21. Elio
Elio
M uch as I try to ignore it, I feel worse and worse as the day goes on. I think I’m going into Deirdre withdrawal. It makes me feel like my whole fucking body is shutting down.
I use voice-to-text to send Enzo a text message.
“Bring Deirdre home now,” I tell him. “I want to see my fiancée.”
My voice sounds raspy and dry. My head throbs with every word.
Not long after that, Enzo’s reply lights up my phone.
“We’re at the vehicle and heading your way.”
Feels like fucking forever before I see the car show up on the security cameras. I follow Enzo and Deirdre on my phone’s screen until they’re mounting the stairs together. Enzo doesn’t go any further, but Deirdre does.
The door opens, and in she walks.
I swear the whole room gets brighter with her in it. She looks just as cute as this morning, maybe even more-so, because a few curly wisps of hair have escaped from her braid.
“How was school?” I ask, making an effort to sit up straighter. I’ve kind of slouched down in the bed as the day’s gone on.
“Fine. I guess. I couldn’t focus.”
I smirk.
“Too much texting?”
She shoots me a harried look as she sets down the school bag I bought for her.
“Technically you sent more text messages than I did,” she replies sourly. “And you didn’t need to tell Enzo to take away my phone, by the way. I don’t even usually text in class.”
“You did today. You messaged me first.”
“Yeah, because I needed to make sure you hadn’t passed out or something without me here to watch you.”
It’s adorable the way she tries to mask her concern behind irritation.
She looks pissed, but even now she can’t stop her feet from carrying her towards my bedside.
There’s a little worried divot between her ginger eyebrows that I want to poke.
I would do it, too, if lifting my arm didn’t feel like such a pain in the ass right now.
“How are you feeling?” she asks quietly. “You look flushed.”
“Probably because my fiancée just walked in.”
Her mouth twists.
“Could you be serious for two minutes? Also, I’m not sure how comfortable I feel about you calling me that. I haven’t exactly-”
Her words go silent when her eyes settle on my bedside table.
She sees the ring box. I left it open specifically for this moment, the single solitaire diamond luminescent on its wings of platinum.
She stares and stares. And doesn’t say a thing.
Nerves prickle along my spine. It’s the perfect ring for her. I’m sure of it.
I… think.
Fuck.
I am going to tear Bruno a new one I swear to fucking God.
“If you don’t like it,” I say without emotion, “we’ll exchange it.”
She didn’t get to pick her groom. I guess I can at least let her pick her ring.
She startles, like I’ve woken her from a dream.
“Oh, no. It’s not that,” she whispers quickly. “I definitely don’t dislike it.”
Satisfaction spreads through me, hot and venomous.
“Try it on.”
“Oh, Elio…” She shakes her head. She’s shutting down. Trying to put distance between us.
“Deirdre,” I throw her name like a grappling hook, trying to pull her back. “I told you before that I would get a ring on your finger even if you were trying to claw my eyes out. Are you going to put a sick and injured man through all that? Or are you going to be good and do what I ask?”
She thins her lips and gives me a flat look.
“Just do it,” I grunt, losing patience because I feel like I might be losing even more than that.
Like every second she refuses to put on the ring I chose it’s like she’s getting further and further away from me.
Even though I’m sitting up in bed, I’m suddenly thrown wildly off-balance.
My left hand shakily reaches for her left wrist and I latch on like she’s a lifeboat.
I guess I must look just pathetic enough, because her face softens and she gives a little sigh.
“I’ll try it on,” she says, emphasizing the temporariness of the act.
But I don’t care. It’s something. I release her wrist and watch her as she carefully takes the ring out of the box.
She handles it so delicately, barely touching it, like she’s afraid it’s going to sting her or stab her or something.
“It’s just a ring,” I tell her. “It won’t bite.”
“Oh! No,” she says, looking at the ring then back at me. “It’s just… It’s so nice. I don’t want to damage it somehow.”
“Because you think we’re sending it back?” I probe sharply. What, she wants to keep it in pristine condition because she thinks I’m going to try to get a goddamn refund on it?
“I actually hadn’t thought that far ahead,” she says, tossing me a frown. “It’s just… I don’t know. I didn’t want to break it.” Her eyes look big and deep and dark. “It really is beautiful, Elio.”
