by Anna Premoli
Amalia thought that what kept him silent about his feelings was shyness mixed some instinct of self-preservation. At least, he was very careful not to reveal anything, while she was the exact opposite: she had to really fight against herself not to start coming out with sweet nothings, because she knew in her heart that Ryan really didn’t want to hear any of that kind of stuff. Even when he was relaxed, his eyes always communicated to her some sort of warning: they told her not to go there. She was absolutely certain that he wouldn’t appreciate any unrequited feelings she might show him – and in any case, their relationship was going to end in forty-eight hours. Only forty-eight hours.
Realizing the actual amount of time remaining made her wake up from the trance that Ryan’s kisses had put her in, and she suddenly lifted her head and observed their bodies, entangled on the living room carpet. The interior designer probably hadn’t considered it being put to such use, given how rough the texture was.
Ryan immediately noticed the change in her mood and stopped moving too.
“Is there anything wrong?” he asked her softly, caressing her face with his big hands.
“No, nothing,” she tried to reassure him.
He probably noticed the tremor in her voice, but didn’t remark on it. He moved his hand towards her breasts instead, caressing one and then the other until finally he took off her black lace bra. She had never worn that bra much until one day she had noticed how much Ryan seemed to like it when she wore lace. When he touched the delicate fabric, his reactions, which were always impulsive, became absolutely uncontrollable.
For that weekend, she was planning to wear her best lingerie. Sure, once those forty-eight hours were up she would be forced to burn a very valuable collection of underwear, but it would be worth it. If she had to admit defeat – and there was nothing that made her think that wasn’t how things were going to end – she would have at least fought for herself.
“Your head’s so full,” he whispered while he kissed her neck, “let me help you stop thinking for a while.”
Amalia smiled bitterly. At this point she barely had any reason left, but she decided now wasn’t the best time to talk about it so she decided to excite him even more. She grabbed his shoulders and with a rapid movement forced him down onto the floor, kneeling down too and whipping his briefs off. God, he really was handsome when he was completely naked.
Ryan closed his eyes and when Amalia started caressing all of his body, at first with her hands and then with her tongue he gave a long, agonized sigh.
“Can we do this later?” he begged her. “I know I must sound like a fool right now, but I don’t think I can resist much longer…”
“What? Didn’t you say you always work better when you’re stressed?” she teased him, raising her eyes for a moment to observe him. And yes, he didn’t really look as if he could control himself much longer.
“I always used to work best under stress – and then I met you…” he confided to her in a hoarse voice.
Very unwillingly, Amalia gave up her intentions, tearing off her panties and in a moment was straddling him – it was a position that she liked, because it made her feel as though for once she was in charge. And she had just decided to do something she would otherwise never have done with a man she’d only been sleeping with for five days. But Sunday evening was very close and she didn’t want to leave any possibility unexplored.
“The condoms are in my jacket pocket,” he said, pointing to his clothes which lay abandoned on the floor a few yards away.
But she shook her head in denial.
“I’m on the pill,” she revealed. “And I’m clean. How about you?”
That question implied a huge amount of trust on her part, and Ryan really hadn’t been expecting anything like it.
“I’m totally clean. Are you sure about this?”
As a reply, Amalia bent over him and brought him inside her in a single fluid movement, taking him totally by surprise. He moaned and grabbed her by her waist, and she closed her eyes and savored the feeling of being united with him with no barrier between them.
*
Incapable of any movement, they let a few moments go by as they enjoyed that powerful new sensation, and then Amalia opened her eyes and almost stopped breathing for an instant. Life is made up of moments and memories that have a lasting impression on us, and that particular moment would torment her more than any other: Ryan, in the semi-darkness of her apartment, his hair mussed and his lips red from kissing hers, looking at her as though she were the most precious thing in the world. She sensed the emotion in his face so powerfully that she caressed his cheek with a hand to reassure him. But while touching him she went close enough to trigger something inside him. He moved closer and kissed her possessively. Their bodies felt each other’s urgency and let themselves go, at a rhythm determined more by necessity than by will. That time, neither of them attempted to slow the pace and when, after a few minutes, they finally exploded together, Amalia was suddenly certain that nothing, absolutely nothing, would ever be better than that.
Ryan woke up in the middle of the night with the sensation that his heart was about to explode. And it wasn’t only a figure of speech. He sat up, trying not to make a noise or wake Amalia. She lay asleep beside him, her lovely hair all around her face, with one hand under the nape of her neck and the other stretched out towards him. She was the most incredible woman he’d ever met, and seeing her lying there was almost enough to make him lose his mind. Or the little of it he had left, anyway.
