“Because you’re my friend,” he answers immediately.
“No, I’m not your friend at all… Do you think we’ll see each other when I finish working out with you? Do you think that we’ll go to eat a pizza or anywhere else together?” I ask bitterly. “The day I quit working out we won’t see each other again. I already know. I’ve always known it, so don’t act like my friend now, in this moment, exclusively to ruin the evening for me - an evening that has been, otherwise, perfect.” I say without really meaning it. No evening where he arrives arm-in- arm with another girl can be perfect, never mind what happens.
He is speechless for a moment and gazes at me, almost disgusted. “I didn’t think that you were like that…”
“Like what?” I ask, but I’m not sure I want to know.
He looks me up and down. “In short, one’s as good as another.”
I pull back as though he had given me a slap in the face. No Andrea, one’s not as good as another, but unfortunately the one that’s worth it doesn’t want me, and I’m tired of living on the sidelines.
“It’s only a question of speed for you, eh? Who crosses the finish line first…”
He has a strange look - chilling, ferocious and intense - like that of a lion before devouring his prey.
“All you had to say was that it was a question of speed…” He murmurs to himself, moving slow but sure, like a predator.
Instinctively I back up towards the door, until I feel the handle in my back. I try to grasp it and open it from behind, without looking because, exactly like a prey, I don’t feel like turning my back on him in this moment.
“You just had to say so…” He whispers. And just like a millennium old dance, we move in the same precise instant. I turn to open the door and he reaches me with a leap. I can’t open the door. Andrea takes me and crushes me with my back to the wall beside the door. He’s very close, so much so that I can feel his hot breath on my lips when he murmurs, “Because I am the fastest.”
These words surprise me and remove my strength to fight. I raise my eyebrows while I relax my hands on his shoulders, at first intent on pushing him away, now limply resting in a sign of easy, too easy, surrender. My mouth opens involuntarily, in a mixture of surprise and anticipation, because I know, I know down to my bones, I know in my belly and in the shivers along my spine, that Andrea’s about to kiss me. And this time it’s for real. This time… a real kiss.
Too bad that the door opens from the outside just in that moment, just a moment before he covers that distance of a centimeter with his mouth. That damned centimeter…
“Andrea!”
I turn blinking my eyes as though I had been in the dark and someone had just pointed a flashlight in my face. As if I had woken up after a long, pleasant sleep. Tiziana is there on the other side with her mouth open and a look of shock on her face, with a hand on the door and her gorgeous figure immobile.
“Tiziana…” I hear Andrea’s voice to my left.
“I can’t believe it…” She whispers with a crooked wrinkle in her beautiful mouth. Then she runs away, as much as her mega-galactic heels allow her to. She runs out of my field of vision.
I feel cold when Andrea’s body moves away from mine and I turn my head towards him, still slightly dazed.
“Olly…” He whispers, looking a little at me, a little at the open space at the door. Undecided what to do.
If he stays and lets her go, I’ll forgive him everything. If he stays and lets her go, I’ll tell him how I feel.
“Stay here,” he says with a look of sadness, and then runs away.
And the saddest thing of all is that I stay, like an idiot. I stay alone, closed in that crappy room with bare feet for at least forty minutes.
When I resurface, in a short time I find out that Andrea and Tiziana have left the party, that Gianca has abandoned my shoes, leaving the party too, while Seba and the other two are in a circle chatting with three girls.
I go home alone, with my shoes in the passenger seat, driving with bare feet even if you’re not supposed to. I swear to myself that it’s over with Andrea. As soon as he comes back from the U.S., I’ll tell him that I don’t intend to continue with the workouts and our program.
And when, at four in the morning, I get a message saying, Olly, when I get back we have to talk, I cancel it without even answering.
***
I don’t know why Nic has the idea that Gianca is not right for me. Gianca is a really nice guy – cute, patient, tolerant. He has only one defect. He’s not Andrea.
During the week after the twins’ party he’s come to the cafè a couple of times, the first time with Nic and the second alone. The third time he asked me to go out together. He did it with a great sense of humor. He was finishing his breakfast, stirring his spoon in the two millimeters of cappuccino left and looking at the bottom of his cup when he began, “Listen Olly, if you promise not to let me end up the evening alone with your shoes, I’d really like to go out with you.”
I laughed and answered yes. If for nothing more than because it seemed like the right thing to get him to forgive me for my behavior the night of the twins’ birthday.
When he left the cafè, that day, I observed Madame Barbieri who had seen the exchange without commenting and I asked her, laughing, “Isn’t there a nickname for him?”
She answered me by bringing her cup to her mouth with a hand and spreading out the newspaper with the other without looking at me. “I’m an artist. I have to be inspired to create. It can’t be ordered.”
“And Gianca doesn’t inspire you?” I asked, curious.
“No, Olivia dear, he doesn’t inspire me at all.”
I went in the kitchen without saying anything else because I didn’t want to go back to the discussion yet. Unfortunately Madame Barbieri is fixated with the Sun God or Apollo dear, whatever you want, and didn’t listen to reason even after I had recounted every minute of the evening of the twins’ party.
