“Good,” Luca answered with satisfaction. He moved me up and down against him.
“That’s good too,” I gasped. “Don’t you want to do it now?”
“Are we in a rush? There are other things we can try.” He put his mouth near my ear and started whispering different ideas. “I was thinking, if I lie on my back and put my fingers…” It got raunchy. Filthy. I couldn’t wait anymore. I moved against him restlessly, rubbing his hardness against me, getting closer and closer. His hips jerked.
“Can we do all that, but after you’re inside me?” I asked urgently.
“Yes.” Luca was panting. “That’s a great idea.” He lifted me out of the pool and I lay on a chaise, holding out my arms as he shook a condom from his jeans pocket and rolled it on, closing his eyes as he touched himself. Oh, that was hot. “Open your legs,” he told me, and they just obeyed him, falling to each side. His eyes gleamed. “Just like that. I want to see all of you.” He climbed up the chaise and lay above me, dripping water onto my body.
I took his face in my hands and he held my gaze as he slowly sank into me. “Jolie,” he exhaled, and I choked on a breath as I felt him all the way inside. He rolled his hips, pressing against my clit.
“More. More, please, again!”
Luca started slowly but built his pace, touching me, kissing me, rubbing me, making me crazy. When he came, crashing into my body, I froze for a moment and then let go and let it sweep over me, too, pleasure coursing through every cell, every fiber. He rested his face against my hair and then picked his head up to look at me. I held his cheeks and felt a wash of emotion, the same thing I had felt before, when I had watched him sleep on my couch.
“Are you crying?” He kissed my eyelids. “Are you ok?” Concern surfaced on his face.
“No, I’m great,” I told him, my voice husky and shaking. I didn’t want him to freak out and run away from me, not now. Not ever. I pulled his lips to mine. “I’m not really crying, it’s like an adrenaline thing. I’m wonderful. That was wonderful. I never felt anything like it.”
Luca smiled and kissed me back. “It was wonderful. So are you, Jolie.”
I cried harder, tears spilling from my eyes. “Not really crying,” I gasped. I remembered what I had said before to him, the first time we had discussed sleeping together. I had said we would keep this clean and aboveboard, no feelings, no emotions. I managed to halt the flow of tears.
“Ready?” he asked, and I nodded. He slid out from me with a little groan. “We should do that again, sooner rather than later.”
“Luca…” My hands were clutching at him without my own volition. I needed him close to me.
“Here, come here.” We tangled together and I hugged him as hard as I could with my arms and my legs. He patted my head on his shoulder, kissing me softly. “You’re ok now?”
“Wonderful,” I said again. “Ready for the next time, whenever you can make it happen.” He laughed softly and tilted up my chin with his hand so that he could kiss me for real.
I had said that I could screw him and walk away. No fuss, no muss. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
I had been wrong about that. No lemon squeezy had happened here tonight. This was…more.
Chapter 14
Nola sang a song she was making up as she hopped down the stairs next to me. “Monkey, monkey, monkey bars, Luca, Luca, no falling! Grazie, prego, ciao, jump!”
Songs didn’t have to rhyme.
She was beyond excited to go to the playground with Luca, to play on the bars, for him to push her on the swings (she was sure he could make her go higher than I could), and to show him all her favorite spots on the Starhurst campus. For example, she wanted to walk to the place where she had found some coyote poop. She thought that had been super cool.
She was excited, but I was something else—I thought maybe the right word was conflicted. The night before, Luca and I had lain together next to the pool, so intertwined I wasn’t sure where his body had stopped and mind started. Then we had swum, and made out, and touched, and made out, and ended up having sex again, gently and sweetly, looking into each other’s eyes, and it was the most intense, tender, amazing experience I’d ever had. I’d felt like he was part of me, almost. I had barely, barely held in about 10 gallons of tears that were pricking behind my eyes.
He had driven me home and we’d knocked on Eva’s door, holding hands. She got a grin as big as her face when she’d seen us together. “Fun evening?” she had asked, and both Luca and I had nodded like idiots and he was grinning, too.
