by Adele Parks
We find a quiet bar with outside seating and order a carafe of house red and some chocolate ice-cream; we had a late lunch and ate well then, so neither of us fancies a proper meal. The red wine is full and intense. I savour it, as it's my first drink of the day. Without discussing it, Chuck and I seemed to agree that it would be better to choose lemonade at lunch. I needed a clear head. Now, as the day is coming to a close, Chuck judges it perfectly and realizes that I need a loose tongue.
'Are we running away?' I ask.
'Temporarily, yes,' he states. 'I think you need some space.'
Momentarily I panic. Have I read today all wrong? I thought Chuck and I were connected. In a tricky position – yes – but somehow connected. I thought he understood that. Maybe I was just a quick and easy lay to him. Well, I was in fact exactly that. But I'd thought – hoped – that I was more. What if he has got a girlfriend? We haven't spoken for a month. It's possible. I should have established the facts before I jumped his bones. Funnily enough I never worried about that at the time. There were brief moments, before I put an embargo on our friendship, when I thought maybe Chuck had feelings for me – it was almost impossible to know for certain because I was with Roberto. What am I talking about? I'm still with Roberto. Not in the same way, of course, but –
Aaghh, this is all so complicated. The floodgate has opened. Everything that I've been ignoring all day threatens to drown me now. I take a deep breath. I know that I have to ask some difficult questions and perhaps face some unsavoury truths but it's better than the alternative. Roberto and I always skirted around the tricky issues, and in the end not only did we not know how to talk to one another, we couldn't remember why we'd bother. I can't – won't – let the same thing happen with Chuck.
Another deep breath. 'If you think I need space, what was the episode in your hallway about?' I ask.
'Not space from me,' says Chuck, partly amused, partly disbelieving. 'Well, at least not unless you want it,' he adds, showing his own insecurity.
'No, no, not at all,' I gabble, 'I definitely don't want space from you. I had that over the last month and it was terrible.' I realize that right now I'm not exactly following the rulebook on how to play it cool but I don't think this is the time for games.
'That said, I'm not a fan of people jumping from one relationship to the next,' adds Chuck, warily.
'I've never done anything other.'
'I know,' he says ominously. 'You told me.' That's the problem with having a relationship with your best friend, they know everything about you. 'Personally I think it does a person good to have time in between one relationship and the next. Time to reflect and learn from what's happened.'
'Yeah, but you are American,' I say, in an attempt to laugh off his comment.
He puts his fingers on my lips to shush me, echoing my action earlier today. Remembering the lusty, needy sex makes me shiver, but in a good way.
'I'm just saying this probably isn't the wisest thing either of us has ever done,' he says.
My heart sloshes down through my flip-flops and lands in a squelching mess on the cobbled pavement. He's back-pedalling.
Then he adds, 'But I can't see that there is an alternative for us. I've looked for an alternative ever since I met you. I wanted to find a way not to end up like this but here we are and I just can't bring myself to be regretful about it.' He holds his hands in the air as if surrendering to the situation.
My heart jumps right back up again and settles in my mouth. He's not back-pedalling! He's taking the brakes off. Speechless with delight, I lean into him and kiss him hard.
55
The second time we make love is quite unlike the first. This time we both know it isn't the last.
We talked until the sun disappeared and the sky was coal-black. We talked in the shadows and warm air and when the air became chilled we moved inside the bar and talked and drank some more. The floor-to-ceiling wooden double doors were spread open and I longed to open my legs too.
I told him some of my ambitions and frustrations with teaching and because I'd drunk a stack of wine it became impossible to distinguish between the two. They jealously meshed into one another, making no sense. I talked about Alison and we speculated about whether Fiona and she would go the distance. Chuck talked about his mates here in Italy and his best buddy back home. He asked me some odd trivial things like when did I pass my driving test and have I ever been to a football match – except he says soccer.
