Chapter 8
“Ah!”Santo screams.
“Che cosa sta succedendo qui?” Eva shouts.
Oliver, as usual, barks his head off.
“Oh my god, oh my god. Santo, I am so sorry,” I cry.
He’s bent over, hands on his eyes, hissing between his teeth.
“What were you thinking?” he shouts.
“You followed me!” I shout back.
“I live here!”
“You live here?”
“Yes. Che due coglioni! Porca miseria!” A lot of other words follow, all of which are, I’m pretty sure, curse words. Eva is shushing her dog.
“It’s fine,” I tell her. “We’re fine, everything’s fine.”
She eyes me but drags her yappy dog up the stairs.
Despite spending most of the day thinking about Santo while simultaneously trying to avoid him, when I heard my name being called on the street, my mind had immediately gone to the man this morning at the coffee shop instead of Santo.
Santo stands quickly and turns away from me. He’s shaking his hands off as if they’re wet from a public bathroom that doesn’t have paper towels, and his eyes, which are squinting, and the surrounding area are all red too. And wet. Again, like he splashed his face in a public bathroom without checking the paper towels first.
I stand in the corner like a child in trouble. My nerves were so on edge today, between the coffee shop guy and then worrying all day that I would run into Santo, plus the first day of school nerves. I nearly left entirely, but Sara, Tessa, and Jade calmed me down. I was in such a panic we actually video chatted in the middle of the day while I hid in an empty computer lab. Of course, though, Jade’s solution when she found out he was one of my professors was to ask him for a do-over.
A DO-OVER!
This man knows what I taste like. This was already a DEFCON-1 emergency before I pepper-sprayed him. There is no asking for do-overs, even if Santo—damn it, Professor What’s-his-name—is just as gorgeous in daylight as I remembered.
He pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths.
“I can take you up to my apartment,” I offer. “I think I have milk. We can wash your face wi?—”
“I’m going to my apartment,” he cuts me off. “Just...”
There doesn’t seem to be an end to that sentence. After a moment, he drops his hand and squints at the staircase before shuffling forward and hitting the first step with the toe of his loafer. He grips the handrail. He can’t see, and this is all my fault.
“Okay, San—Professor. Here.” I grab his bicep with both hands and step closer to him. “I’ll get you to your apartment.”
His grip on the rail tightens, but he doesn’t argue. I help him up the stairs, all the while, his muscles are flexing under my hand. I try to ignore it, but it’s hard. Maybe Jade has been right all along, and I really do need to have sex with someone because this situation should not be sexy at all.
“Which apartment is yours?” I ask. He’s on the same floor as mine, on the other side of Eva and Oliver, who huffs at the base of the door as we walk past. Santo fumbles his keys, and I help him find the right one and enter his apartment.
His place, unlike mine, is a newly renovated one. It’s more modern, with bright blue accent walls and a white kitchen, which I lead Santo to.
I leave him with two hands on the counter and open his fridge, hoping to find some milk, but there’s none. That’s what they say to drink when you eat something too hot, at least back in Austin, so maybe it would help to flush out someone’s eyes? I’ve dealt with the consequences of unintended jalapeno—or worse—consumption one too many times, which is what happens when you have kids, and your favorite restaurant is a Tex-Mex joint in South Congress.
I hear a faucet turn on, and when I look back at Santo, he’s at the sink scooping handfuls of water onto his face. He gasps between each splash. I lean against the counter, curling around my arms, cradling my stomach, and wait. Part of me thinks I should leave, but what if he has an allergic reaction or if the burning doesn’t go away? He’d need help.
After a while, Santo leans back, turning off the sink. He holds out his hands and looks down at himself—the crisp, gray jacket he was wearing over a white button-down is soaked. Reaching for a towel first, he dries his hands and face. He still looks quite red and irritated, but it seems he can see now.
“Santo, I’m?—”
He holds up a hand, cutting me off. Oookaayyyy, not ready to talk yet. Slowly, he peels the jacket off and then his shirt, leaving a white sleeveless tank top behind. We would call it a wife-beater back home, which is a gross name for something that…well, I guess back home it’s pretty gross, period. But here, in the soft light of Santo’s kitchen, it’s a bit more Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire with sweat and muscles and…
I snap my gaze up to Santo’s just before his eyes meet mine. And then they flick to behind me, and they widen.
“Merda! Zola!”
“What?” I ask as he lurches to the door.
“My cat!”
“Your cat? You have a cat?”
He ignores me, whipping around. “A black cat. Check the hallway.”
Holy hell in a handbasket, this can’t get any worse.
Santo’s crouching on his knees checking under the couch so I step into the hallway in time to see a flash of black by the stairs.
I follow it up, and when the hallway comes into view, it is, in fact, a cat. It sits at the far end under the small window, licking its paw.
We had a cat when I was growing up, but Bruce was a dog person, and I was pretty ambivalent about it. We had a golden retriever that died when the kids were in high school—Buffy was her name—but I haven’t been around pets since then.
“Hey, gorgeous,” I say.
The cat ignores me, but it’s in a way that obviously, pointedly says I’m ignoring you.
“What did your daddy say your name was?” I croon, feeling ridiculous, but also, if I let this cat slip by me after the day I’ve had, after the day Santo has had…well, he just might fail me. Or kick me out. Or whatever is in his power to do.
I tiptoe forward while the cat continues to ignore me. “Miss Zola, I think that was your name, right?”
I get a few feet from her and crouch down. She stops licking and blinks at me, squinty-eyed, which makes me think of Santo and his pepper-sprayed gaze.
Like she’s trying to guilt me.
That’s not funny.
Okay, enough anthropomorphizing, Emma. The cat does not understand what you did or why her daddy is upset.
Extending my hand, I hold the back of it out for Miss Zola to sniff. She stares at me like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that, lady?
I’m sure if she understood what I’d done to her dad, she’d be miffed at me.
“Zola? Emma?” Santo calls from downstairs.
“Up here,” I answer.
I hear the thud-thud-thud of Santo, who must be taking the stairs two at a time, and soon he’s striding down the hallway to retrieve his wayward cat. She stares up at him, tail flicking and curling at her feet.
He says something to her in Italian. “Tu, diavolo subdolo. Non vuoi perderti nel tuo nuovo quartiere, vero?”
The view of Santo, his hands on his hips, white shirt, gray slacks, frowning down at his cat, who continues the conversation with a little meroooww, makes me melt. As if I didn’t find Santo attractive enough, now he has to talk to his cat, all adorable-like.
He bends down at the same time Miss Zola stands on her hind legs and reaches up to him, and I actually coo out loud while he grabs her under the arms like a toddler and lifts her up. Her whole body goes long and soft, like some weird cross between a slinky and a set of novelty handcuffs.
Santo puts both stretched out paws over one shoulder and moves a hand under her butt, supporting her. Miss Zola curls up, and they both look at me.
Miss Zola looks smug as hell.
Santo looks exhausted.
“Sorry. For the pepper spray and the door.”
“Yes. Okay.” He takes a big breath, and his cat headbutts his cheek. He says something else to her in pretty Italian, but it’s too low for me to even guess what it is.
“So,” he says to me, his accent thicker than ever. “We are neighbors.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m your professor.”
“Yes.”
“Merda.”
My sentiments exactly.