Then he had carried Nola upstairs for me and put her in her bed, kissed me, and told me to meet him at Starhurst the next morning. So here we were, on our way, with Nola so excited and me so conflicted. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to see him, but because I did. That was the problem: I wanted to see him too much. Like I had barely been able to let him leave my apartment the night before, like I’d wanted to put my arms around his waist and keep him forever, that kind of thing. The same way I had gone off the deep end when Ty had left me and I’d turned stalker. A terrible, desperate clinginess. Which was way, way wrong, because that was not what Luca and I had. We were friends. And there was the conflict, because friends didn’t act like crazy people with each other.
A friend could have sex with a guy and not feel like his body was made for her alone, that every other woman was just going to have to suck it—suck someone else’s—because his was just for her. Friends didn’t have intense fantasies, not about sex, but about making breakfast together and brushing teeth side by side. Friends certainly didn’t feel the way that I suspected I did about Luca, which I was not able to admit yet, even to myself. Which was why I had cried into my pillow after he had left my apartment, and why my eyes were spectacularly puffy and ugly this morning. I pushed my sunglasses closer to my face to hide it, and I was going to have to keep those babies on all day, even with the heavy clouds in the sky.
My phone was vibrating with a message from Maia as I put Nola into her seat. “CM,” she wrote. Call me. Really? She wanted to actually speak to me? Oh, shit. It had to be bad, but not so bad that it deserved the “CM 911” that she sent when my mom was sick or something was seriously up with Kayla. My heart sank a little further but I stuck the phone in my purse to put it off for a moment. I had other problems, closer at home, to deal with first.
Namely, I had to not act like an idiot in front of Luca, or let on that I was thisclose to an emotional breakdown. I was sane, calm, and normal, or at least that was what I was going to portray. Luca had pulled away the last time I’d freaked out, when I’d been up at my mom’s apartment and had blabbed and blubbered. I most definitely did not want him to pull away. I wanted to pull him closer. To chain him to me. To never, never let him escape.
Well, fuck. There went sane and normal.
He was waiting for us with a big smile in the parking lot of the school, and he kissed me hello, his hands roaming a little down to my ass where Nola couldn’t see. “I can’t help it,” he whispered. “It’s like a beacon.”
“I made up a song!” she yelled to him from inside the car, and when she was released from her seat, he listened appreciatively as she belted it out in her Brenda Lee voice.
“That was very nice! Mi è piaciuto tantissimo, davvero.” He repeated the phase slowly and carefully and Nola said it back. I did too, but in my head. “I have something I hope you’ll like, too,” Luca told her. “Here.” He walked to his trunk and swung it open, and Nola ran over to look inside. Her eyes got as big as plates.
“A bike? A pink one, with butterflies? A real pedal one?” she asked incredulously.
“I thought you could ride it today,” he told her. “We can go to the running track, where’s it’s rubber and soft, just in case.” He reached into the trunk. “And I brought a helmet for safety.”
And there I went, the spigots in my eyes turned on again. “Sorry,” I told them. “I’m really happy about this!” Jesus, Jolie! “Luca, thank you so much. No
la, what do we say?”
“Grazie, Luca!” She held up her arms and he picked her up, and then she hugged him and kissed his cheek. And I stood there, watching how much she liked him, and crying like an idiot, wiping away the tears that streamed out from under my sunglasses. I had to get a grip. I was not going to mess this up for her. No way.
Nola pushed the bike toward the track while adding a new verse to her song, and I walked behind with Luca. “Why are you crying like this?” he asked me quietly. He sounded concerned. “Is your head bothering you?”
“No, I’m fine.” With all the stress lately, I was living in painful acceptance of my almost-constant headaches. “I’m just really, really happy about the bike.” The words cracked and broke as I said them and I pressed my hand into my mouth. Damn it!
“You do sound incredibly happy.” He put his arm around me and I resisted the inclination to grab onto him and bawl.
