June 25
We spent the last couple days on a Luca-guided tour of Europe. We toured Paris, and it was vibrant and lovely and every bit as romantic as they paint it in the movies. He took me to London and Dublin. We only spent a little time in each place, enough to see the sights and say we'd been there. He also showed me out-of-the-way places, like Belarus, and Ukraine, and Malta. He sold wine, and we made love.
I grew comfortable with him, grew accustomed to his roving, loving gaze on my body as I changed, or showered, or simply lay naked in bed, writing, after we made love. His attention grew familiar, but never loses its power to stun me.
Like him.
Listen to me, though. Like it's been decades, instead of days.
We're on the way back to Italy now. Italia. Luca is driving, the radio is off, I'm typing with my netbook on my lap ("How can you type on that teeny little thing," Luca asked me, "especially while riding in an auto? It does not give you a headache?" Apparently not.). Luca's hand is on my knee, a familiar touch that makes my heart ache in a sweet and pleasant way.
We're going to be back in Firenze in a couple hours, and I have no idea what will happen when we get there. I'll have explanations to make, I'm sure.
Am I going home? Is Firenze home, now? Or my house back in the states? No, I gave that to Harry in the divorce, along with my car, our stocks and the cashed-out value of my 401K, the properties we owned together...everything. So then, would my parents' house be home? No, I haven't lived there since I was nineteen. Certainly not Leah and Mike's house. If they're still together. I'm sure my little shouted tantrum threw some long-held secrets into the light.
So...where is home?
Nowhere.
Firenze?
Whichever hotel I'm in?
Luca's arms.
Shit.
June 27
Luca's grandmother was visiting when we arrived. What a woman. Past eighty, spry and sharp-witted, clear-eyed. A full head of thick black hair liberally streaked with gray, belying her age.
"Luca, where have you been?" She demanded in fluent, accented English as we entered the courtyard. "Why did you leave your poor old grandmother wondering where have you gone? Come, come, my boy. Give your nonna a kiss."
Luca grinned at me as he hugged his grandmother and kissed her cheek. "I was on business, Nonna. And besides, I did not know you were coming, did I? Am I a mind-reader? I think no. You should call me, if you expect me to be here when you arrive. You know I travel often." He winked at me.
"You should show more respect for your nonna, boy. Of course you aren't a mind-reader. Only I am a that. If you were a reader of minds, you would have introduced me to this lovely girl hanging on your arm."
I extended my hand to her. She took my hand as if to shake it, squeezing hard, and pulled me into a hug. "I am Nonna Maria." Her eyes were kind, piercing black orbs, truly gimlet in their intensity. "But you will call me Nonna, I think. My boy Luca, he is a good boy, no?"
I kissed her cheek as expected. "Yes, he's the best. I'm Delilah."
"Delilah, hmm? It sounds like a flower. You are lovely, like a flower. So much prettier than that sour-faced tart he was married to. Brutta puttana."
"Nonna!" Luca said, shock and something like hurt in his eyes. "Do not talk that way. It is not polite. I know you did not like her, but you should not--"
"Oh, don't you tell me what I shouldn't do, my son. I am eighty-three years old. I have earned the right to speak as I wish."
"You are right, Nonna, but at least respect my wishes, and do not speak that way of--"
"Of who? A stupid girl who was never worthy of my favorite grandson? No. She deserves that, and more. Puttana. She was never good for you. I said so the very first time I met her. And then she left you, just like that. And stole everything you owned. But I am not supposed to speak ill of her? When she so mistreated you? After all you did for her? Took care of her son? Loved her?" Nonna Maria shook her finger at Luca. "I will say my mind, and you will listen. Is this girl worthy of you? She is lovely, that much is true. But is she worthy?"
Luca took his grandmother's hands in his, met her eyes and spoke quietly. "She is more than worthy, Nonna. She is...everything."
Nonna nodded, her eyes narrow, flicking from me to Luca and back. "And you love her?"
Luca looked from me to his grandmother. He took a deep breath a blew it out slowly. "Yes, I do."
Panic hit me. I couldn't hear anything but the blood pounding in my ears, and that same hot hard something in my gut I felt when I found Harry with Helen. I backed away, but I felt hard fingers around my wrist.
