CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (58 page)

“So take it easy.”  Dario finished his own
sentence.  “Don’t shake her life up too drastically all at once.”

“Yeah.  I got it.”  Matteo pulled on his
San
Carlo
bomber jacket and headed for the door.

“Are you leaving?”  It sounded like a
chorus from the Vienna Boys Choir.

With his back turned to the crowd, Matteo
traced the word NO in the air with his index finger as he reached the door.

Marika, in the meantime, was saying
goodbye to Eve, who had come outside and met up with them under the portico.  “Love
you two!”  Marika hugged both of them before they made their way down the
gravel drive, then she rushed down into the cellar to find her love, who had
been left alone for far too long.

The doors of the cellar opened, and the
roar, cheers, and applause from within greeted her entrance.  Outside, Federico
was lingering at the front gate, so Eve took him arm in arm and began to pull
him away.

“Can I talk to you?”  A clear voice
stopped them in their tracks before they could reach the Fiesta parked on the
other side of the street.

Federico recognized that timbre instantly,
and he whirled around to confront it.  But Eve beat him to it.  “So, you’re
Matteo.”  She made her way toward the guy she had never before had the chance
to meet, offering her hand.  “I’m glad to finally meet you.”  She smiled at
him.

“The pleasure is mine.”  He was thrown off
by her kindness.  He had seen her down in the basement talking with Carlotta,
and he hadn’t been sure that she would want to meet him.

“I saw the finals.”  She was vaguely
flirty, staring at him with those darkly-lined eyes.  “You were amazing in
Japan.”

Japan??
  “Thanks.”  Matteo smiled
back at her, thanking her silently for her unexpectedly warm welcome, even if
she got some of the details wrong.

“Would you wait for me in the car, please?” 
Federico was less kind in encouraging Eve to get lost.  After she had spun away
on her heels – in truth, on the soles of her Chuck Taylor’s – he spoke to
Matteo.  “What do you want?”

“I just wanted to tell you that you don’t
need to worry about Marika anymore.  I’ve taken on the job full time.”  The
soccer player was referring to the choice words Federico had reserved for him
after the
King Musical
show, when he had suggested that a guy like him
could never take proper care of her.

“I’m a part of her life now, and I have no
intention of disappearing from it.”  Federico stood his ground.  “Not unless
she asks me to.”  He looked toward the lighted windows of the Vendramini
house.  “I don’t give a damn if now you are rich or famous,  or both.  I’m
going to do what is right for Marika.”

“I’m not talking to you as a
San Carlo
soccer player.”  His voice was calm and seasoned, miles from the nervousness he
had shown at
Rocca Pisana
the day before his departure.  “I’m asking you
as a man.”  His expression spoke for itself, but he spelled it out in order to
avoid useless but dangerous misunderstandings.  “She’s with me now, and I don’t
want you to do anything that might make her uncomfortable.”

“I won’t.  Ever.  I care too much about
her to do anything to hurt her.”  The French poet Mallarmé and, after him,
Borges, claimed that “
everything in the world exists to end up in a book,
”
and if that’s true, and that even every man is a book, Federico was undoubtedly
created by the pen of Keats or some other tormented Romantic poet; while Matteo
was pure passion, like Shakespeare’s Romeo: spontaneous, intense, and
impetuously real.   “But I want to say something else to you.”  Federico
stopped him before he turned to go.  “Treat her the way she deserves to be
loved, because I won’t just stand there and watch like a spectator, and I won’t
ask your permission a second time.”

“We both want the same thing.”  Matteo
dropped a heavy hand on Federico’s shoulder, waving to Eve, who was watching
them from the car with a worried look on her face.  A peace treaty was not in
the cards for these two guys, but at the same time neither of them wanted a
war, so they both accepted to sheath their swords just enough so as to be able
to tolerate one another.  Anything rather than let go of her.

The nervous sound of the Fiesta
accompanied Matteo all the way to the roadster, from which he took something
that he rolled up in his hands before entering the winery again.

When Marika saw him enter, she ran to him
with all of her impetuous, teenage love, that sweet and innocent sensation that
could also be so impulsive and reckless.  “Where were you?”  His absence had
unsettled her.

“Listen to me, Marika.”  Matteo sounded so
cold, so formal as he pulled her aside.  “All of this might seem like a nightmare
to you, a golden prison, and I understand if you are afraid of losing your own
private space.”

She looked at him, stunned, her legs
unsteady in the fear of reading something more in his words than was there.

He was trembling too, but she didn’t notice
it.  “I want you to be the one to decide.”

Marika stared at him, confused, and didn’t
notice the hand he was hiding behind his back.  “What are you talking about?” 
She swallowed, fighting hard against the anxiety that was dulling her senses.  “I
don’t understand.”

