“I don’t think it is me that is missing from here though, Violet.” I closed my eyes and willed myself not to cry. Peiro’s warm, soft lips covered mine, a whisper of a kiss. “But I foolishly find myself prepared to take whatever you can spare me. You are quite addictive, and I find myself willing to do anything for a brief moment of your warmth.” His hand enveloped mine before pulling me toward the valet service. A sleek grey Lexus was pulled to a stop before us, and Peiro held the door open for me. The drive to my home was filled with me giving directions and Peiro concentrating on the unfamiliar streets. Before I knew it, he was standing in my messy room. A wealthy man of such sheer perfection was standing in my modest and incredibly untidy space.
“I wasn’t expecting guests,” I muttered as I kicked my clothes aside in an attempt to find some space on the floor. Peiro took possession of my hand, halting me from my halfhearted attempt to make the mess disappear. His fingers tenderly ran the course of my cheek.
“I am glad you weren’t expecting anyone,” he whispered before kissing me. Any chance to be embarrassed by the disarray of my room was lost under Peiro’s passion. He didn’t give me a chance to regret inviting him into my home, no chance to back out, though if I had said no, he would have stopped in a heartbeat. Instead, he carefully disrobed me like I was a priceless piece of art, his hungry gaze soaking up every inch of skin, his gentle hands memorizing every curve. When he laid me on my bed, he licked and kissed every inch of me before entering me with one long, smooth thrust. He moved like a man worshipping the woman he loves, showing me how he felt with actions rather than words. I clutched at his shoulders as he thrust into me with demanding strokes, his movements becoming almost desperate, and when my body finally exploded with delightful tingles, Peiro followed close behind. Once my racing heart had slowed, the reality of what I had done began to creep in, turning my warmth to cold. This was wrong, leading Peiro on like this. I wanted to want him with all my heart, but it just wasn’t there. He was handsome, rich, playful, compassionate, everything a woman should need and want, every woman accept me.
“Don’t think, Tesoro, just feel,” Peiro murmured, wrapping his body around mine. I fell asleep wrapped in guilty warmth. I’d worry about tomorrow when it came.
When tomorrow did come, it was with a loud pounding on the apartment door which I ignored. Peiro was still beside me, fast asleep. He looked so relaxed and unassuming. I smiled and closed my eyes with every intention of going back to sleep when the door to my bedroom swung open.
“Holy shit,” whispered Mya. I glanced at her as she carefully shut the door, while she remained in the room. In a pathetic attempt to shield mine and Peiro’s nudity, she raised a hand to her eyes. Somehow she managed to tiptoe to my side of the bed without falling over the mess that covered my floor. “You got laid? Who the fuck is that?” she hissed.
“Not Michael,” I whispered.
“Fair enough, I know it’s not Cain because he’s currently in our kitchen,” she said sarcastically. I bolted upright, the sheet slipping down to expose my breasts. “Shit, Violet,” Mya’s eyes clamped shut.
“You do realize you have them as well,” I snapped. “What the hell do you mean Cain is in our kitchen? Cain doesn’t even know where I live!”
“I have no idea how he found you or why he is here. What I do know is that he’s as boiled as an owl.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked as I quickly found some clothes on the floor to pull on.
“Drunk, blind, rotten drunk!”
“Cain’s here?” came a husky voice from behind us that made us both stop in our tracks like a pair of guilty school girls.
“Apparently,” I nervously confessed as Peiro slowly sat up.
Mya tried valiantly not to look at his naked perfection.
“What time is it?” Peiro asked.
“A little after eight,” Mya answered, still averting her gaze even though the really good stuff was hidden behind a sheet.
“La maledizione, I have a ten o’clock flight. I have to get moving.” Mya glanced at Peiro just as he stood, the sheet finally falling away to reveal the perfection of his olive skinned backside. Mya squeaked in terror as she quickly exited the room. I tied my hair up into a messy ponytail.
