I slept in his bed. Sometimes with my face in his chest. Sometimes with his body spooning mine and his arm around me. Always with him pressed against me. Always with his hands on me and his smell everywhere. I didn’t know how or even when it happened, but somehow, he’d found a way to tear down my boundaries and embed himself in every piece of me.
Something touched me deep in the chest.
Something warm and fragile.
Something unraveling like a rope.
He didn’t go to work those seven days.
He taught me how to cheat at cards. How to fuck. And how to make an omelet.
His mamma was a good cook, he said. When she wasn’t high, he was quick to specify.
I soaked up any and all information he shared, no matter how small it was. Soon I would have every piece of the puzzle.
Slowly but surely, I was learning how to cook.
“I’m telling you, Mamma, it’s all watery,” I sighed into the phone.
“You didn’t make the roux right.”
“I did it exactly how you told me!”
“My recipes are buono, Elena. It is you who’s the problem.”
After a few of those similar conversations, I learned Google was a much better teacher. Nico might be able to make an omelet, but he was just as inept at everything else.
We ate a lot of takeout, but he never complained. In fact, he never complained about anything. Not when that itch for his attention began and I bothered him in his office, and not as I sat on his lap when he was on the phone talking business. While that bossy, totalitarian side of him was never going away, I was beginning to learn he was more laidback, more gentle, than I’d ever imagined a man like him could be.
I wished he was awful. Because I would soon deserve it.
He kissed me soft and slow. Ran his fingers through my hair. Let me pick the movie, though we never got through one film the entire week. Once his thumb started tracing circles around my belly button, I was dying for his hand in lower places and he always gave me what I wanted.
His body covered mine, so heavy, so perfect.
Skin against skin. The demanding way he tilted my head to kiss me deeper. The roughness of his palm sliding down my throat. His handprints burning me like brands.
It was all a blur. A feeling that coalesced in my chest.
I pressed my face into his neck and breathed him in. His smell was like nicotine, the drug burning through every capillary and spreading through my bloodstream.
The last thread of the rope snapped.
And then it was nothing but me, him, and a long way to the ground.
Thrilling, she’d told me.
She never said it would hurt.
“I fell off my pink cloud with a thud.”
—Elizabeth Taylor
THE SUN SHONE A WARM glow against my skin, but it couldn’t thaw the coldness that had slid into my stomach throughout the night. I’d lain awake for hours, listening to Nico breathe and debating what I would do.
For my conscience, for my sanity, for him, doing nothing wasn’t an option.
I wished I was a different person, one who could put it past me and forget, just so I didn’t have to ruin the small amount of trust Nico had in me and push him into another woman’s arms. Just so I didn’t have to destroy the contentment that filled me whenever he was near.
He was awake and, by the dip in the mattress, sitting on the side of the bed. His gaze touched my skin, but I didn’t open my eyes. What if he saw everything I was thinking?
His thumb brushed my cheekbone. “You gonna laze the whole day away?”
I nodded.
“Been craving your famous runny soup, though.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” I murmured.
He chuckled.
“I told you I couldn’t cook, and you still chose to marry me,” I complained.
“You also said you spend a lot of money and you haven’t.”
“Just wait until I go shopping.”
He laughed, and then I gasped when he ripped the covers off me. My eyes flew open. “Nico, it’s cold!”
I was naked. If I wasn’t naked in the past week, I was only wearing a t-shirt and panties. Best days ever.
His body came down on mine. I slid my arms beneath his white t-shirt to steal some of his warmth. I was sure this man could survive a night in the Arctic without a coat by the amount of heat he put off.
I loved how big he was and how I always felt small and safe with him. The truth was, I loved everything about him and there was no going back. It was full speed ahead, like a train that couldn’t stop for the girl standing with wide eyes on the tracks.
Bliss hummed beneath my skin as he lay on top of me. He ran a rough palm across my cheek and cupped the nape of my neck. His lips brushed mine. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”