“Jolie.” Luca shook his head. “I feel like force-feeding you a kale smoothie.”
I made vomiting sounds.
“That noise reminds me.” He took out his phone. “Does this guy look familiar?”
I put my hand around his to hold it steady and looked at the picture, an image of a flier to advertise a band playing in a crappy bar not too far from my house. “Oh, damn! ‘Stoney and the Nutrient Broth?’ He’s really in a band?” I squinted at it. “Why is everyone else in the picture all punk and emo and Stoney looks like he’s going to a Jimmy Buffett concert?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to have to go see him in person. Get a sitter.”
“Oh, I will! This has made my night.” I hesitated. “It also made my night that you came here with the lunch delivery. And to make up. I’m sorry, Luca.”
“I’m sorry. If anyone was a dickweed, as you like to say, it was me,” he said. We were still holding hands around his phone. He leaned forward a little. “I’ve been thinking about you, a lot, caramellina mia.”
“Really?” I cleared my throat and tried for a normal voice. “I mean, really?”
Luca got closer. “I was thinking about kissing you. It was a nice kiss before.”
“Yes, not too bad.” I was sounding like I had sucked helium again.
“Not bad at all. We should do it again,” he murmured, and then we did.
It started happening to me all over again: when Luca kissed me, I burst into flames.
Chapter 10
Honestly, it was like Luca’s tongue was some kind of hypnotic device. When it was in my mouth, all sense left my mind. Maybe my mind left my body—all I could do was feel. I felt his arms around me, his breath on my cheek, his chest rubbing against my breasts. Damn, the man could kiss! He moved to my ear and my neck and I tilted my head back and moaned. I really was on fire, sparks lighting up inside and running through me. He brushed across my hard nipple with his knuckles and a streak of flames led from my breasts right down to my clit. We kissed and I burned.
Luca picked up his mouth from my neck. “Jolie, is this ok?”
I ran my fingers through his thick hair. “Yes, all good,” I breathed. I pressed myself against him and he pulled me onto his lap. He nuzzled down into the nape of my neck, hugging me closely. I sighed in absolute delight.
“What about Nola?” he whispered.
Nola. “She’s asleep.” Nola. Shit.
Luca lifted his head and looked at the bedroom door. But even as he did, his arms tightened around me. “I don’t think this is right,” he said. Then he kissed me more, until I was almost dizzy. “Sorry, I did it again.”
“You know, lots of people have sex with kids around. How do you think siblings exist?” I reasoned breathlessly. “If people didn’t have sex with kids present in the house, there would be a lot of only children.” I wanted just a little more kissing. I pulled his lips to mine and he nibbled for a moment before stopping again.
“Couples, is what you’re talking about,” he said. “Couples have sex in their own homes with their kids present. In a bedroom, with a closed door. That’s not what we’re doing.”
I stopped trying to kiss him and looked into his eyes. “People do all kinds of things. And you know, if you don’t want this, you just have to say it.”
He shifted in a little circle under me and I gulped. Oh, there he was, like the Empire State Building, pressing against me. Oh, damn. I moved too, because it felt so good to feel him so hard, and Luca made a noise and held my hips to stop me. I looked down at where he gripped, and my hips seemed a lot smaller with his big hands around them. “I think you can tell that I want this,” he said, his voice a little strained. “But I don’t feel right about it, the two of us screwing on a couch in your living room with your three-year-old child a particle board door away.”
Ouch. “Ok, fine. Yes.” I pushed off his hands and scooted to the other end of the couch. “You’re right, of course.”
“Jolie…”
“Give me a minute. I’m not feeling like my best self right now.” More like I was feeling like a pretty shitty mother. The mother who had previously said that of course, of course she wouldn’t bring back men to the apartment she shared with her small child! The mother who was now a step away from screwing on the couch in said apartment. I was a mother, but I was a human being. I wanted Luca. Badly.
“I started it. I kissed you.” He sighed. “I’m having a hard time keeping my hands off you.”
“Keeping your hands off me?” I couldn’t stop the astonishment from flooding my voice.
“I dreamt about you last night. Naked, in the pool, like a siren. We were doing things that I never did in real life.” He took a big breath.
“You never did yet, you mean. I’ll do those things with you,” I said. At the moment, I felt very eager to. “I don’t have a lot of experience beyond the ‘Jolie, lay on your back and wait for me to grunt my ending’ kind of sex, but I’ll try anything that doesn’t involve the public, or, like, whips. Maybe tying me up? Or you? Or whipped cream there?” I nodded in the direction of his penis. “Chocolate? Milk chocolate, yum. Melted, but cooled, of course.” I would, I totally would. My mouth was watering a little and I licked my lips.
Luca stared at my mouth, then ran a hand over his face. “You’re making this harder.”
“I’m making this harder?” I signaled at his crotch again and he took another breath. “What happened in the dream?” I prompted.
“What happened after was that I woke up, and I…” He made a face. “You can guess what I did.”
“You jerked off thinking about me?” My mouth gaped open like I was catching flies. “Really? I’m kind of honored. And you might be equally honored to know that I do the same thing while thinking about you.”
