Chapter Eight #3
I laugh and pick up my cup. The espresso is creamy and strong and nutty and just incredible. I must make a sound I don’t realize because Marina is smiling at me.
“Good?”
“Delicious. Wow. You Italians sure know how to make coffee. Even the worst cup I’ve had here is better than any I’ve had at home. I’ll be so disappointed when I go back.”
Marina smiles and sips her own espresso, but doesn’t say anything, and I think I see a cloud cross over her face, but I’m not sure. I don’t know her well enough yet to get all her expressions.
I grab a cookie and bite into it, and the noises I make come all on their own. The cookie is crispy on the outside, but wonderfully chewy inside, and the blast of almond flavor wakes up my palate. “Holy shit,” I say, chewing and looking at Marina in amazement.
She laughs. “Your eyes are so wide right now.”
“This is the best damn cookie I’ve ever had. In my life. Ever. Holy shit.”
She’s still laughing, shaking her head. She picks up her cup again and looks out over the river. “I have such fun with you.” She says it quietly, and I’m not even sure if I’m meant to hear it. But then she turns and meets my gaze and shrugs as if saying, What can you do?
“I have fun with you, too.” And I mean it.
We’re quiet for a bit, both of us clearly lost in our own thoughts. Then Marina turns to me. “Tell me about your family.”
Okay. Slight topic shift, but I’m good with it.
“My family. Let’s see. There’s my mom and dad.
I have one brother, AJ, who is four years younger than I am.
He has one daughter, my niece Chloe, who I love more than life.
In fact, she’s coming to stay here with me this weekend.
And she would love you. Do you have time to meet her? ”
“I’d love to meet her,” Marina says without hesitation, and I realize I’m thrilled to have another reason to see her.
“Great. She should be here Friday morning. She’s only staying a few days because she’s got to get ready for school, but it’ll be fun. She’s sixteen. She’s great. Funny. Smart.”
“You light up when you talk about her.”
I nod and grab another cookie. “She’s my favorite person on the planet.”
“You close with your brother?”
I chew and think about it. “I don’t know that I’d call us close. I mean, he’s my brother. I love him. But we’re very different people. If there wasn’t Chloe, I don’t know how often I’d see him or talk to him.”
She nods thoughtfully, like she gets it.
“What about you? Are you and Marco close?” I frown and wrinkle my nose. “I passed the office the other day when you were arguing.”
She smiles what looks to be a sad one. “Marco and I were very close growing up. Probably because I wanted to be a boy back then.” We both laugh softly, understanding how that happens to lots of us lesbians when we’re young.
“He’s a little older and I followed him around like a puppy. He was my hero.”
“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”
She takes another bite of her cookie and chews for a moment before continuing.
“But he can be kind of sexist, to be honest. It’s not a quality I love about him.
Our father is very traditional, and instead of helping to educate him and bring him into a more modern way of thinking, Marco tends to…
” She squints and does that searching-for-a-word thing. “Emalate?”
“Emulate.”
“Yes.” She snaps her fingers and points at me. “He emulates my dad. Which means he thinks I should follow in my mother’s footsteps and do the cooking and cleaning in the hotel. Women’s work.” She scoffs, pairs it with an eye roll, and grabs another cookie.
“Oh, that’s frustrating.”
“It is. And my little sister Valentina doesn’t help.
She’s sweet but doesn’t have much ambition, so she’s perfectly happy to work in the hotel.
It’s easy and convenient for her.” She turns to me.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love my sister. She’s sweet and kind.
But she has no drive. The hotel will be all she knows. It makes me sad.”
“It’s her choice, though, right?” I don’t like the worry I see in her eyes. I want to make it better.
“It is.” She lets out a soft sigh. “I know. Still.”
“You want more for her.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, that just makes you a good big sister.” I drink the last of my espresso. “What about your parents?”
“I love them. Wonderful people. My dad can be hard. And as I’ve said, he’s not exactly a modern guy.
But he’s a good man. And my mother? She is the kindest person I’ve ever known.
” When she talks about her parents, her expression goes soft, and there’s a tender smile that I wonder if she’s even aware of.
“I feel that way about my parents, too, though my dad is pretty modern.”
“When did you come out?”
“I was a freshman in college. I fell in love with my roommate. My very straight roommate. Such a cliché, just like my high school best friend.” I snort a laugh and shake my head.
“She started dating a frat guy, and I was shattered. Which was…” I sigh.
“Just so stupid of me. But I was eighteen and it was such a deeper love than before, at least to me, and so spent the second semester of my freshman year just crying and being heartbroken. I was a walking young adult novel. My poor mother had to put me back together. That’s when I came out to her.
She said she’d pretty much always known, which kind of took the drama away. ”
Marina’s grin is both amused and sympathetic. “We all have those kinds of stories, don’t we? I’m glad your mom knew. And your college roommate has no idea what she missed out on.”
I feel my cheeks warm, and it has nothing to do with the heat of the day. “I don’t know. We’re still in touch and she’s married to the frat guy now. They have three kids.”
“Ah, so, not meant to be, then.”
“Nope.” A beat goes by and I say, “What about you? When did you come out?”
“A bit earlier than you. I was still in high school. Played on the football team, er, soccer to you. Had a major crush on my coach.”
“Talk about cliché.” I laugh and reach over the small table to give her a playful shove in the arm. “Your coach? Seriously? So unoriginal.”
