Thursday, May 32
“Tell me about your dad.” This is objectively the least sexy thing someone can say to a person they just had sex with, but I do it anyway.
“Oh boy.” Marco stretches his arms, bringing them back down to rest behind his head. “Yorgos Antoniou. What a guy. He’s where I get all my most charming personality quirks.”
I roll up onto my side, propping my head up in my hand. “Like your obsession with minor league baseball?”
Marco considers this, biting anxiously at his lower lip. “Boy, I wish. George only likes sports where he can bet on people like they’re dogs. Anything that involves someone getting the shit kicked out of them, really. The less teeth the athletes have, the better.” Marco keeps going, very clearly on a roll, completely entertaining himself. “George loves to drink. He loves to gamble. He loves fake breasts—”
“Wait, hold on,” I cut in. “Do you love fake breasts?”
Marco rolls his eyes. “Not like, explicitly. My dad and I have different vices, but it’s really not a mystery where I get my, uh, appetite for fun from.”
I reach out to Marco and rest a hand against his bare chest. “Was he a good dad?”
“Yeah, he was, actually. My mom is kind of . . .” Marco flutters his eyes shut. A facial expression I know to mean: Where do I even start? “He did his best even for a dirty, rotten cheater.”
I suppress a grimace. “Okay, so he’s generous.”
“Right,” Marco grunts, giving my hand a squeeze before sitting up straight and swinging his legs out of bed. “When people are watching, he’s incredibly giving. You’ll never meet someone putting more change in a Salvation Army bucket. Why do you ask?”
I shrug. “The night after Soph and Allie’s . . . you kind of mentioned your childhood.”
“I did, didn’t I?” He tosses me a smile over his shoulder—a wink of that sad guy I met a month ago. “I was jealous of your life that night. Really jealous.”
“Hey.” I poke him in the back. “It can be both of our lives now.”
“Speaking of which . . .” He gets up out of bed, even though I try desperately to hold him back while he pulls on his boxers and leaves me behind in a knotted mess of sheets. When he comes back into my room, Marco presents a thin, square package with a flourish. “A gift, madam. Open it.”
I carefully tear away the outside paper. “It’s a wall calendar?”
“Uh huh.” Marco’s sporting a very satisfied smirk. “Flip through it.”
The first page is a photo he took of the Brooklyn Bridge the day we went for our picnic—I recognize the view right away. The calendar begins with May. I flip the page around to him. “Adorable. I love it.”
Now he’s grinning, rocking from foot to foot. “C’mon. Keep going.”
“Jeez, alright.”
I turn the page and there’s another photo Marco took over the last four weeks. A high-contrast shot of me reaching into a pear tree outside Paola’s villa. The leaves look like crosshatching over the sky, and a shadow bruises my exposed shoulders as my fingers break through into the sun, grabbing a piece of fruit. It’s a gorgeous photo, one I didn’t even know he’d taken.
I’m almost too distracted by the photo to notice—but the month is still May. And the dates keep going. Thirty-second, thirty-third, thirty-fourth . . .
“Wait.” I laugh, turning the page. “It’s still May.”
Then again. Another May.
Another.
And another.
“They’re all May.”
“What did you tell me back when we met?” Marco reaches out, fingers sliding down my neck to my shoulder. “I had until the end of the month, not a day more.” He gives me a gentle squeeze. “I figured we’ll just have to make sure May never ends.”
I lift my eyes to meet his. There’s moisture gathering in them again. “Marco, I might actually cry . . .”
“Don’t.” He laughs, leaning forward, pressing his lips to my forehead, pressing his body into mine. “Today is officially the thirty-second day in May.”
I let myself fall back against the sheets, relishing the feeling of his weight on top of me, the tickle of his hair in my face. Marco’s been exceedingly gentle with me since yesterday, and I want to tell him to knock it off. Grab me, my body begs. I push his hair out of his face and say, “Just like in the movie.”
He grins down at me. “You get it.”
I bury my face in his neck, breathing in his smell. You’re safe, I tell myself. You can cry now. You’re safe. But I’m not ready to. Maybe one day I’ll feel brave enough to let Marco really see how much he means to me. But for now, I just hold on to him.
If yesterday I’d decided I would never run away from Marco again, today I am positive that every moment of the last six months was leading up to this.
“I love you,” I say once, then again. Over and over. A brand-new mantra.