“I’m totally great!” I said, with all the assurance I could feign. “Let’s go down to the track and do this!”
“Sure.” He was still looking at me sideways as we walked. “I brought band-aids for knees, just in case. I remember my first time on a bike and it was bloody.”
“How did you learn to ride?”
“My father tried to teach me, but he got angry when I fell, and the angrier he got, the more I wobbled. He started yelling that I was slow and not very bright, and went inside the villa. The gardener taught me instead. He was a nice old man, very patient.”
I thought about Luca as a little boy, crying while his dad yelled at him just for being a child and making mistakes. “I’m so sorry to hear that story!” My sunglasses slipped down my nose as I practically sobbed.
“Jolie!” Luca stopped and put his hands on my shoulders. “It happened more than twenty years ago! Are you really crying over that?” He paused. “Or is it something else? Are you regretting last night?”
“Not at all!” This time, the assurance was real. I could never, never regret what we had done. “I loved every second of that. I’m just a little, um, worried this morning. Maia was texting me, saying she needs to talk. That’s always bad, right? I’m afraid to know what’s wrong so I put my phone at the bottom of my purse so it will get covered by silt and fossilize.”
“Call her. Get it over with.” He pulled some band-aids out of his pocket and held them up for me to see. “Better to rip it right off. Are you sure that’s what’s the matter?” He hugged me, rubbing my back for a moment.
“What else could be wrong?” I asked. I pressed my cheek to his shirt and took a deep breath so I could fill myself with his delicious Luca-ness. No, not a stalker at all. “It’s a beautiful day, you just gave Nola the best present she’s ever gotten. Thank you so, so much.” Don’t cry! “I just feel so lucky to have you, Luca. I’m so glad we’re friends. Not for the gifts! I mean, because…” No, don’t fucking cry!
“I’m glad you both like the bike. Let’s teach her how to ride it.” He jogged ahead to Nola.
I was pushing him away. I was making him think I was crazy, because I actually was. God damn it! I stood for a moment, taking deep breaths. I had to calm down before he realized—before he saw—
“Mama! Come on!”
I waved and started walking.
Luca helped her push the bike onto the rubber oval, the scene of many unhappy training runs for me under the hot spring sun during track and field season. I listened as he showed her how to brake with her feet and held the bike upright as she practiced doing it. Then slowly, he started to push and she pedaled, a huge smile on her face. I sat on the stone bleachers and fished out my phone to take a million pictures of the two of them together.
Maia had written again, “Jolie?” I couldn’t put it off anymore.
“Hi. What’s wrong?” I asked when she answered.
“No joke about me using the phone for voice communication?” she asked me.
“Sorry, I’m not in the mood to rise to my normal level of hilarity. What’s wrong?” I repeated.
“Nothing,” Maia answered quickly. “Everything here is good. I’ve been checking in with your mom and she’s doing well. They’re keeping her appointments, especially now that you got them to use ride shares and car services.”
And I was paying for all that, and calling Ron and my mom to remind them of every appointment, every time I thought they should be buying groceries, every morning before school to make sure that Kayla was going to attend that day, every other way I could think of to keep them on track. I had replaced the cordless phone in their apartment with their old rotary dial, which rang loud enough to wake the dead. “Ok, good,” I said to my cousin. “Thanks for looking out for her.”
“You always look out for people, right? You always tried to look out for me.”
Her voice sounded so strange. My anxiety went up about 1000%. “What the fuck is wrong, Maia?” My own voice sounded tense, even to me.
“Nothing, I swear. I just wanted to tell you,” she said, then stopped. “I thought it would be better if you heard it from me, since people up here already know and somebody’s going give it away to you.” She paused. “I’m not going to college next year.”
My stomach dropped. “You mean, you’re delaying for a year? Like, a gap year?” I tried to clarify, because I had to be misunderstanding her.
“No, I mean, I’m not going to go. Ever. I’m doing really well at my job—”
“Wait a second!” I waved my hands in the air for her to stop, like I was a traffic cop. “Wait, Maia! Do you want to work there for your whole life, though? There are so many things you can do. Why limit yourself now? You have to go to college,” I said, keeping my voice level, reasonable.
