Training in Love (27 page)

I
look at him open-mouthed for a second. I have a distorted smile, deformed by my
wide-open mouth.  “This is really rich…”

“You
aren’t in love, you’d waste it,” he says now with a certain urgency.

I
turn to him slowly, because my body was still facing towards the door and I
look him straight in the eye. “Well, really? Because you’re in love with
Tiziana? Nic is in love with the model-pharmacist? I don’t think so, and yet
nothing seems to stop you from… wasting it.”

“What’s
that got to do with it?” He asks pulling back with a gesture of irritation and
taking his hand from the door. “That isn’t about the first time for anything,
not for me or Nic.”

“Oh
really?” I cross my arms again and look at him challengingly. “So you were in
love the first time. Was Nic in love the first time?”

He
glares at me. “I was, yes. I was in love with the girl I did everything with
the first time. I have no idea about Nic. And quit using Nic as an example… Does
he seem like someone you want to emulate?”

“It
seems to me that you imitate him pretty well…”

“You
don’t know anything!” He exclaims angrily, coming closer.

I
don’t answer and he moves away, taking a deeper breath. “Don’t throw it away… After
all these years, are you sure that you want to throw away your first kiss, your
first time with someone you’re not even in love with? And don’t tell me you are
because I don’t believe it… After having waited so long, what difference does
it make to wait a little more for someone special to arrive?”

Now
I come closer, angry. “Waited so long? Someone special?” I take a deep breath
and point a finger at him. “What do you think? That I wouldn’t have done
anything if it hadn’t already happened? It wasn’t my intention to wait you
know. No one gave a shit about me, that’s what happened!”

I’m
so taken and involved in the argument that my breathing has accelerated involuntarily.
“Maybe, unconsciously, I gave you the wrong idea about myself… Maybe you think
I have some vocation as a nun… Well, for your information it’s not like that. I
do not have the vocation to be a nun at all.”

He
takes a step back and I take a step forward. “I want to live Andrea. I want to
live! And now that I’ve finally started to do it I’ll wait for nothing and
no-one!” I take a breath. “And wasn’t it you, for all these months, pushing me
to do it?”

“If
by ‘live’ you mean ‘live in the broader sense of the word’, yes, it was me. If
by ‘live’ you mean ‘go to bed with the first person who comes along’ no, that
wasn’t me!” He’s almost yelling and I’ve never seen Andrea yell.

I’m
without words for a little, then I move away, walking backwards and breathing
badly. “You know what the most interesting this is?” I try to maintain a sense
of calm that isn’t there. “What do you care if I go to bed with the first one
who comes along?”

“Because
you’re my friend,” he answers immediately.

“No,
I’m not your friend at all… Do you think we’ll see each other when I finish
working out with you? Do you think that we’ll go to eat a pizza or anywhere
else together?” I ask bitterly. “The day I quit working out we won’t see each
other again. I already know. I’ve always known it, so don’t act like my friend
now, in this moment, exclusively to ruin the evening for me - an evening that
has been, otherwise, perfect.” I say without really meaning it. No evening
where he arrives arm-in- arm with another girl can be perfect, never mind what
happens.

He
is speechless for a moment and gazes at me, almost disgusted. “I didn’t think
that you were like that…”

“Like
what?” I ask, but I’m not sure I want to know.

He
looks me up and down. “In short, one’s as good as another.”

I
pull back as though he had given me a slap in the face.
No Andrea, one’s not
as good as another, but unfortunately the one that’s worth it doesn’t want me,
and I’m tired of living on the sidelines.

“It’s
only a question of speed for you, eh? Who crosses the finish line first…”

He
has a strange look - chilling, ferocious and intense - like that of a lion
before devouring his prey.

“All
you had to say was that it was a question of speed…” He murmurs to himself,
moving slow but sure, like a predator.

Instinctively
I back up towards the door, until I feel the handle in my back. I try to grasp
it and open it from behind, without looking because, exactly like a prey, I
don’t feel like turning my back on him in this moment.

“You
just had to say so…” He whispers. And just like a millennium old dance, we move
in the same precise instant. I turn to open the door and he reaches me with a
leap. I can’t open the door. Andrea takes me and crushes me with my back to the
wall beside the door. He’s very close, so much so that I can feel his hot breath
on my lips when he murmurs, “Because I am the fastest.”

