Trying Not To Love You

by Amabile Giusti

  As I leave I think, I love you, my little Fran, the light of my youth. You helped keep me alive when I was a boy. And yet, I don’t know how it happened, I don’t know why . . . but as a man, it’s Penny I can’t live without.

  She’s just gone. Vanished. Not even Sherrie knows where she is. I’ve tried calling her number, but it’s no longer active. All I have left of her is a banknote in a crumpled envelope. I wish I could set the sea on fire. I wish I could shatter the sky.

  I take out the hundred-dollar bill and hold it up by the corner in the wind. It flaps and quivers like a wounded bird. I’m about to let go when I notice there’s writing on the back. I frown and turn the note over; it’s still lurching and squirming like a bird that’s wanting to fly. My gaze is fixed on a few small letters, written in pink: ‘I love you. If you still want me, you can find me here. P.’

  Next to it is the name of some town in Vermont. I crumple the bill in my hand, slap my forehead and swallow hard. I was about to throw it away. I was about to give it up. The very thought is enough to floor me, and I sink into the sand with all the weight of my body. Right now, the sun is scattering the clouds and I laugh like an idiot in front of the churning sea. I laugh and laugh, and as I do, hope begins to rise within me once again.

  She’s not hard to find. The village is small. After all the many mistakes I’ve made in my life, fate is finally on my side. At this precise moment, Penny’s just coming out of a store – not a moment before, nor a moment later. I recognise her immediately, walking towards an old apple-green pickup. I look at her and can’t breathe. Yes, she’s changed, but it’s still her all right. I want to undo that braid with my fingers, knead her hair in my fist, kiss it and touch it for hours. I want to hug her, sleep with her, wake up with her, for all of this life and all of the next. I want her with every drop of my blood.

  Then the man at the store calls her back and I see how he looks at her, and I’m afraid. Has she forgotten me? Does she have someone else now? She doesn’t even notice me, because she’s lost in who-knows-what thoughts, and I hang back behind the parked bus at the terminus.

  It’s been more than two years now. Does she still mean what she wrote on that bill?

  35

  Could it really be him? Marcus?

  She stared at him in disbelief, captivated at the sight of him. When she left, she had wanted to challenge fate. She’d reckoned that Marcus would most likely never come back, or if he did – who knows when and who knows how or why – he’d most likely have spent that cash on drink, or else he’d have come looking for her sooner.

  He’d finally come looking for her.

  Standing there in his black leather jacket, a green army backpack over his shoulder, he stared back at her, as if he couldn’t make his mind up whether Penny was real or imagined. Penny knew all right – it was really, truly him. His eyes, his lips, his throat with the top edges of his chest tattoos peeking out from his shirt, those same imposing shoulders and the strong legs in his usual jeans. So tall he made her feel like a sparrow in comparison.

  Penny’s heart felt like all the hearts in the world, all joined together and thumping so loudly they could probably hear it over the border in Canada. Instinctively, she tucked a lock of hair behind her ears, as if she wanted to make herself look presentable, and it occurred to her that she must look hideous – with her hair all mussed up, any old clothes on and sweaty from splitting the wood, plus she was wearing no make-up – on the precise and glorious day that Marcus finally decided to show up. A long time had passed and she was now a woman of twenty-five who had been through hell and high water, but she suddenly felt as weak and insecure and tearful as a little kid caught in a gust of wind.

  It was like her tongue had a knot in it. She couldn’t think of a single sensible thing to say. After a silence that seemed to stretch on forever, she heard her own voice pipe up, as though it had a will of its own. It said, ‘Will you help me carry the wood in?’

  Will you help me carry the wood in?

  Marcus looked confused for a second, but then nodded.

  They walked around the outside of the house, her in front with a few logs in her arms and him behind her, carrying the rest of the load, the cat following in their wake and treading carefully to avoid the patches of snow. Penny cursed herself a million times for the first words she’d said to him. She should have jumped on him, clasped him in her arms, kissed him from here to kingdom come.

  They entered the house, and Tiger curled up on the couch in a beam of sunshine. Marcus and Penny put the logs in the basket, and then Penny stood with her back to him, struggling with her emotions, while he fumbled with matches and kindling, lighting the fire. And then she said another idiotic thing: ‘Are you visiting the area?’

  What had happened to her brain? Was she in some kind of trance? Her mind was almost blank, filled only with tumbleweeds and a vague sense of panic. Her grandma and Thomas smiled down at her in encouragement from their photos on the shelf, two pieces of the puzzle that was Penny’s life. Penny couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, except to utter that one ridiculous question.

