Training in Love

by Manuela Pigna

  I look at him, as he wants, and find him angry. “Why are you angry? Your clients don’t stay around forever… They come and go continually…” I tell him gently, reasonably.

  The scowl he has on his face, so serene before, doesn’t soften a bit. “You still have six kilos to go…”

  I shrug. “It doesn’t matter. I feel fine like this. I don’t feel the need to lose any more weight.” Instead I will certainly try to continue alone, until I feel satisfied, but I have to quit seeing him.

  “Is it the truth or is there something you’re not telling me?”

  I shrug my shoulders again, “It’s the truth.”

  He looks away and gazes at the horizon for a few seconds before observing me again. “Okay then. Stop at sixty-six, but we can go on anyway to maintain it…”

  “Forgive me Andrea, but eighty euros a month is something of a burden… If I were a rich heiress I’d pay it voluntarily, but I can’t afford to go on like this indefinitely.”

  “We can cut it down,” he says suddenly. “Only do once a week…”

  He stops because he sees me shaking my head.

  “Let’s do once a week and you don’t have to pay me anymore,” he proposes, watching me closely.

  I burst out laughing, shaking my head. “If you do this with all your clients you won’t earn a cent!”

  But he doesn’t laugh. “So?”

  I silently shake my head again, a gesture of definitive negation.

  “No… There’s something that you’re not telling me, otherwise you’d accept a free session…” He says finally with a frown.

  “I’ll pay you anyway up until the end of the month. I think it’s the right thing to do.”

  He makes a gesture of anger and looks away. “Who cares about that…” He passes a hand through his hair and looks at me again. “What is the problem Olly?”

  I look at my watch for an answer. “Let’s start, it’s already three-twenty.”

  I see him struggling with himself. He’d like to continue discussing it, but in the end, albeit with irritation, he walks towards the track and I follow him.

  He’s quiet for quite a bit. By now we should already be running, but he doesn’t decide to start. He just keeps walking and I do what he does. Today, after all, I really don’t care what we do.

  “Is it your boyfriend that wants you to quit?” He breaks the silence after about a quarter of an hour.

  I laugh. “What boyfriend?”

  “There isn’t any boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  I hear him inhale and exhale. “Because the last time I saw you, you were all intent on…”

  “To do that it’s not necessary to be involved with anyone.”

  “No, in fact,” he agrees quickly.

  We carry on in silence for a while until Andrea slows down, and it’s not as though we were walking that quickly… “Has something happened?”

  I don’t answer. I keep on walking.

  “What happened?” He asks, his voice hardening.

  I shrug. “It’s none of your business.”

  “What happened Olly?” He raises his voice with a note of warning that makes me straighten up. But I don’t give in. I don’t look at him and I don’t answer.

  Andrea stops completely. I turn to him. He seems a little pale, but it must be the shade of the trees. “Who?” His tone of voice is cold, authoritarian.

  “Huh?”

  “Who was it, Olivia?”

  He never calls me Olivia… “Giancarlo.”

  He inhales hard and puts a hand in his hair, while with the other he scratches his chest. “How? When? Where?” He asks when he exhales.

  “But what do you care?” I’m vaguely annoyed, because he’s distracting me from my pain. I would like just to look at him, memorize him and wallow in my unhappiness.

  At this point Andrea transforms – he comes at me like a fury, he grabs both my arms and with his face mutated by anger, says in a loud voice, “Answer me Olivia, or I swear to God this time I’ll smash something!”

  Since we’re in the middle of nowhere, more or less, and at the moment it’s me in his hands… I opt for a rapid accommodation. “We went out a couple of times…”

  “When?”

  “Last week… Andrea, you’re hurting me…” He loosens his grip on my arms but doesn’t let me go.

  “Why?”

  “You mean why did I go out with him? Because he asked me to!” I answer, beginning to attempt to free myself.

  “I’ll ask you again,” he says very slowly, “What happened?”

  “Nothing…” I huff forlornly.

  He shakes me. “Olivia!”

  I puff again. “We kissed and…”

  He inhales sharply. “And?”

  “And,” I redden, looking away from his eyes, “He just… caressed me… a little,” I conclude, struggling with embarrassment.

  “Where?”

  “You can’t be serious…” I say looking at him again. “You can’t really think that I’ll tell you…”

  “I’m dead serious. Where?”

  I look away and don’t answer. He shakes me a little harder and raises his voice, “Olivia! Where?”

  Luckily no-one passes here at this time of day… “Oh my God! In… this area…” I say, indicating my chest with vague gestures.

  “Just there?”

  I look at him open-mouthed for a few seconds, then I nod, blushing.

  He lets me go, looking at me with the eyes of a crazy person. “Were you dressed?”

  “What?” I ask in a shrill voice.

  “You heard me. With or without clothes?”

  I produce the most disdainful “Heh” that I can manage, starting to walk in the opposite direction, going back to the cars.

  I don’t get far, because he grabs an arm and turns me around until I find myself a centimeter from his face, twisted by anger. “Olivia, if you go back I’ll wreck my car and yours too. And then I’ll ask you for damages.” He shakes me again. “With or without?”

  “With!” I yell.

