“Something smells good. Is that garlic?”
Luca glanced away from the ingredients he was tossing in the skillet like he was a master chef on some cooking show. “Help yourself to coffee and take a seat. This is almost ready.”
I slid onto a barstool behind the kitchen island, admiring his fine ass in gray sweatpants and his broad back in a white undershirt. A week had passed since we arrived in Montauk. Despite the good insulation in the house, I woke up to the smell of garlic. That was because I left the French doors to my room slightly open. I wanted the sound of the ocean to lull me to sleep and wake me up slowly. My sleep had been dreamless save for a few erotic ones starring Luca, my waking-up moments peaceful. There was something healing about this place and this isolation.
“What are you cooking? That looks like a lot for breakfast.”
“Sausage fried rice.”
My mouth watered. I told Luca how I discovered my love of eating leftover Chinese food at midnight during one of our beach walks.
“No wonder you had me cook a lot of rice yesterday,” I said. Our discussion also included what type of rice made the best fried rice. All Asian cookbooks would tell you that cold leftover rice made the best. We mimicked the same activities we did when we were on our honeymoon. We ate at restaurants, watched movies on the wide-screen TV, we ate at home—I prepared dinner while breakfast was Luca’s domain, or we simply ordered takeout. The exception was Luca didn’t disappear for secret meetings and I didn’t secretly get on my laptop.
And the sex? So far, there was no sex.
Luca turned around and set the giant platter of fried rice in front of me.
“That’s a lot,” I repeated.
“Eat what you can.” He parked his ass beside me. “You’ll need it for tonight.”
I shook my head and laughed briefly. “We’re really going to do this?”
“No backing out now.”
On our second night in Montauk, Luca took me to an Argentinian restaurant. What was special about that night was it was usually closed on Thursdays during the off-season. We had the restaurant all to ourselves with our own string quartet playing romantic music. We also found out there was going to be a tango festival today.
Luca apparently knew how to dance the tango. Jealousy stabbed me in the chest when I wondered who he had danced with.
“It’s hard to back out when I’ve already bought a new dress and new shoes.” I laughed into my coffee even when the wings of nerves fluttered madly in my stomach. Of course I had to look up the tango scenes in True Lies and Scent of a Woman. Those were iconic, and they looked easy, sexy.
They were not easy.
I must have groaned, because Luca nudged my shoulder. “We won’t have to do anything fancy. Just float around. I’ll guide you.”
I started digging into my breakfast and cocked my head in his direction. He was giving me those panty-melting gazes that further turned the flutter of butterflies in my stomach into a riot. I was feeling the no-sex strain in our interactions, and there was nothing more torturous than dancing the tango. It wasn’t only the proximity, but the music itself. We practiced a bare minimum, because every time we did, an inferno overcame my body while drenching my panties at the same time. It could be sweat, but who was I kidding? I knew it affected Luca too.
Whoever said tango was a sensual dance wasn’t lying.
“What do you want to do today?” he asked.
“We explored most of Montauk. I’m not sure if my body is aching from the dance practices or all the walking.”
He grinned devilishly and shot me a look full of promise. “We can’t have that now.”
He’d been doing that from day one, but he never followed through. We always said good night in the middle of the kitchen before we headed into our own rooms.
Did he want me to make the first move? He was not unaffected. He was never ashamed of his boner when one of our dance rehearsals got too heated. I remembered when he asked me to swing my leg over his thigh and my pussy rubbed against those hard muscles, Luca’s groan was reminiscent of those times he came inside me. And I think I left a wet spot on his pants.
“You’re blushing,” Luca observed. “You’re too young to have hot flashes.”
“Fuck you, Luca,” I mumbled.
Before he took a sip of coffee, he muttered, “Soon.”
And I could’ve just spontaneously combusted in my chair.
After breakfast and as was our routine, we walked on the beach. Our most meaningful conversations occurred here. I wondered if it was because we felt free to share our thoughts and feelings that were too big to contain within four walls. Here we trusted the ocean to cleanse our sins and shortcomings while also carrying away our heartaches we whispered to each other. I was ready to face another one.
