20. Chiara #2
When I go too sensitive he eases, still buried deep, kissing my temple, my cheek, the corner of my wet mouth.
“Still with me?” Soft now. “Want more, or do you need a minute?”
“More.” I’m wrecked and laughing and almost crying. “Don’t you dare finish without me feeling it.”
“Then stay with me.”
He rolls us carefully onto our sides without leaving me, hooks my top leg over his hip, and drives back in from that angle. Chest to chest. Mouth on my shoulder. One hand splayed on my lower back to keep me flush against every thrust.
“Feel that?” Deeper this way. Unavoidable. “Feel how deep I am. Tell me if it’s too much.”
“It’s not.” I cling to him, moaning into his throat. “It’s perfect. Don’t stop. Lorenzo. I’m.”
“I know. Come again.” Soft order against my ear. “On me. With me. I want to feel you break while I’m inside you.”
I shatter a second time, harder, sobbing his name into his skin. He follows almost at once, groaning like it has been torn out of him, pulsing deep while his arms lock around me and he holds on through every throb.
We stay joined while our breathing slows. He kisses my hair, my forehead, my knuckles where our fingers are still laced. Then he eases out carefully. I make a small sound at the loss.
He gathers me at once, my back to his chest, our legs tangled, the sheets pulled half over us without either of us caring how they fall.
Moments pass as we stay tangled together in sheets that smell like both of us, the lamp casting warm shadows across the ceiling.
“Would you turn the lamp down?” I have one arm beneath his pillow and no wish to retrieve it. “I want to sleep.”
“Are you comfortable?” Lorenzo has to shift to reach the lamp, and I complain when he takes the pillow with him. “Apparently that’s a yes.”
“It was.” I reclaim my share of it when he settles beside me. I can be tired and happy and unwilling to move.
He switches off the light. I expect to lie awake, listening to every sound in a room that has carried so much of my unhappiness. Instead, I find his shoulder in the dark and fall asleep before the last voices disappear from the courtyard.
When I come out of the bathroom the next morning, Lorenzo is looking for the shirt he left on the chair. His sleeve is caught beneath the edge of my dress. I free it before he can dislodge the silk, then pass him the shirt.
“Thank you.” He checks the creases with a resignation that makes me laugh. “I should have hung it up.”
“You were distracted.” I hang my dress in the wardrobe, in the space I left when I went to the cottage. I don’t have to decide where every piece of clothing belongs this morning. For now, I just want the silk to stop creasing.
“Come down when you’re ready.” Lorenzo collects his jacket from the chair. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”
I can take my time, then go and find him. I like knowing he’ll be there.
The divorce papers are still sitting on my lawyer’s desk.
Unsigned, unfiled, waiting for a decision I’ve been putting off for weeks.
I told Lorenzo at the vat that I wanted to find out if we could have a real marriage.
I’ve spent three weeks finding out. And now I need to decide what I’m going to do about it.
Before going downstairs, I email my lawyer to ask for the current draft. I want to read it once more before I decide.
By the time I get downstairs, Lorenzo has finished breakfast and is reading beside the open kitchen door. He puts the page aside when he sees me. I help myself to a roll and sit with him, aware of how little effort this ought to have required all along.
“I want to go to the vat today.” The words come out before I’ve fully decided to say them. “This evening. At sunset.”
“Any particular reason?” Lorenzo leaves the page unread beside his plate. He has the rest of the morning for it.
“I have something I want to say to you.” I meet his eyes. “Something that should be said there, not here.”
“I’ll meet you there.” He leaves the time I named unchallenged, and I remember that I no longer have to argue for space in his day.
“Sunset.” I finish my roll instead of trying to begin the conversation here. “I’ll find you.”
After breakfast, Lorenzo goes to deal with the work left from the gala.
I spend the morning in the garden, checking the herb beds and making notes on a fresh sheet of paper.
My journals are still at the cottage. For the first time, fetching them doesn’t feel like a task I ought to postpone until I’m certain about everything else.
At noon, I print the draft my lawyer has sent and take it to our bedroom. I read it by the window, considering the choice without rehearsing how I’ll defend it to anyone else.
I don’t sign it. I leave it there, face-down on the desk, and go to find something else to do with my afternoon.
***
As sunset approaches, I change into warmer clothes and go downstairs. Lorenzo’s coat is gone from its hook. He’s already on his way to the place we agreed, and I take mine down to follow.