“Hunter is going to start working for his dad. He’ll take over the business and in a few years I’ll go work there also. I’ll run the office. I’m really good at that.”
Fucking Hunter! I knew this was about her stupid boyfriend. “Maia, you can’t base your life around your high school boyfriend. I mean, I know it seems like he’s everything, right now, but when you get out of our dumb little town, you’ll see that there are so many great guys.”
“You don’t take my relationship with him seriously at all!” she shot out, and I saw the error of my ways. I never, never should have disparaged Young Love.
“I just mean that you have the opportunity to do so much more than what’s available there. You’re such a smart girl, the whole world is your fucking oyster! If you want to take some more time to work before you go, to save more money, that makes a lot of sense. You can defer, right?” I was losing the reasonable tone.
“No,” she said firmly. “I’m not going to go to college.” I heard her take a breath. “At the end of senior year, Hunter and I are getting married.”
“What?” I shrieked it. Luca and Nola looked up at me and now I waved my hands to say I was fine, everything was fine.
“We’re getting married,” she repeated. “We love each other so much. You don’t understand.”
“Ok, you love each other. That’s great, Maia, seriously.” Not great at all. I hated this Hunter, who was selfishly ruining her life. “It’s just that you’re really young to get married. Dating is great. It’s awesome!”
“No, we have to get married,” she said stubbornly.
“Why the rush?” Then it hit me, slapped me right in the face, just as she said the words:
“I’m pregnant. We want to have the baby.”
I couldn’t speak.
“We weren’t exactly trying for this, but we weren’t not trying, if you know what I mean,” Maia explained. She actually laughed. “I know it will be hard, but I have Hunter, and his family. They’re really excited.”
Still, no words.
“I hoped you would be excited too, after you get used to the idea,” she said.
I tried to talk. There were so many things I needed to say to her.
In my continued silence, Maia kept going. “You did it, right? I mean, you�
�re always saying that it was so hard to have a baby, but Nola’s so great. And I’ll have way more help than you ever did. Ty was terrible, but Hunter is a really good guy. I love his mom and dad.” She paused, waiting for me to respond. “I’m really happy about this. Hunter and I will have a great life together. Maybe we’re a little young, but you were kind of young when you had Nola. And now, you’re doing so well. You have your apartment and your job and you handle everything up here with your parents. I can do that, just like you do.”
“I have to go,” I told her. “I can’t talk right now.” That was literally true. I was having a very hard time forcing words from my throat.
“Jolie, come on! Just be glad for me.” She was exasperated, annoyed that I wasn’t squealing and clapping.
Glad for her? Anger rushed through my body. “Sure. Sure! I’m really happy for you, Maia,” I said, the irony thick enough to cut with a knife.
“Really?” She missed the sarcasm. She just sounded hopeful.
“Of course! Out of everyone in your graduating class, you had every opportunity to get out of our dead-end backwater and do something exciting and cool with your life. You had every door open to you, but you chose to be as irresponsible as I was, and now you’ve screwed your future.”
“I haven’t screwed anything!” she said angrily. “It’s just a different future from what you were trying to force on me!”
“Force on you? I was helping you! I was trying to prevent exactly this, you throwing away your potential! Do you seriously think that my life is something to emulate? I live in an apartment with a guy who plays drums over my head twenty-two hours out of each day, I drive a car that was a piece of shit even when I bought it, I struggle to provide for Nola, to take care of my parents, to try to watch over you! I’m very, very sorry that the fact that I don’t lie down and cry each day somehow encouraged you to think that you should do what you’re doing now.”
“I’m not the same as you, Jolie! I don’t want the same things! If you can’t be happy for me, then fuck you. Plenty of people are really excited about this.” She started to talk about all her dumb little friends who had always acted like Maia and Hunter were Deborah Kerr and Carey Grant and it was just the dreamiest thing ever.
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