  ‘No,’ Marcus replied firmly. ‘I finally found your message and I came. Are you glad to see me? I want you to tell me: should I stay or should I go?’

  His body was talking to her too, and as he spoke, he took a few steps closer to where she was standing, still and full of pent-up tears, with that one long braid on her breast, her cheeks flaming like the sun, and a tumult of love pounding in her chest. The fire was blazing now as he rose to stand behind her, his arms drawing her into his embrace.

  ‘I love you, body and soul,’ he whispered, and Penny’s legs went weak. Her grandma, from the photo, told her not to be afraid, reminding her once again that love is a miracle.

  So she turned to look Marcus in the eye and said, ‘Not as much as I love you.’

  He stared solemnly at her for a moment, running his eyes over every millimetre of her face, one hand on the nape of her neck, his other thumb running slowly along the line of her mouth, as if painting it with his fingertips. And then he pulled off the band fastening her braid so that it spilled out into a cascade of liquid copper, and finally he kissed her. Penny’s heart flew past the tops of the maple trees outside, thirsty for the spring. Marcus’s kisses were deep and sensual, sending shivers of longing throughout her body. Gentle, but with a bold promise of mischief to come, his hands began to wander and she grew desperate to feel his weight upon her.

  They slipped down on to the patchwork rug, under Tiger’s lazy gaze. Marcus removed his jacket and sweater, the broadness of his chest thrilling Penny as much now as it had in the old days. She remembered his silken skin, his firm muscles, his bold tattoos, the leather cord around his neck with the silver crocodile, and was as enchanted by it all as she had been their very first time together. She touched him delicately, like he was a painting, feeling the soft roughness of the canvas beneath her fingers. The tribal tattoos, the stingray, that heart pierced by thorns . . .

  ‘What does that one symbolise?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s how I used to be,’ he replied, ‘once upon a time – back when I knew nothing, back when I didn’t know you. Enough talking now.’

  He ripped off her chequered jacket, only to find her button-down shirt underneath. Hoarsely, he whispered, ‘Any more layers – maybe you got a wetsuit on under there? Shit, Penny, I’m gonna die if I don’t get to fuck you soon.’

  ‘Refined as ever, I see,’ she quipped.

  Stripping off in front of him made her feel small and exposed, but only for an instant. Seeing his naked body in front of her lit a burning desire, pure and brutal, deep within her. An intense answering hunger gleamed in Marcus’s eyes, and yet she saw him stop and make a face, as if he’d suddenly remembered something essential, and he murmured in pain and frustration, ‘If I can’t be inside you I’m gonna have a heart attack, I swear, but I don’t have a condom on me.’

  She pulled him to her, their bellies rubbing toget
her. ‘Be inside me anyway.’

  Grabbing her hair in his fist, Marcus shoved his tongue in her mouth, before saying, ‘You really mean it?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s OK. I just finished my period and . . . I haven’t done it with anyone else but you.’

  Marcus continued to hold her hair in his hand like a bunch of severed stems, his breath uneven. ‘You really mean that?’ he repeated. ‘You’re still all mine and mine alone? Fuck, Penny, you’re making me even harder.’

  ‘I’ve been waiting and waiting for you, my darling poet.’

  ‘You know I’m no poet, but I am so goddamn crazy about you. For two years and three months now I’ve done nothing but think of your eyes, your lips, your beautiful thighs, every single fucking day.’

  ‘Then come to me, my love – come.’

  He stared at her in silence. Penny misunderstood his hesitation and was disappointed. Marcus was right to be cautious, but she felt like she’d been robbed of a promise.

  ‘OK . . . so let’s not then . . .’ she whispered.

  Even while she was talking, Marcus suddenly took possession of her, moving his body in a delirium of thrusts and moans and kisses. There, on the rainbow carpet, prey to a pleasure that transcended her flesh and clung to her soul and ravaged her mind, Penny cried tears of pure joy, while Marcus came inside her, naked within her nakedness, giving her that part of himself as a pledge of an infinite future together. Her whole body thrummed as she came, almost lifting her from the ground, like a spirit rising to the heavens before landing safely back in his arms.

  They remained locked in an embrace in front of the blazing fire, which was beginning to make the room feel toasty – her leaning against his chest while he kissed her brow and her hair, caressing her all over.

