Chapter Three
Luigi
La Sirena pretends to be holy. White stone. Blue glass. A chapel bell on the hill that rings like forgiveness is something you can buy by the hour. Some bells bless. Some bells count the missing. The night my father didn’t surface, a different bell rang like a ledger.
I’m not here to save my soul. I swim laps until my shoulders burn and the noise in my head goes quiet, until the counting inside me loosens its grip and my lungs start telling the truth. The water takes what it can. Salt and effort and repetition, the only kind of penance that ever worked for me.
When I stop for breath, she’s there.
White suit. Red mouth. Sunglasses that catch the sun but don’t hide her eyes. She sits like she belongs to the horizon more than the pool, watching the line where sea meets sky as if she made a bargain with it and it hasn’t decided whether to keep its end.
I drift to the marble lip and feel the temperature change where my forearms meet shade. She’s sizing me up, like she’s deciding if I’m a hurricane or just a gentle breeze.
I’m sizing her up too.
She’s the kind of beautiful that wastes nothing, built in long, clean lines and restraint, with a waist I could bracket with one hand if she allowed it.
Her shoulders are set. Her chin is steady.
The white suit looks poured on, thin straps and a high cut that makes her legs go on forever, and there is a bare flash at her hip where warm skin lives.
Sun glosses her collarbones and a bead slides down the hollow of her throat where a bruise hides, half concealed, half daring anyone to ask.
Pool light knives her calves and lifts the arch of her foot.
Her red lips part, and her hair is pinned up, damp wisps caught at her nape like she dressed in a hurry and refused to apologize for it.
When she looks over the sunglasses, her green eyes go straight through my ribs, and something in me clicks into place with the ugly certainty of instinct.
I decide to spend the rest of the day learning what she’ll let me touch and what she’ll make me earn.
“You look like you’re making a run for it,” I say.
“Run is a strong word. I prefer swim.”
It lands low in my chest. Calm and precise, she holds her posture like a dancer who learned to fight. I ask whether that’s her plan or her preference. She says to call her Sera and lets it sit between us. It’s a good lie. Soft where it needs to be. Tailored. Expensive in the way it hides seams.
I tell her I don’t want her name. I want her yes. Coming from nowhere and everywhere at once, it’s not a line. It’s truth in a world that I rarely confess to.
Her fingers tap the stem of her drink once. She weighs me like a purchase and like a risk. Then she nods.
“Yes.”
On the steps the towel boy appears as if trained by fear. I climb out and offer my hand. Her palm is warm. Her fingers are cool where the glass kissed them. The shape of her mouth makes me forget what time wants from me.
“What should I call you?” she asks.
“Luca,” I say, and wear it like a jacket I’ll take off later.
She tries it once and it fits.
We stay by the water until the fans turn the air slow and the ice sinks in her glass. We trade stories that never mention cities or last names. Someone taught her to be still, and she learned the lesson too well.
We take the terrace that wraps the cliff.
The stone burns our feet. She swears in French and laughs at my Italian I stumble on as a cover.
A boat slides along the horizon, and I name it by its wake.
She names the lives on board and gives them better endings than most people get.
I watch her profile while she talks. The wind lifts her hair from her neck, and I want to put my mouth there.
“You’re good at this,” I say.
“At what?”
“Not being where you are.”
She looks at the water and smiles without showing teeth.
“Practice,” she says. “And need.”
The chapel bell strikes noon.
We rent a Vespa. She climbs on behind me and holds my waist like she’s been doing it for years. The road winds upward through pines and almonds and sudden pockets of shade. Every time we hit gravel her fingers tighten for a breath and then loosen. I lean into the turns because she gets closer.
The trattoria we find should be impossible.
A dozen tables, string lights up at noon, the owner pouring wine like we’re family.
He’s smiling like he has seen men like me come through here pretending they’re ordinary.
I’m sure I’ve been here before. A different woman. But no one like Sera. Whoever she is.
She eats like a woman who’s finally remembered she has a body. When she licks a bit of oil from her thumb, I lose whatever thought I was about to form, and that irritates me because I don’t like being easily moved.
The owner glances at her left hand when he refills our glasses. His eyes touch the pale band and move on. He has good instincts.
So does she.
She notices me noticing and tilts her wrist so the light falls clean along the skin, not hiding it, not offering an explanation, simply letting the truth exist without permission.
We walk after. A set of stairs braids down the cliff to a cove where rock cradles the sea. We leave our clothes on warm stones and slide in. Water closes over my shoulders and takes half my anger with it. She swims on her back and watches the sky.
When I touch her, I do it with two fingers at her waist, nothing more than a question.
She turns into my hand.
The answer moves through both of us.
The first kiss isn’t planned. It’s a tide.
A thing the body knows before the mind writes it down.
Salt on her mouth. Fire under it. A small sound she tries to swallow and then lets me hear.
I press my palm to the small of her back, and she breathes against my teeth.
The cliffs keep our secret. But we don’t take it further.
The sea lifts and lowers us as if everything is simple.
Nothing is simple.
When the shadows change shape, we dress. I wrap my towel around her shoulders and carry her sandals as we climb the stairs because it pleases me, because it marks her as mine for the length of the path, because the possessive part of me wants proof even when I have no right to it.
“Have dinner with me,” I say when we get back to the resort. It’s not a question.
She says yes, again.
We separate to our rooms. I tell myself to give her an hour and take forty minutes.
Even after showering, my hands smell like the sea.
I change shirts twice before I settle on linen because anything heavier feels like a lie.
When I go down, the terrace lights are starting to warm, and she arrives in red.
We take the corner table at the glass. The quartet plays something that would make my late mother sway. The sommelier talks about limestone, and I nod so he’ll walk away. Under the table my knee finds hers. I don’t move.
She doesn’t move.
She names the constellations wrong on purpose just to see if I’ll correct her, and I let her have her victory because I want her amused more than I want to be right.
“You’re leaving tomorrow,” I say.
“I am leaving always,” she says. “Even when I stay.”
Truth lives in her voice like a bruise. I lift her wrist and kiss the vein.
The smallest sound leaves her.
I want a hundred more.
I want them with the lights on.
And in the dark.
We go upstairs.