I clung to his shoulders and let out soft moans when he thrust back in all the way. His fingers found their way between my thighs as my legs wrapped around his waist. The position offered no reprieve; I was at his mercy as he circled his fingertips, faster and faster.
“I…Gianluca—”
I was so close to crumbling. My hands fisted his hair. He sped up his rhythm, dropping his mouth to capture my lips. His tongue swirled with mine as my legs started to convulse. Tiny sparks started to spread and I knew he could feel me come around him. He pumped into me a few more times, finding his own release with a powerful shudder and a soul-stealing kiss.
After, we stayed there, him still inside me as I struggled to catch my breath.
I kept my eyes squeezed closed and I could sense him doing the same, clinging to the moment for as long as possible.
Eventually, I tried to move, but my muscles ignored my brain’s commands. It was with loads of effort that I eventually sat up. Gianluca pulled back, kissed my cheek, and pulled me to stand. We washed up and got ready for bed in sated silence. I met his gaze in the mirror while we were brushing our teeth and he offered up a guarded smile. We weren’t yet out of the woods, but there was hope for us, I thought.
I HADN’T EXPECTED Georgie to push the idea of keeping things casual between us. After our dramatic blowup, I’d been a wreck, trying to decide how to proceed without hurting her. The way she’d looked at me after she’d found Allie’s things…it was as if I’d been cheating on her. She’d wanted to make me feel guilty for keeping Allie’s things and I’d jumped down her throat, angry with myself more than her.
The truth was, I couldn’t offer her my future. Pinning it on some undying love for Allie was an oversimplification: in reality, things were much more complicated. Sure, I still thought about Allie on most days, and I did love all the memories we’d made together, but the reason I couldn’t move on had very little to do with eternal devotion to my dead wife. It was more like I was trying to climb a new mountain when I’d left all my ropes and harnesses on the previous one. I just wasn’t equipped with any of the tools to safely ascend, which led to the inevitable fall with Georgie.
Things might have been simpler if I knew how to get it all back, how to free my heart from its prison, but I didn’t have the key and I didn’t know the sentence. The more I tried to make sense of my feelings for Georgie, the more confused I became. I needed a bit more time with her. We’d only known each other for a few months, hardly any time at all.
Just a short time before, I’d never wanted a Georgie in my life. I’d been perfectly content living out my days on my own. I had the villa and my repair work. I loved to fish and tend to the garden around my home.
I had no need for love in my life. I’d experienced an abundance of it already, more than most people can hope to have in their entire lives. I’d counted myself lucky and I’d pushed the idea of finding someone else so far into the back of my mind that Georgie had taken me by utter surprise.
Forgetting Georgie was clearly the easiest way forward. It was a well-worn path, flat and featureless, and I knew it by heart after five years of traversing it. I wouldn’t need to climb, wouldn’t need to fall.
But it was too late; I already loved Georgie. So, I found a solid foothold, and I climbed.
…
I knew Georgie well enough to see that things had changed since our discussion the night before. Mopsie aside, she wanted to try to put the cat back into the bag, and I was too selfish to tell her it wouldn’t work. I wanted things to go back to the way they had been as badly as she did. No pressure, no future, no ultimatums, just an easy sort of life together. There was something off about her though, like I was watching a flickering projection of the way things had been before. She still smiled and laughed. She kissed me when I bent low to greet her hello in the morning, but her smile stopped at her cheeks and her eyes betrayed her unease. She’d pulled away and I was too scared to bring up the reasons why.
Fortunately, our first guest’s impending arrival meant Georgie was flitting around making sure everything was set. For the time being, a discussion about our relationship (or lack thereof) would have to wait.
“Georgie, it looks great. You can relax,” I assured her.
She glanced over at me, as if only then realizing I was there.
“I just want to check one last time!”
She didn’t need to worry; the place was spotless. From the entryway to the bathrooms, every square inch of Il Mare had been fixed up and redesigned as a contemporary, clean space. She’d brought in new furniture for the downstairs common room and even purchased a massive oak table from a carpenter in Monterosso. With it on one side of the room and a couch and coffee table positioned on the other, she’d transformed the space so that it was functional and open. I was impressed.
There was still work to be done, of course. I was outfitting a balcony on the top floor and touching up a few spots in the bedrooms on the second floor, but I promised Georgie I’d only work when our guest had gone exploring for the day. I could have rushed and finished up the work quickly, in a week or two, but I wanted to stretch it out as long as possible. If nothing else, it meant I had an excuse to spend my days as close to Georgie as possible.
I adjusted my tool belt and was about to take the stairs up to the second floor to start working when the front door opened. It was our first guest, arriving a few minutes earlier than expected. I spun to greet her and then stopped short when my gaze caught on a man strolling through the doorway and lugging a heavy suitcase behind him. Georgie had said the first guest was a woman, hadn’t she? This was some posh bloke wearing trousers and a button-down with brown leather loafers. He had a well-made laptop bag hanging off one shoulder and a duffel bag clutched in one hand. With that amount of luggage, it looked like he was planning on staying on a while.