Chapter 38 Elisa
Elisa
As I stare at Michael, petrified, the sound of keyboards fills the air, and Vanni’s nephew hands me a second microphone, leaving me no escape.
“Do you still remember it?” Michael asks me.
Who could forget? We must have sung it two hundred thousand times when we were kids. Ivaldo, one of the vineyard workers, was a big Jalisse fan. He always used to drive us into the village and had a cassette of “Fiumi di Parole” on repeat in his car.
Michael and I were obsessed with forming a band, so we couldn’t resist singing along.
He belts out the first line, and the words have a strange new effect on me.
So, Michael remembers it by heart, too, and we start alternating verses as he keeps me locked under his gaze.
When we sing the chorus together, I shiver from head to toe, hearing our voices in unison after all these years.
It makes me want to smile, but I shouldn’t. I can’t. I look away to avoid showing my feelings, but he takes me by the hand. When I hear him sing “goodbye,” I find myself thinking, Please, no! and all my determination fades.
We continue to sing with a kind of distance between us.
I replay all our beautiful moments in my head, reliving the sensations he made me feel but also the intense discomfort of the other morning. I would be nothing more than a game for him, one among many, a holiday fling, and I can’t bear the idea of being cast aside.
I almost feel angry in the last verse, my eyes involuntarily blurring with tears.
By the time we finish, everyone in the audience has raised their lighters in the air, and then they break out into an applause like no other at the Belvedere karaoke.
As we stand there, looking at each other in a silence that says everything, we are interrupted by Vanni, who joins us, carrying a Dyson vacuum cleaner festooned with a bright ribbon. “The jury was unanimous! Congratulations!”
“Elisa,” Michael murmurs, ignoring Vanni. But I can’t stand the tension anymore, so I drop the microphone on the counter and run.
I take refuge in a wooden hut in the park next to the elementary school, my knees pulled tight to my chest, overwhelmed by a tsunami of tears.
I’ve never been the crybaby type.
I like Michael more than I thought I did, in a way that goes beyond a fleeting animal instinct, much more than a revived lukewarm teenage crush.
I like Michael as a man, even if he’s the wrong man. And to say that I like him is an understatement.
I can’t be with someone like him, a person who can have whatever he wants, however he wants it. Someone like him would leave me in the dust.
I hear a gentle knock on the roof of the hut.
“Anyone home?” asks Michael, peering inside.
I dry my tears with the back of my hand, relieved the darkness hides my eyes, which are swollen with tears.
“No,” I mutter.
“So who just answered, then?”
“I don’t feel like playing anymore, Michael. In every sense.”
“But I’m not playing,” he replies. “May I?” he asks, pointing to the space next to me.
“There isn’t room for two,” I reply dryly.
“There is if we squeeze.” He ignores me and crouches to enter. His presence makes the cabin seem microscopic, our bodies pressing together more than they should.
“That was a low blow from you tonight,” I mutter, my throat still catching on my tears.
“I know, but needs must.”
“What do you think you got out of it?” I ask.
“Your attention.”
“Why do you need that? You already have the attention of every woman in the world.”
“But not yours, and that’s all I’m interested in.”
Every sentence is a gut punch. “Words, Michael. They’re just words. Oh, by the way, nice song choice. You’ve ruined one of my few pleasant memories of us.”
“I don’t think I ruined anything. In fact maybe I managed to tell you something I otherwise would have kept inside.”
“Like what? That you had at least two girlfriends in London? Not one, not two, but three!”
“I didn’t think I needed to tell you, because I didn’t even consider them to be girlfriends. Sure, I was having sex with both of them at the same time for a while there. Which makes me a classic . . .”
“Asshole,” I say venomously.
“It’s true; there’s no other way to put it. But I’m not proud of it, if you care to know.”
“What I care to know is why it would be any different with me!”
“Because, if you haven’t noticed, I didn’t chase after anyone else. Not Danielle, not Sheila, just you.”
“And that’s supposed to be enough for me?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what? For making a fool out of me or for getting caught?” I reply harshly.
“For disappointing you. Look, if you need to interrogate me about all my past relationships before you believe I’m serious, then that’s something I’m willing to endure.”
“I don’t have that much time,” I snap.
“Maybe I haven’t been clear enough, so let me be more direct: I feel something for you, Elisa, and it’s not just physical attraction.
It’s physical, too, but it goes deeper than that.
It’s something I’ve had inside me all my life.
I’m ready to take a hit from you, but there’s something I have to confess.
When I was seventeen, I was in love with you and never dared tell you because I was embarrassed.
I was an idiot, which is not an excuse but a reality, and I always let myself be influenced by the fact that you—”
“That I was fat and ugly?” I prompt him. “That you didn’t want to be the boyfriend of the village loser?”
“That you just saw me as a friend,” he corrects me, making me feel stupid and superficial.
“I didn’t want our friendship to end, so I kept my crush to myself and, like at the end of every summer, I went back to London.
But then I realized I’d missed an opportunity, and I decided I’d tell you when I came back the next year.
It’s just a shame I didn’t know that summer would be my last in Tuscany.
I couldn’t have foreseen the old count’s poor health and his son’s aversion to teenagers. ”
I listen to him, my head bowed and my gaze fixed on my knees.
“Believe me, it took me so long to get over you that I didn’t have my first real girlfriend until I was nineteen.
It wasn’t anything memorable, and my second was even less so.
With the third one I tried my best, but I still felt nothing and lost interest as soon as we slept together.
From then on, I realized that sex with no strings attached was less exhausting and less depressing than trying to fall in love at all costs. ”
“Careful,” I warn him, “you’ve leaped from ‘crushes’ to ‘falling in love.’”
“That’s because I really would give you my heart. I just can’t tell if you want it.”
“I do want it,” I admit, “but I’m afraid you’ll take it back.”
“You should know that in my eyes, all the women in the world put together are no match for you. I like you because you can piss me off like no one else—and do you know why? Because I’m indifferent to the others.
You’re the only one I care about. You’re in my head.
I can’t get you out, and I don’t even want to.
I won’t give up on you, even if we have to spend hours screaming in each other’s faces. ”
“What if that’s all we can do? Just scream at each other all the time?”
“It’s not, Elisa,” he objects. “You and I are also this.” And I can feel the “this” on my face. He leaves a trail of light kisses on my right cheek, following the wet trail of my tears over to my lips, which, to my surprise, are already open, waiting for him.
Am I forgiving him too quickly? Maybe, but what if, as usual, I jumped to conclusions instead of reflecting on the situation?
“I’ve seen you cry twice, at most. I’m almost proud of the fact that one of them is because of me,” he whispers, his breath against my lips.
“I hate you,” I reply, giving him a punch in the chest that he doesn’t even feel.
“I know.”
“Now kiss me, please.”
“You don’t need to say ‘please.’” His tongue traces my lower lip with a criminal slowness. “If you really want it, you have to come and get it.”