I got up. “I promised my mom and Tammy I’d drop in. We’ll cover cultural differences tomorrow. You’ll be okay here?”
“Sure.” He looked up at me, surprised yet accepting the sudden change.
I took my wineglass to the kitchen sink, deciding to shower at Tammy’s and find something I could eat there. I went to my closet to put my shoes back on and grab clean clothes and a hoodie.
“Can I use your washing machine?” Angleo asked when I crossed the living room again.
For your laundry list of girlfriends?“Sure.”
While I grabbed my phone, keys, and the purse with the wedding ring in it, Angelo picked up a call on his cell phone. Before I closed the door behind me, I heard Italian pouring from his mouth like music again.
I called Tammy from the road, giving her a five-minute advance notice.
Belonging. I remembered Angelo talking about that when he’d told me how he had gotten his first tattoo. I needed that feeling now and knew I could get some of it with my family.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“You never stay this late,” Tammy said, the words coming out distorted over a huge yawn. It was one thirty a.m., and we had just finished watching three episodes ofWhite Lotus.
I had made her stay up with me so I wouldn’t have to go home.
It wasn’t Angelo’s fault. It was me. All my fault. I was stupid to get into financial trouble in the first place, then agree to such an idiotic and dangerous scheme, then a fool to look at this man and wonder what his skin and mouth tasted like, and let a few intimate moments and conversations blur the lines and feed some starving part in me.
There was nothing between us, there never had been, there never could be, never would be.
I was beige and proud of it; he was burgundy red.
I killed simple house plants; he made wood play music.
The funny thing was that I didn’t evenwantanything to exist or happen between us, yet I yearned for him, nonetheless.
20
Angelo
Ihadn’t seen June when she’d come back from her sister’s that night.
The next morning, when I woke up, she was still asleep. Even with my eyes still closed, I could tell that something in the atmosphere was different. When I opened them, I discovered that the accordion panel wasn’t there to separate us and that she was still in bed. I sat up and looked at her.
She looked vulnerable, lying on her back in a white T-shirt, no bra, one arm splayed along her body, the other stretched beyond her head that was facing away from that arm, her hair half veiling her face, her lips slightly parted.
Seeing her without the prickly defenses that had her running from me each time she opened up gripped my heart inexplicably. Like it had on the beach, or in the bathroom when she’d been sick two nights ago.
But she hadn’t let herself be or seem vulnerable for more than a moment, even then. She’d looked ashamed of being sick, as if it proved her life wrong or defied her being infallible.
She rolled to her side, perhaps unconsciously feeling me staring at her from my place on the sofa bed. The curve of her neck and shoulders, her face, her body all the way down to her waist, which was all I could see, were restful. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
She stirred again, and I quietly got up and went to the bathroom. When I came out five minutes later, she was up and dressed, making her bed.
“Oh, good, you’re out. I’m late.” She rushed past me and into the bathroom.
“Buongiorno,” I said when she passed by me.
Without replying, she semi-slammed the door behind her.
No more Sleeping Beauty; she was wide awake June.
“Good morning to you, too,” I muttered to the closed door.
