All I Believe

by Alexa Land

  I was quiet for a while before saying, “My last relationship ended when I caught my live-in boyfriend cheating with someone who’d been my best friend since childhood. It’s taken me a long time to move past it. Over two years, actually. After something like that, I guess what I really want is to be able to trust someone again. I hate feeling like they took that from me.”

  Luca kissed the top of my head and held me a little tighter. “Your ex was a total and complete idiot.”

  “So was yours.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me.”

  After we soaked for a while, I looked up at Luca and asked, “Do you hate the idea of going downstairs with me and seeing if my family is still at the bar? I kind of feel like I ditched them, and even though Nana was acting like the thing with her sister didn’t hurt, I’ll bet it did. I should point out that if they’re still down there, they’re probably very drunk, know we just had sex, and are definitely going to ask about it.”

  He surprised me by saying, “You’re right, they are. But let’s go anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. I think it’s a nice idea. Besides, we can pick up right where we left off after they finally conk out.”

  We got out of the tub and dried off, and Luca loaned me some clothes. He got dressed in a long-sleeved white button-down and black pants. I watched him as he rolled back his cuffs, then ran a comb though his collar-length hair. I was struck once again by how stunningly handsome and effortlessly sexy he was, and when he looked up and smiled at me, I felt an unfamiliar rush of happiness. It made me realize how long it had been missing from my life.

  *****

  Downstairs in the bar, my family had gotten a bit of a party started. A young lesbian couple visiting from Croatia, two waiters who’d gone off-duty, and a forty-something husband and wife on holiday from Scotland had joined Nana, Jessie and Fiona. Someone (probably Nana) had convinced the manager of the normally sedate bar to play dance music, and Nana was leading a conga line among the tables to, of all things, an old Spice Girls song. Luca took that completely in stride and joined the end of the line, grasping Fiona’s waist, and I got behind him and did the same to him. We were all laughing by the time the song ended.

  We then had to catch up with the drinking. Jessie lined up four shots in front of both Luca and me, and by the time we did the fourth, I was feeling no pain.

  Luca asked me, “Do you dance?”

  “Yes and no. I took a class in ballroom dancing at one point, but I can’t do the modern stuff. I look all spazzy, like a cat chasing a laser pointer,” I told him.

  “I want to see that some time,” he said with a grin.

  The bar was empty apart from our group, and he pushed back a few tables. He then spoke to the bartender, who was acting as DJ. The woman flipped through a stack of CDs and put one in the player. Luca came over to me and extended his hand.

  When tango music started to play, I said, “Now this I can do.” I slipped out of the pair of slightly-too-large shoes he’d lent me and Luca did the same with his loafers before leading me barefoot to the makeshift dance floor.

  He gave me a seductive smile and said, “Follow my lead.” At that moment, I would have followed him anywhere.

  Luca led confidently, guiding me with his palm on the small of my back, my left hand held in his right. It took me a few moments to adjust since I’d been taught to lead, but his movements were so sure and decisive that I soon gave myself over to it. The moment I relinquished control, the dance became fluid, effortless.

  He spun me and walked me backwards with several quick long strides, and dipped me before whisking me back across the room. Luca coiled and uncoiled himself around me, then pulled me close. I kept my gaze locked with his and mirrored his steps, fast then slow, forward and back, our bodies pressed together, my heart racing. He spun both of us, again and again.

  Everything else fell away, the bar, our audience, even the music faded into the background as I focused on Luca. I slid down his body, dropping onto one knee, and he held my hand and dragged me around in a circle before pulling me to my feet. We clutched each other tightly, and when he dipped me backwards he went with me, our bodies moving as one, circling, spinning. It was absolutely intoxicating, far more than the alcohol, more than anything I’d ever experienced.

