Chapter ix
ix
ON MY WAY BACK HOME, I PULLED OUT THE ADDRESS in Rome again and imagined the woman who might have such elegant handwriting. Was she a photographer like you? An artist? Was the address her studio? The boy her son? Was the apartment one you knew well? One that felt like home?
I remembered the night a few months after we first moved in together, when your friend Justin sent you the listing for the apartment he’d just rented, and it was one of those fancy buildings with a gym and a pool and a roof deck in Long Island City. It was after dinner, and we’d both opened up our computers to check our email or whatever, and when I looked up at you, your face was contemplative.
“What?” I’d asked. “What happened?”
You turned the computer my way. “Am I supposed to want this?” you asked, showing me the apartment and the building.
It was interesting because it wasn’t something I ever actively wished for, but also if someone handed it to me, I would’ve been happy to have the luxuries.
“You don’t want it?” I asked.
You shook your head.
“What if you had all the money in the world?” I asked. “And it didn’t matter what you spent on anything. What would you want then?”
You thought for a long time, such a long time that I thought you weren’t going to answer. But then you said, “Cozy little apartments like this one, but all over the world. One here, one in London, one in Shanghai, in Rome, in Sydney, in Johannesburg, in Mexico City, in Delhi, Jerusalem, S?o Paulo, Lagos, Istanbul … as many as I could buy.”
“You haven’t been to those places,” I said. “At least not most of them. How do you know you’d want apartments there?”
“I know I haven’t,” you answered. “But wouldn’t it be amazing to call all of them home? To know that we have places to welcome us all over the world?”
I thought about it then. It isn’t what I would do with unlimited funds, but there was something appealing about it. I wasn’t sure, though, if it was an apartment that would make a city feel like home, or a person—you. If I were with you anywhere, I’m pretty sure it would feel like home.
That’s what I said to you then. “You’re my home, Gabe.”
And you smiled that slow smile of yours, that seductive one. And all of a sudden, we were somehow naked on the couch, and when you slid inside me, with your eyes closed, your face blissed out and beautiful, you said, “I’ve come home.”
And those words made me orgasm. I was your home. I was your safe space. I was yours.
I used to think about that. I used to wonder if you felt like that with the other women you dated. Did they feel like coming home?
Was there a Roman woman with beautiful handwriting who’d made Italy your home?