"Look at me, child." Nonna's eyes bore into mine. "Love is not something to fear. Especially not when it is Luca doing the loving. Your fear is misplaced, I think. If you want to love him, you have to wash away the past. Only you can do this, my dear. You must go away, to the sea, perhaps. And you must bathe away all the fears and all the hurts given you by your history."
"Nonna, what are you telling her this for? She doesn't need this old woman's folk story nonsense." Luca sounded irritated.
His grandmother swatted him on the back of the head, hard. "Don't be so sciocco. It's not folklore, stupid boy. It's the wisdom of an old woman who's had many heartbreaks. I know the look in her eyes. She fears love. She fears hurt." She looked at me, her fingers looser on my wrist, holding tenderly rather than restraining. "You don't need a hot springs, or a special place or any fancy prayer. You only need the time alone, to decide truly what you want. If you want to run away at only the word 'love' then you have deeper fears. I know this. I have had these fears. His grandfather was not the first man I loved, but he was the last, and it was very hard for me to learn to love him. My story is one for another time, perhaps. But you cannot think to go further into love if you do not trust yourself to know what you want. And you do not know."
"Nonna, you--"
"Luca, no. She's right," I interrupted. "You know she is."
Luca nodded. "I know, I know, but we just...you--"
"It'll be fine, Luca." I put my hand on his arm. "I'm not running, I promise."
"And you're not going anywhere yet," Luca's mother, Domenica, said, emerging from the kitchen. "It is time for dinner. The rest will soon be here, I think. They will all want to see you."
She hugged me, as if I was her daughter. This simple act of familiarity had my eyes burning and my throat thickening. My own mother had stopped hugging me when I became a teenager. When we saw each other as adults, it was an awkward, back-patting, several-feet-of-space-between-us kind of hug. But this hug from Domenica was a completely different thing. It was warm, safe, familiar, as if she'd always hugged me. It would be overly dramatic and not precisely true to say that all my worries and fears evaporated when she hugged me, but I did feel a lot better.
Luca took my hand and led me into the kitchen, which now felt more like home than my own ever had. I sat at the huge block of age-polished wood that was the kitchen table and chatted with Nonna, Domenica, and Luca while coffee percolated on the stove. I heard voices in the courtyard, Elisabetta and Lucia, Luca's sisters--with their husbands Fillipo and Claudio. Behind them came Guliana and Marta, his sisters-in-law, with their husbands--Luca's brother's--Lorenzo and Niccolo. Woven around the adults' chatter was the babble and laughter of children, eleven of them between the four couples.
I felt a moment of panic at all the voices, all the people and personalities, all the names to keep straight. This one family, without even any of the aunts and uncles from Domenica's and Dante's sides of the families, represented more people than I knew back in the States. I knew people, so that might not have been totally true statement. It would be more accurate perhaps to say I was acquainted with most of the town, knew most people by face and name. But Luca's family, these were people I'd spent time with. I knew more than their names and faces. I'd broken bread and drank wine with them, dandled babies and done dishes with them. If things went further with Luca, they would be...family.
<
br /> Panic boiled even hotter, igniting my flight reflex: run, run, run.
Luca's hands descended on my shoulders, massaging gently. His whiskers brushed my ear and his voice rasped gently: "Relax, amore. Do not be worried. It will be fine. Only breathe, and be calm."
I wondered how he knew what I was thinking. Did my panic show on my face? I turned my face to his, our lips brushing. He kissed me, a light, quick peck meant to reassure.
"How'd you know?" I asked.
Luca laughed and pointed at my hands: I'd picked up a fork and bent it nearly in half. I let go of the fork and it clattered to the table, my fingers suddenly throbbing. Luca straightened it effortlessly and took my hand in his, threading our fingers together.
Lucia was the first to enter the kitchen, a little boy about two years old on her hip. "Delilah, you have returned!" She set the little boy on his feet and he immediately toddled over to Domenica and tugged on her apron to be picked up. "You left so suddenly, we were all worried for you."
Luca frowned at his sister, shaking his head imperceptibly. I squeezed his hand. "I know I did, Lucia, and I apologize for making you all worry. I'm just--I have issues sometimes. Nothing to worry about."
