Chapter 39
Chapter 39
“Was that so hard to say?” I ask him after, and it’s not easy. Breaking away from him and meeting his eyes. Demanding answers. Not slipping down the path of teasing, where we’ve already left so many worthless tracks.
I deserve to know. Three years of this, ten months of nothing—I need him to tell me what took him so damn long.
“Yeah. It was.” He looks sad, regretful, but there is a calm, intense, clear determination in his dark gaze. It squeezes something inside me, but I roll my eyes anyway. Glance away. Three sparrows land on the tallest folly, their chants lost in the breeze. “I’d never said it before.”
“It was not your first time saying ‘I love you.’?”
“No.” Conor smiles in the slow morning light. “It was my first time meaning it.”
The shadows shorten. Midmorning heat washes over me, boils my skin, turns the lemon water I buy into a mess of near-melted plastic that I end up guzzling, then tossing away.
Conor looks fresh, as immaculate as always, but a sheen of sweat has begun to form under the fabric of his shirt, sticking it to the stretch of muscles between his shoulder blades. Impossible to spot, but I feel it when I tap his back to point at a narrow alleyway.
An overwrought sigh. “Sure. Let’s climb more stairs.” But he loves the ivy-curtained walls as much as I do, the colorful pots full to the brim with firecracker peppers and prickly pears. His happiness sits at the corner of his mouth. Crinkles in the fine web of lines splitting from his eyes.
Because I am wearing his sunglasses.
“We don’t have to. If your knee joints are too fatigued, old man—”
He pulls me in, under his arm. Even though my skin is tacky and I can’t recall if I put on deodorant, I let him.
“What?” he asks halfway through the staircase, when he notices me grinning up at him.
“Nothing, just…”
He stops. Bends in to kiss me, first on the tip of my nose, then, lingering, on the lips.
And I think: Just .
“Try it,” he tells me in the middle of exploring the bustling market, after overpaying a local seller for a single branch of cherry tomatoes.
“No way.”
“Try it,” he repeats.
I pout. His knuckles are right there, brushing against my lower lip. “How did my life go from a traditional Sicilian gelato breakfast to this ?”
“This kind of attitude toward fresh produce won’t get you far in life.”
“What? I love fresh produce. Some of my best friends are fresh produce! All I’m saying is, it has a time and a place.” But he’s holding it out to me, the red a vivid scarlet, inviting, tempting. Maybe my body could stand some nutrients.
“Fuck me ,” I grunt, chewing. “Are you kidding me?”
“What did I tell you?”
“I hate you.” I pop another one in my mouth. “It’s so sweet.”
He pushes a strand of hair behind my ear. Watches me polish off the rest of the branch with a satisfied, smug expression that has me poking his flank.
“And what have we learned?” he asks.
“That we should respect our elders?”
His eyes narrow. “That it’s always a good time for fresh produce. Trouble .”
I laugh. If someone came to me and pried my chest open, they would see light beaming out of it.
I’ve always liked sex. Kissing…Too variable. Inconclusive. Above all, it’s much harder to instruct a man on how to kiss properly than on how to fuck. That’s probably why I used to be on the fence about it.
Conor convinces me otherwise in just a few hours. Then we have lunch on the second-floor balcony of a restaurant just off Corso Umberto. It’s a nice place, a little fancy, and I’m worried that the strawberry embroidery will get me kicked out, but they must not care. Or maybe Conor has worn so many pairs of cuff links in his life, it’s paying forward.
“So,” I say at the end of the meal—cantaloupe and prosciutto and soft cheese, arugula, crispy focaccia, Aperol spritz. “Is this our first date?”
That’s the thing of sitting across from each other: No kissing. No turning away. No way for him to ignore my signature difficult questions.
Not that he would have, at least going by how laid back his posture remains, hand relaxed on the table.
“I don’t know,” he says, sounding just as curious as I am. “Would you like this to be our first date?”
“Would you like it to be our first date?”
He mulls it over. “Honestly? No.”
I wait for my stomach to start churning, but it doesn’t happen. I feel remarkably secure about all of this. He said he loves me, which means that an explanation must be forthcoming.
“It’s a very American concept,” he continues.
“What is?”
