Chapter 27 - Igor
TWENTY-SEVEN
IGOR
THE PAST
Three years ago
“Come in.”
Mammona’ voice filters through the closed door of her living quarters at the Moretti mansion. When I enter, she sits by her window with two extra blankets over her legs, book in hand with her glasses threatening to fall off her nose.
“Igor, my boy, what a lovely surprise. Come in, come in. Came to keep an old crone company?”
I give her a bashful smile, fidgeting with my fingers in front of me.
Mammona and I speak often, but most times without words.
We’ve come to know each other well, meeting almost every night at midnight in the Moretti kitchen.
Her caring presence and her insistence to feed me until my belly’s ready to burst were hard not to like.
And the fact that she observes rather than fill silence with words helped me when I thought I had no one to confide in.
She never gave me encouraging words but clicks of her tongue and little nods.
They were more precious to me than ‘all will be well’ bullshit.
“Actually, I came to see if you’d like to come on a little secret adventure.”
Her grey eyes sparkle with mischief before a downright wicked smile takes over her face. She gives me a quick once-over, humming as she realises what I’m wearing. “What shall I wear?”
“Your fanciest attire?”
“Oh?”
I clear my throat and glance down at my dress shoes. The beige suit fits me like a glove—it’s custom-made, after all—but I’m more comfortable in cargo pants and cotton tee-shirts. The waistcoat might be an overkill. I pull at the collar of the white shirt.
“I… I need you to… Could you convince Julian to dress in a similar fashion, and to accompany you to that little abandoned chapel by the sunflower fields?”
Her lower lip trembles, then she slowly sets her book aside to the coffee table and grab both armrests, pushing her weight up to stand. She doesn’t need a cane to walk and still has the posture of a Queen, but her steps are slow as she approaches me. I let her pull me down for a kiss on each cheek.
“You’ll be the most handsome grooms Kalliste has ever seen.”
My fingers clench on her biceps and I resist falling into tears into her arms for all of two seconds. But it’s Mammona, the woman who raised me. And the pride I see in her faded irises is all too much.
I hunch over, almost in half, and she holds me, soothing me by rubbing my back up and down. Her cheeks are wet as well when I straighten up.
“Will you… Will you do us the honour of marrying us?”
“I thought you’d never ask. I have to use that license I got off the internet to piss off Father Cantona.” She winks.
I kiss her cheek and drive to the abandoned church at the speed of light.
I must have driven down that road a hundred times.
Located thirty minute outside of Sant Armellu, on the flank of a mountain overlooking the sea, the old stone building always stood eerily still above a field of sunflowers.
From up there, you can’t see either Sant Armellu or the next city, giving the illusion that civilisation doesn’t exist.
From what I’ve gathered, the chapel was abandoned in the middle of the twentieth century because the local archbishop didn’t like driving so far off and decided his flock should meet him at the cathedral of Sant Armellu, not in a chapel that can barely hold two hundred people.
We won’t be able to enter. With its state of disrepair, I don’t want to have Mammona potentially trip or a beam falling on our heads.
The September sun burns my skin as I wait, pacing behind the edifice so Julian doesn’t see me when he and Mammona arrive, reciting the speech I prepared.
“Julian, you are… Fuck, what did I want to say again?” I take the paper I wrote my vows on from inside my pocket.
The ink is almost faded with how much I’ve folded and refolded it.
I may or may not have written these words a few moths ago.
Maybe years. Okay, years, plural. I’m so in love with Julian Bartoli I’ve been rehearsing what I’d say to him if we ever got married for years.
There, I’ve said it. It doesn’t erase the anxiety coursing through me or the fact that despite knowing the words by heart, they won’t come out.
And they fully escape me when I hear a car door snap shut and the love of my life complain.
“I swear Mammona, are you taking me here to kill me? Is that why you made me wear my best suit? To make it easier for the coroner?”
I snort.
“Oh shush, ciucciu. There’s something we need to do.”
“Is this how I find out you have Alzheimer? Do you think Father Cantona is holding mass here again?”
I take him out of his misery and round the corner of the chapel.
My breath catches in my throat.
Mammona holds the arm of the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.
His Ray-ban hide his baby blues but the blond strands I love to pull are tied in a messy bun, a few rebel ones framing his clean shaven jaw.
My eyes land on his throat, the open collar of his shirt revealing the Adam apple I want to bite and the chest I want to worship.
The smooth expanse of skin hides under fabric but my fingers remember what it feels like underneath my touch. They tingle at the memory.
My throat dries up at how gorgeous he looks in his oversized, olive-coloured linen suit. A model from a fashion shoot wouldn’t hold a candle to the man in front of me.
Mammona beams at me when she sees me, and Julian frowns before looking in the same direction she does.
His lips part as he raises his sunglasses to place them on top of his head.
Why is that move so damn sexy? If Mammona wasn’t here to marry us, I’d maul the man before vowing my life for his.
The baby blues gleam with awe, and confusion, I think.
Julian unfurls his body to his full height, the hand not holding Mammona’s dropping by his side.
He looks stricken, shocked. Before his expression morphs into one of glee and excitement, that jokester personality of his I love so much coming back to the forefront.
“You clean up nice,” he says, eyes roving over my body and warming me up more than the end of summer sun. “What are you doing here?”
I had a whole speech. Years, I’ve repeated the words in the darkness and secret of my room.
How every painful step I took in life was worth it because they led me to him.