Gianca and I went out together the same evening. He took me to the movies outdoors. We watched a film eating popcorn and we chatted for all the rest of the time. When at the end of the evening he asked me to go out again, without trying even a trace of making any physical advances, I said yes again.
The second time we went to eat a pizza and then to an open-air party. When he took me home, he tried to kiss me for the first time and I pulled back instinctively. He didn’t ask me to go out again that evening, understandably, and I didn’t say anything. Once I was closed in the solitude of my room I was angry with myself, because, without realizing it, I had obeyed Andrea, who apparently manages to influence me even from another continent.
I gave myself a talking to - to live my life and not wait for anything or anyone again - and the next day I phoned him to ask him to come with me to the barbecue at the twins’ house, where we are now.
All day I’ve been laughing and joking, but there’s a weight in my heart. I’m impatient with everyone, even Linda, even myself, for no good reason. These days I’m not very nice.
Linda and Marco are talking about England where they’re going in September. And I have to restrain myself with effort to not tell them to unglue themselves for a minute, that it’s the entire day that they’ve been holding hands or kissing or touching in some way. It’s ghastly hot too, doesn’t that continuous contact make them sweat?
At least Nic isn’t stuck to the model-pharmacist every third minute. Each of them does their own thing. Of course, when they actually notice each other, they’re completely lacking in decency and minors should be prohibited from coming near them, but at least the rest of the time they are two separate entities.
We’ve been in the yard, seated at a table in the shade of a tree for hours and hours, with the remains of the food in front of us – meat, potatoes, salad, watermelon and a heat wave that won’t let up until evening. I puff, probably for the millionth time, because Gianca, annoyingly attentive as a mother hen, whispers in my ear, “Do you want to go?�
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I look at the time. It’s six o’clock. “Yes, let’s go.” Also because I can’t stand pretending to be in the mood for company anymore.
He takes me home in his car. We arrived together and have been together all day, close, like a real couple. Before getting to my house he turns into a secondary street with little traffic. In fact, it’s practically deserted. It’s easy to imagine what his intentions are and mine are to content him. Today I won’t pull back. Today I’ll do what I want, without worries.
He turns off the car and turns to look at me. “Will you let me kiss you today?”
I just nod without speaking.
When he comes closer I don’t pull back. Gianca is a handsome man and I don’t run away.
His blue eyes are closer and closer as are his lips. I swallow and close my eyes for an instant before his mouth touches mine. He begins to give me little kisses, light and soft. I breathe deeply trying to let myself go, to relax, to enjoy this moment that I’ve wanted for so long.
Slowly the kiss becomes more insistent. His breath so close, too close, on my skin, gets on my nerves.
I try to relax and let myself go. I get more comfortable on the seat to leave him room, to give him everything he wants. And I don’t pull back not even when I feel the point of his tongue graze my lips as though looking for an invitation and not even when I feel it enter my mouth.
Everything is going great and I’m not wasting my first kiss at all. The sensation is pleasant. It would be better if I didn’t feel his breath, but it’s still pleasant. I don’t know very well what to do and I hope that he isn’t aware of my total lack of experience. I wouldn’t want to tell him that he is the first one to kiss me for anything in the world. There isn’t enough trust between us.
For a second I feel like laughing at the thought that this person has, currently, his tongue in my mouth, but I don’t feel confident enough to tell him anything too personal.
After a bit he gets up and comes over to my side, climbing over the gear shift and putting himself over me. He starts kissing me again right away and I let him do it. His hands start to wander with random caresses, on my sides, my belly and I don’t run. I’m making enormous progress. I don’t pull back even when, with a caress on my side, he arrives just under my breasts and, with a thumb, brushes my nipple. It tickles me and I feel a little shocked. Mostly I feel a great desire to take away his hand and tie it behind his back, but today I won’t run away. Today I’ll give him what he wants, which is also what I want. To live my life. I don’t want to wait for anything or anyone.
When he moves to caress my breasts with two hands at the same time I have to make a super-human effort not to react, to not move him away, get out of the car and go home. I grit my teeth and stay.
All of a sudden I hear a car horn honking furiously, coming from the main road. A little later someone, a man, yells, “Look where you’re going, asshole!”
I hear another male voice answer, “Fuck off!”
And the first voice say, “What?”
Then the voices overlap and I hear a loud banging of car doors. I detach myself with alarm and cry in a low voice, “Gianca!”
He doesn’t even look at me, but continues to kiss my neck. “Hmm?”
“I think there’s been an accident…”
At that point he looks up and looks to the right and to the left out of the car windows, “Where?”
“On the main road, I heard two people insulting each other and now nothing. I’m afraid they’re hitting each other, maybe it’s better to go and see…”
He stares at me, a little confused. “On the… main road?”
I nod. He sighs and moves to his seat after a brief hesitation. He stays there a moment and looks out the windshield in silence, and then turns on the car with a frown. “Now I’ll take you home and we’ll see what’s happening, but I’m not putting myself in the middle of any fight. They can kill each other, I’m not taking any punches for two idiot strangers.”