Luca got a smug smile. “Hm. I am honored.”
He looked so self-satisfied, it made me smile. “Well, you’re welcome,” I told him.
“As are you.” He grinned. I couldn’t really stop myself from stretching out my arm to run a fingertip over the very obvious bulge in his pants.
Luca groaned and reached for me. And then I was on my back on the couch before I knew what was happening and he was touching me, like I hadn’t been touched by anyone…ever. Like he was crazy to feel me, stroking over my hair and my face, caressing my throat and my breasts with gentle sweeps of his fingers that got faster and harder as I moaned and pressed into his touch. His hand moved down my side to my hip again and pulled me against him, pulled me against his erection. I got carried away on a wave of lust and something. Something I felt, but didn’t put a name to.
I was undulating against him, whispering his name, when he stopped. Again.
“Fuck. Fuck! What am I doing?” he muttered. He sat up and brought me with him. “Jolie, fuck.”
Yup, that was what I wanted. Exactly that word. I gulped. “Luca, I think we need some distance.”
“You want me to leave?”
“No! I want you to go sit over there.” I pointed to the kitchen table.
He got up slowly, painfully.
“I could help you with that issue you’re having. The blue balls thing,” I noted. I was more than a little frustrated, myself.
Luca held up his hand as he walked to the kitchen table. It wasn’t that far in my small apartment, but it gave us both some breathing room. “Keep comments about my balls to yourself, please. Can we talk about something non-sexual?”
I thought. “Maybe. But first I want to say that what you were just doing was amazing. Your kissing is spot-on, but when you touch me…” I ran my own hands over my breasts and sighed.
“No, don’t do that!” he said sharply. “What about sports? Do you follow any sports?”
Ok, time to refocus. “I used to know the money line favorite for almost every game and the spread on a lot of them. I was better with numbers than Ty was,” I explained. “But I didn’t like to watch because I didn’t like the uncertainty. Growing up li
ke I did, there weren’t a lot of givens. Like, where’s dinner? Nobody knows. So now I don’t like surprises. I want to know the ending ahead of time, and all those races and games with money on them—it was way, way too uncontrolled for me. But that was exactly why Ty liked it.”
“I don’t understand you with him. Why did you stay all those years with Ty? What was it about him? From what you say, you seem so different.” He stopped. “I’m trying to be diplomatic. He sounds like an asshole.”
I didn’t want to explain Ty and me. “Why did you love your fiancée?” I countered.
“Vesa? She was perfect. On paper,” he clarified. “Smart, beautiful, driven, exciting.”
“Are you getting to the part how she wasn’t perfect, off paper?” Soon, please?
“She wasn’t very…nice.” He did his hand tossing thing. “She wasn’t a nice person.”
“You think that because she cheated? I mean, that’s reason enough for me,” I clarified.
“I knew before she cheated. It bothered me some, but not enough. I wasn’t considering how it would be for the rest of our lives. When we had children, how it would be for them. When I asked her to marry me, I was thinking of all the other things that were great about Vesa. She’s an incredible woman.”
I wanted to move on from the great, incredible things about Vesa. Did not want to hear those things.
“But then one day…this is stupid.” He stopped.
“Tell me. This conversation is helping me not want to rip your pants off. My pulse is back out of the heart attack range.”
He shrugged. “It’s stupid, but it made an impression. One day, when we were living in Milan, everything went wrong for me. A terrible day. Like the kind when your alarm doesn’t go off, you step in dog shit on the way out of your building, you spill coffee on your pants, your best employee resigns, you lose your phone, your father calls from across the ocean to bitch at you for an hour, and you end up so distracted that you take the wrong metro to go home. And it rains.”
“I’ve had those days. I prefer to call them ‘major suckers.’”
“Exactly. I had a major sucker. I came home and all I wanted was…” Hand toss. “Affection? And I realized, she didn’t have that. I didn’t need to cry on her shoulder, but just for her to say, ‘That was a major sucker, sorry,’ would have been good. Vesa wanted us to go out to a party for one of her friends and she didn’t want to wait for me to change.”
“Out of the dog shit shoes,” I nodded, and he nodded back.
“She said she would wait for me in the car downstairs for five minutes only and that it was boring when I brooded. I told her to go alone and never, ever to give me a time limit like I was a child. And after that, I felt differently. Just that one thing changed our whole relationship, for me, anyway.”
“It wasn’t that one thing that changed your feelings. If it had just been one time that she acted thoughtless, you would have forgotten it and moved on,” I argued. “That day made you realize what had been going on all along.”
“She has no sympathy for others,” Luca agreed. “She isn’t interested in other people. Like when she saw a friend’s baby, she didn’t want to hold it.”
“And you do,” I confirmed.
“I like kids.”
Hold it together, Jolie. Do not run across the room and jump him.
“Then I found out that she had cheated. She acted on what felt good at the moment, like a child grabbing for candy. She didn’t have a thought for me or our life together. As much as I was questioning things, and as much as I thought we were coming to the end, I never, never would have treated her that way.”
“Then what is she doing now?” I asked curiously. “I thought she really had to love you to follow you around like this.”
