17. Growing Closer #2
His face does something complicated. Surprise. Reluctance. Decision.
"Yes."
A woman. Early fifties. Dark hair streaked with grey. His exact eyes. She's standing on this terrace, the bay behind her, smiling at whoever holds the camera with the private smile of a woman who loves the photographer.
"Maria Sorrentino," he says. "Née De Luca."
"She has your eyes."
"I have hers."
Cancer. Pancreatic. Four months from diagnosis. He keeps the photograph in a drawer because he can't look at her every day and run this family. She raised him to be someone else. A professor. A curator.
"She knew what your father was," I say.
"She knew. She stayed."
"And you think she'd be disappointed in you."
"I know it. Some mornings I look at my hands and I can feel her watching."
I put my hands on his chest. The Latin tattoo under my palm.
"She loved you," I say.
"Love doesn't preclude disappointment."
"No. But it survives it."
He pulls me against him. Chin on my head. We stand in the doorway between the bedroom and the hallway. The ragù cooling. Puccini fading.
Later. The bay outside the windows turns from gold to amber to the deep blue of approaching evening.
We're on the couch. He's reading. I'm reading.
My head in his lap, his hand in my hair, his fingers moving through the strands.
Two people on a couch with books and silence. The most ordinary afternoon of my life.
I want to cry because of how ordinary it is.
I set my book down. Turn my head. Look up at him.
"Hi," I say.
"Hi."
I sit up. Straddle him. His book falls. His hands go to my thighs.
"Hi," I say again.
"You said that."
"I'm saying it again."
I kiss him. Slow. Roll against him. Feel him respond.
"Piano," I say. (Slow.)
He listens. He always listens.
I ride him on the couch while the city lights appear across the bay, one by one, until the black water is scattered with gold.
Slow. Intimate. I initiate. He lets me lead.
The orgasm builds from my chest, not my pelvis, spreading downward until it breaks quietly, my forehead against his, my eyes closed, a sound for him alone.
He follows. My name. Just my name.
We stay connected. The apartment darkening. His hand in my hair.
Evening.
He insists on dinner. Not the ragù leftovers.
Something new. He works in the kitchen while I shower, and when I come out in his shirt with my wet hair and my glasses, the dining table is set with candles.
Real ones. Beeswax. Two plates. The good wine, a bottle he's been saving, he says, for something worth opening.
"You set a table," I say.
"I set a table."
"With candles."
He has made cacio e pepe from scratch. The pasta water starchy enough, the pecorino grated by hand, the pepper cracked coarse. Simple. Perfect. The kind of dish that cannot hide behind complexity. Either the technique is right or it isn't. His is right.
We eat by candlelight. He tells me about a monastery in Amalfi he wants to take me to. I tell him I've never been south of Salerno. He says this is unacceptable. I say many things about my life are unacceptable. He doesn't know what I mean. I didn't intend him to.
We finish the wine. He clears the plates. The candles still burn on the table.
He comes back. Stands beside my chair. Takes my hand. Pulls me to my feet. Kisses me. Deep. Slow. His hands unbuttoning his shirt on my body, one button at a time, the fabric falling open.
He lifts me onto the table. The candles flicker from the movement. I sit on the edge, his shirt open, the candlelight on my skin.“It’s time for dessert,” he says and he sinks to his knees.
His mouth on my inner thigh first. Just below the scars he doesn't ask about. His lips against the sensitive skin, his breath warm. He works inward, slow, deliberate. The way he eats. The way he drinks wine. Complete attention.
His mouth reaches me. His tongue flat, wide, tasting me with the patience of a man who considers this an art form.
I grip the edge of the table. The candles throw shifting light across the ceiling.
The bay glitters through the windows. His hands hold my thighs apart, firm, steady, his thumbs pressing into the soft skin.
"Niccolo."
He responds by pressing closer. His tongue circling. His lips closing around the specific point that makes my spine arch. I lean back on my hands, my head falling back, the candlelight on my face, his face between my thighs.
He brings me to the edge. Holds me there. Pulls back. Returns. Holds me again. He is patient. He has always been patient. The Don who waits, who watches, who studies before he acts.
When he lets me come, it's a demolition.
My hands give out. My back hits the table.
The wood is hard against my spine. I don't care.
His mouth doesn't stop. He draws it out until my legs are shaking, until the aftershocks overlap into something that might be a second orgasm or might be the continuation of the first, until I reach down and pull his hair and say basta (enough) and even then he presses one more kiss against me, gentle, almost reverent, before he rises.
He stands over me. I lie on the table with the candles burning on either side of my head. Breathing. Wrecked.
"Dessert," he says.
I start laughing. The kind of laugh that takes your whole body. He watches me laugh on his dining table in the candlelight, naked in his open shirt, my glasses fogged, my hair spread across the wood. He's smiling. The full one.
He helps me up. Carries me to bed. We fall into the sheets and his body covers mine and the candles burn themselves out in the other room.
I lie in the dark. His arms around me. His breathing deepening into sleep.
This is real. Whatever happens next, whatever the candles demand, whatever truth is waiting to detonate, this weekend was real.
This kitchen. This table. His mother's spoon in my hand.
The way he laughed when I burned the garlic.
The way he knelt between my legs like prayer.
I hold onto it.
The way you hold onto something you know you might lose.