The whole thing was going to be the end of him, it was glaringly obvious now. Even he could see it, despite his total lack of intuition recently. He was sinking and felt unable to do anything to save himself. He wasn’t fooling himself about it, though: there was no way he would be able to get away from her before Sunday evening, he was like an addict who can’t get to the rehab clinic of his own free will. Yes, he thought, Amalia actually was like a drug for him, the analogy was absolutely perfect.
The only thought that consoled him was the realization that all those years before he had read the situation correctly: Amalia was lethal for him, and he had known it. Maybe she didn’t have the same effect on everybody, but she clearly did on him. She was like kryptonite for Superman: it might look like an ordinary, run of the mill piece of stone, no different from any other, but in reality it was an invincible weapon against anyone happening to come from the wrong planet.
It was all his own fault: if that woman had always remained in a corner of his mind, even after ten years, there must be a reason. Ryan had made the childish mistake of thinking he was above all that, he had been too sure that he would be able to control himself around her, even if he had clearly seen all the warning signs his mind had been flashing him. Now he thought about it, it occurred to him he might have even heard anti-aircraft sirens.
So if his head wanted to explode, his heart was beating faster and faster and his blood pressure was threatening to give him a coronary in the middle of the night, he only had himself to blame, nobody else.
He had never seen himself as a man who could be driven by his emotions – not because he had any weird theory about it, but simply because it happened to him so rarely. He had been a very capable and determined kid, and his plans for his future had required commitment and a lot of hard work, and he had given up all distractions without a second thought. That’s why he had thought they weren’t particularly important to him. But apparently, he had been wrong.
He had even lived with a girl for a whole year, and he still hadn’t felt the way he did after only five days with Amalia. Five days. The mere thought of that took his breath away again – and he didn’t enjoy the sensation at all.
He knew that most people would have been happy to finally meet that one person who could make them re-think all their certainties… that unique, special human being who could give them the strength to move mountains. But the thought of finding himself in that state just made him feel ridiculous. First of al
l, he wasn’t really used to having to deal with his irrational side – in fact he didn’t know that side of himself at all, whilst he knew the calm and rational part well. The second reason for feeling ridiculous was that for absolutely the first time in his life he was able to understand the words ‘I would do anything for you’. In the past, he’d thought they were just stupid, empty rhetoric – a bit of excessive poetic license.
But he had been wrong the whole time. At that exact moment, had she asked him to jump off the Brooklyn bridge, he would have done it. Plain and simple. He had no doubt at all about it. He would have jumped with no regrets whatsoever.
Falling in love and being temporarily unfit to plead were the exactly same thing. He wondered how the hell people managed to have a normal life while they were going through that? When all senses seemed to be amplified, all colors appeared more intense and smells more persistent. When you were driven by the impossibility of thinking, working and even sleeping. Seriously, how did other people handle it? He really couldn’t find an answer.
Ryan stood up and headed towards the kitchen. He was thirsty and needed an excuse not to wake Amalia up and start kissing her again. Had she been someone else – that is, if she hadn’t been part of an immense estate passed down through the generations – he really would have lost his mind over her.
He would have booked a flight for Las Vegas for the following day and, assuming she actually felt the same, he would have married her as soon as they got off the plane. He would then have presented Wyatt with a perfectly acceptable reason for not proceeding with the trial. Ok, it wouldn’t have been ideal regarding his intention of making a career for himself in the New York D.A.’s office. Nevertheless, he was sure: had she been another lawyer, he would have done it. For love, he thought, he would do things that under other circumstances he wouldn’t even consider.
But Amalia was Amalia, born and raised amongst privilege, the walking, talking personification of a world he had never had any respect for. She was who she was anyway, and he was in no position to ask her to change. It would have been unfair and unreasonable. And anyway, the two of them wouldn’t have lasted long if one of them had to change to please the other. Sooner or later the same issues would emerge, causing an inevitable rift. For people like them, there was no easy way out.
That’s why breaking up with her the following Sunday would be awful, but watching their relationship slowly destroying itself would be even worse. He would throw himself into that weekend, and then he would be able to close that door forever. Luckily for him, in all his thirty-three years he had only met one woman who was able to put him in such a state of confusion. He hoped to God that he wouldn’t meet another for at least the next fifty years.
19
Amalia woke up with a strange sensation in her chest, and she instinctively reached her arm out towards Ryan, only to find that his side of the bed was empty. She raised her blonde head from the pillow and began peering around the room in search of him.
“Ryan?” she called, without completely managing to hide the slight note of panic in her voice, and feeling annoyed with herself for it. Realizing that she couldn’t bear his absence was extremely irritating, but given how things were going she was going to have to learn to live without him in the very near future.
He immediately popped his head round the door, just as handsome as usual but unfortunately already dressed.
“Hey, good morning, sleepy head. Breakfast is ready and waiting for you. So come on, ‘cause this is going to be an intense day,” he added with a lovely – and uncharacteristically relaxed – smile.