  As the song reached its finale, he lifted me off my feet and held me right above him, staring deep into my eyes, our lips just inches apart. One arm was around me, holding me up, while his other hand rested on the back of my head. The room fell silent for a long moment when the music ended. I wanted him to kiss me like I’d never wanted anything in my life.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he lowered me slowly, sliding me down his hard, muscular body, his eyes never leaving mine. It took me a few moments to notice that our little audience was whistling and applauding.

  My heart was pounding as I looked up at him. It had very little to do with physical exertion. He brushed my hair from my face and said, “You’re right, that you can do. Not once did you look like a cat going after a laser pointer.” I laughed and took a step back embarrassedly.

  After that, we joined my family and our new friends in a game of Prosecco pong. The longer we played, the funnier it got. Nana was incredibly good at it for some reason, but every time she got a ping pong ball into a glass of the sparkling white wine, she drank it herself rather than assigning it to the other team. After a few rounds, she was dancing on the bar with Jessie and the couple from Croatia. Luca and I acted as spotters, just in case she took a header. When she decided she was done, she jumped into Luca’s arms, patted his cheek and said, “You’re a good boy. So handsome, too. You and my grandson are beautiful together.”

  “Thank you, Nana. Want a lift upstairs?”

  She nodded and said, “Can we do a piggyback ride? I haven’t done that in ages.” When he agreed, she climbed on his back while Luca paid the hefty bill and added an extremely generous tip. When she saw him paying, she told him, “Tomorrow night, dinner’s on me. You are going to see Nico then, aren’t you?”

  He looked at me hopefully and said, “I will if he’ll agree to go out with me again.”

  “Of course,” I said shyly.

  I scooped up Jessie, who was also completely smashed, and we called goodbye to our new friends and the bar staff. Fiona followed us, weaving a bit, her high heels in one hand, a half-finished bottle of Prosecco in the other. Nana meanwhile wrapped her legs around Luca’s waist and grabbed his pecs with both hands. “This is fun,” she announced happily as she squeezed his muscular chest. “Way better than I remember piggyback rides.”

  When we got to my family’s suite, Luca and I deposited Jessie and Nana in their bedrooms, and I told Fiona, “Take my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.” She slurred a thank you in Italian, then wove her way to my room.

  Luca picked up my hand and said, “How about spending the night with me instead?” He didn’t have to ask twice.

  Once we were back in his suite, we stripped down to just our underwear and got under the covers. I put my head on Luca’s chest, and he took my hand. “Thank you for tonight,” he said, and I tilted my head to look up at him in the soft light from a little lamp on the nightstand. “It was perfect.”

  “Even the part where you got felt up by my drunk eighty-year-old grandmother?” I said with a grin.

  He grinned, too. “I really like Nana. What I wouldn’t give for a relative who’s so supportive of my sexuality.”

  “Are you out with your family?”

  “Both my brother and grandfather know I’m gay. I never really see my extended family, so their opinions don’t mean much to me. My brother accepts it, and my grandfather begrudgingly tolerates it. Given how he was raised, I always thought that was pretty good. But your grandmother is just as Catholic and grew up in the same era of intolerance, and she’s totally accepting. My grandfather’s attitude is, do what you have to do, but I don’t want to see it or hear about it. Which is bullshit.”r />
  “It is.”

  After a pause he asked, “Would you consider going away with me for a couple days? I know it’s selfish of me to cut into your family vacation, but I’d really love to spend some time with you if you’re willing.”

  “God yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course.”

  “Terrific! I’ll make some plans for this weekend.”

  He sounded happy and excited, and I looked up into his green eyes. All of a sudden, recognition dawned on me. I drew in my breath in surprise, then laughed delightedly and kissed him. When we broke apart, I said, “I kind of miss that chip in your front tooth. It was cute. Why’d you have it fixed?”

  Luca looked confused as I sat up and ran my thumb over his collarbone. I slowly slid it out of the way, revealing three freckles in perfect alignment, which I hadn’t noticed earlier. My smile doubled in size as he asked me, “How did you know I got my tooth fixed?”

