by L. D. Davis
“Wait!” I cried out just as he came at me again. Marco paused and stared at me warily, but I just turned my head and drained my glass of wine. “All right. Come at me, bro.”
He laughed so hard that he gave up on the paint fight. I grinned at him and turned back to my canvas. There were flecks of paint on it that hadn’t been there before, but I still liked it.
“Cracker?” He held up a cracker with a small slice of cheese on it. He’d also packed grapes in the bag, and we’d been snacking since we started.
“Yes, please.”
He put the bite of food right at my mouth instead of handing it to me. I opened without hesitation. Marco grinned as he chewed his own cracker and leaned forward to give me a quick kiss on the lips. Our mouths had been closed, and the kiss really had been chaste, but it still made my toes curl.
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “I thought you weren’t going to kiss me again until I kiss you.”
“That wasn’t a kiss. It was a peck.”
“Which is just a light kiss. You broke your own rule.”
“It was a peck! You would know if I really kissed you.” He waggled his eyebrows, and again, I found myself laughing.
At the end of our session, we shared a sink and tried to wash the paint off our hands, faces, and clothes. I even had a streak of blue in my hair. Without mirrors, we had to rely on each other for the cleanup. When I took a wet paper towel and began to gently scrub at a yellow spot on Marco’s cheek, he dropped his hands to my waist and pulled me close. I didn’t stop, even though my immediate thought was to back away and escape the situation.
“You’re touching me again,” I murmured, my soft voice quavering.
Closer. He pulled me even closer, until my body was against his. “I know.”
The spot was long gone, but still, I remained where I was, nearly breathless as my hand lingered on his face. The hair sprouting on his face was softer than I thought it would be, and for a moment, I couldn’t help but run my palm over it.
“Um, excuse me?”
I snapped out of it and took a giant, stumbling step back. My eyes were wide, my face red, and my heart pounded much too hard in my chest.
“Sorry,” I muttered to the teenage girl who was waiting for the sink.
I didn’t care how much paint was left on either one of us as I hurried away. Thankfully, Marco gave me a few minutes to pull myself together, and he didn’t mention my lapse in reality that had led to that intimate moment at the sinks.
After the art studio, with paint remnants staining our fingers and faces, Marco got us lost again—this time for an hour—before he finally broke down and consulted the GPS.
I shielded the navigation screen from my eyes. “I promise not to look. Was it also your sisters’ idea to get us lost?”
He puffed his chest out proudly. “No. That was all my idea. Okay, we weren’t that lost. We are only a couple blocks away.”
“What else did they ask about me? Your sisters.”
“They wanted to know what kind of person you are. You can uncover your eyes now. I’ve got this.”
“Hmm. We’ll see. What kind of person did you tell them I am?”
He rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “I told them you are stubborn and proud, that if I said the sky was blue, you would say it was green with polka dots just to spite me. I also said you are about as huggable as an istrice.”
I frowned. “What’s an istrice?”
“Porcupine.” He laughed. When he saw that I was frowning and unamused, his face softened. “If it’s any consolation, Tesoro, I also told them I loved all those elements about you, and I’d have you no other way.”
His hand came up to stroke my cheek. It was quick, barely a second, but no less effective than any other time he’d touched me like that.
A few minutes later, Marco parallel parked on a busy side street. I kind of knew where I was, but it had been a long time since I’d been in the area. I sounded like one of my kids as he helped me out of the vehicle, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Where are we going?”
He winked at me as he gave my hand a squeeze. “You will see in a minute.”
We walked about half a block, which felt like several blocks. There I was, this ragged, skinny, pale, and obviously crippled woman, walking hand in hand with the likes of Marco, a man who could walk beside supermodels, dazzling actresses, and stunning sophisticated types and still outshine them. People did look at us. Some openly stared and others tried to be more clandestine about it. One woman looked at my gimpy leg, my face, and then Marco’s face before her brow furrowed before she glanced at my leg again.
For his part, though, Marco didn’t seem to notice the attention, but he wasn’t oblivious. That much I knew. There was no way he missed some of those stares, yet he made no mention of them and kept his attention on the sidewalk ahead and on me.
I didn’t bring it up, though. We both knew I was insecure, but I wasn’t about to say it aloud. I tried to do what Marco was doing and keep my focus on him. Soon enough, we were walking through another door, and once I realized where we were, the last few minutes of discomfort were pushed to the back of my mind.
I clapped my hands together. “Vietnamese food!”
Marco guided me along with a hand on my lower back, seemingly pleased with my reaction. “This is the best in the area, according to critics.”
As we were led to our table, familiar savory scents made my stomach growl with wanting. I had to put a hand over it to try to quiet it. I sat down in a booth, and with one light tap to my thigh from Marco, I knew to slide over to make room for him. It made me a little nervous to sit so close to him, even though we’d been closer that night on the loveseat at his cabin.
After we ordered drinks, Marco opened his menu and held it between us.
“I don’t know what I want. I have some old favorites, but there are other things I’ve always wanted to try.”
“Then we will order everything,” he said with a shrug and closed the menu.
