by Anna Chillon
Giada
A Guilty Love
ANNA CHILLON
Translated by
Sally Ibba
This is a work of fantasy.
Characters, places and events are the result of the author’s imagination.
Any reference to actual events or to real people is purely coincidental.
© Copyright 2018 Anna Chillon
All rights reserved.
www.annachillon.it
[email protected]
For Robby,
friend, confidant, accomplice.
Lover.
Man.
Chapter 1
One by one my fingers slotted into the metal links of the hexagonal fencing. My forehead rested on the wire and my eyes found two holes to spy through with an unimpeded view.
It was damn hot, and not because it was an April evening after a particularly beautiful day. Simon lifted the pickaxe over his head and his biceps burst, tightening his muscles and emphasising his physique. His legs steadied on the ground and the pent-up energy was released with a dry blow that shattered the rock.
That’s why I felt so bloody hot.
“Oh yes, yes, that’s so good, put it in...” Zoe urged him at my side, sucking on an ice pop. I could hear her even though I had the iPod in my ears. ‘Jungle’ by the Ambassadors was the soundtrack for this scene.
“Don’t you want to follow me into the jungle?”
Hell yes, I’d even follow him into the desert.
Simon threw down his tool and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, shaking his head to loosen the damp hair that was sticking to his scalp. Not content with that, he took off his orange uniform vest, under which his wet T-shirt was sticking to his chest. To our total joy he took that off too, so for ten or so seconds Zoe and I got to enjoy the view of his naked torso before he put the vest back on.
The uniform the community service workers had to wear was an insult to them and their chiselled physiques; it looked like a proper prison uniform, as if the lock shutting them inside the fencing wasn’t already enough to make them look like real prisoners. But they weren’t prisoners, they were just bad boys working out their punishment for petty crimes.
At the time, Zoe and I should have been watching the football match, admiring the good boys running after the ball under the floodlights. It just so happened that we’d found it much more interesting to hang out at the back of the new pitch changing rooms, where they were digging the new water pipelines. The floodlight pointing at the ditch left us in the shadows out of sight, and allowed us to contemplate an alpha male specimen at work.
Simon would become a great alpha male, I was sure of that.
I saw him gesticulating animatedly with the team leader and moving back out of the way of the digger.
“No, what are you doing, are you leaving?” Zoe complained. “It’s not fair!” She protested, shaking the fence like a gorilla in a cage.
Although he was quite a way off, Simon heard her and moved away from the floodlights, squinting in our direction.
“Yup!” Zoe gasped, turning her back and pointing to a star, a bird, a UFO... or anything she could find in the cloudy night sky that she could pretend to be interested in. In other words... nothing.
I was slower and carried on, besotted, watching as the object of our erotic fantasies caught me drooling over him. He put his hands on his hips and frowned, not looking very happy to have been spied on.
“Shit! We’ve been caught!” I swore, blushing.
Zoe grabbed my arm and turned me round. “There, look up there, nod your head... and smile, damn it!”
“What does it matter if I smile? I’ve got my back to him, he can’t see my face any more.” Thank God.
“It’s all in the acting.”
I obeyed and sighed, craning my neck. “He’s such a sex god” I told the stars that weren’t there.
“No, he’s a world-class sex god” she corrected me, throwing the ice pop wrapper in the bin. “He already was when we were in year 3 and he was in year 5.”
Simon had had to repeat year 5 twice, so he was still at school when we started year 4, but now we were in year 5, he’d left the year before. A year in which he’d become a man.
The shape of his face had become more masculine, his eyes dangerous and his smile cunning. He already looked as if he had to shave frequently.
“We need to forget about him. There’s no way he’d ever speak to us.” By now I was resigned. It was enough for me just to be able to look and fantasize about him.
The digger had stopped running. Looking round the pitch, I saw that everyone was leaving. “He’s finished.”
Zoe lowered her head again looking for Simon amongst the workers walking off, but by now it was too late. “I know how to make him talk to us.”
Oh no, when she got that obstinate look it meant that she was looking for trouble. She started combing her bushy hair with her hands to smooth it out, bit her lips to make them rosy and adjusted her push-up bra to show off her tits.
“Let’s go” she ordered, in a way that made me prepare me for the worst.
After thirty minutes and plenty of complaints from me, we found ourselves at the back of the old sports ground changing rooms. The match had finished too and all the players except one had gone. The one who was left was a friend of Simon’s, who had stayed with him to tell him about goals, and also to do something else, according to Zoe. Tim found the buyers and Simon sold the marijuana, persistent offender that he was. Perhaps three months of ‘forced labour’ hadn’t been enough for him?
Straddling a bench, Simon was watching while Tim mimed his football victory. Like a cartoon, he was making lopsided faces, distorting his already un-coordinated face: uneven eyebrows, broad nose, wonky mouth.
It was late, we ought to have been home already by then, safe in bed, not flirting with a cannabis dealer. If my parents had known, they would have killed me. Worse: they would have grounded me for several weekends in a row.
“Ready?” asked Zoe.
“No.”
“Good, nor am I. Let’s go.” She smiled nervously.
