Some wishes can never come true.
Opening the door, I was a little disappointed when there wasn’t a gun in my face, as it should have been. When I saw Scarlett relaxing on the counter, eating food like the queen I believed her to be, all disappointment faded.
“Angel,” she called out with a bit of a slur. Her stained lips told me why.
Apparently, Sal thought we could skip meat products for her belly and go straight to wine. I couldn’t believe I missed a first of hers.
“Would you like to join my pic-i-nic?” purple teeth gleamed, forcing me to smile.
“Pic-i-nic?” I guess there were two firsts I had missed.
Empty wine bottles explained why the guard left in charge was cooking lasagna instead of doing his job. Sal explained, “I told her about all the picnics she will love back home…”
I had never realized his voice was so comforting.
“…and how we spend much time next to the orchards with Mamma’s cooking…”
Just the mention of his mother’s homecooked meals had me thankful to see Sal and smell a delicious scent wafting from the open oven.
“…Scarlett wanted an example. Seeing how we are hanging on the side of the mountain, with no backyard, I improvised.” He winked at Scarlett. “Who am I to tell her bare feet on the kitchen counter are frowned upon?”
Not me. I tugged on one of her perfect toes. “You can do whatever you want.” I then grabbed Sal into an embrace. Inhaling, I suddenly realized it wasn’t a gun I had wished had greeted me at the front door.
It was my friend.
Forehead to forehead, my arm around his neck, I sighed with relief that he was safe. I whispered, “I am sorry. I shouldn’t have left you so abruptly—”
“Can I taste you like I tasted Sal?”
My ears began to ring…
Tightening the arm that had been holding him, I growled in Italian, “What did she just say?”
Sal’s arms held me. “No. It’s not how it sounds.”
I leaned back. “What happened between you two?”
“You weren’t here. You don’t understand.”
Stunned by my sudden and unexpected jealousy, I released him. “W-What don’t I understand?”
“Are you angry with me again?”
Bewildered. I was epically bewildered as unknown emotions plowed through me, yet still managed to face Scarlett, who was now sitting at the edge of the counter. Her lovely bare, dangling legs only compounded my confusion.
I could barely talk. “No. Never. Not with you.”
Within the last thirty seconds, my body felt like a rocket that desperately needed to explode into the sky with such force that I could be set free. It was beyond my comprehension.
Something Scarlett saw in me had her grand smile fading… being replaced by sad eyes that threatened to bring me crashing down. Yet, she was brave enough to reach out her hand.
Longing for something I hadn’t believed I deserved, I took it and walked toward her as she gently pulled me in. I stood between her thighs, making her match my height for the first time. She wasn’t looking up at me. She was staring into my soul. “Taste,” she whispered.
Her lips… They called to me. I leaned forward—
But clarity suddenly set in. I looked at Sal. “You kissed her?”
I felt like I was caught between two magnets. Equal laws of attraction.
Now, Sal’s eyes were squinting. As he tried to read me, he slowly nodded. “Just a peck.”
Blinking, I gazed back at her incredibly full lips. Delicious. So suck-able. But they had touched Sal’s without me there. This was against everything I knew… and possibly wanted.
Weakening legs had me stumbling back a few steps, releasing Scarlett’s hand. Once realizing what I had done, I reached out to reconnect with her, but her expression said it all. I had caused her pain.
My cheeks burned and my ears pounded as Sal went to her, saying, “Dove, let me take you to your room so I can talk with Angelo.”
As he lifted her from the counter, setting her on those precious feet, she asked, “Why do I hurt, Sal?” She tapped her chest. “Here,” then tapped her belly, “and here.”
He caringly led her away. “Because you feel rejected. You think Angelo doesn’t want you, but there is nothing further from the truth. I promise…”
He was right. If I hadn’t been frozen in shock, I would’ve been running to her, never wanting her to feel an ounce of pain. But I couldn’t move. Not until Sal returned to me, his hands grasping my face. “Talk to me.”
Blink. Blink. “I… I thought I was jealous of you being around her.”
As if pleased I was finally making sense, he jostled my head and smirked. “No shit, Caveman.”
“No.” Blink. Blink. “Sal, I was jealous to have her around you.”
Now, it was Sal who was stumbling backward. His face was full of shock, like mine. But there was also awareness in his expression, as if I had just slapped him with a truth he hadn’t considered until now.
My heart raced… “You feel the same way, don’t you?”
He grabbed his chest, as if to check to see if he was still breathing, but shook his head no.
I got louder. “Don’t fucking lie to me.” This was all such a shock. The last thing I needed was for my best friend, my brother, to bail on me.
“Just give me a minute!”
I stalked forward as he backed away from me. “Why do you need time, when I can tell that you know I’m right?”
He opened his arms and leaned back, angrily stating, “We are not gay, Angelo fucking Bianchi!”
“Nope,” jabbing a finger in the air toward Scarlett’s room, “because I just wanted to dive into her mouth.”
“See?” He raised his arms higher. “Then everything is fine!”
“But I couldn’t because that mouth had yours. Without my permission.”
His neck stretched forward, eyes widening impossibly larger. “Your what? Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“It appears so,” were the only words I could use to respond.
“When did you sleep last?”
“I haven’t. Now, stop fucking mothering me and tell me if I’m wrong!”
“You’re wrong!” He marched toward the kitchen island. “You sound insane again.”
With my teeth about to shatter under the strain I was forcing on them, I followed. “I feel fucking insane. Trust me, this is the last thing I saw coming.”
“Nothing is coming or happening. You are just buckling under pressure.” He tilted his glass of wine and guzzled.
“That may be so. Let’s test it, shall we?” I started to walk away. Right toward the hallway to Scarlett’s room.
“W-Where are you going?” he yelled from the kitchen.
“Nowhere that should bother you!”
“Angelo!”
To be rude, I lazily shooed at him from over my shoulder. “Nope. Nothing to see. Just me going to get my dick wet.”
Crash! Sal’s empty wine glass was now in pieces all over a wall and floor in the kitchen.
With remorse, I turned slowly to face him, and the reality we both didn’t see coming.