And suddenly I remember what she told me the night I took her virginity.
The story she’d never told anyone else. About how when she was ten years old and all broken up inside from the loss of her mamma, she tried to make a pot of tea in her mamma’s beautiful old pot.
Seeking comfort in one of the last places left to her.
And she broke it. Dropped the teapot and smashed it into pieces.
When I picture it, a sad little Deirdre staring at the broken pot, it feels like one of those jagged hunks of ceramic is lodged in my throat.
She’s not worried about sending the ring back to Bruno in perfect condition so she can get out of the engagement. She just doesn’t want to break something beautiful. Something special. Even if that something came from me.
My chest feels like its cracking, and I don’t think it’s from the broken ribs.
“You’re not going to break it, Deirdre,” I tell her softly. “And even if you somehow manage to seriously damage a platinum and diamond ring, I will get it fucking fixed for you. Alright?”
I need her to hear me on this. I need her to understand.
There is nothing in her life that I cannot control, reshape, repair. Nothing I can’t fix for her. Protect her from.
That’s what a husband’s fucking for.
“Alright,” she says, and there’s a tremulous quality to her voice, a liquid-shimmer sheen in her eyes that makes me think she might be about to cry.
And I don’t want her to cry, not now, but then again maybe it’s a good sign.
Don’t some girls cry when they’re proposed to?
But I didn’t actually propose. So what the fuck do I know?
I don’t get time to dwell on any of those questions because Deirdre is sliding the ring onto her finger and, like a lick of lightning in my head, she burns away all other thought.
As I stare at her, I wonder if this is how other people feel when they step into a church.
And not just any church. One of those big, old ones with a saint’s bones inside.
The kind of place where miracles happen.
Never believed in miracles before.
Not until I had one standing in my bedroom with tears in her eyes and my ring on her finger.
“Fits,” she says tightly. Just one word, choked from her throat.
Like she can’t manage saying anything else without bursting into tears.
Her throat works, the muscles constricting, and she suddenly draws her hands together, like she’s going to rip the ring off, but once again I capture her wrist in my fingers.
Apparently, I too am only capable of a single fucking word in that moment.
“Don’t.”
“Elio-”
“ Don’t. ”
She opens her mouth, ready to argue with me, but instead she just breathes out and nods.
“Just for a bit,” she finally says.
Just for a bit? Try just for-fucking-ever.
But I know when to take my victories when I get them. She’s no longer itching to take the ring off, and that’s a win in my books.
It’s as if all of the energy goes out of her at once.
Her knees bend, and she sits down heavily on the edge of the bed beside me.
A flickering expression, like the shadow of a smile, is briefly visible on her face before it fades.
She leans towards me, brushing hair away from my forehead.
She lays her knuckles against my skin, so silken and cool that I groan without meaning to.
“You feel a little warm,” she says, her brows drawing together. This time she’s close enough to easily reach, and I do poke the little wrinkle that appears between them with the tip of my index finger.
“What are you doing?” she asks with exasperation as I run that finger down her freckled nose.
“Touching you.”
“Well, obviously.”
Her knuckles glide down across one of my throbbing temples, coming to rest at the top of my cheek.
“You really do feel warm,” she says.
“I run hot. It’s a Titone thing.”
“That’s true. You were like a furnace even before you went to see Darragh. But still…”
I poke the dimpled spot between her brows again. Which, ironically, only makes the wrinkle deeper as she gets annoyed and swats away my hand.
“Has the doctor come to check on you today?” she asks, pulling back a little bit, presumably so that I stop poking her face.
“Is this what people talk about when they say they have a nagging wife?” I mumble, letting my hand drop. I always thought I’d hate that kind of thing. But not now. Not with her.
“You’re the one who decided you wanted a wife,” she reminds me icily.
“If you don’t like me nagging you about important things like fevers then I don’t know what to tell you.
” There’s a bit of bite in her voice, but the caress of her knuckles against my cheek is very gentle.
Tender, even. A sweet supplication of her skin on mine.
Without even realizing I’m doing it, I close my eyes and tip my head, leaning harder into the touch.
“Nah. I like it just fine.”