by Cassie Rocca
“Very” her friend said, a satisfied expression on her face. “I knew he was the right one. It took you long enough to figure it out, but finally you two are together.”
“Hey, he wasn’t exactly Speedy Gonzales himself, am I right?” muttered Zoe, shaking her head. “If I think about how much time we’ve wasted…”
“Well I don’t consider it a waste of time. At the end of the day, you are together. And you were more in tune with each other than a lot of other couples I know.”
“You’re right,” sighed Zoe, her eyes shining like never before. “He’s taking me to dinner at the River Café tonight, seeing as our hot date for Valentine’s Day got blown out.”
“You know, you wouldn’t think Eric was the romantic type, but actually he is.”
“Yes, in his own weird way – he’s not mushy, and that makes him even cuter. And he’s so adorable when he’s embarrassed… God, I could just kiss him to pieces!”
“I think that college student over there feels the same way,” whispered Liberty, who had walked up behind her, into her ear.
Zoe turned to the counter and her eyes narrowed when she saw the flirty way that the girl – who was wearing a skirt that was way too short – was behaving with Eric.
“Excuse me a moment,” she hissed, and marched off in their direction.
Eric smiled when he saw her but carried on explaining to the girl in front of him how the intricate vintage music box worked. “It’s a perfect gift for your friend if, as you say, she likes collectibles. This is a truly unique piece.”
“You almost make me want to keep it for myself,” giggled the girl.
“Think about it – if you decide to keep it, you can always come back here to see if you can find something else for your friend,” said Eric, kindly.
“Maybe you’re right. The way you talk about this music box has almost made me fall in love with it. But maybe if you could give me some more details…”
“I’ll be happy to help you if you need any more information,” cut in Zoe, a falsely angelic smile on her lips.
“Oh no, that’s fine – your colleague is already doing a great job of helping me.”
“My boyfriend is very sweet, but he doesn’t know as much about the vintage items as I do,” said Zoe, turning in the direction of Eric and patting his arm. “Go back to your work, honey. I’ll deal with her,” she said in a soothing voice, before planting a kiss on his mouth.
While Eric walked away, a confused expression on his face, Zoe turned her eyes back to the girl, trying not to glare at her too much. “So, what do you want to know?”
“Look, I’ve decided: I’ll take it,” the girl stammered, pulling out her wallet from her backpack. “I don’t really need to know anything else.”
“I totally agree. When you see something unique, the best thing to do is snatch it up before someone else steals it out from under your nose,” said Zoe with a wink.
Once the girl had left, Zoe joined Eric and Clover in the office.
“You went over there to mark your territory like a rottweiler! Bravo!” laughed Clover, who was perched on the edge of her desk.
Eric looked at her with incredulity.
“Hold on, let me get this straight: you were jealous of that girl?”
“She was flirting with you absolutely shamelessly! Jeez, how old was she, eighteen? They start young, these girls today,” Zoe muttered, approaching him. She looked at him with a critical eye, then shook her head. “No, that’s not going to work.”
“What do you mean?”
Zoe stared at the collar of his dark shirt, which was unbuttoned at the throat, and hurriedly did it up.
“Since when have you gone around dressed like this? Do you really need to be flashing all this flesh to the other girls? And what about your hair? Couldn’t you have kept it combed this morning?” She put her hands on his head in an attempt to tame the messy curls that gave him that mussed look that she liked so much. “You used to keep your hair so perfectly combed it looked like plastic.”
“You said that you like it better like this,” he protested in puzzlement.
“And where are the glasses?”
Zoe looked around, spotted them on the desk and grabbed them, sticking them on his nose. “Okay, now you’re perfect.”
Clover, chuckling in the corner, intercepted Eric’s amazed glance and shrugged. “Who the hell understands her?” she mouthed to him.
“Zoe, you gave me a forty-five minute sermon about how I never used to make the most of my appearance and told me that all I needed to do to make myself better looking was wear a sexier shirt, leave my hair messy and wear contact lenses… and now you’re changing your mind?” asked Eric.
Zoe smiled at him gently.
“This just shows how much I like you, even when you look like the teacher’s pet!” She flung her arms around him and kissed him briefly.
“Hey, I don’t want you to change, let’s be clear about that.”
“And she especially doesn’t want other girls looking at you!” Snorted Clover from behind her.
“Yeah, that too,” agreed Zoe.
His arms around her, Eric laughed.
“So does that mean that I have to make myself look ugly every day just to reassure you?”
“‘Ugly’ isn’t quite the right word, but if you could avoid batting your eyelashes at half-naked young girls I would be grateful, yes.”
Eric shook his head.
“Zoe Mathison jealous over me! There must be something in the air that’s making her crazy.”