Lucia took the percolator from the stove, grabbed half a dozen mugs from a cabinet by their handles and poured coffee for everyone before resetting the percolator with fresh grounds and water. This family drank coffee at all hours, it seemed.
Lucia took a seat by me on the opposite side from Luca. "You know, I think if we are going to be sisters, you should be truthful with me."
"Lucia," Luca said, "do not be so--"
"It's fine, Luca," I interrupted. "She's right."
Luca muttered something in Italian about always being interrupted by women, but held his silence.
"The truth is I'm not sure what's going on with Luca and I. Things are complicated."
"Complicatedness is a part of living, I think," Lucia said, and sipped her coffee. "It is no reason to run away from a man who loves you."
I suppressed a bolt of irritation. Lucia was right, as the women in Luca's family so often seemed to be.
"You don't know my complications, Lucia," I said, trying to keep my voice even. "I can't just..." I trailed off, unsure what I couldn't just do.
Lucia waved her mug at me, a dismissal. "Bah. I do not think it is so complicated as you would like to make it. Fear and complicatedness are not the same thing, you know." She leaned forward and put her hand over mine. "I like you, so I will speak francamente. I think you are not so complicated, not having so many issues as you intend us to think. You are only afraid of committing, for having been betrayed in your history. This I understand, and am not meaning to make little of your fears. But you must be brave, if you wish to defeat your fears and have happy life with a man who loves you. Which would be Luca, in case I am not being chiaro."
I nodded. "I think you're right. But...it's not as easy to do as it is to say."
"True, it is true. I did not say it was easy, only right." Lucia seemed satisfied with having said her piece. She plucked her son from his grandmother and set him down to walk. "If he is always held, Mamma, he will not ever learn to be able to walk as a big boy."
Domenica responded in Italian, too fast for me to follow, but it was something about a grandmother's right to spoil her grandchildren, I think. Lucia just rolled her eyes and followed her son into the courtyard, where the laughter of children echoed, a joyous, exuberant chorus.
Dinner was a raucous affair, lasting well into the night. Children fell asleep in their parents' arms and were laid down in available beds while the adults continued to drink and talk.
The last time I remember looking at a clock it was two in the morning and I was thoroughly and pleasantly drunk on excellent wine. I felt safe, though, protected and comfortable. I could be myself, I didn't have to worry about getting back to a hotel, or being taken advantage of, or judged.
Luca led me upstairs to the same bedroom we'd been in before, overlooking the courtyard. I stumbled up the stairs, held steady by Luca's strong hands, felt myself lifted into bed, wine-breath on my face as he leaned in for a kiss. His lips met mine, and he wobbled above me, making me realize he was as drunk as I was. I smiled into the kiss, scratched at his waist for the bottom edge of his shirt and lifted it off.
We fumbled at each other's clothes, laughing at how clumsy we were, missing buttons, falling over as we tried to lift up to get pants down past our hips. Luca struggled for a pathetically long time with the hooks of my bra, eventually giving up and falling over.
"I cannot do it, amore," he said, sloppily kissing my spine. "I cannot make out how many hooks and hoops are there."
I managed to get the bra off, and then we were both naked. Luca pulled the chain to turn the light off, and then we were lit only by the silver wash of the full moon shining in through the open window.
Luca and I lay side by side on the bed, facing each other. His hand rested on my waist, just above the swell of my hip. His lips touched my shoulder, and then my arm near my elbow. He wound our fingers together and lifted my arm over my head, lowering his mouth to the mound of my breast, nipping the taut bud of my nipple. I whispered Luca's name, rolled to my back and feathered my fingers through his hair as he paid homage to one breast and then the other.
I felt his finger dip past my navel to trace the crease of my labia. "Yes, Luca, touch me," I said, spreading my legs apart.
He smiled against my nipple and slipped the finger into the wet, tight, heat of my pussy. I arched my back, eyes closed, and exulted in his touch. I reached between our bodies and wrapped my fingers around the hot, hard, silk of Luca's cock, heard his moan against my skin as I moved my hand on his length.
I pushed Luca's shoulder to roll him onto his back and slid down his body, resting my cheek on his belly. I took him in my mouth, not touching him with my hands at first, just my lips and tongue on his salty, soft skin.