We crept out of the bushes like a couple of peeping Toms. Like the shy coward I was, I stood slightly behind Zoe, following her.
Simon immediately pointed his radar in our direction, while his friend continued to play the clown. He brought Tim’s attention to us by tilting his chin in our direction.
Tim quickly stepped between us and our prey. “What do you want?”
“What do you think we want?” Displaying a boldness that she didn’t possess, Zoe kept her head up, because he was much taller than both of us. “How about 50 Euros’ worth of good weed?”
And bang went the bulk of my pocket money.
“Bad luck, we don’t sell anything.”
“Are you sure? Because your brother Medo is in my archery class and he told me to come to you if I want to get high.”
“The little shit!” he replied, grabbing his mobile from his pocket.
He stepped away to call his brother Medoro, while we submitted to Simon’s watchful eye like a couple of little fish on the BBQ. Then he whispered a few things in his ear and received another nod of agreement.
“The little shit has vouched for you, so please, don’t be shy and make the deal with my friend,” sniggered Tim, before walking off to keep a look out.
Zoe dug me in the ribs and we walked hesitantly towards the bench. Simon was sitting there, resting his forearm on his knee, but there wasn’t even a trace of smoke.
I’d never been so close to him; his hair was blond with chestnut streaks, thick an
d short, his blue eyes lined with grey. He had a foreign beauty; they said that his Dad was American and he definitely had the appeal of a Californian surfer, or some other sporty type from overseas.
“Hi” we greeted him with two idiotic grins.
He looked up at us, but only because he was sitting down. “I don’t sell to little girls, least of all under 18’s.”
As if he was so much more grown-up: he was twenty-two, who did he think he was?
I jumped back. “But he said...”
“She is eighteen!” Zoe pushed me forward and I tripped, almost landing in his arms.
Simon grabbed my biceps to stop me from falling onto him, and the fresh scent of his shower gel hit me. He must have showered with the guys from the team. For a moment I imagined the spectacle that we’d missed during that half hour showering. He helped me to straighten up. “And how long have you supposedly been eighteen for?”
For about five seconds all I could think about was the fact that he’d touched me, and then I looked at the clock, raising an eyebrow. “Well, for... an hour and three quarters?”
“Give me your ID card.”
My cheeks on fire, I rummaged through my bag, coming across everything except my blooming purse. In the end I found it and gave him my crumpled ID card. “There.”
He looked at it and smiled devilishly. “Happy Birthday.”
Congratulations from Simon were a gift I would never have dreamed of getting and I owed it all to Zoe and her exceptional recklessness. “Thanks.” I said, blushing a bit more.
I probably didn’t look eighteen. I had soft facial features, almost childlike, I wasn’t made up and had my hair in two ridiculous plaits.
“And you?” he asked Zoe, fixing his gaze on her push-up, much more obvious than my simple elasticated bra. “How old are you?”
She couldn’t lie given the rigorous ‘ID check.’ “Seventeen. But I’ll be eighteen in November” she hastened to say.
Shame it was still April.
“So I’ll only sell to...” he looked at the name on my ID card. “Giada Di Gregorio.”
Maybe it would have been good to tell him that I didn’t care at all about smoking, but there was no way either Zoe or I were brave enough to embarrass ourselves by admitting that.
Simon gave me my ID back, plucked a joint out of his Marlborough pack, lit it and took a long pull on it before passing it to me.
“Quality control” he said, seeing me looking unsure.
“Me?”
“Sure. See if you like it. I don’t sell anything that hasn’t been tested first.”
“But we trust you.” Zoe tried pathetically to save me, but was ignored.
“Go on, try it. It won’t bite, what are you afraid of?”
He provoked me with his superior air, as if he was making fun of me.
We were already making a pretty poor impression with our clumsiness and I didn’t want him to think I was a little girl; I hated it when people treated me like one. I could accept being treated like a loser, but not like a kid.
I’d already tried a few puffs of a cigarette without much success in the school toilets. With a bit more effort I was sure I could do it. I just needed to pretend to be a smoker and I would have the privilege of putting my lips where his had been, hoping it wouldn’t have too much effect on me. The smoking, I mean.
Taking my courage in both hands and the joint in two fingers, I inhaled. The end glowed bright red and for the first time a really strong smell of grass filled my mouth and lungs. The bitter smell would have been enough to knock me out, inhaling was too much.
I blew it out, coughing .“Go...oo...od!”
Sure, for all I knew it could have been first-class dried dandelion. I would’ve liked to sit down and get my breath back, but he stayed straddled over the end of the bench, forcing us to remain standing in front of him.
Zoe gave me a couple of pats on the back and the joint ended up on the floor and rolled under the bench. “Oh shit!” I exclaimed.
A second later we were both on our knees at Simon’s feet.
“Sorry.” When I looked up and saw that he was staring at me, I could have stayed in that position for the rest of the night if he had asked me to.
I gave him the joint back, dusting it off with my fingers. He had a pull, held his breath and exhaled the smoke between his teeth.
“Are you sure you’re the one who smokes?”
“Yes, sure. Every now and then.” The words really didn’t want to come out of my mouth.