  Suddenly he lets go of me, taking a step back. He is breathing heavily as though he had really been running and he begins to walk up and down my field of vision, like a caged lion.

  “It’s none of your business anyway…” I murmur weakly. He doesn’t even answer.

  He begins to crack his knuckles. “Do you want to hit me?” I ask him with a teasing tone.

  He turns towards me, still scowling, still upset. “Yes… yes… You know, I would hit you… I’d strangle you…”

  I look at him in astonishment. “You’re this angry because I didn’t listen to you? You’re not my father you know. I’m a free person… I’m an adult…”

  He stares at me and then comes very close. He takes my arms with his hands, but not as hard as before. “I haven’t been able to touch you even with a finger for months! Months! Not even to do stretching!” He shakes me, beginning to search my face with his eyes. “You didn’t let me get close! Not even for an instant, ever! You kept repeating incessantly ‘don’t touch me’! Those words… don’t touch me…” He shakes his head, as though lost in thought for a second. “And then this guy,” he recovers, shaking himself, “Who… who is he? Someone you saw one evening? You didn’t even remember his face before Nic’s party! I know it!”

  I look away.

  “The first anonymous jerk shows up and you let him kiss you, you let him touch you… maybe you touch him too…” He stops. I can see his sudden stillness even if I’m looking down. “Did you touch him?”

  I shake my head negatively.

  “And me?” He asks in a loud voice, lightly shaking me.

  “And you what?” I ask in a low voice, looking up slowly into his eyes.

  He is breathing heavily, with his mouth open. His cheeks are flushed and his eyebrows are still knit. He stares at me intensely, without answering. Slowly he lifts his arm and brings his hand behind my head, releasing my ponytail roughly. When he
speaks, he does so slowly, pronouncing each word clearly, “Don’t tell me ‘don’t touch me’ today, because I won’t listen to you anyway.”

  It’s swift and electrifying as a white bolt of lightning in a dark sky. He lowers his face to the level of mine and he kisses me. His lips touch mine, impetuous and insistent, until I open my mouth and let him in.

  His hands are everywhere. They run rapidly all over my body, from my hair, where he buries both of them at the same time, to all along my back to my bottom and back again to my hair which he grabs in locks and then goes down again. He grazes my flanks while he kisses me passionately on the mouth. Then his hands take two different routes – one in front, touching my side and my breasts, and the other behind me. After separate explorations, they return to join around my hips which are pushed towards his, making me feel his excitement distinctly.

  He doesn’t leave me a second of pause and perhaps I am cured because I don’t feel the least trace of awkwardness, because the only thing I feel in this moment is pleasure, an immense pleasure which gives me shivers on my arms, back and stomach.

  When, after an undetermined amount of time, he leaves my mouth, he’s breathing even harder than before and I take a step backwards, swaying.

  We look at each other without speaking for an instant, then he takes me by the arm, loads me on his back and starts running.

  “W-What are you doing?”

  “I’m going back.”

  “I-I can walk b-by myself.” I don’t have the strength to fight any harder than that. His kiss, his hands have reduced my limbs to gelatin.

  “You’re slow,” is his only answer before shutting himself in an obstinate silence.

  The road for fifteen minutes of walking becomes not even five with Andrea running. He doesn’t appear to be even a little hindered by a weight of exactly sixty-six kilos on his shoulders. Okay, he’s an Iron Man, but good grief…

  When he finally lets me down, he does it in front of the passenger side of his car. I turn to look at him questioningly and he takes my face in his hands and kisses me on the mouth again. He’s devouring more than kissing it, with his lips, his teeth and his tongue. When he lets me go I’m almost stunned and I let myself be pushed without even a minimum protest into the seat of the car. He buckles my seatbelt and runs to the other side. He gets in and begins to drive like a madman – like-a-madman. During the ride silence reigns and I hold onto the door handle with all my strength, with my heart beating like a Moroccan derbuga. When I feel feebly able to speak I ask him, “Where are we going?”

  “To my house.”

  Neither of us says anything, but from his driving I can see that he’s calming down a little at a time.

  He parks in front of a house, turns off the car, but doesn’t get out right away or do anything, not even speak. He looks straight ahead of himself.

  After a while I clear my throat and dare to ask him, “Have you calmed down?”

  My voice must have brought him back from whatever place he went because he inhales deeply and stretches out in the seat, lying back and sliding down until his left elbow comes to rest on the door and his left hand covers his eyes. “Forgive me, I…”

  He swallows and doesn’t look at me. He remains with his eyes closed behind his hand. “I… It’s that I completely lose it if I think… when I think…”

  “Yes, I got that,” I save him the trouble of saying it because I’m so good, that’s why.

  Finally he takes his hand from his face and turns to look at me. “Do it with me. Here, now. Not with him.”

  I look away and turn towards the window of my door. It’s a beautiful day and this residential area is full of trees and plants. “Look Andrea, this isn’t a contest to win by going faster, pushing harder…” Also because if it were a competition, you would have won it almost immediately. A long time ago. There, maybe let’s not say this to him, since we just said the opposite…

  “I know… It’s not that I think it’s a competition, it’s that…” He pauses briefly. “I can’t imagine you in the arms of someone else, I can’t do it. I… want you to be with me.”

