And he says it so simply, so matter-of-fact, that it takes me a moment to realize what he’s said.
“Girlfriend?” I ask.
He nods. “That is what you are to me. I can be whatever you want me to be to you: Italian lover, sexy artist, cock machine, but to me, you are my girlfriend.” My heart is thudding in my chest, butterflies igniting every inch of my veins. He then frowns. “No. Girlfriend doesn’t sound quite right, does it? How about Dolcezza? Mi sono infatuato. Ho un debole perte. Mi hai cambiato la vita.”
The lyrical, dulcet tone of his accent nearly drowns me and I have to fight to keep my head above water.
“I have no idea what you just said,” I say breathlessly.
“It doesn’t matter. Just know that I mean it.” He starts swimming past me. “Come on, let’s go back. My mother and father are no longer on the balcony, which means breakfast is ready.” He glances at me over his shoulder. “Hope you worked up an appetite.”
I nod and follow.
I worked up something alright.
But it isn’t my appetite.
He called me his girlfriend.
And for once, I don’t want to correct him.
Maybe I still don’t know where we stand publicly, but if this is what we call each other in private, I kind of like it.
As hopeless as it seems.
Eighteen
Grace
After yesterday’s morning swim, we spent the rest of the day lounging on the beach and going up to the house for mealtimes, where his mother would spoil us with copious amounts of wonderful wine, and dishes fresh from the sea, like grilled seabass with fennel (can’t get enough fennel!) and prawns cooked in white wine and sweet cherry tomatoes. We spent a little time exploring the bay around Cavoli Beach, but aside from some restaurants, gelato shops, and souvenir stores, there wasn’t a lot to see.
But for our last day on Elba, Claudio decided we should go for a drive around the western tip, and then take a gondola up to the top of Mount Capanne, which I’m told is the highest peak on Elba. Then we’ll go out with his parents for dinner to a trattoria on an olive farm, which is supposed to be one of the best on the island.
But first, alone time.
Being with Claudio around his parents reminded me a lot of the first days at Villa Rosa. I had to keep my attraction under wraps, be sly with my eye contact, pretend that I wasn’t swooning over the things he said, or the way he looked.
Claudio has been doing the same, though he was a little more transparent. His eyes always sought mine no matter what room we were in, his smile was always overly warm, his focus was always on me. More than a few times I caught his mother shooting his father a look, but I couldn’t read either of their expressions. It was something, though.
Regardless, this was much harder than our pre-coupling time at Villa Rosa, because we both knew how the other felt, and I mean that in both an emotional and physical way. We were used to having frequent (albeit secretive) sex and here it just wasn’t an option. I was going fucking crazy. I couldn’t even look at him without a torch igniting in my chest.
That said, I wasn’t about to hop on him for another round of car sex, not on these roads.
“Oh my lord,” I cry out, covering my eyes as Claudio guns the Ferrari and overtakes a line of cyclists. “How can they even cycle this? Are they crazy?”
“Very,” he says, grinning into the wind, clearly enjoying himself.
I, on the other hand, with my fear of heights, didn’t realize that the road around the western tip was up a precipitous mountainside. I was expecting leisurely winding around sparkling bays, not climbing along a narrow road, with a big drop off to your death on one side.
“You know, the scarf is in the console,” he says cheekily. “Put it on if you don’t want to look.”
“No, thank you.” I don’t want to look but I feel I need to at the same time.
It feels like forever before the road stops being so nerve-wracking and heads more inland. We pull over into a busy gravel parking lot and then walk up to a café where a little old lady sells us tickets to ride the gondola.
Then we walk further up the mountain, the path thankfully shaded by tall trees. Even though it’s morning, it’s stinking hot again.
And that’s when I see it.
I stop dead in my tracks. “What the hell is that?”
“The gondola?”
“No, that!”
I frantically wave my hand at the bright yellow cylindrical cages that are whisked around a vestibule and up the side of the mountain, two people standing in it per cage. There’s no room to sit down, there’s no seat. It’s just people standing in open metal tubes, dangling from a continuous overhead wire.
“That is the gondola,” he says.
“What? How? I thought it was like the Air Line that goes across the River Thames in London. Ten people can fit in it. There are seats. And glass windows. And, you know, safety precautions.”
A bemused smile flits across his lips, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Would you like to walk? I’ve done it a few times. It is no big deal.”
I crane my head to look at the top of the distant craggy peak. “Up there? You want to walk up there? In this heat?”
“It’s that or the gondola.”
“Stop saying gondola. It’s a human-sized birdcage hanging from a wire.”
“Gondola is an Italian word.”
“So gondola means the same thing as deathtrap?” I put my face in my hands for a moment and take a deep breath. I look up. The couple ahead of us are getting in and they’re being whisked away and they look … happy. Or stupid.
Definitely stupid.
“How high does it go above the ground?”
“Not high at all. I promise.”
I sigh. I don’t want to be a wuss. “Okay.”
We walk up to the vestibule, give the man our tickets, and then we’re waiting on the platform for the next birdcage to come around.
“This is shite,” I mutter under my breath as the cage slows beside us, the cage door opening.
“Come on,” Claudio says, grabbing my hand and pulling me inside.
Well, it’s definitely intimate. There’s enough room for both of us to turn around, and I’m sure you could maybe squeeze a child on it, but that’s it.
And while the first few seconds as we get on, the cage door closing, are slow, now that we’re away from the vestibule, we’re moving faster, the wind in our hair.
“Ahhhh,” I cry out, watching the ground drop away, my grip tight around the bar that rings the cage. I can feel my pulse starting to skyrocket, and I’m getting that pins and needles feeling in my veins, a sign of oncoming vertigo.
“Perhaps it’s best if you look up,” he says. “Don’t look down.”
“You said it doesn’t go that high!”
He shrugs. “Maybe, I don’t know.”
“You jerk!” I say, swatting at him.
He lets me hit him, then grabs my wrists, pinning me in place. “No fighting on the gondola,” he says with a smirk. “It’s dangerous. Against the rules.”
“Fuck the rules.”
A flash of heat comes over his eyes, and he pulls me right up against his chest, kissing me. All it takes is the swift press of his lips against mine to unlock the hunger inside, the fact that we’ve only been able to sneak sweet little kisses here and there.