I let out a laugh at first, because I thought he was kidding, but when he flagged down the waiter, I gripped his arm with surprise. “Wait. You’re not really going to order everything, are you?”
His brow creased, his face serious. “Yes. Why not?”
“Why not? Because it’s expensive, and a lot of food. And it’s expensive.”
His body angled toward mine. “Tesoro, I can afford it.”
“Yes, I know you’re Daddy Warbucks with the deep pockets, but still…to spend so frivolously…”
His eyes held mine. “It is not frivolous if I am spending it on someone so priceless.”
“Damn,” I breathed. “You are so…corny.”
Those eyes widened with surprise as he laughed. He gave me another “peck” on the mouth and turned to our waiter who finally made it over. “We want to order one of everything.”
The waiter didn’t seem surprised at all. “No problem, sir.”
Marco turned back to me, forehead crinkled. “Who is Daddy Warbucks?”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
His face told me he was not kidding, that he was indeed clueless about one of the most important bald men ever.
“Little Orphan Annie?” I probed. “Little girl with a red afro?”
“Oh! That little girl with the dog, but who is Daddy Warbucks?”
I slapped my forehead into my palm. “I cannot believe this. That’s it. We are no longer friends.”
He draped an arm over my shoulders with a smirk. “I think we are more than friends.”
My face heated, but I went on. “We are nothing, Marcello Mangini.”
He drew back a little. “This is serious. You used my full name.”
“Yes, this is serious. Daddy Warbucks is the bald, filthy rich, old grumpy man that fell in love with Annie and—”
“Married her?” Marco’s face twisted with disgust.
“No, you dope…although I’m pretty sure there’s a porn version
out there that’s similar. Anyway, he adopted her. Annie is a comic—”
“She is funny?”
“Book,” I said with exasperation. “A comic book. It’s also a play and a movie. Growing up, she was one of my favorite characters ever.”
Marco pushed my hair behind my ear. “Because of her red hair?”
I nodded, even as my skin burned where he’d touched me. “I loved redheaded characters in books and in the movies. It made me appreciate my red hair.”
“I happen to love it.” His fingers stroked a few strands of it and brushed against my neck.
I ignored the shiver that rippled through me and went on talking, my voice a little hoarse. “My favorite was Anne Shirley. In the movies, when she got older and stopped wearing her hair down, she often had this…” I made a swirling motion with my finger around my head. “Puffy style.”
“Puffy?”
“Yeah, puffy. When I was a kid I tried to do that hairstyle. It seemed so grown up.”
“How did that turn out for you?”
“A can of Aqua Net later, I looked nothing like Anne. It took a few washings to get all the crap out of it. I think I burned another hole in the ozone layer all by myself.”
He laughed. “Tell me more stories about your childhood. I want to know more.”
My childhood had been a happy one overall, with a few hiccups along the way, but it was a safe enough subject. “What do you want to know?”
Three hours and several hilarious—and sometimes embarrassing—stories later, we were both in the Rover rubbing our stomachs, mighty satisfied with our meal. We’d literally tried a little bit of everything on the menu. I’d never done anything like that before. The menus at McDonalds and Burger King didn’t count.
Marco had a possessive hand on my knee as he drove. He’d been quiet for several minutes and seemed distant, as if his mind was somewhere else. I didn’t know if this was a look of a man who had eaten himself into a food coma, or if he really was lost in thought.
I didn’t ask, though. I had enough on my own mind. Not for the first time since meeting him, I asked myself what I was doing. My mind raced with thoughts of what would happen next. He claimed he would never purposely hurt me, but like I’d told him, Gavin hadn’t meant to hurt me. Likewise, I hadn’t meant to hurt him either, except that last day… That last day I’d meant to hurt him with everything I’d had…
“What’s on your mind?” Marco murmured, knocking me out of my thoughts.
“You first.”
He inclined his head, resignation in that small move, and turned his gaze back to the road. “I want to apologize for this morning.”
“For what? For cleaning my kitchen? Please. You’re welcome to it anytime.”
“I should have told you I was coming to start with, and I shouldn’t have forced you into this today.”
“It’s not like you forced me at knifepoint. Do you really believe you could’ve made me do something I didn’t want to do deep down?”
He smirked at that. “No. You are very stubborn, but that does not mean you didn’t feel pressured. I…I don’t know everything you’ve been through. I only know a little, but it is clear now that there were issues between you and Gavin long before the accident. Whatever you are going through every day in your own mind and heart must be ten times worse than I can imagine, because much of it was unresolved with Gavin’s death and will be that way forever.”
My heart felt as if it were in a vice, being squeezed too hard. He had hit the nail right on the head with that. Unresolved. You couldn’t resolve anything with a dead man. I could forgive him, but he was no longer here to forgive me.
“I literally cannot talk about it,” I choked out, holding a hand to my throat. “I can’t.”
He squeezed my knee and glanced at me a couple times. “Have you ever tried?”
I shook my head.
The look he gave me was sad, but it wasn’t pity. I wouldn’t have handled pity well. “Someday, Tesoro, you will have to talk about it, or it will cause irreparable damage.”
I turned my head and stared out the window. “It already has.”
