Beautiful Secret

by Dana Faletti

  Kissing her ear, he whispered, “Je t’adore, cousine.”

  The lovely words landed upon her softly, mingling with every other sensation she’d indulged in on this unforgettable night. “Me too,” she said and closed her eyes.

  In that moment just before sleep, when reality isn’t quite solid, Tate thought she felt a hot tear land on her neck. She wasn’t sure if it came from his eyes or hers.

  Chapter 31

  Tate

  Tate sat cross-legged and naked, her bottom half wrapped in the smooth sheets she’d pulled from the bed. Early sunshine and an unexpected breeze slipped into the room through the floor-length windows that ran all along the far wall of the bedroom. Every once in a while, the motor of a speedboat broke the serene quiet that hung over the beach bungalow they’d holed up in for the night.

  “The best time?” Tate repeated Michel’s question, sucking in a deep breath of the sea salt-laced air. Her cheeks stretched into a grin, and she could feel the pink brush burn he’d left on them.

  “Yes, your best,” he said and chuckled, stuffing a piece of warm brioche into Tate’s mouth.

  “Mmm,” she moaned. “This is so delicious.” She licked rich hazelnut chocolate spread from her lips and swallowed. “Thanks for getting breakfast.”

  “You’re delicious, cousine, and you didn’t answer my question.” Michel scooted closer so that he sat six inches away, facing her on the bed. He took one of her cool feet in his hands and began to massage the center of its sole with the flat part of his thumb.

  “I don’t know what my best time ever was, Michel.” Tate’s curls fell over her bare chest as she tossed her head back with almost embarrassed laughter. Why were they even having this adolescent conversation? She shot him a teasing look. “Do you want me to say last night was the best ever? Is that why you’re asking?”

  “I don’t need to hear you say it, Tatiana,” Michel joked, crawling into her lap and sealing his mouth over hers, his tongue sucking lightly on her lower lip. His blue eyes stared into hers, taunting her, daring her to reply, but Tate ignored the challenge and closed hers. Michel’s hands traveled under the sheets up her legs and stopped on her inner thighs, squeezing just enough to make her sigh.

  “Maybe there have been too many men,” he whispered between kisses. His mouth moved lazily over her chin and onto her neck as his fingers lightly brushed the curls from her breasts to her back. “Maybe you can’t decide, cousine. Is this the problem?” He pulled slightly away from her then, an impish tilt to his lips.

  “Jesus, Michel.” Tate fell back, flustered, covering herself completely with the sheet.

  A second later, he shimmied under the covers next to her. The two lay side by side on their bellies, propped up on their elbows like two school-aged children at a campout. All that was missing was a flashlight. Michel reached his left foot out and hooked it over Tate’s. She smiled to herself.

  “So, where are we, anyway?” Tate asked. “In relation to your grandfather’s house, I mean.” Lining the outer edges of Tate’s mind was the worry over how she was going to get back to Zio Nino’s house without performing a bang-up job of the walk of shame.

  “This is Saline, Tatiana,” Michel told her, leaning his face into her shoulder. “We are maybe twenty minutes from Valanidi.” Seeming to read her mind, he said softly, “I have some clothes in the closet…if you need something to wear later.”

  Suddenly, the full force of the truth hit her over the head like a sledgehammer. This was their house—Michel and his wife. A sick heaviness pooled in Tate’s stomach as she turned her head to peer into his eyes. The thought of Lilliane’s clothing hanging behind the closet doors, the possibility of her beauty products hiding under the sink—the scent of her ghost made Tate shiver.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” she asked, unsure what answer she hoped he would give. “With your wife, I mean.”

  “No,” he said, a huff of sarcasm escaping through his nose. “But I will, Tatiana. I should.” He met her stare with his lips pursed as if he’d swallowed something bitter. In the space of a few seconds, his eyes grew dark, their watery blue changing to a melancholy shade that Tate couldn’t put into words.

  “You don’t have to talk about it, Michel.”

  Michel turned his face away, nodding his head several times and picking at the sheet with his fingernail in silence. He didn’t look at Tate when he finally spoke.