He laughs at me and with me; when he does so his entire face explodes with a life-seizing guffaw that I adore. He contradicts me and agrees with me. He informs and makes mistakes. He's astoundingly authentic.
After our ice-cream and two bottles of wine we asked the waiter if he knew of a hotel that might have a room. We both feared that the only hotel that would have space at this time of year would be a flea-pit. The waiter shrugged and looked doubtful but said that we could try his girlfriend's cousin's place, which was back around the San Marco's square and Rialto bridge area. He scribbled the address on a piece of paper and wished us luck.
'It probably busy. Is very good hotel, very popular but you can only try. If you no try you no get,' he said wisely.
The best we were hoping for was an overpriced downmarket tourist trap, but despite the odds it was a gem of a place and surprisingly reasonable. A1 Sole Hotel is a beautiful fifteenth-century terracotta building which nestles in the ancient Palazzo Marcello. We stumbled into the reception fully expecting to be turned away, but we were told that they had just received a last-minute cancellation and amazingly they did have a room for us. In fact it was one of their better rooms, boasting a stunning view of the Tolentini Canal.
Some things are meant to be.
We lie on the heavily embroidered bedcovers and kiss one another, over and over again, for the longest time. I'm trying not to draw comparisons – it's never helpful – but I can't remember the last time Roberto and I kissed like that. We barely bother with a perfunctory peck on the cheek nowadays. I know Chuck is concerned that I am moving away from a monumental relationship with indecent haste, but the more I am with him the more I realize how dead my relationship with Roberto is and has been for quite some time. I just haven't wanted to admit it to anyone, least of all myself. As Chuck kisses me he caresses my arms, my legs, my shoulders, my back, and each stroke seems to brush away my sense of loneliness. With each startling contact I feel the frustration slip from my body and the disappointment drip out of my mind. His fingers fix me, comfort me, and most thrilling of all, they excite me.
We shed our clothes unselfconsciously and lose ourselves in one another. Unhurriedly, so, so gradually, he kisses and licks and nibbles until I yelp with gratification. Slowly, slowly his tongue roves over my body and he uncovers unexpected places of pleasure that make me moan and whimper simultaneously. He pays attention to my wrists, the insides of my elbows, the backs of my knees. He nibbles my thighs and sucks my fingers. I think of nothing other than the texture of his skin, the smell of him and the taste of him, and he seems to be entirely concerned with making me squirm with delight. He explores my nipples, my stomach and my bush with a frank interest that borders on reverence. Soon limbs, sheets and sensations become entwined and muddled, yet I encounter an unexpected impression of lucidity and conviction. I like it here with Chuck. It feels good. It feels utterly right even when I weave my fingers through his blond hair and gasp with surprise that it is light hair in my hand, not dark.
When I think that I can't take any more and that I'll explode with longing if he continues his gentle exploration, he changes tempo. Suddenly, he thrusts, he plunges, he fills me. I groan with a searing mix of hurt and hope as I let this other man into my life.
I am done in with delight.
I want to reciprocate. I want to give him as much as he's given me, although I'm not sure it's even possible. I push him on to his back, wiggle down and take his cock into my mouth. He makes me feel so sexy; an acknowledged goddess. He sighs, writhes, sli
thers and groans until finally he shakes and becomes breathless, then lets out a loud moan which is bordering on the embarrassing and will probably have alarmed the people occupying the room next door. Through the open window I hear a cheer. I doubt it is related to our performance but it makes me smile anyway. Exhausted and replete, I tumble off his hot body and tuck myself under his arm.
'I wish I'd met you before,' I whisper.
'Where – among the fourteen lovers your husband is unaware of – would you like me to have fallen?'
'Anywhere,' I say with a bittersweet smile. 'Everywhere.'
My hair is damp with exertion and is sticking to my neck, my nipples are moist with his kisses and my thighs with his love. I smell of him and he smells of me but I feel immaculate. I feel sexy and wanted. Thrilled and thrilling. We hold one another, close, until our breathing becomes peaceful; we inhale and exhale in harmony. I am myself.
