“Tell me about your place in Long Beach, Caro.”
I didn’t know why it surprised me: maybe because it didn’t seem to be part of ‘us’; maybe I’d been unconsciously avoiding it.
“Oh! Sure, okay. Well, it’s small, a bungalow in an area called the West End. It was built about 90 years ago, and it was pretty beaten up when I bought it. I restored the porch at the front so I can sit out and watch the ocean, and in the winter the windows get covered in salt from the wind coming off the Atlantic. I have some really great neighbors, and they look after the place while I’m away. My friends like to come out from Manhattan on the weekends. You spoke to Nicole, she works in merchant banking; and then there’s Jenna, who’s a bitch-on-wheels attorney, but actually she’s really lovely; and Alice, she’s a Professor of literature at NYU. I met her when I was going to school there…”
I stopped suddenly.
“What’s the matter, Sebastian?”
He’d stopped eating, and was staring at me with dark, angry eyes.
“How am I going to fit in with your life there, Caro? All your friends have these amazing careers… and I’ll just be a jobless grunt with a high school diploma.”
“Sebastian, no!”
“You know what they’ll think: Muscles Are Required Intelligence Not Essential.”
“Hey! No one will think that, and you know what? I don’t give a shit anyway. Sebastian, haven’t we had to listen to enough crap in the past to care less what anyone else thinks now? Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me?”
He shifted in his seat, but didn’t answer.
“Sebastian, do you love me?”
He looked up instantly.
“You know I do, Caro. Sempre.”
“Then whatever happens, we’ll deal. I vaguely remember someone saying that to me. Oh, wait, that was you a couple of days ago. Sebastian, the only thing my friends will care about is that I’m happy.”
I took his hand in mine.
“What about your plans to be a personal fitness trainer? And, jeez, Sebastian, we’ll be in New York: you could do something amazing with your language skills. Don’t go and get all shy on me now, Hunter!”
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to relax.
“Yeah, okay. Sorry. I just kinda freaked for a moment there.”
“I know and I understand. It’s weird for me, too, and we haven’t been doing this for very long. I guess you could say we’re out of practice with the whole dating thing. I feel very un-me sitting here in this shockingly short miniskirt, but I tried it, for you.”
“Shockingly short?” he said, his grin returning.
I took his hand under the table and let him run his fingers up my thigh.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “shockingly short.”
“Okay, Columbus, you’ve discovered enough for one evening,” I said, slapping his hand away as it began to travel even higher.
He pouted at me, and I laughed out loud.
“Come, tesoro, take me home.”
When we returned to our beautiful room, and our beautiful, large bed, Sebastian made sweet, slow love to me. Maybe it was the romantic setting, or the way we were gradually getting to know each other again and defeat our fears one by one, but the way he touched me seemed to have a new depth and intensity. I was dreading the moment, just a few days away, when we’d have to say goodbye. Again.
We woke with yet another day of bright sunshine spilling in through the open windows.
“Ciao, bella,” he said, copying the words I’d said to him the day before.
“Ciao,” I said, smiling back at him.
I stretched, and several muscles grumbled at me. I’d thought I was in pretty good shape, but I’d been worked over by a US Marine, for several hours. There was definitely something to be said for a having the services of a personal trainer.
Sebastian’s morning wood poked me in the side and his hand drifted over my hip.