by Jen Tirone
But every morning and every night he reminded me I was his treasure through his knack for knowing how to give me just the right amount of warmth, that on some days, I almost forgot how he really was in this world when he wasn’t charming me with the romantic facade he portrayed all too well.
It took me about three weeks to come to the conclusion there wasn’t a right answer, a good decision or an easy route to take when I asked myself what to do now that I knew he was mafioso.
I focused on the fact that my husband, however he conducted his business outside of home, hasn’t ever treated me badly, aside from the night he dragged me to the car at the warehouse.
I shouldn’t punish him when his actions toward me have only shown me he’s had me on a pedestal.
So day in and day out, I grin and bear it.
I await him with a forced smile while I’m coming to terms with it all, and I ignore my petty woe-is-me problems, because my gorgeous husband adores me, cherishes me, and gives me everything I ever want and need, aside from having wanted an honest life.
When I didn’t meddle I didn’t see it, so in essence, I only had myself to blame.
What started off as a way to refocus my thoughts baking bread those few weeks ago, became an almost daily habit that I didn’t know what to do with the surplus of bread I kept making.
I couldn’t eat it all. Chiara would have a fit.
One evening after class as I waited on the sidewalk chatting with Nora, she mentioned she was hungry.
I had a loaf on me in hopes I could find a reason to offer it to her without coming off as weird, and the timing couldn’t have been better.
“Gianna! This very good! My family, love it when they try,” she said between mouthfuls.
I got the gist of what she meant and if she would leave them any of it to taste, they might enjoy it too.
The following class, she didn’t need to beg, but she did all the same even when I tried to explain it made me happy to bake it for her and promised to make her my mother’s cannoli one day, too.
Every week she greedily accepted my rosemary bread and she in return gifted me a handmade bracelet with a Celtic infinity knot, explained to be a symbol of friendship.
It meant more to me than she could ever imagine.
Too many times I had lunch with my mother-in-law to find that I couldn’t trust anyone the Morettis were surrounded with, most especially none of the vapid women pretending to want me as a friend. They only wanted to get closer to my husband.
Nora never even cared to know my last name.
With the distraction of English classes, baking treats to share with my lovely friend, and the many girlish giggles I shared with her as we spoke too loudly in the library, I started to feel like everything was going to be okay.
I could live this way.
I could pretend Giorgio Moretti and his family ran their nightclub and managed their other businesses I didn’t know much about…legitimately.
I would assume the next person to recognize me while I, or the both of us were out, was because as large as New York was, it was also a small world.
I could do it.
Gio was a good man… well, he was most certainly a good one to me.
One exceptionally warm evening after class I had to pass on doing my homework with Nora for a dinner Giorgio asked me to accompany him for.
Spring passed and summer was approaching quickly, making me miss Salerno’s coastal breezes that kept you cool while it was hot. I even preferred the brutal New York winters over the heat.
I checked my watch for the time and needed to be on my way home already, so I turned to Nora to say bye when she was waving someone down to join her.
“Gianna, look! My brother here. Meet him. He always eat all the bread,” she says, locking her arm with mine to keep me from leaving just yet.
When my eyes connected with the person standing before me that she was introducing as her brother, something visceral happened.
It was beyond me.
My world had just tilted on its axis.
Or more like a star exploded, and I was sucked into its black hole with no choice.
The feeling was larger than life, larger than the little speck I took up in the whole scope of the universe, and all the planets lined up and eclipsed each other in this very moment.
I felt my world, my DNA, and my life morph into something unrecognizable, all from looking into the exquisite green eyes of the man before me.
Not only did it scare the hell out of me, but my instincts warned me that his sudden presence was a heavy hand played in fate.
Somehow, our intersecting at this point in life had a profound reason, would have a profound effect, and a destined result no matter how much I would fight it.
I could tell he was going to cost me my soul and it wasn’t going to end well for anyone.
The gripping fear alarmed me, yet as dangerous as this encounter felt, I was immobilized to the spot.
I had to swallow a few times.
Not only because my mouth went dry at the sight of him, but because my crazy heart was trying to climb its way out of my throat and wrap its arms and legs around him.
Her brother stared back at me for a long time too, rendered speechless perhaps feeling the same reaction as well.
I could only know what I was feeling.
Nora, uncomfortable watching this absurd encounter, and bless her, oblivious to how moving it was, cleared her throat loudly and managed to snap me out of my stupor.
Her brother, on the other hand, continued to stare without abandon.
It should have creeped me out.
It should have irritated me he would be so blatant with his staring, but it only felt right.
It felt like he was entitled to.
“Gia, this my brother, Mícheál Inys,” she says, pronouncing his first name MEE-hal, “Everyone say ‘Michael’ in America. This my friend, Gianna,” Nora introduced as best she could in English.
“Ciao, Michele. Un piacere di conoscerti.” A pleasure to meet you, I said not meaning for it to come out so husky.
And still, he didn’t speak.