  “Our relationship was very physical, Tatiana. And very intense,” he said, clearing his throat. “Lilliane, when she want to fuck, she want to fuck now. Not in five minutes, not when we get home, not later when the baby is asleep.” He paused and pushed the sheet back from over their heads. “She was a very selfish woman and sometimes a selfish mother, but when the sickness came, it was more than just selfish. For many days, she didn’t leave the bed, all day staring at the wall but not moving. The baby would cry and cry and Lilliane would not budge.” He swallowed, as if reaching for the resolve he needed to share this story. “This crazy, Tatiana, it is a disease. Her mother had it, too.”

  Tate remained silent, watching Michel’s eyes wander the room, wondering what memories danced behind them.

  “I was stupid to believe she could be happy, that she could be well,” he said, shaking his head. “She was so young and so…I don’t know, Tatiana.” Michel let his face drop into the mattress, and Tate, still saying nothing, placed a hand between his shoulder blades to let him know she was there.

  “And, when Amelie, our daughter, was born…” he continued, his words tearful yet quickening with eagerness, as if remembering the moment of her birth could alleviate his sadness. “Lilliane was better. At least, I thought so. She was almost normal; she almost cared about things other than herself. And Amelie…” His voice trailed off as he began to weep.

  Tate didn’t shush him, didn’t rub his back or try to wipe away his tears. Instead, she slid her body beneath his and began to kiss his wet cheeks. She wrapped her lithe arms around his neck and pulled him into her, pushing her hips forward into his.

  This time, their lovemaking was not slow and soft. Tate absorbed his heartache with every violent thrust he offered into her. When they came together, they were both crying, their synchronized satisfaction laced with the sad stories fate had written them into. The magnitude of one sensation did nothing to balance or cancel out the other, and in that moment of climax, pleasure coexisted with anguish.

  After a stretch of sated silence, Michel spoke.

  “Stay with me today, Tatiana.” He laced his fingers into her hands and rested his cheek against hers.

  Tate wanted nothing more than to stay cradled in the fantasy of his arms, but she knew there was a task she had to complete. The package nagged at her from her purse on the floor. “I have to do something, Michel,” she began.

  Technically, Zia Luisa had said not to tell Zio. She hadn’t really mentioned anything about telling her grandson. Tate ran her fingernails across her scalp and winced as she made the decision to share her aunt’s cryptic directions. “Your grandmother gave me a package. Told me I have to take it to an address in Trunca, my Nana’s hometown.”

  Michel’s eyes narrowed. “Did my grandmother give you a name?”

  “No, she didn’t say much. She was very emotional about the whole thing. Told me not to tell your grandfather about it.”

  “Hmm, my Mami has a secret, it seems, no?” Michel’s mouth bent into a smile. “I hope when I am old, I too will have secrets, Tatiana.”

  Tate laughed softly. “Not me,” she said. “I hope that when I’m her age, I’m brave enough to be totally transparent.” She looked at Michel’s confused face but chose not to explain her English. She was just so used to keeping everything she felt bottled up inside. Someday, maybe by the time she was as old as Zia Luisa, Tate would be able to bare all of it. She’d have no secrets she needed to keep. Or maybe she’d have someone she didn’t have to keep them from.

  “Tatiana, I know Trunca,” Michel
said, bringing her thoughts back to the situation at hand. “I’ll take you to find the address tomorrow, but today you stay here, with me.”

  The decision was easy to make then. She wanted to be here. With him. “Okay.”

  “We can sleep on the beach at Saline this afternoon. The water is calm, nice for swimming,” he said. “And I can show you how to jump from the rocks into the sea. It is impressive.”

  “Hmm,” Tate hummed. “Sounds lovely.” Her open eyes stared at the fleur-de-lis patterns on the ceiling tiles. “Except for the rock jumping part. That sounds scary.”

  “It is not dangerous. Come,” Michel said, pushing his body off of the bed and going to the windows.