“I was already jealous, but I couldn’t make it too obvious,” smiled Zoe. “Anyway, now that I’ve finally got my hands on you I have no intention of letting anyone take you away from me. The less people notice you, the better.”
“The holidays have been really generous with us this year,” said Clover, looking at them. “Christmas brought me Cade, Valentine’s Day brought the two of you together… What’s the next one?”
“Easter, I suppose” giggled Zoe. “Too bad that Liberty is already taken. We could have prepared a giant egg with a hunky male stripper in it and have it delivered right here! What a gift that would have been? It’d have knocked her off her feet!”
Eric grimaced. “That sounds more like something you would have wanted to get.”
“Maybe once upon a time, but not any more,” said Zoe, looking at him carefully with a mischievous expression on her beautiful face. “But seeing you climb out of a huge Easter egg dressed only in chocolate wouldn’t be a bad idea…”
Eric cleared his throat in embarrassment, and Clover laughed heartily.
“We should all go out on a date together,” suggested Zoe. “We are all in couples now, it would be fun. Me and Eric, you and Cade, Lib and Justin.” She looked over at Eric with a smirk. “We deserve an official night out with our friends after the disaster a few weeks ago.”
“Finally I will have someone equipped with a reasonably high IQ to talk to,” he nodded, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “By the way: that scene that you made before with that poor girl – can I do that too when the next slimeball comes in here and tries the moves on you?”
“Of course you can,” said Zoe, hugging him tightly. It felt as though she was living in some beautiful dream from which she hoped she would never wake up.
Eric Morgan had always given her everything she needed as a friend, and it turned out he gave her even more as a boyfriend. Letting him act jealous was the least he deserved: she’d have fly posted all of downtown New York, if only she could, to cry out to all and sundry that this guy was hers and hers alone.
She suddenly felt a hint of anxiety, and she looked into his eyes. “Promise me you’ll stay with me forever,” she murmured. “I don’t care how, I just want to know you’ll always be there.”
“I always have been.”
“And you won’t hightail it to Boston the first time we have a problem, right?”
“No,” said Eric with
a gentle smile.
“And what if I make you angry?”
“You always make me angry!”
Zoe ignored his sarcasm. “And if I disappoint you?”
“What are you doing, covering your back?”
“I just want to be sure.”
Eric looked into her eyes, gave her a quick kiss, then shrugged.
“Maybe I could go to Boston…” Zoe stiffened, but he tightened his grip. “But I’m sure that it wouldn’t be long before I came back here.” He rested his forehead on hers and looked into her eyes with profound love. “I’ve waited so long… How could I have managed if I hadn’t been sure that you’d be worth it, don’t you think?”
“You’re probably right,” she sighed, feeling her fear slip away.
“Hey, I’m the brainy one, remember?” joked Eric. “I’ve done my calculations, so you can rest easy.”
Zoe gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder.
The click of a camera made them turn around. Clover was holding the old Polaroid instant camera that she always kept on her desk and looking at them with a tender smile on her face.
“Your first official picture as sweethearts,” she said, waving the photo.
Zoe turned in her direction. “You could have used my camera instead of old that thing, we might have got a decent picture!”
“What do you care? It’s a keepsake, not a photo shoot!”
Eric glanced at the photograph and snorted in amusement. “God, we look as though we’re stoned out of our gourds! Check out our faces!”
“Drug addicts of love,” winked Zoe, planting a kiss on his mouth. Then she reached over to Clover. “Thank you for taking that, I will treasure it.”
“No way, this is mine,” said Clover, walking over to the big noticeboard on the wall behind her desk upon which were pinned dozens of photographs similar to the one in her hand. It was a sort of a collection of all the most successful gifts she had found over the years – the ones she was most proud of.
“I did play a small role in all of this and I’m going to take the credit that I deserve!”
Zoe gave way. “It’s true, you were great. Your courtship plan for Valentine’s Day was a stroke of genius, even if we did screw up part of it.”
“Not entirely, since I managed to bump the reservation at the restaurant,” Eric corrected her. Then he turned to Clover, with a gentle smile. “I owe you a lot. You’re help’s been so precious, and I don’t just mean in the last few days, I mean always. If I didn’t give in more than once that was thanks to you and your unshakable optimism.”
“Hey, don’t make me cry! For the last few months I’ve been getting emotional about happiness.” Clover joined them, hugging them both in a single embrace. “I love you guys.”
“We love you too.”
“Ok, this is all very nice, but I would like some of you to actually go back to work now. If it’s not too much trouble.”
Zoe and Eric sat up straight and Clover smiled at Liberty’s ostentatiously bored voice as she walked past them absently.
“Come on over here, Ice Lady,” Clover called out, pulling her by the hand and dragging her into the group hug.
