Chapter 13 Naomi
Valentino fucked me three more times during the night. I don’t know when I fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
When I wake up, I’m alone in the big bed, my body languorous and spent. I imagine taking a fresh watercolor canvas, carelessly brushing it with water at the top, and then watching all the colors bleed down into a liquified mass at the bottom. That puddle? That’s me today.
I wince when I stretch. I’m sore all over, and none less between my thighs. Will I even be able to set one foot in front of the other? I test this out as I sit up then throw my legs to the side with a groan. It’s hard to stand up, and I have to step gingerly not to flare up the soft pain at the apex of my thighs.
The room is bathed in pale, rheumy light. Looks like the January sun has barely started its ascent in the morning sky. It looks chilly outside, but inside, it’s warm, though I can’t go traipsing around naked. I glimpse Valentino’s shirt on a sofa in the corner and edge towards it while cursing softly. It’s an exercise in contortion to put the shirt on—I’m so sore—but I manage to button it up and roll the sleeves up since my hands barely make it past the cuffs.
The house is quiet. I didn’t reflect upon it last night, but it appears Valentino and I are alone in here. I don’t think I’m going to run into anyone if I go down, and I have no other choice. I didn’t bring my phone with me yesterday—no place to tuck it into that dress, and I was so excited, I forgot to take a purse—so I have no way of contacting Valentino and asking him to come up. Plus, I don’t have his number, either.
I should get it. The way he spoke last night, this is just the start of something between us. What, I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure it involves falling into his bed regularly.
I giggle as I think of this and how thoroughly I was fucked last night. So that’s what sex is really all about. I was missing out, but I know it’s only because it’s Valentino that I’m feeling this way. Someone like Thad… Urgh, I refuse to think of intercourse with such a robot. No way can I settle for any other man in my bed now.
I exit the bedroom and take the stairs down to the first floor. Eerie quiet here, too. The layout of the house is not the same as ours next door, so it takes me some investigating to find out which room is where, and that’s how I stumble upon Valentino’s study.
He hasn’t seen me yet, his dark head lowered slightly forward as he peruses a sheaf of papers in his left hand, his right hand holding a tiny cup of espresso that he sips from as I watch. He swallows, his throat rippling, and I gulp watching the movement of his throat. Even that’s sexy.
I must’ve made a sound, because he looks up then, and a slow smile graces his beautiful mouth. It’s impossible not to smile back, though I stay rooted in the doorway, suddenly wary of entering what’s obviously his domain.
He puts the papers and cup down, then stands up, moving away from the massive mahogany desk. His stride is languid, lithe, like a relaxed panther taking a leisurely stroll in the savanna. It’s the first time I’m seeing him dressed so casually. Worn jeans that look eminently soft, a white cotton crew neck T-shirt, and that’s all. He’s barefoot, and this more than anything softens something inside me. Something about a man with bare feet in his house… It speaks of being at home, at peace, of belonging.
“Morning,” he says as he pulls me close, dropping a soft kiss on my temple.
This also makes me pause. I expected a kiss on the lips, his hands on me in a lascivious way. He was insatiable last night, and I thought this would extend during the day. A kiss to the temple and his arms slipping around my waist to clasp me gently to him? It throws me, harkening to that sense of domestic bliss his bare feet just elicited in me.
“Did you sleep well?” he voice softly rumbles, as he releases me.
I laugh under my breath and collapse against him in exaggerated exhaustion. “What do you think?”
His turn to chuckle. “Ah, forgive me, gattina. But I cannot resist you, you know that.”
Warmth threads into me, different strands that meet and weave a tapestry inside. One of belonging, and oddly, safety.
“You were up early,” I say, trying to shake off this weird sense of being in a liminal space where I can’t really find myself.
“Early bird gets the worm.”
I grimace—squiggly, slimy worms are not a welcome sight in my imagination.
“Not a fan of liver and worms, I see.” He laughs.
If I think about this too hard, I’m going to throw up. Hard stop on liver and worm talk.
Valentino pulls me back into him, drops another kiss to my temple, then lets me go. I feel the loss of his warmth acutely. Wait, don’t let go , I want to say.
I see him stop in front of an espresso machine and look at me over his shoulder.
“Coffee?” he asks.
I nod with enthusiasm. “Yes, please.”
While the machine is rumbling away and extracting the drink from the pod, I glance around the room. It’s a big space, with white walls and a beautiful wood floor, thick plush rugs, custom built floor-to-ceiling bookcases along two walls, a massive desk, and taking pride of place in front of expansive windows, a black grand piano.
