“How do I look?” I asked him, and his gaze on me was so intense that my eyes dropped to the ground.
“You’re a dream,” Rob said, tilting my chin up. He leaned in, and finally we were kissing; a slow, tender kiss that sent a shiver through my body. My mind went back to that afternoon, when Jenn and I had planned my seduction strategy. So far, I wasn’t doing great, but I hadn’t been a complete disaster either. I was surely failing at “showing self-confidence” and at “looking straight into his eyes” but I was totally rocking the “rely on your body language” part.
When our lips parted, I knew I shouldn’t just stay silent. I tried my best to remember the next step of the plan. “Do you like pomegranate?” I asked, and Rob looked at me as if I had just spoken Chinese.
He raised his eyebrows and blinked a couple of times, before saying, “Well, I guess. Why?”
Shit, Jenn was right. I should have brought one with me. “No reason. Ahem… I think you need a massage. You look tense.”
“Really? I do?”
I seriously wanted to kiss that irritating smirk off his face.
“Yes. Totally. It’s all in the shoulders,” I said.
He grinned and pulled me closer. I couldn’t believe it was actually working… or maybe not. “So you know how to give a massage?” he asked me.
“Sure,” I said, too hurriedly to be believable. I released the sigh I was holding in, and finally admitted, “No, I’m sorry. This is so stupid.”
“What is?” He seemed genuinely curious. Once again, I figured I must look ridiculous in his eyes.
“Everything. Starting with the pomegranate,” I replied, averting my eyes.
“Do you want to elaborate?”
I dropped my face to his chest and said, as low as I could, “Apparently, pomegranate juice has been shown to boost men's sex drives.”
“According to…?”
“WikiHow. Don’t laugh.”
Rob remained silent for a moment. “WikiHow…How to what?”
“How to seduce a man.”
Rob burst out laughing so hard I hoped a hole would open under my feet and make me disappear. My face burned to the point I thought it would explode. “You promised not to laugh!”
“No, I didn’t,” he said, still laughing too much for my taste. “I thought you were worrying about my sex drive which is, I can reassure you, completely normal.”
“Thank you for the information,” I murmured, looking at the ground.
Rob lifted my head up and delicately brushed his lips against mine. “Trust me, when it comes to you seducing me, it doesn’t take much effort.” He smiled and I couldn’t help smiling back at him. Before I could reply, he whispered to me, “Will you go somewhere with me tonight?”
I didn’t even need to ask where. I would have followed him to hell if he asked. “Yes.”
ROBERTO
The morning of the festival I finally had the chance to catch Marco alone. He had been a silent spectator when I told my family about my breakup with Luca and after I asked James out, I had been too busy to find the time to talk to him. But that morning Dad was out fishing and Mom was busy cleaning up all the bedrooms upstairs so I took that opportunity to finally ask him, “Why did you pretend to be into James?” I wasn’t so naïve to think that he didn’t say all those things to me and Luca on purpose. And I wanted to know why.
“I owed you one,” he said, seriously, maybe a little defensive. I remembered he had said something like that when I had given him advice about his girlfriend, but I still failed to see why lying about his feelings for James was supposed to be him returning the favor.
“I don’t understand. You said you kissed James. Seriously, why risk your life like that? If it was supposed to be a joke, it wasn’t funny.”
Marco’s mouth fell open. “Risk my life? You would have killed me? Talk about brotherly love.”
We stared at each other and in the end, I chuckled. Over the past couple of days, I had been too happy with James to waste any energy in getting angry at my brother. “I was kidding. But seriously, why did you do that?”
He scratched his nose, thinking deeply about something. “I was trying to break you guys up,” he said in the end. I felt a cold shower fall on me and my smile faded away.
“You were doing what?” I hoped with all my heart it was just a misunderstanding.
Marco glanced at the stairs leading to the second floor, where Mom was, and gestured for me to talk quietly. “If she finds out, she’ll kill me for real. Okay, I see you aren’t taking it well, but I can explain,” he said, and I was so angry, disappointed and confused that I ended up staying silent to listen to him. He was very serious as he looked into my eyes and said, “I know it became a sort of a joke over the years, but I’m sorry it was my fault that you were outed to our family. I’m glad you never resented me for what happened.”
“That would’ve been stupid. You were a toddler.”
He smiled. “I know, but… I appreciate that you were mature enough to understand that. You were always mature enough for everything, weren’t you? Great grades, tons of friends, secret boyfriends. I remember everything, because I’ve always looked up to you. You have no idea how many times I heard ‘try to be a bit more like your brother’. And when Mom said that, guess who stood up for me… it was always you. For a long time, you were a hero to me.”
For the first time, I realized how much my little brother had grown up. When he was born, I didn’t understand very well what it meant when everybody told me I was going to be a big brother. I knew I was somehow supposed to care about that baby, but a part of me didn’t want that responsibility. I didn’t like the idea of another child stealing Mom and Dad’s attention. But then, whenever I looked inside his cradle, he smiled at me. When he learned my name, he called me all the time and I started enjoying teaching him things. And sometimes he was so stupid that I just had to look after him; like that time he followed a ball into the sea and I had to rescue him, or when he entered the closet and couldn’t come out – funny thing that he also got me out of the closet, but that’s a different story. And every time he did something he wasn’t supposed to – which happened a lot – I was the first person he’d come to. In a way, it felt nice to know that this kid needed me. The person he was now was different from the baby I remembered, but in a way, he was still the same. I liked to think that if he grew up into a responsible and happy teenager, it was a tiny bit also thanks to me. And I was really proud of him.
“I’m almost disappointed you used the past tense. I guess you changed your mind about me,” I said, quietly. The anger I had felt toward Marco at the beginning of this conversation had faded completely.
“I didn’t really change my mind, it’s just that I’ve observed you for so long… I think I figured out a couple of things about you.” I had never had a conversation so open and intense with my brother before. “You were always so perfect, that at a certain point I started wondering if that perfection was… fake. I wondered if your good grades, superficial friendships and mild relationships were the result of your efforts not to disappoint our parents. I thought that maybe, even if you made everything look simple, things weren’t that easy for you. Maybe you were afraid that behind the appearances, Mom and Dad would be disappointed in you because of your sexuality and you worked hard not to disappoint them again. God, if I’m wrong this is about to become the most embarrassing conversation of my life.”