How his love of reading is what helped me connect to another for the first time after Misha.
We were bonded by blood. But Julian and I are bonded by respect and love.
All my words are useless. My throat has dried and my brain has emptied. I’m not sure I can actually say anything faced with him.
I simply drop to one knee in front of him. He gasps.
In the corner of my vision, Mammona lets go of Julian’s arm and disappears from view, giving us an inkling of privacy. I know she watches on, like our very own protector. She might be past eighty, but I don’t know anyone fiercer.
I remove the velvet box from my pocket and fumble to open it. The simple silver band, a twin to the one I gifted him before I left for London, glints in the sunshine. Finally, my tongue moves and words form in my mouth, an onslaught of them spilling out.
“Since the very first time I saw you, I started falling for you, Julian. I never thought love was in the cards for me. And then, you appeared in my life, with your smiles and your never-ending patience. I don’t think I can live without you.
No, scratch that. I actually can’t live another minute without you as my husband.
You’re it for me. You’re my first love. And you will be my last.”
Tears stream down his face and he clamps his lips shut as if to hold off a sob. Behind us, Mammona isn’t so composed. She hiccups. Breathing gets harder. I’m choking on all the love I feel for the man standing above me.
“Mammona, I swear if you can’t hold it, I’m going to be a mess in five seconds,” Julian murmurs, voice thick, on the verge of tears.
“I’m not even sorry, ciucciu. Your man is just too good at this.”
“I know.”
“Please do me the honour of marrying me, Julian.”
The love of my life slowly drops down to his knees in front of me, forever my equal. His hands, calloused from hours of working the land he loves so much, frame my face. I lean into his touch.
“Igor. My love. There hasn’t been a day since we met when I haven’t imagined this exact moment. I thought I’d be the one that would have to do it, though.”
He chuckles and I follow, my eyes moistening until my vision clouds. I blink to make sure I can still see him. The raw love on his face is all I crave. And I can’t wait to see it for the rest of my days. I’m ready. I’m finally ready to claim him in front of the entire world.
I make to pull us up, but he keeps me anchored.
“Wait,” he says. “I’m not done. I love you so much that every time you’re away, it’s like I can’t breathe.
You’re the reason I wake up every day wanting to be a better man.
I’m a coward. I’m impulsive. I hold grudges.
I’m greedy. But when you look at me, I’m okay with my flaws because I’m loved by you.
And when I look at you, I see the man I will protect and love for the rest of my life.
Even if you want it to be in the shadows. ”
“Jules…”
“No, listen. I don’t care about anything but you.
You are my priority. Now and forever. You’re the sun that shines on my life, even if you think you’re only darkness.
I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.
Your patience, your dedication, your fierce defence for those you deemed family, your shy smiles and tentative laughs.
I love everything about you. Now and forever. ”
I surge forward to kiss him. Our kiss tastes like salt, our tears mingling on our lips. It tastes like sunshine and the rest of our lives. When he opens for me, I don’t waste a second and dive in, sliding my tongue against his.
“Okay, okay, you two, enough. I didn’t put on lipstick and got out of my favourite pyjamas to bear witness to my grand-babies tongue-sucking,” Mammona complains.
We break apart, laughing and blushing.
Under the shade of the chapel, with the sea and the field of sunflowers as our backdrop, we exchange more vows of love. Mammona’s hands encircle ours, locked together.
“Are you, Igor, free to marry Julian?” Mammona asks.
“I am.”
“And are you, Julian, free to marry Igor?”
“I am.”
“I promise to protect you, to cherish you and to always choose you,” I finish.
“I promise to be by your side no matter what, to love you until the end of our days, and to remind you every day that it’s always only ever been you.”
Tremors rack my hand as I slide the ring I chose for Julian onto his right ring finger. When it’s his turn, before he can worry that he doesn’t have a ring for me, I take the other box from my breast pocket.
“I took the liberty of… uh… having one made for me.”
“My, my, baby, aren’t your prepared?” Julian taunts but snatches the box out of my hand and slides the ring onto my finger in record time.
With the last few words from Mammona, we seal our union with a kiss.
My cheek hurt with how much I’m smiling, even as my mouth seals over Julian’s.
I can feel his own smile against my lips.
Happiness threatens to boil over. A heart attack would probably feel the same, with my entire soul bursting out of me to fuse with his.
“Well, I can’t introduce you to the mice but when we do go out in good society, how shall we announce you? Mr and Mr…?”
“Bartoli,” I answer and Julian’s smile drops, his face contorting with shock once again. I’ve rendered him speechless. A smirk spreads on my lips, because that’s a feat in and of itself. “We shall be introduced as Julian Bartoli, and his husband, Igor Bartoli.”
Julian slaps a hand over his mouth. “You’re trying to kill me.”
With a low chuckle, I take him into my arms. When he slides his head into the crook of my neck and breath me in, clutching me with both fists and rumpling the fabric of my shirt, I know I’m exactly where I need to be.
Mammona winks at me. I don’t pay attention as she pulls her phone out of her minuscule bag until car tyres on gravel snap me to attention.
“My Uber,” she declares and waves us off after another wet kiss on each cheek.
When the sleek black sedan has disappeared from view, my eyes snap back to my husband.
His lips pull to a taunting grin, the one I love so much.
“So. What do you have in mind for our wedding night, Mr Bartoli?”
I whisper against his lips. “Worshipping my husband on my knees.”