“I’m sorry about this. I haven’t seen Cain in months,” I quickly explained. Peiro knew most of this though. Our conversations had grown more intimate and honest with distance. It was easy to talk to him about things like Cain when he wasn’t physically here.
“I know, Tesoro. This is something you need to deal with, and I have a flight,” he said as he quickly dressed in the suit he had folded over the back of my chair. He left his shirt untucked, his tie hanging freely around his neck. “I’m just going to use the bathroom before I leave.” I nodded and left Peiro to take care of his bathroom needs while I smoothed down my crinkled shirt and left the bedroom.
My heart was thumping like a jackhammer by the time I navigated the short hallway and entered the large living space. Mya stood with her backpack on. It was Sunday study; she would be gone all day. My eyes moved to Cain, who was indeed boiled as an owl. He was disheveled, his hair a tangled mess around his shoulders, his face holding more than a weeks’ worth of stubble. He was as striking as ever, even in his chaotic disorder.
“Cain?” He went from moving hurriedly around my kitchen, collecting what I think was the ingredients to make pancakes to perfectly still in the blink of an eye. He slowly turned to face me. It was difficult to judge his emotions; he seemed almost frantic. When his gaze moved to a figure behind me, I knew Peiro had made his entrance.
“I need to get moving if I want to make my flight.” Without an ounce of shame or hesitation, Peiro took my hand and gently tugged me forward, pressing a heated kiss to my lips which I automatically responded to. “Parleremo ancora presto, Tesoro,” he murmured. Once again, I had no idea what he had said, apart from tesoro—treasure.
“I’m off to study group,” Mya muttered, moving to the door at the same time as Peiro. Once they had both quietly escaped the apartment, I turned back to face Cain. He looked furious, which made me furious. What the hell did he expect of me? He was as good as married, and I wasn’t allowed to move on?
“How did you know I lived here?” I demanded.
“I didn’t realize it was a secret,” he scowled.
“It’s not, not from you anyway. I just prefer that certain elements of my past don’t know where I live.”
Cain’s eyes softened ever so slightly. “Harry told me. I had to bribe him; he didn’t give the information willingly.” I moved cautiously to the kitchen and sat on one of the stools as Cain went back to making himself comfortable in my home.
“You look like shit,” I admitted.
“I don’t ever recall telling you that you looked like shit following one of your benders.” He pushed a glass of juice my way before helping himself.
“You didn’t have to tell me, I knew it.”
Cain snorted. “Well, suffice it to say that I am more than aware I look like shit. Annabelle told me as much several days ago.” I cringed at the mention of Annabelle, and my eyes dropped to his left hand. No ring. “We’re not married, yet.” Cain confirmed when he noticed my gaze. “Though now that she is pregnant I guess I’ll have to remedy that immediately.” I think I stopped breathing. “She’s about eight weeks along and wants to keep it. Fucking hell, I’m not even able to commit to a date to our wedding, how the fuck am I going to cope with being a father?” He began mixing the pancake batter a little too vigorously in his anger. My head was a whirl of chaotic thoughts, and my heart was hurting.
“You don’t want children?” I somehow managed to ask through a voice tight with emotion. I don’t know what I was more upset about, the fact that Cain was having a child with someone else, or the thought he might not want them, ever. I wanted children. There was a time when I didn’t, when the thought of passing my toxic lifestyle onto a child sickened me, but now…now I
wanted kids. Lots of them. Cain didn’t answer right away, instead he focused every ounce of his concentration on the pancake mix. He swayed a little as he stood there, the smell of alcohol strong.
“I don’t want Annabelle,” he eventually confessed. I didn’t move, didn’t speak, if I didn’t have the need for oxygen, I probably wouldn’t have breathed. “Do you have blueberries?” he asked with a nonchalance that would have suggested we were talking about how ridiculous Justin Bieber’s latest album was and not his impending future. It wasn’t like Cain to place such little value on something so important, and now he had a child to add to the mix. He needed to snap out of this and deal with the consequences from the choices he had made, much like I had to do in rehab.
“Why were you with her if you didn’t want her?” I snapped.
Cain gave me a pissed off look. “She was safe,” he growled.