56
27 May
We make love for four days. We do eat, and drink, and walk, and talk in those four days, but even when we are doing those more mundane things we are making love.
Sometimes we ride fierce and fast, other times we choose stretched and slow. The temperature outside soars, and sweat runs down his back or slides between my buttocks, making our skin seem glittery and dazzling. He seems mesmerized by my large breasts, which bat him in the face when I ride on top. He laughs when I apologize for them.
'They are gorgeous, what are you apologizing for?'
'I've always hated my big boobs,' I admit.
'Well, I love them.'
'And they look even worse when I have a tan.' I panic at a vision of my big white udders slapping around my brown stomach when I get a tan this summer. I'm pretty sure Chuck will say I look fine but I'm not sure I'll be able to believe him. 'I've always wanted to sunbathe topless because if I get a tan my tan-lines make my boobs look even bigger.'
'That's crazy,' he teases. 'Next you'll be asking does my bum look big in these strap marks? You are absolutely beautiful, Elizabeth. How can you be anything other than proud of your body? You ought to be more confident and sure of yourself; if you want to sunbathe topless you should.'
Easier said than done. Whenever I'm with Chuck I can genuinely feel my esteem rise, but it's starting at a pretty low level after months with Roberto's and Raffaella's attacks.
'No, it's impossible with such huge breasts, it's too overt, too explicit. All I want is an even tan but their size says more than that, whether I like it or not.' Chuck kisses my left boob and for a moment I don't think it is such a terrible part of my body. 'It's OK for women with goose bumps for breasts, nothing they do appears overtly sexual. I envy them. Plus men always think women with small boobs are brighter than women with big chests.'
At this Chuck nearly chokes on my nipple as he laughs out loud.
'How do you work in a world so full of clichéd prejudices? Big breasts are vulgar. Italians are enigmatic. Americans are ignorant. Mother-in-laws are wicked. You have it all wrong.'
'Not all of it,' I say sulkily. I'm uncomfortable with him contradicting me and yet, thinking about it, Alison and my family contradict me from time to time. Actually, Alison contradicts me just about all the time. Perhaps it's a way of showing they care what I think. They care about me enough to want to help me to get it right. Maybe debate is OK. It's better than diktats at least.
'How does it work in your world then, Chuck?' I ask curiously.
'There are myriad possibilities,' he says with a smile.
It's a hopeful thought.
He leaves me gasping, astonished, vulnerable, venerated. I feel him in every crevasse and contour of my being. His large and lovely body takes possession as I come again, and again and again. With each wave of bliss that gushes between my legs my past is condensed and my future looms large. I begin to wonder how I could have lived thus far without this precise blend of passion and reassurance.
'When did you start to want me in this way?' I ask curiously.
'From the very moment I saw you I thought you were hot.'
'Really?' I sit bolt upright with excitement.
'Really,' he confirms calmly.
'I had no idea.'
'It would have been very wrong of me to give you any idea because within about a nanosecond of meeting you, you told me to back off.'
'I did not!'
'Yes, you did. You told me that your husband's family owned Bruno's. Bringing a husband into the conversation so early on was a pretty clear signal and I liked that about you. I like faithful women.' We both fall silent as we guiltily consider that I'm being unfaithful right now. 'And I like it even better when hot women are unfaithful with me,' says Chuck with a laugh which breaks the tension.
I consider hitting him with a pillow but can't bear the idea of behaving like someone in an advert for mattress sales, so I resist. Chuck kisses me carefully and slowly for quite some time. When he pulls away he continues, 'I didn't expect to think about you again after that first encounter in the piazza but then I found myself repeatedly going there on the offchance I'd see you. I didn't plan to seduce you away from your husband; I thought I could be a good buddy to you. That's all I hoped for. It was weird – I just felt I needed to be near you. Anyway, whenever I turned up at the bar you'd invariably be in rubber gloves, cleaning crap for him. I thought you were madly in love with him.'