We must have appeared naïve and unsure of ourselves and yet he took a little plastic bag of marijuana out of his backpack, flipping it back and forth between his fingers. He stood up, tall and handsome, making us step back. “You understand that no one must know anything about this stuff, otherwise I’m fucked and so are you two.”
“Who do you take us for? Spies?” replied Zoe. “What a hassle for a bit of grass.” That’s what she was like: whenever she felt threatened or nervous she counterattacked aggressively.
“Look who’s talking! Maybe I’ll come and watch you working in an orange uniform, what do you say?”
He had recognized us.
“We were only waiting for you so we could buy the stuff,” she explained. “You can trust us. Are you gonna sell it to us or not?”
“Here it is.” He reached across with the bag between two fingers.
Zoe went to take it.
“Not you.” Simon drew his hand back. “Her.”
He let me take the booty and then thoroughly examined the money I gave him. One twenty note, two tens, one five, two two Euro coins, one of fifty cents and a load of five cent coins. All the money we’d managed to scrape together. He gave me back the ten Euro note, smiling with his vivid pink lips and his sharp eyes.
I felt weak at the knees from the effect of the joint, or much more likely from having his eyes on me.
“A discount for your birthday. Have one on me,” he winked.
All the rest, our leaving, the kiss I gave Zoe on the cheek, going home and going to bed, happened without the smile leaving my lips. I’d spoken to Simon and he’d wished me a happy birthday, way better than any present for my eighteenth birthday. There would always be time tomorrow to get back to my restless humdrum existence and the daily frustrations of my life. That night I just rejoiced, in spite of everybody and everything.
Chapter 2
We went back to the pitch the next few nights, but Simon wasn’t there and life was flat. For me and Zoe it was graduation year, I was tired of studying, I often had nightmares that I was crying or running away, sometimes waking myself up crying. And yet, despite the boring days, the spring made me feel excited and hopeful. I was eighteen and still a virgin, which only just put me one step ahead of the mentally retarded in the classification of popularity. In my class almost everyone had already had sex, except Zoe, maybe part of the reason why we’d ended up in a group of our own.
There wasn’t a specific reason why we hadn’t consented, it simply just hadn’t happened yet. My most enlightened sexual experience had been on a sun bed on a beach the year before, obscenely kissed, in prohibited places, by rather an eager kid I hardly knew, but he hadn’t tried to go further.
The lack of penis, mouth, hand or any other anatomical part of a man had become a sort of torment. I was perennially starving for something I hadn’t yet had the chance to taste or even sniff.
Some nights I found myself tossing and turning, clenching the pillow in-between my thighs hoping in vain for a slight hint of virility. Then I opened my eyes and found myself alone, in a pink and white bedroom, now too childish, that would have presumably only lasted this summer.
If my parents’ plans worked out, that autumn they’d be the owners of a farm and I’d have a brand new bedroom. I would find myself far from the hills of Rome, in a ‘delightful’ estate in Tuscany, fitted out for their catering business and fully licensed restaurant. Of course no one had asked my opinion, they were euphoric and u
sed to not seeing me smile, so they weren’t able to understand how much the idea of being uprooted from what had always been my home upset me.
My Mum was already spreading the news, and to celebrate she’d organized a Sunday lunch with a diverse bunch of guests. I’d hoped to slip off somewhere with Zoe, but Mum was an expert in the art of blackmail, so I found myself bartering an evening clubbing with my presence at the lunch and good manners. Give and take.
The first to arrive was my aunt Frida, who we saw about once a month. She appeared head to toe in designer wear and, as she didn’t have a hope of baking as well as her sister, bought a bunch of flowers. Three years younger than Mum, she seemed older, though she was well groomed. She hugged and kissed me, rubbing my head as if I was five years old.
“Giada, treasure, look what I brought for you.”
She put her hand in her bag and pulled out a bunch of clothes and accessories tags, bound by a pink ribbon.
“Thanks aunty, you shouldn’t have!” There were two Burberry, one Louis Vuitton, one Prada and others with prices of at least a hundred euros. The biggest was black plastic, marked three hundred and fifty euros. Others were cardboard, with slim satin ribbons or safety pins; three still had the little bag attached with the spare buttons or pearls. There was just one small problem. It wasn’t my stuff. She really had no idea that I wasn’t at all interested in the tags from other people’s clothes. I accepted them anyway because it was interesting to see where she shopped and how much she spent. Obviously for her to throw her spending in my face was her way of showing off not just to me, but also to my Mum. Being the widow of a jeweller had been fruitful.
After my aunt Vincenzo De Luca arrived, Vincent to his friends, our neighbour and family friend. Often he and Dad closed themselves into the office, downing beers and telling each other stories that we were excluded from. They were attached at the hip but they couldn’t have been more different. My father was down to earth, of large stature and good character, dedicated to his family, although awkward in demonstrating his fatherly love. Vincent was restless, tended to act on impulse, often getting burned. My father was sedentary, the other always on the move. Dad liked a game of football, Vincent Formula One. One drank Budweiser, the other Tennents. How they could be such good friends was a mystery to me, that to be honest I wasn’t interested enough to solve.