10.
It’s past midnight. I’ve been sitting on the front steps for hours, waiting for Giada to pull up.
The waiting is difficult because I’ve been doing it for years, and I want it to come to an end.
But I imagine she’s going through a lot now that she knows what her mother did to us.
If she lied about that, then I know she wasn’t being truthful when she told my mother that Giada outgrew me.
It was all a ploy to keep us apart. But why?
When I see lights at the gate, I stand up and anxiously await her arrival. I know she’s tired. She was crying on the phone when she was talking to me hours ago. I hope those tears have since dried up because I can’t handle seeing her cry. It destroys me.
She parks in the driveway. I walk to the car, open the door for her, and allow her to step out. Looking at her face and into her eyes, I see the pain that’s written over her heart.
“My head hurts, and I’m tired,” she says softly. “I don’t have any energy to talk, Kase. I just want to sleep.”
“Okay.”
“Do you need me to get anything for you?”
“No. I want to take a shower and sleep.”
I close the car door and reach for her hand. I’m not sure if she’ll accept my grasp, but I’m relieved when she does.
I don’t say a word more. I soak up this moment, allowing her hand to rest in mine while we walk up the stairs – while I escort her to her bedroom.
She steps inside.
“Goodnight,” she says weakly.
“Goodnight, Giada.”
I’m up early Sunday morning, hoping she’d be up so we can discuss some things. I go to her room, knock on the door, but I don’t get an answer.
“Giada, are you in there?”
It’s close to noon. Maybe she’s still sleeping since she was up so late last night crying. Maybe her headache hasn’t subsided.
I knock again before turning the doorknob. When I open the door, I see an unmade, empty bed.
“Giada?”
Walking to the bathroom, I don’t find her there either.
I immediately look out one of the front-facing windows to see if her car is in the driveway.
It is.
Now, I know she’s somewhere around here. And I think I know just where to find her.
I head upstairs and walk to the room where we spent most of our time – my childhood bedroom.
When I open the door, I see her sitting at the edge of the bed, wearing a pink sheer nightgown, but it fits more like a big shirt.
I can see her shapely breasts poking through the thin garment.
Her hair hangs at her shoulders, hiding her face.
She turns to look at me, rocking the same expression that was on her face last night when she came home.
She’s mellow. She doesn’t scramble to cover herself.
She looks at me and then turns her attention back at the paper in her hand.
“Hi,” I say.
She doesn’t take her eyes off the paper.
I walk further into the room which brings back so many memories for me. I think about all the time we spent here. The way we used to be. The feeling of home only she could give me.
Kneeling in front of her, I say, “Somehow, I knew I’d find you in here.”
She looks at me with those pretty, yet sad eyes and says, “It looks the same way I remember it. How is that possible?”
“When you never came back all those years ago, I couldn’t sleep in here. I took another bedroom for myself and left this room as it was.”
“Seriously?”
Nodding, I say, “Yes. It hurt too much to be in here knowing I wasn’t going to see you anymore.”
She inhales deeply and says, “You didn’t know at the time.”
“I had a feeling. We were close, Giada. I felt the moment that slipped away.”
A tear travels down her face.
She says, “You were right. Mom lied to me. She made the whole thing up.”
“It’s not about me being right. I just needed to get to the truth.”
She nods. More tears fall.
My heart steadily stings with pain at the sight of them.
“I’m so sorry I hit you,” she chokes out, her voice cracking as tears stream down her face. Her shoulders shake as the tears come harder. Her cry becomes raw and filled with regret as she covers her face with her palms.
“It’s alright, sweetheart.”
“No, it’s not,” she snivels. “I was wrong. Wrong about you, wrong about her, wrong about everything.”
She glances down at the piece of paper in her hand and says, “She even had this. After all these years…”
I take the piece of paper out of her hand and read the words I wrote. The ink is old and faded, but the words mean just as much now as they did then.
She wipes her eyes and says, “Toward the end of the letter, you said you loved me, but the letter trails off and is not complete. What were you going to say?”
“I was going to say that I—that I need you. That I can’t live without you, but on the chance your mother read it, I didn’t want her to read too much into it, so I left that part out.
