“I know.” Wrapping the blanket tighter around myself, I look away from her again. I wake up thinking about Alexei and he’s the last thing I think of before I fall asleep at night. I’ve been trying to avoid him, I’ve been trying to think about him, and not to dream about him, but he’s always here, right beneath the surface. And still. How much, how hard can I fight? How can I fight for us when it feels like I’m the only one doing the fighting? Alexei says he wants me but he doesn’t want to try to see things from my point of view.
“I’ve been fighting for us for the past three years.” Once we’d started getting serious, once I’d realized that Alexei could be the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I’d told myself to be patient. I’d told myself that change takes time. I’d told myself I could live in his world if he would just start thinking about making a world we could live in together. “He doesn’t want to leave his...work. He won’t even consider it. If he loved me the way he says he does, he’d at least consider it.”
Her eyes are full of gentle reproach. “You know it’s more than work to him, Radiah.”
“Yes.” I snap my eyes back at her. Don’t I know that better than anyone else? “I know it’s more than work. I know it’s everything to him. Don’t you see, Carla? That’s my point! That’s the most important thing in his life. Not me. And I want to be that, Carla. Is that so wrong, really? I want to be the most important thing in his life and I want him to be the most important thing in mine. I’m willing. I’m willing to put him first.” I shrug. “He’s not. And Emilio…Emilio isn’t like that. His work is just that—it’s his work. It’s not his whole life. He actually wants a life. He wants a wife. He wants children...”
She interrupts me. “How do you know that? Because he told you? It’s easy to say those things. You know actions speak louder than words. I just—” She sighs. “I’m glad you’re having a good time. I just don’t want you to get hurt. You don’t know him. You just met him, Radiah. He’s saying all of the right things but doing and saying are two different things.” She says it softly, but she says it, and I feel my temper rise to it. Maybe because I know what she’s saying is true.
Maybe I don’t want to hear it. Maybe I just want to actually enjoy myself for a change.
“You know what? He talks to me about himself more than Alexei has talked about himself in five years. I mean… You’re right, I know. I know I don’t know much about him yet. How could I? We just met. But, Carla, I do know that Emilio wants the same things that I want. Why would he make that up? And I know...I know that he wants to know me, Carla. And I know that I want to know him. We’re exactly where we should be. Enjoying each other, enjoying getting to know each other. What’s wrong with any of that?”
I want to know him better. And I will. I’m going to take the time to get to know him. I’m going to make him, make myself really, a priority.
“Okay,” Carla tells me. She smiles, and I know things are alright between us, but I know too that, at least right now, in her heart she is rooting for Alexei and I.
I don’t know how to tell her that I’m pretty sure there isn’t anything left there to pull for. But I know too that I can’t expect her to jump ship so quickly. It’s hard to explain to anyone else what I’m actually going through. It’s hard to explain the kind of quick connection I felt with Emilio. It’s one of things that, if you’re not in it, it probably seems a little strange. The important thing is that Carla is here for me, and I will always be here for her too.
Still, when he calls later, I’m glad I’m alone in my room. Because when I answer the phone, I know I’m smiling that silly little smile. My Emilio smile. Lying on the bed, and twirling my finger through my hair, I watch the reflections of sunlight dance across the ceiling. “How are you?” he asks, and just that question makes my stomach do little flip-flops. It’s the way he asks it. He makes me laugh. He makes me smile.
We talk for almost an hour and I don’t really even know what we’re talking about. It’s nothing too important. I don’t even know where the time goes. He tells me about his day. He tells me about the woman who brought him his coffee this morning, and the way she couldn’t understand his accent and gave him a bagel with lox.
“Which, surprisingly, wasn’t too bad,” he tells me. He knows it wasn’t too bad because he hadn’t given it back to her. He hadn’t wanted to make her feel bad. It’s so sweet.
It’s so sweet that I tell him;“You’re so sweet it makes me want to throw up.”
“No no,” he protests. “My mother just told me to be nice to people. She said, you never know what kind of day they’re having. She said that small things can make people feel so much better. So, I try.”
I don’t tell him, but my mom used to say the same things. I don’t tell him that I think we were both raised by similar kinds of women. And maybe it’s one of the reasons we feel so much the same, think so much the same, about so many things. We come from a similar place, even though those places were thousands of miles away from each other.
Sometimes, we talk over each other. Sometimes, we are laughing too hard to say anything at all.
Then, we go quiet. It’s a comfortable quiet. I twirl my hair. There is no more sunlight on the ceiling anymore. The sky is dark; the sun has gone down behind the buildings.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say back to him.
“So I want to tell you,” he says. “I want to tell you that I like talking to you,” he tells me.