The world spun around me, the bed undulated and I closed my eyes to block it all out, focused on the taste of his skin, the tang of his leaking pre-come, his huge shaft thick and throbbing in my hands, the heat of his body against my face. I felt myself lifted and moved, and then Luca's stubble brushed my thigh. I was on my side, Luca's cock in my mouth and my hands, and then I felt my leg pushed up and rested on firm, solid flesh, and then something warm and wet speared into my pussy. He was licking me as I sucked him.
Oh god. Good gravy. There was a term for this, something odd, two numbers, but I couldn't remember it, and it didn't matter then. All I knew was that it felt incredible. The angles were a bit awkward, but I didn't care. He was in my mouth and he was in my pussy all at once, we were a never-ending cycle of pleasure. My lit-major brain floated a word to me: ouroboros, a serpent or dragon eating its own tail, a symbol of eternity, or self-reflexivity.
Apparently my drunken mind couldn't come up with the term "sixty-nine" but it could remember the definition of ouroboros.
That was us, self-perpetuating pleasure, cyclical love. We broke apart at the same moment, and I climbed up Luca's prone body, rested my weight on his chest and my forearms. My hips lifted and I impaled myself on him, slid him in to the hilt in one smooth motion. There was no gradual immersion this time, just full, deep, immediate penetration, sweet surrender to his body's fit with mine.
His hands pulled my hips onto his, lifted and pulled, his mouth found mine as we dove into climax together. There was no moaning or screaming, this time. Only whispers and sighs, names uttered in the moment of ecstatic release.
I don't remember falling asleep. I woke up tangled with him, sticky and smeared and sated, head aching with the sharp slice of wine hangover, sunlight streaming in through the window.
I've started the habit of leaving my netbook on the bedside near me when I sleep, or on the floor, somewhere close at hand so I can write as soon as I wake up, put down on screen the previous day's memories while they're fresh upon waking.
Luca is stirring, and
it's time for some morning lovin', and then a shower, and then coffee.
I'm almost ready to say it. His family is right, my fear is all that's holding me back. But then, my fear is a potent thing. When I think of saying "I love you," I think of Harry, of saying those words to him every day for over a decade, rarely hearing him say it back, rarely, if ever, seeing it in action. Knowing, in a swift and sudden and gut-wrenching revelation, that he never did love me.
Luca is awake, watching me type with sleep-blurred eyes, blanket rucked around his hips, one arm beneath his head, a half-smile on his lips.
"Put that away and come here to me," he is saying.
I'm continuing to type as he reaches for me, just to irritate him. Oh god, he's not playing fair, touching my pussy as I type. This is fun...I can't concentrate, can't think, and now,
oh the hell with this game I'll finish the entry later
June 28
I decided to leave the previous entry's ending the way it is. It's cute, I think.
I'm sitting on a beach on the west coast of Italy. I don't know the name of this quaint little town with the picturesque ruins on the bluff and the stone buildings that have known the chatter of villagers since before America saw the trod of European feet.
I took a train here to get some time to think and make some clear-headed decisions.
It's too easy to think with my body and my heart when I'm with him. My mind and my logic get pushed aside, and if I'm going to make a rational decision, I need to get away from the potent, heady drug that is Luca.
But he isn't a drug, is he? He doesn't alter my mind, or change me. He turns me into who I truly am. I'm carefree with him, unfettered and liberated and full of life. His family is so loving, so generous, so welcoming, that I feel them to be more truly my family than my own blood back in the States.
My father is cold and judgmental, quick to hand down ultimatums and hard-nosed demands, slow to affection, spare with praise and compliments. Mother is the same, but more passive aggressive, willing to wait and watch and gather evidence against you, and then strike when the moment is right. She's tactical.
Leah is Miss Perfect. Straight A's, effortlessly. Captain of the cheer squad, debate team, Vice President of the student council three years in a row, popular, fun, skinny. Married a stable, caring man, after a short engagement, had kids, got a house with an actual, factual white picket fucking fence. Pretended life was spiffy and perfect, like she always has. And then she fucks my husband.
Sexy Surrender Page 3