“Oh, yes, I almost forgot… Judge Wyatt’s last crazy task…” mumbled Amalia, while she stood up and starting looking through her wardrobe for something suitable to wear for that day’s punishment detail. Another few preposterous assignments like the last ones and she would have gone through all her – admittedly few – informal pieces of clothing.
“I would have thought that you’d enjoy this one at least!” he teased her, entering the room. He walked over to her and put his arms around her waist, breathing in the perfume of her hair and kissing her loudly on her lips. Ryan was one of those men who liked to kiss their partner all the time, something she couldn’t get over her surprise at – if a few weeks earlier she’d been asked to guess, she would have said without hesitation that he was a cold, distant kind of guy.
“Well, luckily it’s a damn sight better than the kindergarten. Though to be honest, practically anything would be better than a kindergarten for me, as I guess you’ve figured out for yourself by now.”
She disentangled herself from him and grabbed a blue hoodie and some jeans. She would never have thought that one day she’d be wearing such casual clothes so often.
“Quite the contrary – you were pretty damn good with those kids,” he said encouragingly.
She glanced at him. “You’re just a liar, and you know it. You’re the one who’s good with kids – what I usually do is bribe them to keep away from me. And I do it for their own good. If I were one of them, I would never trust me,” she said in a very serious voice while she finished getting dressed.
“You are going to change that attitude one day,” he insisted, as though he could predict the future.
She stared at him dubiously. “Who me? Er, I really don’t think so.”
And so saying, she headed off towards the kitchen, from whence the aroma of coffee was drifting. When she got there, she discovered that Ryan had added a delicious looking muffin to her favorite cappuccino.
She would never have gone out for breakfast, she thought – much less in March when it was about forty degrees outside.
“Can you please just accept that I don’t eat in the morning?” she asked, pointing at the tempting little cake.
He smiled and handed it to her. He certainly was persistent, that was undeniable. In fact, when it came to talking about him, the word ‘persistence’ itself took on a whole new meaning.
Amalia raised the muffin to her eyes, scrutinizing it from extremely close range, and after pondering the issue for quite some time she decided to taste it.
“Just this once, then…” she mumbled, feeling annoyed with herself for not being able to resist. She took a big bite and chewed away in front of an amused Ryan.
“I’d really like to think that I’ve succeeded in teaching you at least a couple of healthy things by the end of this week: having breakfast in the morning…” he started, only to be immediately interrupted by Amalia.
“And what about having sex in the morning, huh? What do you think about that? Is that a habit I should continue with too?” she asked pugnaciously – seeing just how casually he could refer to the end of the week and what would come after it made her really angry.
He stood there speechless with his mouth hanging open for a moment, undecided as to whether he should reply or not.
“Well, even though I’ve only got brothers so I grew up around men, I think I know enough about women to understand when a question is better left unanswered. There’s no chance that I could actually manage to answer it correctly anyway. So… Errr… what would you like me to say?” he asked, smiling to try and break the tension that had suddenly appeared.
“What do you feel like saying?” insisted Amalia, determined to obtain an answer.
“Remind me never to play this game with you again…” he said, in an attempt to play for time, but Amalia’s posture was a clear signal that her patience was running out.
“Are we already talking about tomorrow evening?” he asked, turning serious as well. “I thought we were gonna try to enjoy this last day together without any arguments.”
Amalia raised her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation.
“Hey, you are the one who can’t stop talking about what’s going to happen after tomorrow evening! You’re the one who keeps bringing it up, not me! So please cut it out. I get it, I promise you, it’s crystal clear that you can’t wait for tomorrow to come, fine. But don’
t worry, we’re almost there…” she concluded sarcastically.
Ryan’s patience seemed to be infinite that morning, though.
“Come on, let’s not fight,” he said, surprising her, before bending over to steal a kiss which he had probably meant to be a quick one, but which turned very intense very quickly.
“Your mouth tastes of blueberry muffin…” he sighed as he held her tight.
His choice of blueberries was quite apt: it was actually a berry that represented her well. They are sometimes a bitter-tasting, but they hide a sweetness that you only discover after eating them for a while and letting your palate get accustomed to the taste.
“I’m the type of woman only connoisseurs are able to appreciate,” she answered, hugging and kissing him, hoping to be able to express in that way what she somehow couldn’t manage to in words. Luckily, she was still able to kiss.
They pulled themselves apart with no little effort, and only because at that point it was really getting late. They were expected at The Humane Society dog shelter at nine sharp. Wyatt had chosen it because some relative of his worked there as a volunteer every once in a while. It seemed as though the judge had connections everywhere.
“You know, Michelle actually foresaw all of this,” Amalia told him while they were walking towards the metro station, clad in thick winter coats.