And I tell him, “I like talking to you, too, Emilio.”
And when he asks me to go to dinner with him tomorrow night, I don’t hesitate. I say yes.
Radiah
Carla is still at home when the doorman buzzes Emilio up. She lingers then, like I expected she might. I don’t blame her for being curious. But I’m really not ready to make introductions. Yet.
“Carla.”
She looks at me from where she’s standing at the entrance to the kitchen munching on an apple. “What?” She manages to muster the most innocent look I think she has in her repertoire.
I can tell how hard she’s trying toact natural. As though to prove her point, she leans against the wall.
“Carla.” I say her name again, a little more firmly this time. “I don’t think that wall needs you to hold it up.”
She arches one of her finely-manicured eyebrows at me. Then looks at the wall, as though she hopes the wall might back her up by saying something different. The wall just goes on...being a wall, “Fine,” she says. “I can tell when I’m not wanted. Come on, wall.” Rolling her eyes, she goes all of the way down the hall to her bedroom. She closes the door.
Of course, I know she might be planning to peek around the corner, I know she might decide to listen too. That, I really can’t say much about. I mean, I’ve checked all of the men that come to the apartment to take Carla out. Under any other circumstances I’d definitely introduce them and later, I’d ask Carla, “What do you think?”
This isn’t any other circumstance though. I know, in Carla’s mind, Alexei is the man for me. Emilio could show up looking hotter than any man she’d ever seen, and being as polite and as well-mannered as a groom on his wedding day, and it still wouldn’t matter. He could show up saving babies from burning apartments, petting dogs and walking little old ladies across the hall and that probably wouldn’t even be enough.
Honestly, he could show up doing his own version of Magic Mike, and that wasn’t going to make her think he was as good looking as Alexei.
Nothing is going to be good enough for Carla, not yet.
It’s not something I want to put myself or Emilio, or her either for that matter, through.
So, I greet him at the door. I can whisk him into the living room, run to my bedroom to grab my shoes, and then we can be...we can be…
I literally lose my train of thought when I see him.
He looks even better than he did the other night. Or maybe it’s just that smile that makes him look so.
..delicious. He has the most handsome smile I’ve ever seen. Somehow, his smile is both devilish and angelic. Maybe it’s the way his lips curl into something that straddles between a grin and a smirk.
Really, he’s so devilishly, angelically debonair a part of me can’t wait to…
Can’t wait to what? Was I thinking about what I think I might have been thinking about?
Wait! I literally have to tell myself: Hold on, woman. Slow down, take a deep breath. Really, it’s too soon for that.
That.
Did I just think that? Was I about to just think that? Had I just successfully stopped myself from thinking that?
I did.
I had.
It was.
Oh, Radiah, I say to myself. Simmer down, girl.
It’s an alarming thought. It’s something so different and so new and this is already so very new and so very different I feel completely out of context with myself. It almost feels like I’ve literally forgotten how to date someone. I’m not sure what to say, or how to say it, or how to look at him or how not to look at him.
So, I guess I go to my Emilio default. And I end up...beaming up at him.
I’m smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. I’m always smiling around this man, damn it! Now I almost wish Carla was out here, so she could see some of the things I see in him. I don’t just mean how good looking he is either. I mean the way he talks and the way he smiles and the way he looks at me. She could see the way he is lifting my hand into his, and the way he is lowering his head to press a soft kiss to the tips of my fingers. That, and every look he gives me, all of it, makes my stomach flutter with anticipation.
This time, I think it without hesitation, and without remorse. I want to kiss him again. I can’t wait to kiss him again.
I do kiss him again.
Rising onto my toes, so I can touch my lips to his, I have to force myself to stifle a soft moan. I’m not sure what we have planned, and then I remember, dinner! But really. Our only plan could be to do this all night and I know I’d be completely and utterly satisfied.
“Hi.” Our kiss whispers away and I lower back to stand flat-footed in front of him.
“Hello,” he says. His little grin looks secretive. “You look beautiful as always.”
Pulling the door open wider, I invite him in. “Thank you.” Of course, the way it always seems to be when I’m around Emilio Peroni, I can’t stop smiling. “Do you want a drink?” I nod to Carla’s small wet bar. There’s liquor there of course, but also water, and juices, almost anything he might want. “I’m almost ready. Just give me a minute more.”
He stands in the center of room, looking at me. “Take your time, Radiah. I don’t mind waiting. You’re worth waiting for. Although…” his eyes move across me, somehow polite but at the same time... not so polite. I don’t mind him looking. In fact, I enjoy his eyes. “I’m not sure what else you could do to get ready. You already look so beautiful.”