I find myself going to it as if hypnotized. What’s this doing in his study? I’m no expert, but the bench looks like it’s been sat on a lot. The keys are polished, but there’s some hints of dullness on them at regular intervals.
I blink when a small coffee cup materializes in front of my face. I gratefully take it and have my first sip. It’s rich and strong, just hot enough, and sweetened, too. I appreciate that he didn’t give me a bitter black coffee.
As Valentino moves away, he caresses the piano. Wait, it’s his?
“You play?” I ask before I can curb my curiosity.
“Yes.”
There’s no being coy or anything in his answer. It feels like playing the piano is part of who he is—that’s how quickly and assertively his reply came out.
“Will you show me?” Suddenly, I’m dying to hear him play something, anything.
He huffs a small laugh. I’m worried he’s going to demur, because he doesn’t move for a few seconds. It feels like a very long time.
Then he steps around me and sits on the bench. His long fingers settle in the middle of the row of keys, and they’re suddenly a blur as a rhythmic symphony, like the dance of a galloping horse, erupts in the room.
He stops after the first few chords and looks up at me.
“Coffee. It’ll grow cold,” he says with a nod to my hand.
“Hmm? Oh right.” I’d completely forgotten I still held the cup in my hand. I down it in one single shot and put the cup and saucer on a coaster on a side table. “I know this tune.”
He smiles. “Most people do, though they don’t know the title.”
“Which is?”
“Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca . Most commonly known as the Turkish Rondo or the Turkish March .”
“It’s…fast.”
He laughs now. “It’s a good piece to let the fingers run.”
No wonder his fingers know how to run so well on a woman’s body. He hones them on this beautiful piano.
“Music,” I say. “It’s part of you.”
Valentino stays silent, then a soft nod comes to confirm my assumption.
“Play something for me,” I urge. “Something that makes you think of me.”
Where this boldness comes from, I don’t know. But it’s like asking someone to walk into a perfume store and to choose the scent they most associate with you. It’s a glimpse into their perception, a view of what you evoke in them. And suddenly, I want to know what I invoke in Valentino Andretti.
Silence stretches between us. I’m starting to worry he won’t heed my request, until he turns away from me and stares at the piano. His hands settle in the middle again, and the first note pierces the quiet.
It’s soft, gentle, and the melody continues in the same vein. Like the patter of raindrops in a shallow puddle on a warm midsummer’s afternoon. Milliseconds of quiet weave in between the notes, adding to the lulling quality of this ethereal sound I’m hearing for the first time in my life.
It’s not a long tune, though it feels like we’re caught in an intemporal bubble as Valentino plays away, eyes closed, emotion playing on his brutally handsome features which soften to almost rapture in certain moments.
This is him as I’ve never seen him, as I’ve never even conceived of him.
This is the real Val.
It jars me when I realize the silence now is lingering, no longer the little beats in between the chords.
“It’s you,” Valentino says.
I blink at him, as if suddenly seeing him for the first time. “What?”
“This tune. It’s called La Fille Aux Cheveux De Lin . It’s by Debussy.”
I shake my head a little, still not getting it. “How is this me?”
“It’s French, means the girl with the flax-colored hair.”
I lose my breath when it hits me. The title, the meaning, but also the haunting melody. There’s a melancholy to it, soothing as much as it tears from the heart, speaking of longing and loss in equal measure.
“I always play this when I think of you,” he continues.
Now, I can hear that haunted feel in his voice. Everything in me yearns to take his face in my hands, to kiss his lips and murmur over and over again that I’m here—I’m always here. But I can’t.
“I must’ve played this a thousand times since that Christmas party. Every time I thought of you, of kissing you.”
My heart is breaking right now. “Then why didn’t you kiss me back?”
“Honor, gattina.”
I shake my head. “What, I don’t understand? I wanted you so much.”
“You were in high school.” He raised one eyebrow to emphasize the point.
This hits me like a slap. What was I thinking at the time? I was eighteen, yes, but he had been a grown man of almost thirty.
“And then, there was your father.”
His now hard and cold tone when he says the words wraps a vise around my heart.
“I couldn’t be like him, Naomi.”
Everything in me freezes. It feels like I lost the ability to react, let alone say anything.
But the words come out, nevertheless.
“What do you mean? What does that have to do with being like my father?”