Chapter Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWO
DARIO
Under the guidance of Dario’s therapist, they come up a with a plan of action.
Rolling out Dario’s date book, they schedule outings to places where Dario can expose himself to triggers safely.
They detail escape routes and identify coping tactics to get him centered should the anxiety overwhelm him and a panic attack come on.
Dario refills his as-needed anxiety medication to calm him when all else fails.
Early in the morning on Monday, they sail across Lake Trasimeno to Castiglione del Lago, the site of his proposal-gone-wrong and where the annual blues festival—a tourist attraction he would usually give a wide berth to—is already underway.
The festival, where they will watch Beau perform, is the final test of Dario’s exposure.
He worries a week may not be enough to overcome such debilitating fear, but for Charlie, he feels like he could move mountains, so he has to try.
The sail is smooth, and the sky is clear, which are normally good things, except today where Dario searches for any reason to turn this boat around. But Charlie smiles at him, and he doesn’t veer the helm off course. He trains his eye on the horizon and visualizes the ideal outcome.
When they dock in the bustling marina, they have no intentions of getting out. Small steps lead to bigger results. Rather than trotting around the city, they picnic beneath the sail and people-watch from a comfortable distance.
Dario eases through the worst of his panic, letting the acidic burn come and taper off with breathing and time and ample amounts of sunshine.
“Did you sail a lot with your dad?” Charlie asks, clearly hoping conversation will quell some of the fear. Some of the fear of fear. Isn’t that strange? Brains can be such fickle beasts.
“Every week we would bike down to the lake as a family and sail for hours, Emilio and I trading off roles as skippers,” Dario says.
“What was your dad like?” Charlie asks, stealing another slice of cheese from their charcuterie board.
“He was a total adventurer. I swear nothing scared him. He sailed, he drove a Vespa, he rock climbed and cliff dove. I think sometimes when you grow up as well-off as he did and have as many experiences as he did when he was young, you become addicted to chasing adrenaline,” Dario says.
A memory book of his father flips fast through his mind.
The unfilled pages at the end remind him that some lives get cut too short.
“I don’t know if that’s true. I never got a chance to ask him.
There’s a lot I never got the chance to ask him. ”
“If you had the opportunity to ask him one more question,” Charlie says, “what would it be?”
“I’d ask him if he ever wanted to take over Amorina,” Dario says, eyes cast on the few white clouds charging overhead.
“It was always in the background in the way I imagine princes in a monarchy are aware of the line of succession but if they think too hard about it, they might combust from the stress of what’s to come.
After my dad died, my brother kept saying that he acted with such reckless abandon because he never wanted to be a corporate suit.
But that’s never been what Amorina was like.
I think Emilio was projecting. That couldn’t be what my dad was thinking. ”
“What’s your theory?” Charlie asks curiously.
“That he was fearless for so much of my childhood because he knew that, as soon as he took over Amorina, he would love it so much he wouldn’t want to retire.
Like my grandfather, he would spearhead it until he passed.
I think he did it right. He did retirement before claiming his career,” Dario says, wistfully.
“I know that’s extremely privileged. I’m not saying it would work for anyone else, but for him?
He was just as happy captaining this boat as he was discussing business with my nonno. ”
Charlie soaks this in. “Would you have done it that way, if you could have?”
Pondering the could-haves has always been hard for Dario.
When his father died, he learned very young that he had to make peace with what was.
There was time for grieving, and then there was a time for looking ahead.
If he dwelled, he risked slipping on the banana peel of pity and never getting up again.
“Amorina is at my fingertips much earlier than I anticipated, but I have to roll with it. I would need more balance anyway,” Dario says. “All play and no work would leave me a little adrift. All work and no play…”
“I’ll make sure there’s play,” Charlie says. He raises his eyebrows suggestively while running his bare foot under the hem of Dario’s boating trousers.
“Can I hold you to that?” Dario asks, scooting closer.
“You can hold me any way you’d like, Candy Man,” Charlie says.
Dario leans in, hauls him to standing, and confidently kisses him.
On Tuesday, they take their exploration further. After a session with his therapist, Dario gathers up Charlie from the pool and they board the boat again to make the trek across the lake. This time, when they tie up, they disembark.
Dario’s never had sea legs in his life given all his experiences out on the water, but today as they venture into the fray of tourists in town for the big music festival, he wobbles all over the place. Charlie’s arm linked in his steadies him some.
For an hour, they wander in and out of shops, sticking to the sidewalks and trying their best to keep a slow, even pace.
Eventually, as Dario knew it would, the overwhelm catches up to him. His mind becomes a timer blinking up the seconds he’s been away from home, then a film reel of worst-case scenarios that won’t stop.
When his breathing grows labored, Charlie pulls him into the least crowded storefront they come across.
To both of their surprise, it is a desolate tattoo parlor.
The walls are a smorgasbord of designs big and small.
In the next room, there’s a comfy-looking chair with supplies on a rolling tray beside it.
A woman with jet-black hair pulled up in a high ponytail comes out from the back asking if they had an appointment.
“What did she say?” Charlie asks.
“She says if we don’t plan to get a tattoo then we can’t loiter here.” Dario grips his chest.
“You just need a place to reset. Can’t we tell her that?” Charlie asks.
Through the haze of his anxiety, he gets a better idea. After a brief exchange and a flashing of some cash, the artist ushers them back to the chair with little fanfare.
“What’s happening?” Charlie asks as Dario takes a seat.
“We are getting tattoos,” Dario says as he breathes in the sanitized leather of the chair.
“Of what?” Charlie asks.
“You tell me,” Dario says. The panic attack subsides incrementally. While his heart still thrums, it does so with excitement. He had never thought about getting a tattoo before, but he likes the way they look on Charlie, and he wants to share this experience with him.
