Chapter 9 #2
I read it twice. Then I put the phone face down on the desk and look at the window for a moment and think about the fact that she has been in this house for nearly two weeks and has not mentioned it once.
Then again. She has been kidnapped. She is wearing a chain on her ankle and eating meals on a schedule set by someone else and her father has filed an anonymous missing person's report rather than pick up a phone. The birthday, in context, makes a particular kind of sense that sits badly.
I pick the phone back up.
Drop Gloria home and get a cake on your way back.
Three minutes pass.
A cake
Yes
You're asking me to buy a cake
Renzo
I'm getting the cake
He returns at seven with a white box and sets it on my desk.
"You're quite the romantic," he says dryly.
"You can handle the Fremont run tonight," I reply, not looking up from the contract I'm reviewing.
"That's a four-hour operation."
"You brought Gloria here on purpose didn't you?"
He sighs. "Have fun," he says, with a sincerity so false I almost chuckle. He walks out mumbling and I open the box.
The cake is dark chocolate, simply decorated, the kind of thing a good bakery produces without fuss. I look at it for a moment and I think about whether she will like chocolate and I realize I don't know and I think I want to know.
I find the candles in the kitchen drawer, the kind kept for power cuts, and I push several into the frosting and light them and I carry the box out to the garden where I saw her walk to a few hours ago.
She is on the stone bench with her knees pulled up and her face tipped toward the last of the evening light.
The red dress again, the paint mostly washed off her hands now.
She doesn't hear me until I am almost beside her and when she turns and sees the candles her face does something I am unprepared for.
It opens completely, without any of the careful management she usually applies to her expressions around me. She looked young and unguarded and lit from the inside.
"Happy birthday, princess," I tell her.
She looks at the cake and back at me and her eyes are bright. "No birthday song?"
"Don't push it."
She pouts and blows the candles out and scoops a fingerful of frosting directly from the cake and puts it in her mouth and her eyes close briefly. Then she scoops another and holds it out toward me.
I look at her hand.
"Go on," she says.
I lean forward and take the frosting from her fingers which I immediately regret. Her fingers stay in my mouth and despite my best judgment, my tongue swirls around it then she turns red and pulls away.
We sit on the bench with the cake between us.
"Why didn't you say anything?" I ask.
She considers the question with more genuine thought than it probably requires.
"I never really celebrated it. I'd get things, sometimes, presents left on the hall table, a week after the actual date usually.
No card." She picks at the edge of the cake box.
"After a while, I just stopped thinking of it as a day that meant anything.
It's easier to forget it than to wait for something that doesn't come. "
I say nothing.
"Don't look at me like that," she adds.
"Like what?"
"Like that." She glances up briefly. "I'm fine. It's just a birthday."
"It's your birthday," I reply. "Life is short enough. It's okay to celebrate it with your friends."
"I've never had friends to celebrate with.
" She says it without self-pity, which makes it worse somehow.
"My father didn't allow it. He was worried about the wrong people getting close to him through me, about embarrassing information getting out, about — it doesn't matter.
My cousin was the only one ever permitted near me and she doesn't like me very much. "
She looks at the extinguished candles.
"How do you want to celebrate?" I ask. "Tonight."
She turns to look at me and my eyes involuntarily fall to her lips. They are full and supple with a hint of icing on them. Do I wipe it off? I shrug the idea off and look away.
"I always wanted to go dancing," she says finally. "My mother used to take me when I was little. I don't really remember the specifics but I remember the feeling of it."
She pauses. "I know that's—"
I stand and she looks up at me.
I extend my hand and she slowly takes it and stands and I bring her in with one arm around her waist, careful of the wound, and I find her hand with my other and hold it properly.
Her skin is soft underneath and she feels oddly warm.
I resist the urge to wrap my hands tighter around her small waist.
"You can dance?" she asks.
"I grew up in Italy," I reply. "I could dance before I could drive."
She tilts her head up at me. "That must have been a very long time ago."
I move us into the first step and she follows without stumbling, and she laughs quietly at herself for being surprised by it.
"That's going to cost you," I tell her.
"I'm terrified," she replies, still smiling.
We move slowly across the stones of the garden, no music except what she provides herself, a soft tuneless hum against my shoulder. I guide her steps and she follows them and after a while she stops thinking about her feet and simply moves.
My hands linger at the small of her back and I breathe her in. Then comes another urge to bury my face in her neck.
Suddenly, her cheek comes to rest on my chest and I look down at her, becoming conscious of the blood that is flowing to my member. I clench to control myself, beginning to ask myself why I got myself into this. I should pull away before this turns—
"Thank you," she says, quietly, into the fabric of my shirt. "For today. I don't think I've been this happy in a long time."
I press my lips to the top of her head, I breathe her in and I close my eyes for a moment.
"It's okay, princess," I tell her. "We had a deal."
"Yes," she replies. "We had a deal."
She says it easily, agreeably, and she doesn't move her cheek from my chest and her hand stays in mine and we keep moving in the dark garden.
I can feel the beat of her heart and her soft hum. The pain on the other side of my bandaged chest is dull.
Against my better judgment, I pull her closer to feel her warmth, ignoring the painful throbbing of my member.
It doesn't matter what I am feeling, I tell myself, this will be over soon.
Tonight, what felt right was keeping her close.