  ‘Am I wrong, or did your boobs grow?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘Please, Marcus, you’re far too polite. Could you be a little more direct possibly?’ she protested, laughing. ‘And no, they didn’t grow, I just put on some muscle.’

  ‘You smashed those logs like a real lumberjack. I’ll do it next time. I need to find work if I’m gonna stay. Are you looking for someone to help you here? I can get up at dawn and break logs, draw water from the well, groom the horses, clean the stables and drag the plough. And I promise you that no matter how tired I am, I will fuck you to tears every night.’

  Penny pressed herself into his body. ‘You really want to stay?’

  ‘You really doubt it? Penny, I want to stay here and help you realise your dream and make love to you until the end of my days. And in the meantime . . .’

  ‘In the meantime?’

  ‘In the meantime, I want to give you two things.’

  Without giving her time to ask what, Marcus reached for his backpack and pulled out an envelope. He handed it to her and Penny threw him a questioning look. She opened it and all of a sudden was sitting dumbfounded in front of a stack of banknotes. It looked like more than five hundred dollars. She stared at him, perplexed.

  ‘What the . . . ?’

  ‘It’s the money you paid me over two years ago for walking you home,’ Marcus explained. ‘The exact same bills, including the last hundred dollars you gave Sherrie.’

  ‘You never spent it?’

  ‘Not a single dime. I felt like shit accepting it, but I didn’t want you to know that I’d have done the same job for free. I didn’t want you to know that you were fucking with my head just by breathing. I was messed up, Penny. I was going through hell. I couldn’t understand why you made me feel the way you did. I ended up in prison again and they confiscated my things, but when I got out they gave it all back. It’s yours now and that’s it. You never paid me, baby, never. I did everything I did for you because I wanted to.’

  Penny smiled at him and thought back to that time of fear, and lies told out of fear. She whispered a feeble ‘Thank you’, followed by, ‘And there’s something else?’

  In silence, Marcus pulled the leather cord with the crocodile ring on it from around his neck. He took it off and held it between his fingers for a moment, then slipped the ring on to Penny’s left ring finger. It fitted perfectly, like it was made for her.

  Penny kissed that worthless ring as if it were the most precious jewel in the world.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again, stroking his chest.

  ‘And now we have all the formalities out the way, let’s get back down to us. I have two years and three months to make up for, and I’m a hungry bastard.’

  Penny thought about how she also wanted to make up for lost time. And then she thought about how there is no lost time when you learn to know yourself and prepare your heart, body and soul for that one person who will one day come to complete you in every possible way.

  She still had so much to ask him, but that could all wait for now.

  Then Marcus kissed her again, a kiss as deep as the sky at the bottom of a well, and Penny thought that, yes, her questions could absolutely wait.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Acknowledgments are always the hardest part of any story, because there are so many people whose contribution, however minor, helped that I always worry I’ll forget someone. But they’re also the best part, because I realise how many friends I have around me, how much loving support I’ve received along the way. Writing is a solitary activity, but it’s like a seed: to make it blossom and flourish takes teamwork.

  Thanks to Laura Ceccacci, my agent who is always full of ideas and diligence; to Alessandra Tavella of Amazon Publishing, whose kindness is something magical. Doubly magical is the fact that, before I met her, I had already included a character with her less-than-common surname in the plot – Mrs Tavella, in Penny’s apartment block. Clearly it was destiny that brought us together. Further thanks to my editors at Thèsis, whose advice has been invaluable. Thank you also to Patty and Rosy, the first ones to read a story I didn’t think was working, but who encouraged me not to press Delete.

  Finally, last but not least, thanks to Penny and Marcus, who appeared in my mind one day, asking me to tell their story.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amabile Giusti lives in Calabria, Italy. She’s a lawyer but doesn’t feel like one. She has been writing novels since 2009 and is always working out how best to start or finish a story, even when she’s at work. She loves reading Jane Austen novels as well as Japanese mangas, collecting blue china and tending to her collection of cacti – the thornier the better. She hopes to age as slowly as possible, because she wants to live to one hundred but always stay young inside. She’s a great listener but not very chatty, although when she starts writing she just can’t stop.

  This is her ninth novel, and the second to be translated into English. She has ideas for many, many more.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  A resident of New York City, Hillary Locke studied Spanish and Italian literature and translates from the Romance languages into English. When she’s not running along the East River or reading in Tomkins Square Park, she likes to travel around the world and listen to beautiful languages she doesn’t understand.