“Safe for you, but what about her?”
“She got what she wanted.” Cain slammed the pancake batter down so forcefully it splattered over the counter. “She’s wanted to fuck me; she got that and then some. I got safe, a girl who wasn’t going to snort away her life and piss away her future. I got a girl who I wouldn’t have to be afraid of finding dead on some fucking bathroom floor, a girl who I knew I wouldn’t find in bed while two men took turns fucking her!” His words were filled with so much venom I actually slipped from the stool and onto my unsteady feet. I was bombarded with the memories of that night, each one lancing my heart and opening up the slow healing wound.
“How dare you,” I growled.
“How dare I? While you were having the fucking time of your life, I was living a fucking nightmare!” Cain screamed.
“The time of my life…” I laughed, and it was a bitter, painful sound. “Were you even there?” I wondered out loud. “If you can call feeling so empty and worthless that I wanted to die the time of my life, then yeah, I guess it was. Being chained to drugs and alcohol, making choices dictated on how I got my next score, whoring myself, being raped, if you call that the time of my life, then it was a fucking blast!”
“What do you mean raped?” Cain’s voice was one of sheer terror.
I snorted as a tear escaped. “Oh, you were there for that epic moment of my life. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you allow two men to take advantage of you for a single hit.”
“Motherfucker, those men in Vegas? They raped you?” Cain’s eyes held nothing but fury and panic now.
“I took them back to the hotel, they had promised me some blow, we partied, I was high as a kite, and I never said no, but I never said yes; I was incapable of making that decision in the state I was in. And if I had been sober, I would never have done something like that.”
Cain shook his head in disbelief. “I should have done something; I shouldn’t have left you. I was so angry, I was so tired of you being so destructive, and I was terrified the day would come when you would party too hard and something bad would happen. I was so fucking scared of losing you that I walked away. It’s my fault I didn’t protect you.” His voice had trailed off.
“Its fine, it’s all in the past, forget about it.” I wiped angrily at another tear that slipped free.
“It’s not fucking fine. Violet baby, I’m so sorry.” I turned to face Cain. He had moved out of the kitchen and stood right before me. His eyes were swimming with unshed tears, and it pained me to see him so vulnerable and hurt.
“Don’t be sorry, Cain. It wasn’t your fault; it was my poor decisions that led to that.”
“I was supposed to look after you,” he whispered, the back of his fingers brushing away my tears. His touch reminded me of my need for him, and I moved away, needing to put distance between him and those thoughts. I leaned against the wall by the balcony windows, glancing over the street below.
“I was an adult that should have looked after herself, Cain. I became too comfortable with you doing that job for me, and I think I forgot how. I won’t lie; it hurt me when you left, but I was destructive, and if you hadn’t left, I would have eventually destroyed you, too. Once on my own, I was forced to start looking after myself.” I hadn’t noticed Cain was close again, now leaning on the wall beside me, his arms crossed over his chest. He had lost weight. His shirt hung off him rather than molding to the muscular curves I was used to.
“I have to say, I’m pretty conflicted right now, baby. I hate that you were alone, I hate what you went through, all of it.” His gaze met mine. “But look at you now. You were always beautiful, but now, you’re glowing.” He pushed a lose strand of hair behind my ear.
“And you’re going to be a daddy,” I quietly reminded him.
His hand dropped away and fear filled his eyes again. “What am I going to do?” he whispered.
“The right thing; it’s what you do best.”
He sighed as he leaned his head back against the wall. “Who was that?” Cain asked after a short silence.
“Mya? Harry’s niece, she’s weird but lovable.”
“The foreigner, Italian if I have my accents right.”
I nodded; I had assumed he meant Peiro but was reluctant to give him that piece of my life. “Peiro, I met him when I was in Italy.”
“I didn’t know you were seeing someone.”
“I’m not…I mean, we’re not.” I fumbled for words. “He’s giving me space.”
Cain chuckled. “So, sleep overs only.”