  Tate propped her head up on one elbow and watched him, her chest heaving at the sight of his nakedness. Every sharp angle and curve of his flesh seemed to speak so fluidly to her, to be versed in the intimate language of her own skin.

  “Come and see, cousine,” Michel said again, parting the heavy white curtains.

  As Tate stood and neared Michel, she could feel the blazing August heat seep into the room. Michel moved aside and placed her at the window, his arm slung just below her breasts from behind, his fingers pointing toward the view outside.

  “Wow, it’s amazing,” Tate said.

  The view from Michel’s bedroom window boasted a bright blue cove, with about two hundred feet of usable shoreline. On one end of the beach, the land inclined to what looked like a little alleyway with cars parked bumper to bumper along its sides. At the other end, the beach was bordered by an expanse of huge gray rocks, one on top of the other. It looked to Tate as if someone had tried and failed to build a dam there. As she watched from the window of the bungalow, two children began climbing the rocks: one a little blonde girl who looked to be about six, the other a chubby dark-haired boy of around the same age.

  “Is it safe for them?” Tate asked, alarmed that such young children were making their way up what looked like a sharp miniature cliff.

  “They are fine. I told you, it is not dangerous,” he said, still pointing at the sprawling rocky crag. “After the rocks is the sea, all the way to Sicily. You can see the volcano from there.”

  The view was great, but Tate was stuck on the vision of those little children scaling the huge rocks. “At least they have water socks on,” she said, noticing the stretchy black shoes on their feet. “Their toes won’t get cut up too badly.”

  “They wear the shoes for the riccio.”

  “The what?” Tate furrowed her brows at the unfamiliar Italian word.

  Michel lowered his forehead into his hands, rubbing his temples and closing his eyes. “I cannot think of the word in English, but these are all over the place in this water. A ball-shaped creature who has spikes all over his back. Very painful if you step on him without shoes.”

  “A sea urchin?”

  Michel snapped his fingers. “Yes, this is the name,” he said. “Thanks.” He kissed her cheek and leaned his hard chest into her back.

  “I am definitely not getting into that water,” Tate told him. Active Sicilian volcanoes and spiny sea urchins sound anything but tempting, she thought as she pulled the curtain closed and turned to face him. She edged the fullness of her chest into his and brought her lips to his neck, hoping he’d forget about the beach and, instead, find other ways to impress her.

  Two hours and two rounds of lazy lovemaking later, Tate murmured groggily. She raked shaking fingers through her hair, surprised to find it dry. Her vision was still blurry from sleep, her mind yet caught up in the dream. In it, she’d been swimming naked in the open caves off of Tropea, gliding through the clear salty water, weightless and free. Diving deep through warm to cold, she’d kept her eyes wide open, then surfaced lazily into patches of sunlight that dotted the rock ceilings.

  For hours, it had seemed in her dream, she’d dived and surfaced, her only emotion pure joy.

  Until the last time.

  She’d upended her body and submerged, forcing her head and shoulders to thrust their way toward a black bottom that held only mystery, not fear. Her arms pushed water behind and above her. Her feet were stiff and her toes pointed skyward. But when her lungs whispered that it was time, she couldn’t find the sun, couldn’t see the light. She’d swum, in circles it seemed, until her lungs were screaming.

  Then, suddenly, she was breathing again. Awake and alive, here in the sweet sweatiness of Michel’s arms, where the only sounds were the puffs of his soft breath in and out and the buzz of a resident fly.

  “What is it, Tatiana?”

  “Nothing.” She sunk back into his too-warm flesh, melting into him. “Just a dream.”

  “Mmm.” His lips brushed her forehead, and he sighed. “Are you ready now to jump off the rocks?”

  She groaned, hating that he’d remembered. “I didn’t say—”

  “Oh, but you did, cousine,” he teased. “When I was doing this.” He ran his fingers up her thighs and snuck them slowly inside of her. “And this.” His thumb rubbed circles upon that sensitive spot, just as it had earlier when she’d begged him.

  He’d made her promise she’d jump off the rocks with him before he’d entered her and quenched the thirst that burned her from the inside out.

