“What should I call you?” she asks.
“Luca,” I say, and wear it like a jacket I’ll take off later.
She tries it once and it fits.
We stay by the water until the fans turn the air slow and the ice sinks in her glass. We trade stories that never mention cities or last names. Someone taught her to be still, and she learned the lesson too well.
We take the terrace that wraps the cliff. The stone burns our feet. She swears in French and laughs at my Italian I stumble on as a cover. A boat slides along the horizon, and I name it by its wake. She names the lives on board and gives them better endings than most people get. I watch her profile while she talks. The wind lifts her hair from her neck, and I want to put my mouth there.
“You’regood at this,” I say.
“At what?”
“Not being where you are.”
She looks at the water and smiles without showing teeth.
“Practice,” she says. “And need.”
The chapel bell strikes noon.
We rent a Vespa. She climbs on behind me and holds my waist like she’s been doing it for years. The road winds upward through pines and almonds and sudden pockets of shade. Every time we hit gravel her fingers tighten for a breath and then loosen. I lean into the turns because she gets closer.
The trattoria we find should be impossible. A dozen tables, string lights up at noon, the owner pouring wine like we’re family. He’s smiling like he has seen men like me come through here pretending they’re ordinary. I’m sure I’ve been here before. A different woman. But no one like Sera. Whoever she is.
She eats like a woman who’s finally remembered she has a body. When she licks a bit of oil from her thumb, I lose whatever thought I was about to form, and that irritates me because I don’t like being easily moved.
Theowner glances at her left hand when he refills our glasses. His eyes touch the pale band and move on. He has good instincts.
So does she.
She notices me noticing and tilts her wrist so the light falls clean along the skin, not hiding it, not offering an explanation, simply letting the truth exist without permission.
We walk after. A set of stairs braids down the cliff to a cove where rock cradles the sea. We leave our clothes on warm stones and slide in. Water closes over my shoulders and takes half my anger with it. She swims on her back and watches the sky.
When I touch her, I do it with two fingers at her waist, nothing more than a question.
She turns into my hand.
The answer moves through both of us.
The first kiss isn’t planned. It’s a tide. A thing the body knows before the mind writes it down. Salt on her mouth. Fire under it. A small sound she tries to swallow and then lets me hear. I press my palm to the small of her back, and she breathes against my teeth. The cliffs keep our secret. But we don’t take it further. The sea lifts and lowers us as if everything is simple.
Nothing is simple.
When the shadows change shape, we dress. I wrap my towel around her shoulders and carry her sandals as we climb the stairs because it pleases me, because it marks her as mine for the length of the path, because the possessive part of me wants proof even when I have no right to it.
“Have dinner with me,” I say when we get back to the resort. It’s not a question.
She says yes, again.
We separate to our rooms. I tell myself to give her an hour and take forty minutes. Even after showering, my hands smell like the sea. I change shirts twice before I settle on linen because anything heavier feels like a lie. When I go down, the terrace lights are starting to warm, and she arrives in red.
We take the corner table at the glass. The quartet plays something that would make my late mother sway. The sommelier talks about limestone, and I nod so he’ll walk away. Under the table my knee finds hers. I don’t move.
She doesn’t move.
She names the constellations wrong on purpose just to see if I’ll correct her, and I let her have her victory because I want her amused more than I want to be right.