He’s doing it again, that smile. His smile is that kind of devilish little smirk that only a few kinds of men can pull off without looking smug or condescending. He’s just got it, naturally. There is no denying it. Emilio is not only handsome. He’s hot. He’s the classic Italian stallion, all dark haired and dark eyed and broad shouldered. And those lips. We just kissed only a few minutes ago but looking at him now makes me want to kiss him again. Makes me want him to kiss me again. That’s the second time in a space of a few minutes that I’ve thought about kissing him.
That’s right, I tell myself. That’s what that means. It means kissing him. There’s no way I’m thinking about running my hands down his body. There’s no way I’m thinking about his hands running down my body. And there is definitely no way that I’m thinking about his hands and my hands running down each other’s bodies.
I don’t even look at his body. Nope. Not at all.
I wonder if he is thinking the same thing—if he is excited about the idea of kissing me again too.
Just thinking about the other night on the ferry makes my stomach flutter. I remember the lights in his eyes and the lights blinking in the dark; I remember the warmth of his arm surrounding my waist and the shiver of excitement I’d felt when he looked at me.
Okay, I really need to think about something else. I need to think about anything else.
“Do you feel like having Thai food tonight?”
“I feel like anything you want tonight,” he says. He says it in that way.
“You’re always making me blush,” I tell him and I move forward down the hall to head to my bedroom. It sounds a little bit like an accusation and maybe it is.
I think I might be putting a little extra swing in my hips. I can’t seem to help it.
“Maybe I like it. It might even be something I’m doing on purpose. I’m nefarious that way.”
I feel the flush rising through the back of my neck. The soft sound of his voice makes me shiver. Whirling around, I look at him.
He’s looking at me.
“And I’m nefarious in other ways too.”
I don’t think I can smile any wider. “Nefarious,” I repeat. “You—Just… Yeah.” I lick at my lips. “I don’t doubt it, Emilio.” I feel almost giddy. “You.” I nod toward the couch. “Make yourself at home. I won’t be long. I promise, Emilio.” And I make myself go because if I don’t, I don’t know if we’re going to make it out of the apartment.
Back in my bedroom I pick out a pair of dark plum-colored pumps to go with my lilac dress. I want to look perfect tonight. I want to feel perfect tonight. Because already tonight feels like it’s going to be special. I know I’ve just met him. I do know that Carla is right about that. But the way Emilio looks at me, the way he talks and the things he says are the things I want to hear and it’s the way I want to be looked at.
I’m going to savor it.
And I’m going to try to keep level headed about it. I’m going to try, but I have to admit to myself, I’m not doing a very good job of it.
Because I can’t stop myself from thinking: maybe he’s the one. I’m not sure I believe in fate but if I hadn’t left the penthouse that night, if I hadn’t stormed out on Alexei, I never would have met Emilio. There had been so many nights, too many nights, when I’d been just as depressed and I didn’t leave. Night after night, I’d kept my feelings buried. I’d decided to exchange my future for the present. Now, I feel like I can have both. I feel like I can have today and I can have tomorrow.
It’s almost too perfect to be real, the way it’s all worked out.
Worked out for the best.
Pulling the closet door open to look at the full-length mirror, I give myself the once over. It’s easy to imagine it: Emilio and I curled up on the couch or walking hand in hand down Riverside Drive while the sun is setting over the waterfront. It’s easy to imagine seeing him when I wake up and seeing him before I close my eyes at night.
Easy to imagine his large, gentle hands smoothing up along my sides.
Even easier to imagine running my hands across the broad, muscular width of his chest. I can see his chest stretching wider with each breath he takes, and damn, he works out. And it shows.
My imagination is way too vivid.
In so many ways, it’s so easy to see how compatible we are.
But am I letting my imagination run too wild?
There are so many little things I want to know about him. Does he like riding a bike? Would he want to go to poetry readings with me down in the Village? Does he like curling up on the couch to watch a silly movie and eat popcorn? Those are little things, silly things. Then, there are the much...bigger things I find myself wondering. I know he must like kids since he’s already told me he wants children of his own. But does he want a big family or a small family? Does he intend to stay here in America or will he, eventually, be going back to Italy? And yes, I know I’m letting myself get caught up in a fantasy. I know I’ve only just met him. But things are going so well and there are so many things I want to know abou
t him. So many things I need to know about him. Things I’m going to find out. Things I’m going to enjoy discovering.
It’s not a bad thing that I’m just starting to get to know him. It’s a good thing, an exciting thing. A thing I am savoring. That’s what I wish Carla could understand. It’s exciting to be at the beginning.
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