“If you don’t want to tell everyone that
we are together, that’s fine, I’ll accept that.”  Matteo could see the sunset
in her eyes while he spoke: brown, with hints of gold and ringed by evergreen. 
“Just remember that I love you with all my heart and soul, and that I would do
anything for you.”  Most people think that love doesn’t stand the test of time
– that it is eternal only as long as it lasts – but love is an unquenchable
flame.  It is only the fires of momentary desire that burn too fast and go out
far too quickly without leaving behind a single trace.  “Whatever you decide, I
want you to have this.”  From behind his back he unrolled the official
San
Carlo
jersey, his jersey, with the number 28 and the
Folgore
sewn on
its chest.  “It’s the one I wore for the finals.”  He would have liked to be
able to read her thoughts as he waited, impatiently, for a word, a comment, a
sign.  But on the other side, nothing but a blank screen.  “It’s clean.  I got
it washed first.”  His voice cracked, and with it, his smile.

“Check it out, everybody!  He brought it!” 
His friends, his teammates, and his little brother all swarmed toward the
corner where the couple had taken refuge.  “Is it the one from the finals?” 
They couldn’t contain their excitement.  “Give it to me!  –  No it’s mine!”
they argued.  “I’m his brother,” Daniele whined like a little boy.  “What about
me, his best friend?”  Dario was acting as if he had regressed to elementary
school.

“It’s yours.”  He held his hand out,
offering her his most treasured possession.  “I brought it for you.”  Matteo’s
eyes hadn’t left her face, totally disinterested in all the rest.  “But if you
don’t want it, or if you think it’s a bit silly, just say....”

Marika shut him up by covering his mouth
with a passionate, intimate kiss.  A kiss without any false modesty, but
immediate and genuine, which she hoped would answer all his doubts as well as
the question he had just asked.

Their friends stood stock still, their
attempts to lay hands on the jersey silenced.  “Oh well,” they grumbled
sarcastically.  “If that’s the way you want it, we’ll get out of your way.”

“About time!”  Marika took the shirt from
Matteo’s hands and pulled it over her head, blushing like a beet.  “I love you!” 
Her vision went blurry, swimming in the deep blue sea of his brilliant eyes.  “It’s
the most wonderful thing you could have given me.  Thank you.”

“No, it’s thanks to you.”  He stared at
her, transported by the ecstasy of intense pleasure.  “I love you.”  He ran his
tongue over his lips to get another taste of her.  “I love everything about
you. 
And I’ve felt that way for such a long time that it could last
forever.
”  He pulled her against him, and he gave her a second kiss,
powerful and heart-rending.

If – as many claim – victory is sweeter
after extended battle, then that kiss must have tasted like vanilla and sex.

“Kids!  Excuse me!”  Paola was annoyed,
and divided them, not wanting any untoward scenes in her house.  “You are not
by yourselves, you know.”  She put out her hand in order to stop any despicable
acts in front of everybody.

“Matteo, please.”  His mother Delia also
pulled back hard on the reins, sick to her stomach.  But Matteo’s father was
only kept from applauding out of respect for Ferdinando.

“If that’s how they are now, we’d better
not leave them alone together,” laughed the crew from
The Rook
and other
friends, mostly boys, slapping each other on the back.

The future is unknowable.  Seers,
astrologers, oracles, and sorceresses have tried to learn its ways, always in
vain.  But while you cannot control destiny, you can choose how to live your
life.

So Matteo squeezed her hand, igniting that
emotional spark with rocket propellant, and side by side they walked across the
room, ready to face the future together, whatever it might have in store for
them....

And maybe one day, to be able to say, like
Maldini: “
If I had written my life’s story when I was a child, the most
wonderful story that I could ever imagine, I would have written it exactly the
way it really happened to me.
”

First off, I want to give a huge thanks to my fiancé, my very first
reader. I'm forever grateful for all your patience and input.

To my translator, Douglas Grant Heise, for being so in tune with me
and the story.

And to my readers, I cannot thank you enough for your support. U
rock!

Llàrjme (aka Mirella Muffarotto) grew up in Milan, where she
graduated and started writing Young Adult romance under this pen name. She is
the author of The Rook Café Series (Contemporary YA).

Yin and yang: she lives between Milan and Rome, she likes NY and LA,
she enjoys reading under a tree and playing sports, she craves chocolate and
eats greens, she likes fashion but she wears what she wants, she enjoys hanging
out with friends, and she loves family and her fiancé above all.

She is currently at work on the sequel to CRAVING U (The Rook Café
series).

Twitter
@Llarjme

www.facebook.com/Llarjme

www.goodreads.com/Llarjme