  Now, her throat was once again fiery with desire, but this time she swallowed her lust and kicked him away, jokingly stealing the upper hand. His rock-solid maleness told her that she wasn’t the only one who was thirsty.

  “I don’t have a swimsuit,” she said, turning her body so that her ass shifted against his hardness as she left the bed.

  Michel dropped forward into the bed, blowing out a mouthful of air, then raising his head to grin at her. “This is not a problem in Calabria.”

  Tate crossed her arms and pushed one hip out. “There is no way, Michel.”

  “Earlier, you said this same thing about jumping off of the rocks,” he said, his laugh a deep and hearty music that would forever be her favorite song.

  And so, with the sun sitting like a golden sentry in the late afternoon sky and Mount Etna spewing spirals of steam in the distance, Tate stood atop the gray-white rocks at Saline. Wearing nothing but white cotton underwear and water socks, she squeezed the hand of her beautiful Michel, a man she knew she shouldn’t love for more reasons than one. A man with whom she’d shared secrets. A man with whom she shared family.

  “Are you ready?” he asked her.

  She didn’t bother to answer him before she jumped.

  Chapter 32

  Tate

  Tate dug her heels into the foot pegs of the motorbike as Michel turned sharply onto a narrow dirt road. The drive to Michel’s from the dance club to Saline on the fast, flat highway had been scary, but riding up the mountain to Trunca brought Tate to a whole new level of terror. Her arms couldn’t squeeze any more tightly around him. She tried desperately to hang on as gravity forced her body backward on the steep inclines.

  “Come, Tatiana,” he said as he killed the engine and leaned the bike into its kickstand.

  Tate inhaled deeply, finding the air to be somehow fresher on this part of the mountain. The landscape here was more rural than in Valanidi; a tad greener, with bushy bergamot trees dotting the fields outside of the town. She pondered where Nana’s farm might be if perhaps it still stood and was being tended by another family.

  “Is this it?” Tate reached for her purse, which she’d stowed away in a compartment below the leather seat, and gazed at the small village in front of them. Trunca looked as if it had been scooped up by the hand of God—buildings, gray dirt, beat-up cars and all—and planted haphazardly in the middle of a pastoral expanse of fields and trees. Faded and dirty, tiny rustic homes with chipped and broken stone walls lined either side of the streets. Most of the residences resembled Zio’s bread house, flat-roofed and surprisingly small, but some stretched to three or four narrow stories. The town, with its colorless homes that sat practically on top of each other, was tucked inside a coliseum made of moun
tains.

  “The address is this way,” Michel said, pulling Tate away from her observation of Nana’s hometown. He held out his hand to her, and they started, together, down a narrow cobblestone street.

  “It’s all so old,” Tate said quietly. While the rest of the world had evolved into the twenty-first century, Trunca, it seemed, had stood peacefully still. Washboards and laundry lines, straw brooms and glass milk jugs. These, and other antiquated articles of life, caught Tate’s attention, blanketing her with a nostalgia that came from somewhere beyond her own memories.

  “Look,” Michel said, pointing to a large wooden-framed wire coop, a massive raven perched behind its bars.

  Tate wrinkled her nose and stared at the large creature. “Who would want to keep a blackbird like that?” The raven looked back at Tate, then turned its head sideways, its beady black eyes flashing eerily in their sockets.

  “Ciao.” A man’s voice broke into their study of the strange bird. “Alla ricerca di qualcosa?” Are you looking for something?

  Tate pivoted on one foot toward the man, immediately noticing the gentle smile that sat beneath his thick black mustache and the calm kindness in his dark eyes. “Ciao,” she replied. “Is this bird yours?”

  “Si, il corvo è mio.” Yes, the raven is mine.

  Tate nodded, biting the inside of her lip and taking another look at the bird, which was now pecking intermittently at the wire of its cage. Michel stood behind her, his hand upon her shoulder.

  “The raven is a smart bird and very good luck,” the man told them as he leaned against a cement wall in faded blue jeans and a stained white V-neck T-shirt. “This bird can speak. I will show you.”