“No,” I snapped, irritated that Cain was putting Peiro into the casual category, yet that’s exactly what I had done. “He cares for me, a lot, but he’s concerned that my heart isn’t in the same place as his.”
“Is it?” Cain asked, his voice sounding more tired than I had ever known it to be.
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “What did you have to bribe Harry with?” I finally wondered out loud, carefully changing the subject.
“He’s booked us for a gig next month, big function for the opening of some swanky gallery downtown.”
My heart raced with excitement. “What do you mean he booked us, there is no us,” I asked, even though I was quietly thrilled with the thought of singing beside Cain again. With a long, drawn out sigh, Cain pushed away from the wall and made his way to the door on the other side of my apartment.
“There will always be an us, Violet. And there lies the problem for both Annabelle and Peiro.” Cain pulled the door open.
“What are you going to do?” I murmured, not really wanting to know the answer, but needing to.
“I’m going to do the right thing. It’s what I do best, remember?” With a tired, sad smile, Cain left.
A week can pass quickly when your thoughts are turbulent and lost. What felt like no longer than an hour or two of lying on my bed in a chaotic vortex of confused emotions turned out to be an entire day. When I forced myself to get up and actually participate in life, I did so in a numb state which turned seconds into minutes and minutes into hours, all of which skipped past me at a rapidly unnoticed rate. I hadn’t called Peiro and he hadn’t called me. I found myself staring at my phone for long hours, almost willing it to ring. Why hadn’t he called? Probably for the very reason I hadn’t called him. I had unfinished business; my heart was still holding on with greedy little fingertips to something I could never have. What was Cain up to? Did the wedding have a date now? He was going to be a father. That word kept ringing through my mind over and over like a tormenting bell that wouldn’t let up. He belonged to another in a way I could never comprehend. Now was the time I was supposed to move on, take a deep breath, and leave the heartache of something completely unattainable behind. So why the hell couldn’t I do it?
It was on a Friday night as I sat watching The Notebook, tears fresh on my face, when an epiphany hit me. Peiro was right for me; he was handsome, successful, smart, funny, but as right as all that was, it didn’t equate to love. Sometimes, things that look good and feel good aren’t necessarily what you need. Sometimes souls are simply drawn to each other, like Noah and
Allie in The Notebook. Sometimes those souls are ripped apart and for one reason or another, different paths are taken. New people come along and sometimes those people help fill the gap in your heart, but they don’t ever fill it completely. They are adequate substitutes and nothing more. Life is too short to be lived in the grey area of passable and average. Life is meant to be lived with bright and vibrant colors, with words like extraordinary and passionate. Peiro wasn’t ‘the one’. I wished he was, but he wasn’t. He had become a good friend who was a convenient distraction to bury my broken heart into, but he wasn’t my forever. It was a weight off my shoulders to realize that. I had lost my forever; my soul mate now belonged to another, and that would be my pain to carry. I wouldn’t force a good man like Peiro to carry such a burden. While I worried myself almost sick about calling Peiro to tell him, the conversation went blessedly better than I imagined. In fact, my rejection didn’t surprise him in the least. His acceptance made my sorrow for not wanting him more intense.
“Tesoro, I always knew, from the moment you spoke, there was heartache within you. It was my choice to see if I could replace that hurt; you don’t have to be sorry.”
I was crying, again. “But, I wish I could love you the way you want me to. It would be so much easier,” I sobbed.
Peiro chuckled, the sound was soft and gentle. “Life is never easy, my tesoro. Hearts are delicate and complicated things. We need to do what is right for them.”
“You know,” I sighed, “this would be much easier if you were an asshole.” When he laughed this time, it was loud and almost carefree.
“But then we wouldn’t be having this conversation because you wouldn’t have given me the time of day.” The conversation ground down to a long awkward pause. “Good bye, Violet.” It was the end, that moment of finality that was always daunting and difficult.
“I don’t want to say good bye,” I whispered.
“Then say mi mancherai.”
“What does it mean?”
“Just say it, mi mancherai.” He pronounced the words slowly, and I carefully said them back.
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