadn’t expected it. He was so fast that I didn’t have time to hold my ground.
“I don’t see anything,” he said.
“See what?”
“You said I scared the shit of you.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I groaned, realizing what he was doing. “Are you really looking? Forthat?”
“You said it,” he said, spinning me around to face him again. “Be literal.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Be sane.”
“I don’t talk to myself,” he said.
“No, but you walk like a ghost.”
“Do ghosts walk?”
This time, a frustrated sound escaped my lips and I turned around, walking away from him, Bambina on my heels. He caught up to me in what seemed like one stride. He took a hold of my arm, forcing me to stop. When I met his eyes, what I found there surprised me and almost made me take a step back. He was truly pissed.
“Don’t walk away from me, Rosalia,” he said in Italian.
He had my arm in his grip, but it was his eyes that held me in place. And I couldn’t help but sense one word that he didn’t say.Don’t walk away from meagain, Rosalia.
Be literal,he’d said. He’d truly meant it. And not only with words. With actions. Even if I was mad, to Aniello Assanti, turning my back on him was actually turning my back on him. He didn’t accept that it was done in a metaphoric way, even though in the life, he was constantly understanding what was implied instead of what was always said. He wanted something different from me. Maybe because my language as a woman was different from theirs.
“I wasn’t leaving you,” I said, a little breathless. The intensity was almost unnerving. “I was mad.”
“Because I asked a question.”
“Because you were trying to make a fool of me. Or trying to get under my skin.”
“Which is it?”
“Both,” I said, deciding. “You were trying to do both.”
He took a step toward me, and even though I wanted to take a step back, I knew he’d read that as I couldn’t hold my ground. So I refused to budge, and I refused to look away from him.
In this light, his eyes were a lighter brown. So beautiful against the darkness of his hair and the olive complexion of his skin. The darkness of his features made his skin seem lighter, but in the sun, I truly took in his colors, since he was usually masked by the night.