But it remains true to this day. I still need you.
I still can’t live without you, and I still love you, Giada.
That’s why we’re together right now. This marriage—it’s—”
“Planned,” she says. “You made up the story about needing to be married to collect your inheritance.”
“Yes.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I needed to feel like you belonged to me, even if it was only for three months. And in those three months, I was going to do everything in my power to get you to fall in love with me.”
I lower my head to her lap, my forehead resting on her thighs.
I search for strength, but she’s my weakness.
Her mother has kept us apart for years, and right now, she needs to know the pain I’ve carried all these years.
She needs to know the hole that’s in my heart.
She needs to know I’m not okay, and I won’t be until we’re on the same page – not just in the same house.
I need her to know that she’s my forever.
That my life will not begin until she’s mine, and not by some piece of paper.
By our hearts. I pull in a deep breath to conjure up the right words.
I look up at her after successfully keeping my tears at bay and say, “You were my best friend. My everything. When you came to visit me, something lit up inside of me. It was a spark. A light. A flame. I knew what that was. Even at our age at the time, I knew. I was afraid of it at first, but then it was as natural as the sunrise. You fit into my life so easily. Being with you was the best part of my days.”
I try my best to bite back the hurt rising in my throat, but a tear escapes against my will. Oh, well. I tried. I need to lay it all out, and I don’t care about anything else right now.
I continue, “When that went away, not being able to see you was the worst of my days. In fact, I haven’t had a good day since the bachelor auction – when I finally saw your face again.
Yeah, I graduated from high school, got degrees and certifications from college.
I worked my way up to be able to take over my family’s business, but none of that, and I mean none of it, gave me the spark that you gave me, Giada.
You are my sunrise. My light. Without you, I’m dim, dark, and miserable. ”
I feel a tear roll out of my eyes.
“Your lips are the only ones I’ve ever kissed. I’ve never been with anyone. I dated plenty of women, trying to purge you out of my system, but I could never take it there with them. And purging you was impossible. So I embraced you.”
I pull my shirt up over my head and say, “I got this tattoo so I’d never forget you when the memories of you started slipping.
Giada, I never considered a scenario in my mind where we weren’t back together.
I knew this day would come and I want you to know I need you in my life, because I love you and I don’t know how I will be able to live if I can’t have you. ”
“Kase,” she whispers, touching my face with her soft hands and wiping that lonely tear away.
She asks, “How is this possible?”
“How is what possible, G?”
“That you still feel the same way for me after all of these years?”
“You feel the same for me, too, don’t you?”
“I do,” she says as tears run out of her eyes. “I never thought twice about dating anyone because I only wanted you. And your lips are the only ones I’ve ever kissed.”
I stand up and take her hands into mine, prompting her to stand as well. Tilting her chin so she’s looking up at me, I say, “There’s nothing that will keep me away from you this time, Giada. Nothing.”
I lower my mouth to hers. My eyes close the moment our lips fuse. This kiss, unlike our last, won’t be so innocent. This time, I’m coming for her tongue, her taste buds. Her teeth. Her throat. For now, I let her get used to what a normal kiss is – just our lips touching.
Teasing.
Acquainting.
Interchanging.
But soon after this phase, I find myself ready to combust – to release the primal urge, pent-up desire, the instinctual craving I’ve nurtured over the years for this woman.
And the fact that this kiss is in the very same spot where we shared the very first one sets something ablaze inside of me.
It’s a full circle moment. It’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime occurrences.
One of those situations that doesn’t happen by mere coincidence.
We’re together because we’re supposed to be together.
We’re together because deep down, we both knew we belonged to each other.
Giada moans softly as she rises to her tiptoes and tries her best to keep up with the long, sweeping, powerful strokes of my tongue as we interchange sucking on each other’s lips.
I think I’m making it difficult for her because not only does my tongue completely take over hers, but I know I’ve lost all control when I pull her lips into my mouth.
When I take her tongue as my own. When I’ve reached the back of her throat.
My Giada.
This kiss has been over a decade in the making. The kiss, the marriage, all of it. I feel like I’ve been reborn, baptized in her mouth, and resurrected to this day – the first day of the rest of my life. Of our lives.