24. Enzo
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Enzo
Afternoon, midweek, and I’m doing nothing.
That’s become a habit these past two months. Weekends used to be for events, networking, the endless performance of being Enzo Vitale, and now even the middle of a workday finds me sitting on my couch, pretending to read, checking my phone too often.
She texted this morning. Thinking about you.
I typed back Same and then stared at those four letters for ten minutes wondering if they said too much or not enough.
This is what I’ve become. A man who agonizes over text messages.
The man who runs my office keeps telling me to go get her. Just show up, he says. Grand gesture. People love that.
He doesn’t understand. The whole point is that I can’t go get her. She has to come back on her own, or it doesn’t count. Or it’s just me, doing what I’ve always done, taking what I want and calling it love.
So I wait. I read the same paragraph four times. I don’t check my phone.
I check my phone.
Nothing new.
The knock comes around three.
I figure it’s the doorman with a package. I take my time getting to the door, not expecting anything, not letting myself expect anything.
I open it.
Ana.
She’s standing in my hallway with no coat, no bag, nothing but herself and a look on her face I’ve never seen before. Not scared. Not uncertain. Just clear. Like she knows exactly why she’s here and she’s not second-guessing it.
“Hi,” she says.
I can’t speak. I’ve imagined this moment a hundred times, what I’d say, how I’d play it cool, all the clever things that would make me seem like I hadn’t been falling apart without her.
None of that comes out.
“Hi,” I manage.
She smiles. It’s a real smile, one that reaches all the way to her eyes, and something in my chest cracks open.
“Can I come in?”
I step back. She walks past me. I catch her scent, something clean and simple, not the expensive perfume she used to wear, and my hands ache with the need to touch her.
I don’t. Not yet. I don’t know the rules anymore.
She stops in the middle of the room. Looks around the apartment like she’s relearning it. Then she turns to face me.
“I practiced a speech,” she says. “On the way over. This whole thing about who I am now and what I figured out and why I’m ready to come back. It was very eloquent. Lots of good points.”
“Yeah?”
“I forgot all of it the second you opened the door.”
I almost laugh. Almost. But she’s looking at me with those eyes, and I can’t do anything except look back.
“So I’m just going to say it badly,” she says. “The way you did. Remember? When you asked if you could say it badly?”
I remember. I remember every word of that conversation.
“I love you,” she says.
The words hit me like a fist.
“I love you, and I’m not saying it because I’m scared or lonely or because you’re the safe option.
I’m saying it because I spent two months figuring out who I am, and who I am is someone who wants to be with you.
Not because I need you. Because I want you.
There’s a difference. I didn’t know that before. I know it now.”
I still can’t speak. She takes a step closer.
“You let me go,” she says. “Even though it killed you. I could see it killing you, and you did it anyway because I asked you to. Do you know how rare that is? Do you know how many people would have held on tighter, made it about them, found some way to keep me here?”
“I wanted to.” My voice comes out rough. “Every day, I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t. That’s the point. You didn’t.
” She’s close enough to touch now. “I told my roommate about you. About us. And she said the difference between someone who loves the idea of you and someone who actually loves you is what they do when it’s hard.
When loving you means letting you go. When it means not getting what they want. ”
“Ana.”
“You did the hard thing. You did it for me. And I spent two months learning how to stand on my own so that when I came back, you’d know it was real.
So I’d know it was real.” She reaches up, touches my face.
Her hand is warm. “It’s real, Enzo. I’m here because I want to be.
Not because I have nowhere else to go. I have somewhere else.
I have a room and a life and friends and I built all of that myself.
And I’m choosing to be here anyway. I’m choosing you. ”
I close my eyes. Let her words sink in.
She came back. She actually came back.
“Say something,” she whispers. “You’re scaring me.”
I open my eyes. Look at her, this woman who walked out of my life and walked back into it, who did the thing I couldn’t have asked her to do, who showed up on my doorstep whole, sure, choosing me.
“I love you,” I say. “I’ve loved you for years. And the past two months have been the longest of my life. And if you ever leave again, I’ll let you, because that’s what you taught me. But I’m hoping you won’t. I’m hoping you’ll stay.”
“I’m staying.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I kiss her.
It’s not gentle. Two months of wanting and waiting and holding back, it all comes out at once. I pull her against me, one hand in her hair, the other at the small of her back, and I kiss her like I’m starving for it. Because I am. I have been.
She kisses me back just as desperate, her hands fisting in my shirt, her body pressing into mine.
“Bedroom,” she says against my mouth.
“You sure?”
She pulls back just enough to look at me, and there’s no doubt anywhere in her face. “I came here to stay, Enzo. I’m sure.”
I lift her clean off her feet and her laugh hits my mouth warm and open. My hands lock under her thighs while she wraps her legs around me. I walk us down the hall without breaking the kiss, tasting two months of nothing but phone calls and empty rooms in the way her tongue slides against mine.
The bedroom door swings in and I kick it shut behind us.
I set her down only long enough to back her against it, grinding my hips into hers so she feels how hard I already am.
