“Well, it is Friday, and if you and I are both off, I was thinking maybe you’d like me to take you out to eat. Or…?”
“I’d love it,” I said as he toyed with the bottom of my skirt.
“After that,” he went on, “maybe we could go home and…”
Now his hands were under my skirt, and I was holding my breath. “And…?”
He leaned his head to the side, his mouth just a few inches from mine. “I don’t know. But I’ll bet we can come up with something.”
One second. Two. Three…
How I loved it: that brief, eternal moment before our lips met.
37
Until then, I hadn’t known you could be addicted to someone.
I’d never felt the need to have a person as close as I wanted Lucas. At every hour of the day.
No one had ever made me feel that longing that burned me up inside, made me tremble, filled me with life.
I hadn’t known until then that I could provoke those same emotions in another person. That someone could look at me the way he looked at me. That anyone could touch me the way he touched me.
And I couldn’t imagine doing all that with anyone else.
I couldn’t see myself elsewhere, with a different life.
I felt certain, and I made a decision. I would put those photos away forever, and I’d say nothing to Giulio. It was enough just to see him every day and to know he was there, that he cared about me. That he was close.
38
The days passed calmly, with my routine of the mornings at the florist that glided into the afternoons at school. I barely even noticed time was passing.
I felt freer than ever, lighter, happier. Leaving behind my life in Madrid, the life I’d fallen into and had never wanted, was like being reborn. Opening my eyes for the first time to a world that allowed me to feel like a part of it.
But the best of all was the time Lucas and I shared.
Those moments when we stripped off each other’s clothes with our eyes and opened ourselves up to get to know each other better. The hours between the sheets. The sex. The pleasure. The sleepless nights holding each other. Sharing caresses with our hands and our lips. Gazing. Or now, nearly falling asleep in a bathtub full of cool water to stave off the heat, my back against his chest, my legs over his legs.
“What time are you done tonight?” I asked.
We were holding hands, and they emerged from the water covered in suds and wrinkly from being in there so long. He kissed my fingertips and told me, “Elevenish. I’ll come get you and we can watch the fireworks.”
It was the end of July, and Sorrento was celebrating the Feast of Sant’Anna, one of the most important holidays. It would end at midnight with a spectacular display of fireworks over the sea.
“Sounds good,” I said.
My phone dinged. It was the sound it made when I got some notification on social media. I leaned over the pile of clothes where I’d left the phone to see what the message was and managed to read the first few words. Then I groaned.
“What is it?” Lucas asked.
“Nothing. Antoine. He’s got terrible timing, and he doesn’t know when to quit.”
“Your ex? He’s still writing you after all these weeks?”
“He wants another chance, and he won’t shut up about it.”
“Are you going to give him one?”