“Dating. I’m sure it’s popularized in Europe, too, by now. Apps and media. And I know that at this point I’ve lived longer in the US than in Europe, but my formative years were here, and the idea of a formal framework to guide people as they attempt to assess whether they are a good fit romantically is…A little too much like a corporate deck.”
“Says Austin’s Entrepreneur of the Year.”
He shrugs. “It’s awkward, too. People try to put forward their best traits, but a lot is at stake, and they are nervous, which is counterproductive. It’s the trial-run nature of it. Like there’s something to prove, a new level to graduate to. The need to discover whether a subeffective dose of someone you barely know might be compatible with your system, then slowly increase the intake, see if your organism tolerates it…it’s the kind of shit you do to get accustomed to poisons.”
“Okay, so…how do you do it, in Ireland? Or did, anyway?”
“Get to know people at work, or school. Within a friend group. Develop an organic attraction with someone. By the time you’re going out for drinks, you already know that you like each other. You do it because you want to spend time together.”
I pull up my knees, distrustful. Hug them to my chest. “What you are saying is that you’d like for us to go on several outings with multiple chaperones, following which we might be able to do something that sounds like a date—but may not be called a date, to spare your fragile European millennial sensitivities.”
He laughs, full of warmth. “I’m saying that I already know I’m in love with you, and that I have little interest in being apart from you. I don’t need you in small doses, because…I want it all.”
His words wrap around me like a hug, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing what his openness does to me, not yet, and try to bite the grin off my cheeks. The problem is, he’s too close. This is too good . “You realize how insane that sounds? That after years of acting like a little shit—”
“A little shit?”
“—yes, precisely like, as I said, a little shit , you have just…changed your mind about us.”
He nods, slowly. Contrite, I think. “You have every right to be apprehensive.”
“ Apprehensive? You will have to forgive me if I suspect this to be a case of the amyloid plaques’ buildup doing their thing in real time.”
He sighs. “You’re really having a field day with the aging jokes, huh?”
“You deserve it, since you made it your cause célèbre for this long.”
He can’t quite swallow his smile. And neither can I.
“Is it because of what Rue said?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“This morning, when she thanked Eli for being patient with her…Is that why you changed your mind?”
“No, Maya. Not at all. It was last night. Everything you said, I…” He shakes his head. “I think I knew all of it. The bits and pieces. When I told you that my decision to stay away from you was something that I had to renegotiate with myself every day, I didn’t lie. And every day my brain would come up with new reasons, insist that maybe I could allow myself to be with you, and I’d have to talk myself out of it. I’ve debated us in my head a thousand times, and I always took the side that wanted to shield you from a relationship with someone like me. And then, last night, you made me realize that none of my fucking bullet points mattered. I was trying to protect you from something that you never even considered a threat, when the only thing that really matters is…”
“The triumph of the free market?”
“ You .” His laugh is soft. “The unregulated market can fuck a traffic cone, for all I care.”
I sit back in my chair. Study him. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Good.”
A slow nod. “Good.”
“So.” I try to sound solemn. Pretend there aren’t fireworks blowing up all over my body. “Since my brother is too busy sex-marathoning his new wife to assure the preservation of my honor, you’ll forgive me if I ask you a few questions.”
“By all means.” He gestures at me, confident.
“What are your intentions?”
A crease forms between his eyebrows. “Regarding…?”
“Well, we’re not dating, because you are too busy protesting American hegemony in all its forms and ideals. Am I your girlfriend, then?”
A nearly imperceptible pause. “If you want to be.”
“Stop saying—what would you like?”
“I…sure. I’d love for you to be my girlfriend.”
“Excuse me, but that doesn’t sound enthusiastic.”
“It is. I am.”
“If you just want to be fuckbuddies, you can say so.”
“I don’t—no, Maya.”
“I just don’t understand what it is that you—”
“I want to get married.”
All of a sudden, he’s leaning forward. A challenging, burning, searching light in his eyes.
I blink. Many, many times. “Well.”
“Yeah.” A sigh. “I’d love to get married tomorrow. But you are turning twenty-four in three months, and as I have been repeating ad nauseam, I am thirty-eight. The age difference is not your fault, and you shouldn’t be rushed into important milestones just because of…”
“Your geriatric status?”
“Precisely. And I don’t think it’s fair of me to demand a commitment of you this early on. Not after being so fucking stupid for three years.”
