“That’s fair.” Corrado stirred sugar into his coffee first, following up with the cream. “But it still feels right.”
That’s what mattered to him.
Besides, he wanted what he wanted.
Guzzis always got what they wanted.
• • •
Corrado didn’t want to return to the penthouse pissed. He took his time going back. He figured ... Alessio clearly wanted to do something there, or whatever. He wanted something, and Corrado would give him the chance to find it. It wouldn’t hurt Ginevra to spend time with Alessio, if she was able to handle his swinging moods.
Corrado wasn’t any better in that respect, and hell, she handled him fine. He had no doubt Alessio would be the same.
So, when he stepped inside the penthouse to laughter, he took a second to soak it in. It confused him, sure, and he had to listen again to make sure he heard what he thought he did ... but yes, they were laughing.
Together.
Corrado didn’t bother to kick off his shoes, or remove his jacket before heading down the entrance. He came to a stop at the end, staying beyond the entryway to stare into the sitting room, finding the laughter.
The first thing he noticed?
Alessio had cut his hair.
Gone was his almost a-little-too-long shaggy dark brown, almost black, style, only to be replaced with a shorter, but still wild, style. It never escaped Corrado’s notice how Alessio was, in many ways, his opposite. Corrado was the calm to Alessio’s storm. From the way they styled their hair, to the clothing they wore.
Corrado would never ink his skin.
Never pierce his body.
Alessio did those things and more.
Regularly.
He liked this new hairstyle though. It showed Alessio’s eyes, even if all Corrado could see was the man’s profile. Now, Alessio didn’t have dark strands of hair to hide behind when he didn’t want someone to look in his gaze—which was where Corrado always found the truth hiding.
Sitting opposite to Alessio on the couch with her legs thrown over the back as she rested on her back, and played the game on the television, Ginevra laughed again as Alessio shook his head.
“That’s what he’s saying here, okay, it says right there in the line. That’s how you know he’s talking about sunlight in this one. Streams shooting high, blinding and bright, yellows and—”
“It could be a she,” Ginevra replied, never looking away from the game as she conversed. “You’re assuming it’s a man, and you shouldn’t. Anonymous might be a woman. A lot of the poems in the book reference men, anyway. Sex, relationships, love ... many discuss men, and not in first person, either.”
Alessio made a noise under his breath. “It could be a man talking about all of those things with another man, too.”
Corrado blinked.
Were they talking about ...
Poetry?
“So, what you mean to say is your bias—because you’re a bisexual, and in a relationship with a man—clouds how you interpret poems written by someone, who for all we know, is genderless, faceless, and ... well, personless.”
Alessio stared hard at Ginevra, even though she wasn’t looking back at him. Corrado found himself all too amused at the concentration knotting Alessio’s brow as he took in Ginevra like he was trying to figure her out. Finally, someone to challenge this man and his need for words.
Corrado could never do it.
Reading wasn’t his thing.
“How did we go from talking about whether this poem is referencing sunlight to you deciding I’m biased on the author of it?” Alessio asked, cocking his head to the side as his gaze narrowed on the woman who was still playing her game like this wasn’t at all a big deal to her. “Because maybe I like to put pronouns on things, Ginny. It doesn’t have to be that deep.”
“Oh, but it does, because everything is deep, Les. Everything when you read, or how you interpret it, but especially poetry, has meaning. The things you find between the lines, for example. Word play. It is all important. That is the author’s intention, but more so one who wrote an entire book of poetry under the name Anonymous, because they wanted you to consider them, or perhaps ...”
“What?”
“Perhaps it was written with the intention to put yourself in their place.”
Ginevra paused the game and turned to give Alessio all of her attention. A small smile curved her pretty, pink lips, and the sly glint in her eyes only added to the appeal. Alessio stared back, engrossed in the conversation, and unwilling to back away.
Good, Corrado thought. Now he can see why ... maybe.
There was something about Ginevra.
Something that fit.
Not just him.
Alessio, too.
“Maybe, it was written like it was,” Ginevra said, “because the author wanted to write it for you, for me, the man walking down the street, or the woman sitting on the bench in the park ... for my friend at college, or the professor at the front of the class. For anyone. So, every person could see the words and put themselves there. Because once a name gets attached to a book, whether we mean to, we put a face and a person to who wrote it, or what we believe about the person who wrote it based on the penname they chose, and what it means. Like this, we read it differently.”
Alessio relaxed into the couch, considering. “Huh.”
“And they could still be talking about the color yellow, and not something else, so ...”
“It’s sunlight, Ginevra.”
“Says you. Not once, in any of the four stanzas, does it reference the sky, clouds, the color blue, and it doesn’t even use words like overhead, or up above to make us think high, like the sky. So, no, it doesn’t have to be the sun just because you want it to be.”
Her argument made, she went back to her game, unpausing it and clicking away at buttons on the remote.
“Jesus Christ,” Alessio muttered, turning his attention away from her only for his gaze to land on Corrado in the hallway. For a brief second, something unknown flashed in Alessio’s eyes, almost like he didn’t know how to feel about the fact Corrado was there, watching them. Just as quickly, something else replaced it. Cunningness. “Looks like we have a visitor, Ginny.”
She peeked around the edge of the couch, craning her neck just enough to see Corrado in the hallway, before going back to the game. “Seems so.”
Corrado put his focus on Alessio, for the moment. “The haircut is new.”
“I like to come back with something new, don’t I?”
Ginevra passed a look to her companion on the couch. “What does that mean?”
“It means he changes his appearance with different things when he’s away on ...” Corrado considered his words, and how he wanted to say that. “... a job. That’s how he got the piercing in his nose, the ones in his nipples, the second sleeve of tattoos, and more. Sometimes, he keeps them, and other times, he doesn’t. All depends.”
Alessio grinned over at Ginevra. “Reminds me of where I’ve been.”
“Except you didn’t really leave, did you?”
Just like that, Alessio’s smirk faded away as his gaze turned back on Corrado. “I wasn’t here. Same difference.”
“According to you. How are my parents?”
“Fantastic.”