“I think she does. She does love me, I’m sure, in her way,” he said. “And it very much wounded her pride when I left. But I don’t love her, not anymore. I would have ended it anyway, but the cheating, that made it immediate.”
We sat in silence for a minute. “Why did your dad call you on the major sucker day to yell at you? Why do you guys fight?”
His mouth tightened. “My father is a difficult person. Difficult as a teammate, according to everyone who has played polo with him. Difficult as a boss, for sure. There was a huge retirement party for him. The employees were jubilant.”
“Difficult to have as a parent. And as a spouse?”
“My mother believes that everything he does is right, so she doesn’t seem to mind him controlling her, and she isn’t bothered by his rages. I don’t agree with him and I won’t do what he says, and that makes him angry. He likes to be in charge.”
“He’s probably acting worse now that he can’t be. Now that he’s sick.”
Luca nodded, then rubbed his eyes. “He’s terrible. Then I argue with him and both of us get upset, and I feel like the worst piece of shit. He’s dying and I’m fighting with him about how many laps I swam that day to stay in shape. I don’t even play polo anymore, so why does he care about my conditioning?”
“Lanie said he was a dick to you when did play, during your games.”
“He was,” Luca agreed. “He used to yell at me in Italian so no one could understand the words, but they understood the tone. The coach, the referees, the head of the athletic department, they all spoke to him about it. By my senior year, he wasn’t allowed at the pool. I left for college and didn’t talk to him for three years.”
“Jesus.” I began to think that my mom’s benign neglect was a real positive. And I remembered how patient Luca had been in the water with Nola. “You didn’t grow up to be like him. I’m so glad.”
“I try. When I have to make a decision, sometimes I ask myself what my father would do. And then I do the opposite.”
I did the same thing, thinking about my mom. “Is that why you don’t have any furniture?”
He stared at me. “What?”
“You said your dad likes to show, to display. Your own house is empty.”
“I never thought of that.” He looked at the rain hitting the window. “Maybe so.” He laughed a little. “I have a beautiful house, with nowhere to sit.”
“You have a few chairs. I love your house,” I said. He smiled at me. “I wish I could own something. I’m saving, but of course Nola and I will never be able to afford to buy anything here. But I’ll rent a better apartment for us.” I would, too. “With a lot of seating.”
“Ha ha.”
My phone rang next to the couch and I reached for it. “Hold on, I want to say hi to my cousin.” I answered, smiling. “Hi, Maia! Are you using the phone for talking?”
“Jolie, did you write to the colleges I applied to about my promotion at the dealership?” Maia asked.
“Yup! I wrote to every one of them.”
“Did you also send them sob story emails about my hard life?” She sounded furious.
“Well, I thought they should know!” I had spent Nola’s sick day and my unexpected day at home trying to catch up on things, including trying to help Maia. “At the college seminar I went to, they said to update the admissions’ offices and keep in contact about any new accomplishments. And I thought they should know that you’re not exactly a normal applicant. Our family is not a normal family, and you’ve been able to overcome all of their crap. You should be proud—I am!”
“That was none of your business!” Maia yelled. “One school wrote to my college counselor and now they want to put my name in for some kind of scholarship for deserving poor people!”
“That’s great!”
“No, it isn’t!”
“Maia, why? Wouldn’t it be a good thing to get more money?” I tried to reason. “And maybe this will make your chances better—”
“Stay out of this college stuff, ok, Jolie? I’m sorry I ever got you involved in the first place.”
“I was trying to help you. I was trying to do stuff like all the other parents. I thought it wasn’t fair to you, that you didn’t
have someone stepping up and promoting you. I’m sorry if you—”
“I don’t want your help. I don’t need it.”
I took a deep breath. “Maia, you didn’t hear what these families do to get their kids into school. I only told them the truth, things that I thought might not have occurred to you. To make you a more attractive candidate,” I said, echoing what I’d heard in the admissions seminar.
“Look, I know you were trying to help, but you keep butting in! You made me send you my essays, you wanted to come on that tour.”
Then I got mad. “I asked you if you wanted help with your essays, and you said yes. I spent a long time reading and editing them, and believe me, I had other things I could have done with that time. You stayed at my house so you could go on the college tour. I drove your ass over there and took you to lunch. So it was ok for me to do those things for you, but then I wasn’t allowed to see the school?”
Silence. “I’m sorry I said that. It was fun to go with you and Nola, ok? It was fun to see you guys. And I appreciate that you edited my essays.”
“I’m sorry that I sent those emails,” I told her. “I really was trying to help you like I think all the other applicants are getting help, too.”
More silence. “I know. I didn’t mean to yell like that. A lot of stuff is going on.”
“Want to talk about it?” I asked carefully. I fully remembered what it meant to be a teenager.
“No.” But then she sighed hugely and told me, “My dad took off for Alaska again.”
“Shit. Why does he keep doing that? He doesn’t have a passport. They just send him right back when he gets to the Canadian border.”
“He keeps saying that interstate travel is his right under the Constitution. And he doesn’t recognize Canada as a sovereign nation.” Maia sighed again. “Something about the Treaty of Paris.”
“What does your mom say about this?” I asked.
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