“You want us to get matching tattoos?” Charlie asks, seemingly stunned. The tattoo artist appears impatient beside him, since they’ve clearly disrupted a chill day in her studio.
Dario nods. “Something small to remember all of this by.”
Confusion dovetails into enthusiasm. Charlie reaches for his sketchbook. The stool gives a soft pfft as he sits on it. “This is your first tattoo!” Glee widens Charlie’s eyes. “Where do you want it? What do you want? Oh my God, this is going to be good.”
Charlie’s zeal laps over Dario in sonic waves. “I trust you to decide for me,” he says.
“You know a tattoo means no sun or pool for a few months. Are you sure about this? It’s permanent.” While he understands the hesitation, he loves—loves—every inch of ink sketched across Charlie’s body. Anything Charlie’s beautiful imagination comes up with will delight him.
“I’m sure. Anything, anywhere,” he says, placing his trust where it will be valued and honored.
“Anywhere?” Charlie’s eyebrows go up. “Your lower back? Your dick?”
“Okay maybe not anywhere.”
“I got you, Candy Man,” Charlie says, and Dario wonders if he knows just how much he’s got him.
Charlie sketches away. Dario uses this time to work through his deep-breathing exercises.
Meditation should rid him of the tingle that still infects his toes from the abrupt onslaught of anxiousness that hit him.
A performance from the festival must’ve gotten out.
People spilled en masse into the street.
His fight-or-flight responses kicked into overdrive.
Centered enough, he reopens his eyes and chats with the artist.
She watches over Charlie’s shoulder as he works, angled away from Dario. “Lui è bravo.”
“She says you’re good,” Dario translates for Charlie. He blushes, responds with a timid, “Grazie.”
“è un artista?” Is he an artist?
He tells her that Charlie is self-taught and that his dream is to become a tattooist.
“è stato apprendista?”
“She’s asking if you’ve been an apprentice before,” Dario says to Charlie who is deep in a creative headspace. He comes out of it just enough to shake his head and get back to work.
“è americano?”
“Si.”
“Adesso vive qui?” Does he live here now?
Dario’s heart speeds up. “Lo spero.” I hope.
“What are you saying about me?” Charlie asks.
“Nothing bad,” Dario reassures him as Charlie holds his sketchbook to his chest.
“Do you want to see what I’ve come up with?” Charlie asks.
Dario shakes his head. “I want to be surprised.” He reaches out for Charlie’s chin and gently tugs him in for a chaste kiss.
The tattoo artist—who eventually introduces herself as Marcella—finesses Charlie’s sketch and properly sizes it.
Once Charlie is happy, they run it through a thermal imager to create the stencil that they will transfer to his skin.
Dario was unaware of how many steps went into this process.
Enough to make him second-guess this a few times over before reminding himself that Charlie knows what he’s doing.
Dario strips down to his undershirt. Dirty thoughts practically float out the top of Charlie’s head. Dario bites back a smirk.
“Va bene se ascolto musica?” Dario asks. Is it okay if I listen to music?
Marcella agrees as she opens a single-use razor pack and tenderly applies a light coating of shaving cream on the upper area of his bicep.
Slow swipes of the razor remove any stray hairs that might get in the way of the needles.
The cold alcohol wipe she uses has a pungent stench that burns Dario’s nostrils.
From his phone’s music library, Dario selects a recording of his mother singing various opera arias. Charlie immediately seems enchanted by the ebb and flow of the music. The instrumentation is lush, yet it’s the athleticism of her voice that has always made Dario most proud.
“Your mother is very talented,” Charlie says.
“I couldn’t agree more.” Dario misses watching his mother perform. If all goes well with his exposure therapy and the possible wedding, he’ll be sitting front row with Charlie by his side the next chance he gets.
Marcella removes the needles and tubes from their sterile casing, and she sets the ink caps out. A bit of ointment is applied over the purplish stencil, which Dario refuses to look at.
The whir of the tattoo machine starting up scares him, so he turns the music up a little higher to drown it out.
“I bet she sang you some pretty epic lullabies when you were a kid,” Charlie says. Dario sees this for what it is, a bid to distract him.
Dario dons a nostalgia-smeared smile. “My brother and I got whole concerts instead of bedtime stories. Divas never miss an opportunity to perform.” As he runs down a whole setlist of songs performed before bed or at parties, he barely registers the pain of the first line being drawn on his skin.
Thirty minutes later, Marcella is done. Dario checks his first tattoo out in a handheld mirror.
The image is a partially unwrapped Amorina bar with a wide-open, cute Cyclops eye in the middle.
“Eye candy,” Dario says, delighted. Charlie clearly knows his tastes enough to have drawn him a tattoo that he would cherish, which bolsters his already-flourishing feelings for him.
Dario is also pleased with himself for choosing spontaneity over retreat.
He could’ve forced them back to the boat as soon as Marcella said they couldn’t stay in the parlor, but he opted to take a chance over falling back into old patterns.
“And?” Charlie asks. “Where’s it placed?”
“My arm? Oh. Arm candy.” He laughs.
“It’s to remind you how sexy and delicious you are, Candy Man,” Charlie says as Marcella sprays and gently wraps the piece. “Do you like it?”
“Of course I do.” Dario loves it, but he worries about uttering that word too soon.
“You’re not just saying that because it’s now forever inked on your body?” Charlie asks.
Dario leans on his arm before wincing from soreness. “I’m saying that because it’s exactly what I would’ve asked for had I known to ask for it. You read a part of my mind I’ve never even accessed before.”
“Good, because it’s my turn,” Charlie says, helping Dario up so they can switch places.