Nora raised her eyebrows in disbelief, probably at his poor manners, when she spewed off at him in rapid Gaelic.
She had to have been chastising him because of her tone.
I don’t know what was going on between us, but I didn’t want her to think I’d been offended.
I offered a small smile at them, when Michael stepped forward, lifted my hand up to his lips and kissed the top of my hand very softly, very seductively, making me shiver. “The pleasure, love, is all mine,” he whispered into my hand, with a delicious Irish accent, as he watched me through hooded eyes.
I couldn’t believe the carnal reaction I had to him!
I hastily snatched my hand from his hold, not caring how rude it seemed because I needed to stop being touched by him!
He didn’t seem perturbed in the slightest, but Nora must’ve registered my brisk reproach as being uncomfortable, but she could never have imagined exactly how.
“Gia! I sorry, friend. My brother...” she shakes her head while glaring at him. “He wrong in head today. DÚsachtach,” she shakes her head at him, “Crazy. No worry. When normal, very nice,” she tries to finish off with a smile.
Michael started laughing at her apology on his behalf and said something to her in Gaelic.
Again, she was a spitfire toward him. She even fondly smacked him on the back of his head while he just shrugged at her.
“Non c’e problema, Nora. I no upset.”
Not over something as irrelevant as manners anyway.
“Another week, va bene?” I asked her while gesturing my hand in what I hoped translated ‘next week’.
“Yes, I be here,” she practiced.
I waved them both goodbye without making any further eye contact with her brother and quickly walked toward Pasquale waiting for me in the car a few feet just down the curb.
I could�
��ve sworn I heard Michael ask Nora with clear disappointment in his voice, “Is she really married already?”
Making my heart jump to my throat again in a panic because I momentarily felt disappointment being married too.
The reprieve I once felt having the English classes to go to, now felt like a burden; I was ashamed for having feelings for another man that I didn’t know why, or how to identify.
I was afraid it was showing on my face all the time. That if anyone looked at me, they’d know I had this... secret crush or whatever it was, on someone other than my husband and could say something about it.
I started avoiding eye contact with anyone and I was afraid Giorgio was going to notice.
I was still unintentionally distant with him, but he continued to genuinely treat me so well and was always so attentive to me.
It made me feel worse.
“Maybe I can get a job, have something else to do?” I suggested one Saturday morning we were being lazy in bed.
“Why would you want to do that?” he asked with a cigar in his mouth as he was rubbing my feet, spoiling me, making me feel unworthy of his affections.
His chest was on display, he was bare underneath the sheets. He had such a relaxed look to him, it was hard to believe he could be an awful man outside of this bed.
“I don’t know. Maybe it can help us.”
And maybe that way he wouldn’t feel like he needed the mafia to have this luxurious life.
“No way. Not my beautiful, flawless wife,” he shakes his head as he says it and puts the cigar down on the ashtray on his nightstand.
“Why not?” I asked genuinely perplexed.
“Because I don’t want my wife tired or getting calluses on her hands.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Because, I like your hands to be soft when they handle me, bella,” he says in all seriousness.
“Oh my God, you’re kidding, right?” I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of his reasoning.
“I’m serious, Gianna. If I want rough hands touching me, I’d do it myself,” he says, raising his eyebrows at me.
Wow, this man!
It was times like these when he was playful, that I just couldn’t remember why I found it hard not to accept all the good and the bad about him.
Why was I struggling with it so much?
“So go ahead, wife,” he says with a sly smile, lifting my hand toward his mouth and kissing the inside of my palm, “touch me with those soft hands.”
Then I’d see Michael a few days later, and as much as I know I loved my husband, there was something about Michael that just... did things to me.
There were stirrings in my heart I didn’t understand.
Feelings I was not supposed to be feeling.
I wanted to blame that first involuntary reaction to him on the fact that I had never paid a cute boy attention before, and since I’d never been with anyone other than Gio, I wouldn’t know if that was typical for a person to be able to have that reaction to someone else, while married.
I also tried blaming it on the fact that this new side of Giorgio wasn’t so shiny and perfect or ideal in my mind anymore. Making it so anyone else would appear… attractive.
It had to be that.
I needed it to be that.
Because Michael wasn’t even that eye-catching in the traditional sense. He wasn’t very tall, his teeth weren’t straight... I knew I was grasping at air trying to make myself believe those shallow thoughts because every time I saw him, the thoughts I tried so hard to quell would deepen the moment he’d set his eyes on me.
“I don’t talk nice,” I tried deterring him from conversing with me outside the library one evening, while Nora chatted up another one of our classmates after we finished our homework.
He smiles smugly, the bastard, knowing I’m trying to avoid him.
“You mean well. Nice is a behavior. You want to say you don’t speak very well. Or better yet, you don’t speak very much English.”
“Okay,” I try to repeat what he said, but it sounds like I said ‘I don’t-e speak-e moch.’