He’s right. I may be sick in love with him, but not so much that I cannot see it. “Then…?”
“Then, we…” He runs a hand through his hair, like this is a stressful topic for him, and often revisited. I wonder how many hours, days, weeks he’s lain in bed awake to figure out a solution that would allow us to be together without shackling me to him. “We start back from where we left off.”
My eyes widen. “Last night?”
“No, I—” His fingers find the bridge of his nose. “I meant, ten months ago.”
“Oh. So, we…talk on the phone like it’s the nineties and live on different continents?”
“No. Or, yes, if you want to. Maya, I will take as much or as little of you as you’ll let me have. But I stand by what I said last night. I want you to be in charge.”
“Conor.” My hand slides across the table, knuckles brushing against his. “If it’s pegging you want, you only have to ask.”
He hangs his head, but not before I notice his grin. When he looks up, he’s serious again. “There is a power differential here. I have and will again admit to having been a stubborn idiot when it comes to you, but to be clear, I do not think that the issues I brought up are no longer there. You remain much younger. I mean, I’d bet a good third of my assets that the waiter is currently wondering why I can’t look away from my daughter.”
I lean forward. Spot the twentysomething idling under one of the umbrellas, a bored look as he waits for the lunch crowd to swarm the restaurant. With a small smile, I twine my fingers with Conor’s. Lift his palm to my lips. Press a kiss to the middle of it. A gentle scrape of my teeth.
“I think he just figured out that we’re not related,” I murmur.
Conor shakes his head, that smile still tugging at his lips, his voice raspy as he starts again. “My point is, we do have to acknowledge that I’m older, have more life experience, and have more financial means.”
I glance down at myself. “Just because there’s sand on my romper and I spilled granita all over it, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have my very own exchange-traded fund.”
“Right, yes.” He’s grinning again. So open, I just…My heart, it’s going to stretch to the sky. He looks at the sleep-deprived mess of me, shakes his head, and says, “Granita spillage notwithstanding, you’re still a bit too beautiful for my taste.”
“I just want to reassure you, in case your worry is that you’d be saddling yourself with the burden of someone who’s younger and poor, that I do have a job lined up, and I’ve been financially independent for several years, and—”
“Maya, it’s the exact opposite. I want to take care of you. I want to throw money at your problems and solve them for you, which is why I need to be very careful not to overwhelm you—”
“Which is why you’re stopping yourself from proposing, yeah.” I take back my hand, pretending to be annoyed. “I guess we’ll be waiting to get started on those babies, hmm?”
He freezes. Flushes. Glances away. “Maya, I don’t—”
“Plan to get me pregnant?”
He closes his eyes, mortified. “That was bad of me to say without first discussing it with you. It was…”
“Problematic.”
“Yes. Maya, I would never ask you to have a baby if you weren’t ready. I would never ask you to keep a baby you didn’t want—”
“Conor, relax. You can be a fan of reproductive rights and think that coming inside me is hot.”
He covers his eyes. “Christ.”
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Lots of people have a breeding kink.”
“ Fucking —I don’t.”
“Oh, Conor. Yes, you do.”
“Such a fucking menace,” he grumbles. Red-cheeked. Adorable.
“It’s fine. I’m into weird stuff, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Like what?”
“I believe it’s called gerontophilia?”
“Fuck off, Maya.”
I try to keep my laughter down, but it’s not working. The waiter turns to us, a confused smile as he watches Conor rub his eyes. Me, cracking up.
“Just to clear the air,” I whisper, leaning closer, “I’m not really a gerontophile. You’re the only older person I want to have sex with.”
“Yeah? Good.” His cheeks are still pink. “I also haven’t fantasized about getting other women pregnant.”
“Really?” He shakes his head. “Never?”
“Never.”
“Did you and Minami not…?”
“No. We were younger when we were together—even though…” He snorts. “Still older than you are right now? But she had a pregnancy scare once.”
“And?”
“It turned out that she was just late. Constantly overworked and stressed out by our supervisor. But it got us thinking about families, and we talked about it. I realized that I didn’t think I wanted kids.”
“But…now you do?” I try to wrap my head around it. “Do you think you just weren’t ready?”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that when I think about doing something with you, it feels like an adventure. Climbing a mountain, having a family, moving to another country…I don’t do well with change, Maya. I like to control my environment and limit the unknown. But I woke up a couple of years ago and realized that you’d completely flipped that for me.”
