“Come for me,” I begged, squeezing him hard with the muscles of my pussy, his eyes flying open in surprise. “Oh god, yes, yes, Nico, come with me, come with me!”
My climax swallowed me up in one quivering mass, spitting me back out into reality, shivering and dizzy and gasping for air. I hung onto him as he came too, hiding the sound of my name in the soft, moist crook of my neck as he shuddered into me, the hot flood of his cum pulsing through us both.
It took me a long time to recover. He rolled to the side, pulling a sheet over us, and we breathed together in the darkness. At first I couldn’t focus, but when rational thought finally returned, I remembered where I was, who I was with, what we’d done. It wouldn’t be the first time in my life I’d had sex with a stranger, but it was the first time in a very long time.
“Well, I think this was indulgent enough for Fat Tuesday,” I murmured, feeling Nico stir beside me.
He chuckled. “We don’t call it ‘Fat Tuesday’ in Italy. Here, it’s Shrove Tuesday. Do you know what that means?”
I’d heard the term but had no idea what it meant. “No.”
“It means to confess. Have you ever been to confession?”
I smiled. “No.”
“It’s very freeing, to be absolved of all of your sins,” he assured me, tracing my navel with his finger. “Today we confess, and for Lent, we do penance.”
“You deny yourself?” I asked. “What will you give up?”
“We have to give up something we really love for it to be true penance,” he explained. “I considered giving up sex, but now… perhaps I’ll give up chocolate instead.”
“Good call.” I laughed.
“So what do you have to confess?” he asked, leaning over and kissing the side of my breast, his fingers tracing light patterns over my skin.
“Far too much for the time we have.” I slid my arm around his neck and kissed his cheek, grateful when a knock came on the door.
“Nico!” It was Mama Dorotea and the sound of her voice had us both scrambling for our clothes. “Why is the door locked? What are you doing? Your sister is leaving, you should come say goodbye!”
We fumbled with buttons and zippers, Nico making excuses the whole while, assuring his mother we’d be right down. Thankfully Giulia and Will and the baby were already gone and I didn’t have to make any explanations. When Nico offered to take me home, I refused, telling him I preferred to walk. I needed to clear my head, I said. That much was true.
But it was only about ten blocks, and I would have needed a far greater distance to accomplish that goal, I realized, as I approached the front steps of Cara Lucia’s. I saw the light on in her window up front, heard laughter inside. I felt as if I’d been part of a family again tonight for the first time in so long. I hadn’t felt a part of things that way since Carrie and Doc had practically adopted me, and it had woken something in me I had almost forgotten about.
“There you are!” Cara Lucia opened her door as I made my way down the hall. How she’d known I was there was beyond me. The woman seemed to have extrasensory perception. She stood only five-foot-two and her graying hair was pulled up and back, her aging face still quite beautiful. Her daughters looked just like her-all five of them. I could hear them laughing and talking inside. “Come to celebrate Carnavale?”
I felt guilty about not accepting her earlier invitation. I didn’t see any of her other boarders-most of them foreign exchange students-sitting at the dining room table. Had she invited them as well? Or just me, I wondered? I’d had lunch with her almost every week at that table, talking about her husband and daughters, my studies, my life-before. She was probably the closest thing I had to a friend in Italy.
But I still shook my head, smiling. “No, I’m sorry, I’ve had enough celebrating today, I think.”
“I have something for you, wait.” She held up one finger, leaving the door open a crack.
“No, that’s-”
She had disappeared already, so I waited, sure she was bringing me a care package, more food to add to the calorie-laden meal I’d eaten today. I smiled, remembering Nico’s family. Remembering Nico. Just thinking about him made my head swim. What had I gotten myself into?
Cara Lucia reappeared, something small in her palm. Definitely not the care package I’d expected. She held it out, smiling, gesturing for me to take it. “For you.”
The necklace was beautiful, a gold ellipse with a green stone set in the center. “Oh, no, I can’t possibly accept this.”
“It is the emerald eye of Beatrice.” She was already folding it into my hand. “I thought of you and your work with Dante Alighieri and knew you must have it.”
She knew that I was doing my thesis on The Inferno.
“That is so sweet of you.” Of course, now I felt doubly guilty for not taking her up on attending her Carnavale celebration. “Thank you, Cara Lucia.” I leaned over to kiss her cheek.
She beamed. “Perhaps your Dante will return to his Beatrice.”
“You mean Mason?” I blinked, looking down at the charm in my hand. It had never occurred to me that my ex-husband might be my Dante-the doomed love of my life, a relationship destined to end in tragedy, at least on the worldly plane of existence.
“He redeemed himself in the end, you know,” Cara Lucia reminded me with a wink.
“And Beatrice might have been better off if she’d just let him go,” I countered, turning the charm over in my hand. I had to admit, I was thinking of Nico.
When I looked up at Cara Lucia, I saw the speculative look in her eyes. I’d told her a great deal-probably too much-about my relationship with my ex and everything that had happened when it all fell apart. “Anyway, thank you. It’s beautiful.”
“L'esperienza di questa dolce vita,” she murmured, squeezing my hand. It was a quote from Dante- the experience of this sweet life. “It is yours, Cara,” she told me, using the endearment her own man had given her years ago. Cara meant ‘beloved’ and she had been called Cara Lucia her whole life because her husband couldn’t speak her name without putting his love for her first. “It is all of ours.”
I thanked her again for the charm, promising to come by next week some time for lunch, going upstairs and down the hallway to my own room. Jezebel was waiting, mewing impatiently for her own Carnavale feast. So we sat on my little bed and listened to Venice celebrating and I hand-fed her the bread and cheese I had been expecting to eat for my own dinner.
So many things had happened that I hadn’t been expecting today. What else did the experience of this life have in store? I wondered, looking at the charm. So far, aside from a few bright moments, life hadn’t been very sweet to me. But maybe I was just being ungrateful. I put the necklace on and found myself thinking of Nico with a little spark of hope.
I had come to Italy for so many things, including the great food, of course, but sometimes I just wanted a good old American cheeseburger. The Mood Cafe had the best cheeseburgers around, and that’s where I told Nico I’d meet him for lunch. He was late, and I was already eating, drinking a vanilla Coke and dipping my fries in hot mustard, when I saw him walking up the cobblestone street.
The day was bright, a little chilly, but I’d decided to sit outside anyway. Italians were oblivious to the weather. In America, life was about comfort. In Italy, it was about experience. If it was cold, you were cold. If it was hot, you were hot. If it was raining, they didn’t care. In the summer, there was no air conditioning anywhere, and it was hot as hell-but no one cared. Those weren’t problems to be fixed, but rather things to be experienced.
I smiled as he approached, seeing his eyes light up when he saw me. I couldn’t help my body’s instant response when he bent to kiss my cheek, remembering his lips, his mouth, his hands. It still felt like a dream, like something that had happened to someone else and not to me.