This brings out a chuckle from him while he reaches into his pocket to unfoil something and then pops it into his mouth, bringing my attention to his full lips while he chews, and then to his throat when he swallows, speeding up my already rapidly beating heart.
“Okay, let me rephrase that for you. You want to say your limited in the language, right?” he asks, breaking me out of my staring spell.
“Si,” I nod, not really having paid any more attention to the conversation but to his sinful mouth instead.
Everything about it, from the way he smiled with his lips pressed together in an adorable pout so he didn’t show his teeth, to the proportional fullness of both the top and bottom lip that made me wonder in secret how soft they would feel... everywhere.
“Alright, just say...” he starts, and then goes on to terribly mimic an Italian accent, “‘not-e much-e English-e...’” while pressing all his fingertips together in one hand and then shakes it back and forth in a typical Italian hand gesture, making me laugh at him, “… and with that face—you’ll get away with anything, love.”
I couldn’t help the blush that crept onto my cheeks and I looked everywhere but at him.
I shouldn’t have liked the way the compliment and the endearment felt coming from him so much.
“Va bene. Not much English,” I say correctly.
“There you go,” he responds.
“Yes... I go. I need go a casa,” I say, feeling reminded of where I belonged.
“Oh no! You misunderstood me, it’s a saying. I’m not telling you to leave!” he clarifies, in an attempt to keep me from going.
“Allora, but I need go,” I tell him and he tries to hide his disappointment, failing terribly.
He wouldn’t win a single hand at poker the way his feelings were always written across his face.
I’m feeling slightly sad I can’t really stay in his presence some more either... but keeping away from him is for the best.
“Sure thing, love. I’ll hail a cab for you,” he offers.
I notice his eyes are green just like mine, and he’s light skinned, in contrast to my golden-tanned Giorgio.
And at that thought, I chastise myself for even comparing the two men.
Their differences shouldn’t even matter.
No one is supposed to even be comparable to my husband, I reprimand myself.
“Grazie, but I have car that wait,” I tell him while pointing over to it.
“Yeah, alright. Have a lovely night then,” he says as he rubs his chest without realizing he was doing it.
It was like he was rubbing away an ache saying so much with the gesture.
“Evening, love.”
Shit.
I thought since Nora wasn’t in class I wouldn’t run into Michael, actually feeling relief when I saw my friend wasn’t there.
“Hi, Michael. It is nice to see you,” I reply in slightly better, but still heavily accented English.
“You too. Nora’s ill. It’s a small cold but she wasn’t up for class tonight. I told her I’d let you know about her when I got out of training from the academy,” he shares. “I was just a few blocks over,” he points his thumb over his shoulder in the direction he’s talking about.
“Va bene. Thank you for let me know. Tell her I hope she become good quick.”
“Sure, of course... I have something for you, though,” he says right before I can make an excuse to leave his presence fast.
It took me by surprise, a pleasant one in fact, but really, I knew I couldn’t accept it.
“Michael, you should not,” I chide softly, not wanting to be ungrateful, but clear that he should not.
I start walking toward the car and he walks right in step with me, and in a low, gravelly voice that makes my belly flip, he says in my ear, “It’s only a kiss.”
I breathe in sharply at the thou
ght and with great effort I step away from him like he was a snake ready to strike.
I’m sure my face conveyed the horror I felt that he would be so forward.
But he doubles over laughing.
Loudly.
Like it’s even funny that he’d just offer up to kiss a married woman.
Pedestrians rushing by are looking at us.
He’s causing a scene and I hate it.
My nerves are frayed around him, my conscience berating me for the butterflies fluttering in my belly.
I already feel guilty I haven’t sent him away and he’s garnering attention I really don’t want to have from people.
I’m tempted to knock him over in his fit of laughter with a good shove, annoyed that he’s laughing at me.
I’m not even going to address the feeling of rejection bothering me right now.
“What is funny?” I snap at him.
He looks up and is coughing now from the exertion, and extends his hand out to me with an open palm.
I step back, afraid of what he has, but curiosity gets the best of me so I look over to see this tiny little triangle wrapped in aluminum foil with some kind of tag hanging from it.
I look at him confused, when he finally gets a grip on himself, and says while still chuckling, “It’s only a Hershey’s chocolate kiss. That’s all, love. A little treat,” he says with a delicious smile.
“Oh,” I mutter, because I feel silly at my reaction and I don’t know what else to say.
He lifts my hand and turns it palm up to place the ‘kiss’ in it while looking into my eyes, and slowly closes my palm around it.
It’s unnerving to have his warm hands encompassing mine, making it feel like a caress to my soul with the simple touch.
It feels so perfect, really.
And because it does, it’s too much, and as innocent as I try to play this scenario off to myself, it isn’t.
This sweet man, with his sweet gestures, is more dangerous than if he’d have outright kissed me.
Because like this, he’s burrowing a permanent spot into my mind.
He’s in thoughts he shouldn’t be in.
Starring in what-if daydreams lately that are detrimental to the reality I want to pretend I can live with.