I take the path past the outbuildings to the pigiatura vat. I’ve had the day to think, and I know what I want to say. The sun is low on the horizon, painting the bare vines gold and amber, and the air smells like cold stone and winter earth.
The vat is empty, as I knew it would be. Dried leaves have collected along the bottom. I remember the awkwardness of my first steps here, and how easily Lorenzo made me laugh once he joined me.
I stop beside the vat. That evening mattered to me long after he walked me back to the house.
I kept wanting the man who had enjoyed my company here, and I kept hoping he would invite me again.
Tonight I have something better than that hope.
I’ve spent weeks with him, including the days when neither of us found it easy.
Lorenzo is waiting at the far side, as he promised. When I reach him, I leave my gloves in my coat pockets.
“Have you been waiting long?” I stop beside him and rest my bare hand on the cold stone. He has cleared the dried leaves from a small patch of the rim.
“I’ve been here for a while.” Lorenzo turns to face me, his breath visible in the winter air. “I wanted time to think about what I was going to say.”
“Did you figure it out?” I had expected to do most of the talking. Now I want to hear what brought him here early.
“Some of it.” He looks out over the terraced slopes, where the last light is turning everything gold. “I don’t want you to have to guess what I hope happens after tonight.”
“Tell me.” I leave my prepared opening for later. I’m here to say something he needs to hear, but I want this from him too.
“I want you to stay.” He brushes the remaining leaves from the rim beside my hand. “I want to be the person you can trust to stand with you when I don’t have a room full of people agreeing with me.”
“I choose you.” He takes his hand away from the stone and holds it out to me. I take it before he finishes. “Every time. Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.”
I recognize the words from the letter he gave me. I had known them before that, from the pages I read and returned to his father’s folder. Hearing them now, I understand how much I wanted Lorenzo to make the promise himself, where I could answer him.
“Even when you think I’m being difficult?” I remember how quickly my questions used to end a conversation. “Especially then, perhaps.”
“Then I have to listen long enough to find out why.” He makes room for me to sit on the cleared patch of stone, staying beside me. “And tell you what I think, instead of deciding what you’re allowed to hear.”
I want that conversation, even when we disagree. Especially then.
Three weeks ago, at this same vat, I told him I wanted to find out if we could have a real marriage. I remember waiting for his attention to fade once the immediate fear of losing me passed. It hasn’t. He’s kept the plans we made on ordinary days, when there was nobody to watch him do it.
“I’ve been able to count on you.” I settle on the cleared stone, my coat bunched beneath me. “These past weeks. It matters.”
“I want to keep doing that.” He sits beside me, leaving enough room for my coat. “I liked having you across from me at breakfast. I wanted you to come downstairs again tomorrow.”
“I love you.” Saying it makes me reach for him, wanting the closeness I kept denying myself.
“I loved you at that grape crush, when you climbed in to catch me and ruined your trousers. I kept loving you even when I couldn’t trust you, even when I was packing my bags and driving away.
It’s been exhausting, honestly. You could have made it easier. ”
“I love you too.” He leans toward me, then has to stop when I catch his sleeve. I want to finish before he kisses me.
“And I forgive you.” I hold on to his sleeve while I say it, needing him to hear the whole sentence without trying to spare me from it.
I thought saying it might frighten me, as if forgiving him would mean I couldn’t speak of what happened again. But he knows what he did. He has said it in private and in public, and he has listened when I’ve been angry. I don’t have to stay away to make him understand that it hurt.
“I’m not leaving.” I let go of his sleeve and move nearer on the rim, no longer needing the space between us. “I don’t want the divorce. I haven’t wanted it for weeks. I was just waiting to trust it.”
He lowers his head until his forehead rests against mine. I can feel him trembling, and for once neither of us tries to turn the feeling into something easier to discuss.
“Chiara.” He pulls me into his arms, and I go willingly, pressing my face against his coat, feeling his heart pound against my cheek.
“I trust you to keep trying.” I draw back enough to make sure he hears me. “Even after you know I’m staying.”
“Especially then.” He kisses my forehead, and I let myself rest against him. “I want a life with you, Chiara. I want us to enjoy it.”
The sky darkens while we sit together. I let myself enjoy the relief of having said it, with no argument left to prepare and no need to take the words back.