“Did you bring your phone with you?” I asked.
Luca glanced at me with a puzzled look. “Yeah, why?”
“I was never ready,” I told him. “But I think I am now.”
He stopped walking. “Ready for what, baby?”
“You offered for me to look at pictures and videos of Elias you took in the past two years. At first it was because we didn’t want to affect the way my memory returned.” I inhaled sharply as if drawing strength from the ocean. I let out a slow exhale. “When all my memories returned?” Tears stung my eyes. “All I wanted was to hug my boy, but I was a coward not to witness all those years he’d spent without me.”
“I get that.” He pulled me down to the sand, angled one way to slip his phone out. “You were back in that mindset where you didn’t feel worthy.”
“Yes.” That one word came out as a ragged syllable. “I feel better…about us.”
Luca rolled his lips and nodded. “That’s…good.”
“We’re not suddenly fixed, but I remember feeling hope when you started trying. I could feel that now in the past week as you continue to try. You’re an open book. Honest.” I put a hand over my heart. “It doesn’t feel like heartache anymore.”
He tapped the phone on his lips. “This might make you sad. I don’t want you sad.”
“I have to see them sometime,” I said. “I want to see them now.”
Luca nodded and swiped his phone. He handed it to me and I almost laughed when it was mostly pictures of Elias. I was sure he had a burner for the mafia stuff. I fortified my emotions, buckled down, and started scrolling. The first image of Elias was way older than what I expected.
A lump formed in my throat. “How old was he here?”
Luca looked at the picture for a while. “Seven months. I…Martha and Nessa might have more pictures before that age.”
Our eyes met. There was pain reflected there.
“I was just…” A muscle twitched at his jawline. I imagined him grinding his molars. His mouth flattened and no words would come. The seagulls squawked above us. They weren’t flapping their wings, but the wind beneath them kept them suspended. I reached for Luca’s hand and squeezed.
He snatched me in his arms and hugged me tight. “I was just lost without you, baby. Our son…he was my lifeline. Without him, I don’t think this man in front of you would exist.” His voice sounded so broken, the walls around my heart cracked. The emotions that I’d once felt for him filtered through.
And when he pulled back, the anguish reflected in his eyes, of a man who’d lost his entire world, drew out the remnants of the love I used to feel for him.
The love before I found out about his deal with Papà.
The love before the time he missed Elias’s birth.
The love before he stomped on my heart and told me of his expectations.
I forgive him, and it’s liberating.
He swallowed hard. “Our son kept me tethered to this world. To what was right. Without him, I would have gone down the path that would have burned the family to ashes. Without Elias, I would have lost everything.”
I cupped his jaw. “I’m glad you had him.” Tears rolled down my cheeks, bringing with it the pain of missing them for two years, but also the love, a fabric with jagged edges defining the girl I once was, and the woman I was now.
“You and he are my world, tesoro,” he enunciated. “Don’t leave me again.”
“I won’t.”
We stared at each other for a while, our lips a hairsbreadth away. I was afraid to close the distance because every time he kissed me, it only gave me heartache. Was that why he hesitated too?
He gave voice to my thoughts. “I’m afraid to kiss you.”
“Why?”
“Because I might not be able to stop and I’ll fuck you right here.”
I laughed lightly because apparently, we had different reasons. “Yes, I don’t think getting sand everywhere will be very comfortable.” We leaned away at almost the same time.
My eyes returned to the phone, and I clicked play on the video. Elias was crawling. The tears returned, but this time it wasn’t because of loss. It was of something else.
Luca cleared his throat. “This one.” He pressed the triangle on another video. “I captured him at the right moment.”
Elias crawled to the couch and used it to stand up. He looked over his shoulder right at the phone’s camera.
“Come on, sport, you can do it.” It was Luca’s voice.
Elias made a cheery sound and toddled a few steps forward.
Luca said on the video,“Holy fuck.”
I burst into tears. My baby’s first steps.
