22. In a Faraway Land of Fingertips and Atonement #2
“Surely, you’ve lived as you please.” Another reasonable argument from Vi, one to which Chiara would sooner drop dead than reveal she had not taken anyone else to her bed—or her wall, or her desk or whatever other surface may have been available—since Vi.
No, better dead than to confess to something like that to the one woman who’d had her last, and who, in all honesty, had her in the one and truest form that mattered. Five years ago and now.
“It’s none of your business how I’ve lived, Vi.” Her voice could really rival the muscles in her neck, taut and full of knots.
“Well then, we are in agreement.”
Again that reasonable, calm tone. Chiara was getting tired of being lectured. Yes, she knew she was being petulant, but she didn’t care how it looked.
She tugged at her hand, still held loosely by those long, once again warm fingers, ready to get up and seek refuge in her bedroom. Except Vi didn’t let her go. Instead, she tightened the hold, making Chiara’s eyes fly up to meet hers.
“What we seem to be in disagreement about, however, is our current arrangement.”
Well now. Vi had her full attention. Or whatever was left of it in her current state.
“You may think that me having had a series of consensual relationships with a number of women might suggest I’d be satisfied with being one of many for you.
But that is not the case, Chiara. If you want to jerk my chain and exact revenge on me for my sins from five years ago, so be it.
” Vi’s thumb rubbed Chiara’s skin and the dissonance between the gesture and the words was somewhat disconcerting.
“I hurt you and I betrayed you, no matter what actually happened. I will accept the punishment, do your worst… But I won’t be part of some game between you and Frankie. ”
The quiet, almost gentle cadence of Vi’s voice, submitting herself as a lamb to Chiara’s knife and slaughter, snapped her out of her childish petulance. This was far more than Vi setting boundaries when it came to Frankie.
This time, when Chiara tugged on her hand, Vi let go. Her eyes, downcast and dull, showed the loss clearly, only to widen, then close as Chiara gently splayed her fingers on Vi’s cheek, thumb caressing the cutting cheekbone.
“No games, darling. We will deal with it. And with the fact that you seem to know the entire New York queerdom. Was sticking to only one borough too much to ask for?”
She deliberately lowered her tone to teasing, turning everything into a harmless joke, allowing the old endearment to slip from her tongue, letting Vi know that she wasn’t serious, and Vi brought Chiara’s hand to her mouth, biting gently on the fingertips.
It felt good, even as her head became fuzzier under the effect of the pills finally dulling the edges of pain. She sighed. “Not right now, because I think I’m turning into a pumpkin here…”
“I thought I was Cinderella?” Vi’s grin was infectious.
“Shhh, just be glad I’m in the right fairytale, the way I’m feeling…
Anyway, if there is one thing I can assure you of, it’s that.
And no Frankie.” Chiara smiled as Vi blinked rapidly.
She could feel the lashes flutter on her thumb.
A moment later, she leaned over and laid a kiss on Vi’s forehead before moving lower and kissing first one eyelid, then the other, followed by the bridge of the nose and the cheekbones beneath her fingertips.
Vi exhaled under the touch, and Chiara simply laid her lips on hers.
For a moment, they were suspended, skin on skin, breathing each other’s air.
“I allowed you to fuck me because I wanted to, Vi.” The profanity jarred, even as it passed her lips, hoarse and ragged, but she was not yet prepared to call it anything else. ‘Making love’ would mean acknowledging out loud what she was not yet ready to even think about for any amount of time.
And so she didn’t go where her heart was telling her to, nor did she bother moving even an inch from Vi’s mouth, her words scattering on those full lips.
“Furthermore, I did not fuck you because I wanted to prove something. Debts aside, I did that because I wanted to. I want you. I don’t seem to know how not to.
And while I’m working through the ‘why’, can you believe me when I say there are no games between us?
That there is nobody else here but you and me? ”
Vi’s eyelids trembled, and Chiara saw a single tear slip and roll down her cheek.
This time, she did not catch it, allowing it to fall to the floor, then simply moved her lips, caressing Vi’s, not deepening the kiss, not demanding, simply giving, comforting as much as she could with the pain still splitting her skull.
Just before Vi could pull away, a frail, tenuous thought Chiara had been chasing and missing suddenly was within her reach.
She slid her hand under Vi’s chin, lifting her face, the midday sun playing on the planes of those cutting features, focusing Chiara on the torment that still lived within Vi, among that light, all those lingering shadows.
“Since I don’t play games and haven’t, in fact, since those months in Paris—which is a separate conversation—I will say only this, Vi. Atonement is overrated. So is martyrdom. So there is no revenge of any kind.”
She felt more than saw Vi’s lips tremble at her words and pressed harder, her kiss a little violent in its intent to impress the true meaning of those words on this ravaged person in front of her, who was ready to endure abuse to pay for what she’d done all those years ago.
“I either forgive you. Or I do not. And we either move forward together, or we move on separately. It’s as simple as that, Vi.
” She said it matter-of-factly, words spilling out of her, and Chiara desperately wanted Vi to believe them, even as she tried her damnedest to make them be true.
To speak them into reality and pray her heart had that forgiveness in it, as much as it had the love.