“Says the girl who fell in love with her straight roommate.” We spend a moment of amusement before she goes on.
“It became kind of clear that I was different—even though I’d always suspected.
So, one day, I sat in a café not far from school and I watched every person who walked in.
And I told myself not to think about it, to answer instantly if I found that person attractive or not. I was there for almost three hours.”
“And?”
“Every person I found attractive was female except one.” She bites a cookie and says with a grin, “And that one guy was kind of girly.”
“And it was decided.”
She nods. “It was. Just like that.”
“Okay. First girlfriend. Go.” This is fun, getting to know her.
“Angelina Martini.” She says the name so fast, I wonder if she somehow knew I was gonna ask. “She was beautiful and funny and athletic, and she broke my very young heart.”
“Oh, ouch. That first one is the worst, isn’t it?”
“The worst . How about you?”
“Michele Burton.” I let go of a wistful sigh. “She was older, more experienced, and I was head over heels. We lasted a whole ten months before she decided I was boring and started seeing a mutual friend of ours. She actually called me a marshmallow.”
Marina grimaces. “Ouch.”
“Yeah. Took me a long time to recover from her.” I finish my espresso. “Like I said, the first is the worst.”
“Okay, how about last girlfriend?” And I swear to God, her dark eyes twinkle with mischief, which makes me laugh.
“Funny how neither of us is asking about current girlfriends,” I say out loud before I realize it. Marina just continues to grin and finishes her espresso.
“I made an assumption,” she says, setting her tiny cup down on its tiny saucer.
“Same.”
Our gazes hold and there’s an electric current of arousal that runs between us. It’s almost visible, I swear, like I could reach out and grab it, feel how taut it is, pluck it like a guitar string.
“How about we compare worst dates instead?” I ask, hoping she doesn’t notice that I don’t really want to discuss my last relationship. She does, though, I can tell by the way she looks at me, and how weird is that? That I can read what she’s thinking already?
“Okay,” she finally says. “You first.”
I nod and clear my throat. “This was about two years ago. I’d been single for a short time and was trying to get back out there. I swiped right on this woman on a dating app and we set up dinner.”
“Ah, there’s your first mistake,” Marina says, finger up. “You start with coffee. Something short you can escape from if you need to. Something with a time limit.”
“Now you tell me,” I joke. “But you’re absolutely right. My friend Jessie told me the same thing— after the fact. Anyway, I meet this woman at the restaurant. Shockingly, she’s more attractive in person than in her photo.”
“Ah, it’s usually the other way around.”
“Exactly. So, I’m pleasantly surprised already.
We shake hands, sit down and…” I turn to Marina.
“She never. Stops. Talking.” Marina barks out a laugh and I go on to say, “I’m not kidding.
Not once. She started talking and that was it.
She never asked me a single question but went from the subject of her job to her family to her education to her cats to the menu to her favorite foods.
” Marina is cracking up at this point. “I think I said a total of about seven words the entire night. And they were to the waiter.”
“You needed to be rescued!” Marina is still laughing, and I decide right here that, just like her accent, her laugh is a sound I love and want to hear more of.
“I know! And I never thought to set that up with somebody ahead of time. I was so out of practice dating.” I shake my head with an embarrassed chuckle. “That was nuts.” I grab a cookie. “Your turn.”
Marina looks out over the river. “All right, so I was doing a favor for a friend.”
“Uh-oh,” I say, and she laughs.
“Exactly. A good friend of mine had a good friend who had gone through a divorce. They’d been together for many years, she didn’t see the split coming, and she was devastated by it.”
“She sounds like lots of fun,” I say with a grin.
“The divorce was over a year before this date, and my friend was trying to convince her friend to get out there, to try dating, to stop staying in her house like an old woman.”
“Good advice.”
“Against my better judgment, I agree to take this woman out for coffee.” She points at me. “See? I’ve already beaten you.”
“Points for you.”
“You say your date started talking and never stopped? Mine started crying and never stopped.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. And I don’t mean little sniffles and tears running quietly down her cheeks. I mean big, loud sobs. Blowing her nose. Streaking her mascara.” Marina’s eyes are wide as she tells the story, and it’s my turn to crack up.
“Oh my God.”
“That’s right. Oh my God is right because how was I to get away?
The woman is clearly heartbroken. Going through something.
And the people in the coffee shop thought it was me!
That I was breaking her heart. Oh, the looks they gave me.
You should have seen. So, I couldn’t just get up and leave, I had to hold her while she cried. ”
“No!” I say, drawing it out as I continue to laugh, and then we’re both cracking up so hard, we’re doubled over.
She can’t catch her breath, and my eyes are leaking tears.
It takes a few moments for us to collect ourselves, but we’re both still grinning.
“I don’t know which of us wins worst date,” I say.
“I thought mine was pretty clearly the winner, but yours might take it.”
“We can call it a draw,” she says, her expression warm. She glances at her watch. “Ready for our next stop?”
I am and I’m not, I realize. I’m learning that just about anything new with Marina is either fun or exciting or breathtaking or all three.
But also? I could sit here with her, sipping espresso, gazing out over the River Tiber, and telling each other stories from our lives for the rest of time, and I’d be perfectly content.
I push away from the table and stand. “Ready. Lead the way.”
Marina holds out her hand, and I don’t think twice before grasping it. Even as warning bells are chiming in my head, I know I’ll go wherever she leads me.