“Yes, I’m fine. Sorry. It was just… a bit…” Disturbing? Shocking? A devastating reminder?
My hands were still trembling and I was in danger of tipping the rest of the water onto his pillows. He took the glass from my hands and placed it on the tiny bedside table.
“Come and lie down with me,” he said, tugging gently on my hand. “Just lie with me. I’m not going to do anything you don’t want to do, you know that.”
He pulled me down and held me in his arms, softly stroking my hair. We lay there peacefully. Somewhere in the room I could hear a clock ticking: my life was passing with every second.
He continued to soothe me, kissing my hair, stroking my back and my arms, threading his long legs through mine.
“Do you want to hear a bedtime story?” he said, quiet humor in his voice.
“Not funny,” I muttered into his chest.
He laughed gently. “You’ll like this one. It starts with a girl and a boy… a motorcycle and a full tank of gas.”
“Very romantic.”
“Told you you’d like it.”
“Well, the boy says to the girl, ‘Hey, baby, let’s go see the world.’ And do you know what the girl says?”
“‘I’m washing my hair’?”
“Ha! No, not quite. She says, ‘Let’s go see Italy because the whole world starts there’.”
“She sounds like an idiot.”
“Hey! This is my bedtime story.”
“Okay, I’ll be quiet.”
“Is that even possible?”
I punched him lightly on the arm and he laughed.
“Okay, so the boy says, ‘I’ve got an idea. Let’s fly to Switzerland…’”
“On the motorcycle? Because I should explain to you…”
He put his hand over my mouth, so I kissed the palm and snuggled in a bit more.
“‘Let’s fly to Switzerland, drive over the Alps and then we’ll go to Milano and see Il Trovatore at La Scala’.”
“That’s the opera where everyone ends up dying.”
“You said you’d be quiet.”
“Sorry.”
“So, then they stay at this amazing hotel where they have breakfast in bed, served on silver plates…”
“And they scappati in the morning because they can’t pay the bill?”
“Yeah! Then they ride off on their trusty motorcycle and go to Verona, one of the most romantic cities in the world…”
“It’s not romantic: that’s where Romeo poisons himself and Juliet stabs herself to death.”
“Shh! Then they drive down the spine of Italy, stopping to eat pasta… and have a lot of sex…”
“This story is NC-17.”
“Yeah, that’s because it’s my bedtime story. Then they ride to Salerno and take this little mountain road to a tiny village called Capezzano Inferiore and they meet all these wonderful, crazy people who turn out to be cousins and aunts and uncles of the girl, because she’s kinda crazy, too…”
“And then what?”
“They live happily ever after.”
I sighed. “Okay, that was a pretty good story after all.”
“Told you you’d like it.”
I felt very comfortable lying in his arms and my attack of guilt and disgust was slowly passing.
He didn’t speak after that and neither did I. We drifted to sleep, wound around each other.
A loud crash woke me suddenly. I sat up, disoriented and panic-stricken in the darkened room.
“Oh, fuck. Mom’s home,” said Sebastian sullenly. “Are you okay, Caro? Don’t sweat it; she won’t come up here.”
My heart was pounding; it was so loud I felt certain he must be able to hear it knocking against my ribs.
“Are you sure? Is your door locked?”
“I haven’t got a lock – I put the chair up against it when I want some privacy.”
I couldn’t believe how casual he sounded. I almost leapt out of my skin when he reached out to stroke my hair.
“I’ll go see if she’s passed out,” he said, reading my mood.
I nodded, nervously twisting my wedding ring around my finger.
He frowned, then rolled off the bed and gently opened his bedroom door. He was gone for less than a minute while I waited anxiously.