My mouth drops to her neck and I suck hard, teeth scraping until I know there will be a mark.
She gasps and tilts her head, giving me more skin.
“Fuck, I missed you,” I mutter against her throat. My hands shove her dress up, fingers hooking into her panties and yanking them down. She steps out of them while I unbutton my jeans one-handed, shoving them low enough to free my cock.
She reaches between us and strokes me once, tight and sure.
I groan into her mouth and lift her again, lining up.
One hard thrust and I’m buried inside her, her back hitting the door.
She cries out and I don’t stop, fucking her in short, urgent strokes while her nails dig into my shoulders through my shirt.
Her legs tighten around me. I keep going until the first edge of desperation eases, then I slow down.
I carry her the last few steps to the bed and lay her on it without pulling out.
Her dress is still on, bunched at her waist. I push it higher, kissing the skin I uncover, then drag it over her head and toss it aside.
I stay deep inside her and start moving again, slower now. My mouth finds hers, softer, tasting every slow roll of my hips. She arches under me and I slide a hand between us to rub her clit with my thumb, feeling her get wetter around my cock.
“Enzo,” she breathes. Her hands push my shirt up until I yank it off. Skin to skin, I press her down into the mattress and kiss her like I can make up for every day she was gone.
I pull out only to drop lower, mouth on her breasts, sucking each nipple until she squirms. Then lower still, tongue licking through her folds while my fingers hold her open. She grabs my hair and I stay there until her thighs shake, until she’s pulling me back up with a desperate sound.
I push back inside her in one smooth thrust. This time I keep it steady, deep, watching her face. Her eyes stay on mine. I kiss her again, slower, and let the pace stretch out until every stroke feels like it could break something open.
She comes first, pulsing around me, mouth open against my jaw. I keep moving through it, thumb still circling her clit until she whimpers. Only then do I let go, burying myself deep and coming hard, groaning her name into her neck.
After, I stay inside her until I soften, then ease out and pull her against me.
She settles with her head on my chest, one leg thrown over mine.
Late afternoon light turns gold across the sheets.
My hand rests on the mark I left on her neck.
Neither of us moves to clean up or speak.
We just breathe. I trace slow patterns on her back, watching the light move across the ceiling.
“I can hear you thinking,” she says.
“I’m not thinking.”
“Liar. You’ve got that crease.” She reaches up, pokes my forehead.
I catch her hand. Kiss her fingers.
“I’m thinking about how I don’t deserve this,” I say. “And about how I don’t care. I’m keeping you anyway.”
“Very romantic.”
“I’m a romantic guy.”
She snorts. “You’re a control freak who’s trying very hard to be better.”
“Also that.”
She shifts, propping herself up to look at me. Her hair’s a mess. There’s a mark on her neck that I put there. She looks completely happy.
“I meant what I said,” she tells me. “I’m staying. Not just tonight. I’m coming back.”
“What about your room?”
“I’ll keep it. For now. I’m not ready to give it up completely.” She traces a line down my chest. “But I want to be here more than I’m there. I want to fall asleep with you and wake up with you and fight about whose turn it is to make coffee.”
“It’s always my turn. You’re terrible at coffee.”
“See? We’re already fighting. It’s very domestic.”
I pull her down and kiss her. Slow this time. Soft.
“Stay,” I say against her mouth.
“I’m staying.”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight. Tomorrow. However long you’ll have me.”
“Forever’s a long time.”
“I know.” She smiles. “Good thing I’m stubborn.”
***
We order food eventually. Eat it in bed, because neither of us wants to move, and I’ve stopped caring about crumbs on the sheets. She steals all my lo mein. I let her.
“I should tell you about the past two months,” she says, mouth full. “All the stuff I figured out. The speech I forgot.”
“Tell me.”
So she does. About Lucia and the cooking disasters. About the morning runs. About the piano in the student center. About crying at movies and learning to pay bills and standing in the grocery store paralyzed by pasta choices.
I listen to all of it. Every small, ordinary detail of the life she built without me.
It should hurt. It doesn’t. It just makes me proud.
“You did it,” I say when she’s done. “You figured out who you are.”
“I figured out some of it. Enough to know what I want.” She sets down her chopsticks. “I want you. I want this. I want to keep figuring the rest out, but I want to do it here. With you.”
“Even though I’m a control freak?”
“Recovering control freak.”
“Even though my family is a disaster?”
“Mine’s worse.”
“Even though…”
She puts a hand over my mouth. “Enzo. I love you. Stop trying to talk me out of it.”
I kiss her palm. She pulls her hand away.
“I love you too,” I say. “In case that wasn’t clear.”
“It was clear. But I like hearing it.”
“I love you. I’ll say it as many times as you want. I’ll say it until you’re sick of it.”
“I won’t get sick of it.”
“Good.”
We fall asleep with the food containers still on the nightstand and the lights still on.
At some point in the night, she rolls over and tucks herself against me, and I wake up just enough to pull her closer.
She’s here. She’s staying.
For the first time in two months, I sleep through the night.