“Why?”
“Because no matter what, or where, or when, you would make it spectacular. Whatever situation, you’d make it worth living. I’d get up and you’d be there, looking beautiful and saying the most annoying things and driving me nuts and making me laugh. And I would love every second of it. Because it’s with you. And you are…” The way his lips curl is internal. Like he’s sorting out the thoughts in his head. “You’re trouble. A constant stream of trouble.”
It’s my turn to lower my eyes. To take a deep breath. “You know, Eli came to see me last night. Before we…Before. He told me to go easy on you.”
Conor sighs. Amused. Unbothered.
“Do you feel…Now that he finally knows, do you feel safer? Like that guardrail is finally in place?”
“No. I don’t. I never…It was a stupid idea, that the people around me could protect me from my feelings. But in my defense, for a while there, I didn’t think I was in love.” My eyebrow must arch, because he continues: “It was too all-consuming. Too gut-wrenching. And I thought—I thought, ‘I’ve been in love before. This is not what that felt like.’
“And then I realized that I simply hadn’t known what love was supposed to feel like, but I still couldn’t accept the risk of being with you and screwing up your life, so I told myself that love wasn’t enough. I kept moving the goalpost. I kept drawing new lines. And…you asked what changed between last night and this morning: you made me realize that some lines should be left where they’ve been drawn. And if we move past them…” His fingers curl around my cheek, thumb brushing back and forth. “Then so be it.”
The city center is beautiful, even if overrun with tourists. A rabble of unique objects everywhere I turn, mosaics and churches, fountains and vistas, religious shrines covered in flowers and the most gorgeous foods. Stray cats nap on their windowsill perches. Hand-painted signs beckon us toward trattorias and stores selling jewelry made of dark, volcanic stone. After lunch, Conor buys me marzipan and lemonade, and a dozen new trinkets with the tripod flag on them.
“It’s my new favorite thing,” I explain. “I’m going to bring back one for everyone I know. And five for Jade.”
“You are…”
“What?”
“A deeply weird person,” he says, and then he’s kissing me again, one hand on the small of my back, the other at my nape.
“My friend Des taught me how to haggle,” I offer. “I could get it cheaper.”
“Absolutely no.”
“But it’s fun .” He nods when I gasp, point at a street performer, say, “I love this piece. Do you have any cash?”
I drop a few euros in the girl’s violin case, then run back to the side, sinking into that one-armed hug that’s no older than this morning, and yet already feels indispensable. Life-sustaining.
“It’s by one of my favorite composers.”
“Ludovico Einaudi?”
I frown up at him. “You know Ludovico Einaudi?”
“I know of him.”
“You. Mr. Industrial Techno. Clang clang, kablam.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“You do not. You contain one genre, and it sounds like bobcats mating on top of a land drilling rig. How do you know about Ludovico Einaudi?”
He sighs. Stares at the graceful push and pull of the bow. “You know that music app you made me download just a couple of weeks after we started talking? You wanted us to listen to a podcast about rowing. Together.”
“Oh, yeah. I do. I had to guide you through linking our accounts. I remember thinking you were a bit senile, after all.”
His glare is contemptuous. “I may be senile, but you never realized that the app required a subscription. I signed up for it and put you on the plan. Basically, a joint account.”
I blink. Because I use that app frequently. Every day, in fact. “Huh. Have you been paying for my music, in addition to my birth control?”
“Apparently. But the way the account works…It sends me alerts. Tells me what you’re listening to.”
“Please, tell me you disabled push notifications.”
“I could tell you, but…”
“Oh my god.” I cover my mouth. Laugh into my palm. “Why?”
“I…It was nice. Sometimes I’d put on the same songs as you, and it felt almost like being together.” He shrugs. The shift of his muscles vibrates through my entire body. “I kept telling myself, ‘I’ll disconnect it tomorrow,’ but…”
I think about the past three years.
All the times I resolved to get over him.
All the times I told myself that the next guy who asked me out, I’d accept.
All the times I never did.
“Yeah,” I say, and then I’m stretching up, pressing a kiss to his cheek, safe in the knowledge that we’re both here to stay.