'But then?'
'But then as I got closer to you I saw that you were unhappy. I think I saw it before you did.' He stares at me, examining the effect his words are having on me. I know he's trying to tread softly, softly.
'Did you know Roberto was having an affair?'
He looks away. 'I heard rumours, but there are always rumours.'
'Did you believe the rumours?'
'It didn't matter what I believed. It was all up to you. You had to come to me. All I could do was wait for you.'
We like waking up early and eating breakfast on the balcony. The early morning sun shimmers on the canal, like a million diamonds, shafts of stars, or perhaps fairy dust. Then we take a walk. By midday the water is calm and more prosaic and we usually go to bed to make our own magic. In the evening the water is lit by boats and waterside restaurants. Boats slice through the sea, leaving lines of waves behind them. It puts me in mind of the lines of faux-clouds that planes leave in the sky. Imitation waves. Imitation clouds. These manmade attempts appear ludicrous or heroic, depending on my mindset. We seem tiny and enormous by turn. Chuck catches me gazing out the window. He wraps his arms around my waist.
'Weren't we lucky to get this view,' he comments.
'Yes, it's a beautiful background to a nervous breakdown.'
'Are you having a nervous breakdown?'
'No,' I admit, and pause before I add, 'but I feel I ought to be. It would be more respectable.'
'To hell with that.'
We revel in our salacious indolence. He combs his fingers through my hair and I muse, 'If only I could keep one inch of you all to myself. So that I could keep hold of it even when you go out of the room and I'd never be alone.' One inch is not so much to ask from such a big guy.
'Which inch would you pick?'
'The tip of your penis, obviously.' We both laugh, but I know really that I'd choose his lips that kiss and contradict me.
I can smell my own sex even when we are walking through the streets of Venice or dawdling around a museum; it smells superb. Chuck fills me with possibility and confidence. It was supposed to feel odd. That's what I'd have thought likely, after years of making love with one man; a different man should feel anomalous.
But it doesn't.
It seems like his broad, powerful body was created especially to delight me. I begin to believe I was born a woman for this man.
'I feel wise and naive at the same time when I'm with you.'
'What do you mean?'
'When I was twenty-seven I loved telling people I was twenty-seven and married, by which I meant established. What a child I must
have seemed. Now I am a child that is thirty-two. I feel anything is possible again.'
I question him continuously, discovering the mammoth things as well as the minutiae that make him who he is. I want to know everything about Chuck Andrews. I'm interested in his values, dreams, family and friends. I watch him all the time; sometimes he catches me staring at him and grins self-consciously. I study the tiniest detail. The way his hair parts, the mole on his neck, even the curve of his fingernails. I like knowing everything about him. I like everything I know about him.
57
28 May
'What did the unofficial yearbook say about you?' I ask.
It's the fifth day of our lovefest. This is a thought that has popped into my head from time to time and can now be voiced.
We are leaning over one of a million small bridges, staring out at the Tolentini Canal watching the afternoon sun joyfully skip on the water. There are two gondolas, moored. Despite being painted black they ooze glamour. One boat has ruby-red seats, the other has calm, regal blue; both boats are decorated with golden crests belonging to another age. Water laps and they bob, occasionally drifting into one another; as they gently nudge I am put in mind of lovers stealing quick kisses.
'The man most likely to seduce married women,' he says with a shy sigh.
'You are kidding, right?' I ask anxiously.
'No, 'fraid not.'
'Why did it say that? Did you have a reputation? Have you done this before?' I demand.
'Shush, calm down. I had a crush on one of the teachers in high school, that's all. Yes, she was married, but of course nothing ever happened. It was just the kids teasing me. I couldn't tell you when you first asked because you'd have taken it the wrong way. You'd have read more into it than it deserved.' Chuck shrugs.
'I guess.'
We both turn back to watching the bobbing boats but I feel a new tension in the air. He coughs.