  “Think back, Bruce Wayne. The celestial rodeo, remember? I still don’t know what possessed you to pull me into that cold fountain! When my parents found me dripping all over our hotel room, it was pretty hard to explain.”

  Recognition lit his face, and he sat up and beamed at me. “That’s why you seemed familiar! I can’t believe it, after all these years!”

  “You told me we’d find each other again. Apparently you really are always right about everything.” I brushed his hair back from his sparkling green eyes.

  “You were my first kiss.”

  “You were mine, too.”

  “I thought about you a million times after that day,” he said. “I had this crazy idea that if it was meant to be, fate would bring us back together. But later on I thought, maybe that was it, maybe that one meeting was fate at work and I blew it by not getting your name and number.”

  “I don’t believe in fate,” I told him.

  “How can you doubt it after something like this? Here we are, a dozen years later, back in each other’s arms!”

  “We’re creatures of habit. We’re staying at the same hotel our parents brought us to, and we came back to Viladembursa because we both have family here.”

  Luca grinned and pulled me back to the pillow with him. “Fine. You be the practical one and I’ll be the hopeless romantic. It’s a good balance.”

  I returned my head to his chest. After a while, I admitted softly, “I used to look for you, for years afterward. I’d scan faces in crowds, looking for that one person in seven billion. I knew it was crazy, but I did it anyway.”

  “I did the same thing. But then when I found you again, I didn’t even know it.”

  “I didn’t either at first, not until I saw something in your eyes.”

  He hugged me tightly. “Meeting you today already felt like an incredible gift, Nicky. And now this! It feels like a miracle.” Secretly, I thought so too, even if I was too practical to admit it.

  Chapter Five

  Luca kissed me awake the next morning, and I pulled him into my arms. “I wish we could stay in bed all day,” he murmured as he climbed on top of me, “but I have a meeting this morning.” He made absolutely no move to get out of bed, and began kissing my shoulder.

  “With the contractors working on your grandfather’s house?”

  “No, though that’s scheduled for this afternoon. I have to drive to Syracuse and meet with a local art dealer who’s preparing to put some pieces up for auction.”

  “Your job sounds interesting,” I said as I ran my hands down his back.

  “It has its moments. I absolutely hate it right now though, because it’s making me get off you and out of this bed.” I grinned at that, and he told me, “I’ll be back this evening. Can I come by your suite at seven and pick you and your family up for dinner?”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Luca said. “But I’m especially looking forward to afterwards, when I get you all to myself again.”

  After he showered, I watched him get dressed in an absolutely flawless charcoal suit that had obviously been custom-made, given the way it perfectly accentuated his broad shoulders and narrow waist. “You take my breath away,” I murmured when he turned to me.

  He bent and kissed me, then said, “You do the same thing to me.”

  Luca let me borrow an outfit before walking me to my suite. My shorts and t-shirt were rolled up under my arm. When we reached the door, he cupped my face in his hands and rested his forehead against mine as he asked, “What’s on the agenda for today?”

  “I’m not sure. I skipped sight-seeing yesterday, but today I’m going to let Nana lead the way. I’m game for whatever she and Jessie cook up.”

  He kissed me and said, “I wish I didn’t have to go.”

  “Me, too. But I’ll see you soon.”

  He kissed me twice more before finally turning and heading down the hall. He looked at me over his shoulder and called in Italian, “Addio, mio miracolo!” His miracle, that was so sweet. I called goodbye and watched him walk away. Right before he rounded the corner on his way to the elevator, he looked back at me once more and smiled.

  Wow. I sat down on the carpet right there in the hallway and wrapped my arms around myself. He’d found me again, somehow, my boy by the fountain. He’d actually found me! It really did feel like a miracle. Even as grounded and analytical as I was, there was no other word for it.