After a moment, Marco reached for my hand. For once, I didn’t pull away, but accepted his silent comfort.
Chapter Sixteen
I glanced skeptically at Marco. He stared back at me with boyish innocence. I again took in our surroundings while lightly dragging my fingers over the nylon material above us. After I quickly flipped through the pages of a coloring book, I looked at Marco again.
“Um, was this also your sisters’ idea?”
He gave me a big, toothy grin. “All mine.”
I fingered the string of lights hanging beside me. “I believe it.”
We were back at my house, in a tent—not like a blanket and sheet tent like kids make, but an actual camping tent, in my family room. No kidding. I’d bought it for the kids at the beginning of summer. We couldn’t afford to go camping, nor was I physically conditioned for a camping trip, but Gavi had wanted the tent. It had reminded him of his father. So, Cliff had helped me set it up in the back yard, and on warm summer nights, we’d slept under the stars. Sleeping on the hard ground had not been easy for me, but the kids had loved it, which had made it well worth my discomfort.
Marco’s setup was rather bohemian, with all the big couch pillows on the floor, the scarf I’d worn earlier thrown over the solitary lamp. He had even moved the TV and DVD player into our fortress. There was popcorn I’d just popped, a shopping sack full of various candy, a few bottles of beer in a bowl of ice, a stack of coloring books and a box of crayons, and The Emperor’s New Groove was ready to play on the TV.
The more I took it all in, the more I began to see the simple brilliance of it. There was something absolutely enchanting about two alleged grown-ups indulging in children’s activities.
I felt my face light up. “This is…pretty damn cool.”
Marco released a relieved breath before he put a piece of popcorn to my lips. I took it, and this time, I met him halfway for one of those pecks.
My eyes narrowed with suspicion as I popped a couple Reese’s Pieces into my mouth. “You must have conferred with my mom to set up this day.”
“Guilty as charged. I knew the children would be gone until tomorrow, and I also knew about her date with her old high school friend. I’ll bet they’re not doing anything as awesome as this.”
“I suspect not. Hand me those crayons.”
He passed me the Crayolas and then got the movie started. “This is the best movie ever made.”
I agreed exuberantly. “I love the whole GILF thing going on here between Yzma and Kronk.”
Marco chuckled. “It is a little disturbing.”
“Pull the levah!” I shouted, trying to make my voice sound like Yzma’s.
“Demon llama!” Marco called out, impersonating another character.
“Where?”
We cracked up. I was still laughing when I felt his eyes on me.
I started to feel self-conscious and my laughter died down. “What?”
“It’s that laugh,” he said quietly as his eyes roamed over my face. “That laugh that had me captivated instantly.”
Feeling embarrassed, I dropped my eyes back to my coloring. “It’s just a stupid, obnoxious laugh.”
“No, it is not stupid at all. Obnoxious, maybe, but not stupid. I think it’s beautiful. Like you.” Marco leaned across our piles of junk food and beer, cupped my face in his hands, and pressed his lips against mine. It was longer, warmer, and softer than a peck. He didn’t try to part my lips or go any deeper, but his thumbs stroked my cheeks as his mouth lingered on mine.
When he finally pulled back, my face was flushed, and I felt breathless. “That was a kiss.”
He grinned good naturedly. “No, it was not.”
“Well, it was much more than a peck. You know you’ve broken your rule like all day.”
“I have not. They were not kisses.”
I s
hook my head. “You should just admit that you’ve been smooching with me all day and get over it.”
“You are doing everything you can so that you don’t have to make the first move. You are what the kids call a scaredy cat.”
“I am not!”
With a haughty look, he crossed his arms. “Then kiss me.”
“Why? You’ve been kissing me all day.”
He shook his head. “Scaredy cat.”
“I am not a scaredy cat.”
“Then kiss me. I double dare you.”
I pushed my hair back and looked away. “Maybe I don’t want to kiss you. Maybe I think you’re a horrible kisser and I don’t want to repeat it.”
His eyes hooded with doubt. “Hmm. I just think you’re pollo.”
I didn’t know Italian, but I did know that pollo was chicken. I tossed a crayon at him in retaliation.
For the next forty minutes, we laughed at the movie, threw popcorn at each other, and had coloring contests. I felt that I had won, but Marco disagreed.
“Do I have to bring up your turd with wings?” he teased, which earned a pillow to his face. He caught it with a laugh.
For several beats, we just gazed at each other. Marco’s face was alight as he stared at me as if in fascination. I was first to turn away as heat bloomed in my cheeks. I was utterly befuddled by his absorption in me and bewildered by my own shifting feelings for him. I was also terrified. The one and only time I’d let myself love someone, I’d barely made it out the other side alive. Literally.
I was having one of the best days of my life. It was certainly the best date I’d ever been on. I laughed. I smiled, and with wide-eyed wonder, accepted his attentiveness toward me, but I was holding back, keeping the larger part of myself in reserve. I remained wary, careful to only give him just enough of myself to be somewhat convincing. My trust in him and his intentions only went so far. I knew he would never physically harm me or my children, but any emotional damage that may be inflicted—intentional or not—could break us beyond repair. This…thing…it was only temporary. I knew that, but…