When we emerge onto the main road, we see that the two men are arguing very closely, but without laying a hand on one another. We pass slowly beside them without stopping. Or at least, without calling the police. Gianca wouldn’t have stopped anyway.
In front of my house he turns off the car and we are silent for a few minutes. He doesn’t attempt any other contact and I’m grateful to him. Suddenly, I decide to quit pretending. With him, with anyone, with myself. “Gianca, you are very sweet, but I’m in love with another person. I’m sorry.”
He nods before speaking. “Yeah, I sort of realized that.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat sincerely, without knowing what else to say.
“You used me to forget him?” He asks looking at the dashboard, without turning towards me. Perhaps thinking that I’m referring to an ex-boyfriend.
“No, no, I… hoped to turn the page, to start something new… I thought that… it was enough to put in a little effort.”
“And instead it’s not like that, huh?” He says, finally turning to look at me.
I shake my head, beaten.
A half-smile appears on his face. “Are you that sad about the situation with him or with me?”
“Both. Mostly I feel guilty for having gone out with you with… someone else on my mind.”
He shrugs in a very magnanimous way. “It happens. Let him throw the first stone who has never done it.”
I answer his smile. “Good luck with… with everything, with your future.”
“Thanks. You too.”
I get out of the car, I turn to wave once more and then go in the house. I go straight to my room.
Life is so unfair. From the first time I saw Giancarlo, my plan was working just fine. Everything went the way I wanted, exactly as I wanted it. And yet, it isn’t what I want now. There has been an unexpected surprise, one about a meter-ninety tall, damn it. I feel like an ingrate towards destiny.
21.
Yesterday I received a message that said – I’ve just landed, tomorrow at the bike track at the usual time?
I confirmed it immediately. Anyway, sooner or later it had to be done, pointless to put it off. I had even thought of doing it at the bike track; while we are running and I’m short of oxygen it would be even better – concentrating on remaining alive, maybe I wouldn’t be tempted to turn back.
When I get to the bike track and I see him already out of his car, all tan and splendid as the sun, I feel death in my heart.
I feel like weeping at the thought of not seeing him again. My throat closes and I’m almost unable to breathe, but this is the right thing to do. If I were reading a book, I’d advise the heroine to do what I’m about to do.
I park and, as I did that first day, so many months ago, I rest my head on the steering wheel between my hands. I squeeze my eyes tightly and take a deep breath, trying to calm my feelings. Most of all I don’t want to burst out crying in his face.
When I feel ready, I get out of my Cinquecento and join him. “Welcome back,” I say to his back and I’m happy because my voice comes about fairly steady.
He whirls around, smiling and beautiful as always. “Olly!” He embraces me spontaneously and I let him do it. When he lets go I ask him, “How did it go? How were the States?”
He answers while he puts away the usual loose pages. “Great! I came in seventeenth and the States were really cool!”
I open my mouth. “Oh my God! But seventeenth is a fantastic score!” I tell him, sincerely happy for him.
He smiles, contented, nodding. “Yeah, I’m happy with it too.” He heads towards the back of his car and I follow him out of habit. “I rested, I had fun and I got a ton of ideas. Partly for my job as soon as I graduate and partly for you.” I raise my eyebrows. “For your workouts. I have some new things in mind, if you agree with them,” he concludes smiling.
“Uh, about this… I wanted to talk it with you today, because I’ve given it some thought and- What are you doing?” I interrupt myself when I see him
pull out the scale.
“We’re weighing ourselves,” he says calmly, putting it in front of my feet as usual.
“Why?” I ask skeptically, “It’s only the twentieth, not the end of the month…”
He lifts his shoulders. “I want to see if you’ve managed without me.”
I step on the scale without further argument. Besides, it’s the last time.
“Sixty-six,” he reads. “Great!”
“It’s just a kilo since the end of July…” I comment without taking my eyes off the display on the scale.
“It’s normal, towards the end it’s like that. The last ones are the most difficult. You’ve done great.”
I look at him, still on the scale, and try to imprint his face in my memory as it is now – his white smile, his eyes, as light as the sky on a summer morning, and the golden color of his hair, eyelashes and unkempt beard.
I look away getting off the scale. “I wanted to talk to you about my workouts.”
“Tell me,” he prompts while putting his things away and closing the car. He has a smile on his lips as he does these simple tasks.
“Today is the last time.”
And his smile disappears.
He turns to me with a questioning and almost… wounded look.
I wheel away immediately because if I keep looking at him I won’t be able to go through with it. I walk towards the track and I hear him near me, I sense him with my peripheral vision.
“Why?”
“Because… it’s fine like this.” Over these three weeks I’ve thought a lot about what excuse to give him for ending out relationship and I believe that this is the only decent one.
“What do you mean by it’s fine like this?” He asks with a glacial voice.
I swallow and answer while looking at the ground under my feet, “That I’m stopping here. Sixty-six kilos are more than enough for me.”
We are silent, then, when we get to the beginning of the track, he stops and turns me towards him with a less than elegant jerk. “Given that you’re, in a few words, liquidating me, you can at least do it while looking me in the face.”
Training in Love Page 24