  “Andrea,” I say to him, looking at my hands in my lap. “You feel like this only and exclusively because you heard that there was someone else. If I had been alone, at home reading a book, you would not have had this desire to get your hands on me at all. You’re a sportsman… competition is part of you… you have it in your blood… I understand.”

  “And that’s where you’re completely wrong!” He exclaims with such conviction in his voice that I instinctively turn towards him. When he locks his eyes with mine, he continues, “It’s months that I’ve had the desire to get my hands on you… months.”

  I sigh and look out the window again.

  “Do it with me. Now,” he repeats simply.

  I think for a moment in silence. He’s not in love with me, that’s for sure, otherwise he wouldn’t have waited all this time to make some sort of move, and most of all he wouldn’t have had a different girl on every fucking occasion in which I saw him before he left. But me? I began this journey because I wanted to quit putting off living. Because I wanted to begin to be the protagonist of my life. I wanted to begin to live to the fullest, and in all senses. I wanted to feel everything, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad, and ever since I decided, a lot of things have changed. Now I have the opportunity to do it for the first time with the person I’m in love with. And, in the end, it isn’t that important if he doesn’t feel the same. Maybe the important thing is what I feel. And I’ll feel a lot of things if I do it. I already know. I’ll feel such a range of emotions that it will cancel the last ten years of an apathetic and anesthetized life. Perhaps it will last me for the next ten years. At least I’ll have a stratospheric memory of this experience when he throws me away like a used sock.

  Slowly, with a trembling hand and without looking at him, I press the button on my seatbelt and unbuckle it. I hear him inhale sharply and hold his breath, but I don’t turn and he doesn’t say anything. With slow gestures I free myself from the seatbelt and open the door. When I close it behind me, he is already by my side. He passes a hand through my hair, resting the other on my hip and whispers, “Finally… finally…” And he kisses me again, this time delicately. Oh, delicately as though I were a flower from which the petals would fall with a slightly deeper breath.

  Then he picks me up and a plaintive “But why?” escapes me.

  “Ssshh.”

  “Why won’t you let me walk today?” I persist, set on ruining the romantic atmosphere. “Since you already did the Iron, you don’t care anymore about getting a slipped disk?”

  He laughs and shakes his head, walking quickly towards the door of a bordeaux-colored house. It’s very bucolic, full of plants in vases and flowers all around the entrance. And even the yard surrounding the house is full to bursting with vegetation.

  “Let me walk… I still have six kilos to go, I need to walk…”

  “You have nothing to go. You’re perfect like this… You’re more than beautiful.”

  My heart is about to burst and maybe it’s better that I’m not walking. I would have fallen on the ground in this moment.

  22.

  Once inside he sets me down at last. I look around and observe his house in the half-light. It seems deserted.

  “No one’s here?” I ask looking to the left. There is an open plan kitchen with an island, then a corridor and a stairway separate it from the living room. There isn’t an immense amount of square meters, but the disposition and the choice of furniture give the impression of largeness.

  “My parents are still on vacation with my sister. They come back next week.” While he replies he pushes me lightly with a hand on the back towards the stairs. “My room is upstairs,” he whispers as we go along, and just the idea of entering his room makes my knees shake.

  It’s the first time I’ve come to Andrea’s house, so I am looking around me. I know that one look is enough for
everything to remain impressed forever in my memory – like this silent staircase, covered with cream colored carpet, very English, like the corridor on the upper floor, in the shadows because the bedroom shutters are closed, like this door in white wood, the first on the right climbing the stairs.

  He opens the door and gently pushes me in.

  The room is not very large, but it is so neat that it seems larger than it is. “My God…” A whisper escapes. “You’ll never come into my bedroom…”

  “Why?”

  I sigh, looking around me enviously. “Because my room isn’t this neat even when I’ve just finished cleaning it…”

  It is almost completely furnished in white, and this clean color really suits Andrea. The window, opposite the door, is large and has white curtains, slightly pulled back to let in the sun which illuminates everything. The white bed (made! And I might mention, his parents are even on vacation for heaven’s sake…), the white, very furry rug at the foot of the bed, this last situated immediately to the left when you enter, and the white wardrobe in front of the bed. Only the walls are colored with a faint blue.

  Under the window there are cube-shaped book shelves with lots of books and on the bedside table, where there is a very simple lamp, there are a couple of books with pages marked too. Right away I go to look, without asking permission, what Andrea reads before going to bed. I hear him laugh behind me.

  I turn around with the volume in my hand. “The Alchemist?”

  He smiles. “I’ve already read it, but from time to time I review the fundamental concepts…”

  I turn without commenting and take the second book – Choose What You Eat.

  “What an interesting combination…” I leave the two books on the bedside table and go towards the shelves with the intention of nosing through his books. If you tell me what you read, I’ll tell you who you are…

  But he, probably sensing my intentions, stops me by taking my arm. “No, no, no! After, maybe I’ll let you look through them. Now no more wasting time.”

  I turn and, as I do, he takes off his shoes without bending over, pulling the heels with his other foot.