Liberty stiffened slightly, and snorted. “Since you fell in love you’ve all become such a drag. How long do you think this honeymoon period is going to last?”
“You tell us, you’ve been in love longer than we have,” said Zoe.
Slipping away from their arms, Liberty straightened her suit jacket. “It should wear off in a hurry, then. Thank God”
Clover frowned. “But I don’t want to stop feeling like I’m walking on air every time I think about him!”
“Me neither,” said Zoe, looking at Eric, who smiled and squeezed her tighter.
“I’ve been drifting aimlessly for years and now that I have finally found me a decent one, it’s going to be while before my euphoria fades.”
Liberty shook her head. “God help me! I’ve spent years being pummelled by Clover’s cartoon optimism and Zoe’s sex kitten exuberance. I used to like being able to count on Eric’s pragmatic sarcasm, but I note with regret that you seem to have turned his head.” She looked at him sternly, but could not entirely prevent a hint of sweetness appearing in her green eyes. “Hey, just don’t turn into a shrinking violet, all right? I still need someone to keep them in check when I’m too busy to do it myself.”
“You can count on me,” smiled Eric, winking at her.
Clover pointed at her boss threateningly. “I know your cynicism and sarcasm is just a mask, even though I will never understood why. But one day I’ll work it out and I’ll find something to loosen you up. And at that point, your photo is going to end up on that wall together with all the others.”
“You can dig all you want, you won’t find anything,” smiled Liberty, walking away.
Clover followed her. “You’re wrong – there is always something precious under the surface of each of us!”
“In my case, it’s probably crude oil!”
While the sound of her colleagues’ voices grew distant, Zoe abandoned herself in Eric’s arms. “How long do you think they’ll keep that up?”
“How long is it until closing time?” he joked. “When Clover makes up her mind about something she’s pretty much unstoppable, as you know. But Liberty is even more stubborn than she is, so I’m afraid it might go on indefinitely. The afternoon is looking like it’s going to be a long and exhausting one.”
Zoe touched his neck with a finger, a mischievous expression on her face.
“We could make it more interesting, you know?”
“What you have in mind?”
“Oh, I have dozens of ideas. The problem is that you have to be naked for all of them, and I very much doubt that you would let me strip you off anywhere in the store, with Liberty only a few steps away…”
She felt his arms tighten around her, squeezing her to that exciting – and excited – body which Zoe was now anxious to see and touch at all times of the day and night. She just didn’t seem to be able to get enough of the guy – and they had plenty of lost time to make up for.
Eric’s face didn’t change, which meant that it took Zoe a moment to understand the meaning of his answer.
“You’re right – with Liberty only a few steps away, I wouldn’t be comfortable. But if there were a couple of doors between us… You know your darkroom? Nobody goes in there without your permission…”
“Eric Morgan, I never imagined that you were so brazen!” Zoe pulled back from him, amazed, amused and, in spite of herself, intrigued. “I’d never have expected to hear you propose a quickie in the darkroom! But I like it – let’s go!”
She grabbed his arm and began to drag him toward the door, but Eric held back.
“Hey, wait a minute. If you say it like that it sounds sad, and meaningless. ‘Quickie’… That’s a horrible word for a few moments of passion with the woman you love! It’s never going to be ‘quickies’ or anything like that with me. I’m not like your exes.”
Zoe grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head down so that she could kiss him ardently. She worked hard at driving him half-crazy with lust, and when she knew she had him in the palm of her hand, she moved her lips slightly away from his and said, “So do you want to keep talking, you dirty little nerd?”
“No,” said Eric huskily. “We can talk later.”
Zoe giggled and dragged him quickly upstairs.
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To think that it was only yesterday that I used to walk around bo
okshops, daydreaming about one day seeing my own name on the cover of a novel… and now here I am with my second!
Please don’t wake me up!
I never know whether I should be grateful to God, to destiny or to the universe in general for all this, but certainly some of the credit goes to the people around me:
The ones who first gave me life as well as those few but wonderful members of my family who have always encouraged me to try.
To all those I met later, because they found themselves watching from close-up the transformation of a shy, almost invisible girl into a girl who is… well, still shy, but who now has a ‘famous’ name.
To all those who actually turned this dream into a reality: my publisher and the people he assigned to work with me, who have followed me and believed in me every step of the way.
To all those who keep it alive: my readers, who trusted me right from the beginning and every day inundate me with affection and enthusiasm.
I hope I always deserve your esteem.
About Cassie Rocca
CASSIE ROCCA is a writer of Sicilian origin who has lived in Genoa since the age of three. In everyday life she is a child-minder, a job which gives her plenty of ideas for her modern fairy tales.
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