  Just as miraculous was the fact that he seemed to want me as much as I wanted him. Even before our moment of recognition, there had been an undeniable spark between us. I’d only experienced that once before, and it had also been with Luca when we met as teens.

  It had been something different with Erik. He’d been a doctor in the E.R. where I brought patients when I worked as an EMT, so we knew each other for months before a coworker set us up on a not-quite-blind date. Over time, I’d grown to love Erik, but it had never felt like that, so passionate and urgent.

  I wondered if he’d found that kind of passion with Gavin. It still hurt like hell that my best friend and my boyfriend had gone behind my back and betrayed my trust like that, but for the first time, I was able to think about the two of them together without sadness slamming into me like a tidal wave. That had to be progress.

  I leaned against the wall and ran my fingertips down the placket of the shirt I was wearing. Though just a casual button-down, it was beautifully made. There had always been an imbalance when I’d been with Erik, his doctor’s salary far outpacing what I made as an EMT. But that was nothing compared to the income gap between Luca and me. That would remain true even after I finished school and found work as an attorney. I wondered if his obvious wealth was all from his job, or if he had family money as well. I guessed the latter. There were distinct differences between people with old and new money. Luca might have a fondness for nice clothes, but they were well-made rather than showy. His watch was the same, excellent quality without screaming of his success. That to me suggested someone who’d grown up wealthy and saw no need to flaunt it.

  I’d grown up around wealth, so I felt like I understood the distinctions. Most of my family had always been well-off, and I could have chosen to take a slice of that pie, but it never felt right to me. The money came from less than legal sources, going back generations in Viladembursa and later in the states. Nana had married into the Dombruso family, and two of her three sons had carried on in the family business. That had cost her son Paulie his life. My dad had followed a vastly different path and had become a civil engineer.

  Even among my generation, some of my cousins had been involved in organized crime until recently. I never knew how to tell people my extended family was in the mafia, so usually, I just didn’t. But it was still part of my reality, and I felt that history more than ever when I was in Viladembursa, where the Dombruso name meant something, even decades after the family emigrated to the U.S.

  The name garnered respect, but it met with a different reaction as well. Locals regarded us with a kind
of guarded wariness when they found out who we were. Once upon a time, the Dombruso family had ruled Viladembursa with an iron fist, and the local people remembered their history.

  That point was driven home for me as a middle-aged waiter pushing a fully-loaded room service cart rounded the corner. I got to my feet, unlocked the door with my room key and said good morning to him as I held the door. He replied with a nervous, “Buon giorno, Signor Dombruso,” as he kept his gaze fixed on the floor.

  It was something I’d witnessed time and time again when my family visited here. That was why I introduced myself and my family by just our first names when I was in Viladembursa, but obviously the waiter had seen the name on the bill, so there was no downplaying it.

  I went into the suite and greeted Nana, Jessie and Fiona, who sat close together on the sofa, making notes on the hotel stationery. “How was your date? I don’t have to ask if you got lucky, on account of the fact that you’re just now getting in,” Nana said, looking up at me through her huge, round glasses. “You and Luca are going to see each other again, this I know without asking. There’s a lot of chemistry between you two, anybody could see that!”

  “It was wonderful,” I said, looking at a bunch of notes strewn across the coffee table. “What are you up to?”

  “Clear your schedule for Thursday night,” Nana said. “Or if you’re planning to see Luca then, bring him along. I’m going to need your help with running the whole operation.”

  “What whole operation?”

  “The rest of us are gonna find us some hotties,” she announced happily, pointing at herself, Jessie and Fiona. “We were gonna arrange some of that speed dating, but we decided we needed more than that to draw people in, so we’re throwing a party instead.”

  “Who are you inviting?”

  “Everybody! We’re gonna put a half-page ad in the afternoon paper, they’re holding the space for us. It’ll run today, tomorrow, and Thursday. I figure that should get people’s attention.”

  “You called the paper already?” She nodded and I asked, “Wasn’t that kind of short notice?”