These
words surprise me and remove my strength to fight. I raise my eyebrows while I
relax my hands on his shoulders, at first intent on pushing him away, now
limply resting in a sign of easy, too easy, surrender. My mouth opens
involuntarily, in a mixture of surprise and anticipation, because I know, I
know down to my bones, I know in my belly and in the shivers along my spine, that
Andrea’s about to kiss me. And this time it’s for real. This time… a real kiss.

Too
bad that the door opens from the outside just in that moment, just a moment
before he covers that distance of a centimeter with his mouth. That damned
centimeter…

“Andrea!”

I
turn blinking my eyes as though I had been in the dark and someone had just pointed
a flashlight in my face. As if I had woken up after a long, pleasant sleep.
Tiziana is there on the other side with her mouth open and a look of shock on
her face, with a hand on the door and her gorgeous figure immobile.

“Tiziana…”
I hear Andrea’s voice to my left.

“I
can’t believe it…” She whispers with a crooked wrinkle in her beautiful mouth.
Then she runs away, as much as her mega-galactic heels allow her to. She runs
out of my field of vision.

I
feel cold when Andrea’s body moves away from mine and I turn my head towards
him, still slightly dazed.

“Olly…”
He whispers, looking a little at me, a little at the open space at the door.
Undecided what to do.

If
he stays and lets her go, I’ll forgive him everything. If he stays and lets her
go, I’ll tell him how I feel.

“Stay
here,” he says with a look of sadness, and then runs away.

And
the saddest thing of all is that I stay, like an idiot. I stay alone, closed in
that crappy room with bare feet for at least forty minutes.

When
I resurface, in a short time I find out that Andrea and Tiziana have left the
party, that Gianca has abandoned my shoes, leaving the party too, while Seba
and the other two are in a circle chatting with three girls.

I
go home alone, with my shoes in the passenger seat, driving with bare feet even
if you’re not supposed to. I swear to myself that it’s over with Andrea. As
soon as he comes back from the U.S., I’ll tell him that I don’t intend to
continue with the workouts and our program.

And
when, at four in the morning, I get a message saying,
Olly, when I get back
we have to talk
, I cancel it without even answering.

***

I
don’t know why Nic has the idea that Gianca is not right for me. Gianca is a
really nice guy – cute, patient, tolerant. He has only one defect. He’s not
Andrea.

During
the week after the twins’ party he’s come to the cafè a couple of times, the
first time with Nic and the second alone. The third time he asked me to go out together.
He did it with a great sense of humor. He was finishing his breakfast, stirring
his spoon in the two millimeters of cappuccino left and looking at the bottom
of his cup when he began, “Listen Olly, if you promise not to let me end up the
evening alone with your shoes, I’d really like to go out with you.”

I
laughed and answered yes. If for nothing more than because it seemed like the
right thing to get him to forgive me for my behavior the night of the twins’
birthday.

When
he left the cafè, that day, I observed Madame Barbieri who had seen the
exchange without commenting and I asked her, laughing, “Isn’t there a nickname
for him?”

She
answered me by bringing her cup to her mouth with a hand and spreading out the
newspaper with the other without looking at me. “I’m an artist. I have to be
inspired to create. It can’t be ordered.”

“And
Gianca doesn’t inspire you?” I asked, curious.

“No,
Olivia dear, he doesn’t inspire me at all.”

I
went in the kitchen without saying anything else because I didn’t want to go
back to the discussion yet. Unfortunately Madame Barbieri is fixated with the
Sun God or Apollo dear, whatever you want, and didn’t listen to reason even
after I had recounted every minute of the evening of the twins’ party.

Gianca
and I went out together the same evening. He took me to the movies outdoors. We
watched a film eating popcorn and we chatted for all the rest of the time. When
at the end of the evening he asked me to go out again, without trying even a
trace of making any physical advances, I said yes again.

The
second time we went to eat a pizza and then to an open-air party. When he took
me home, he tried to kiss me for the first time and I pulled back instinctively.
He didn’t ask me to go out again that evening, understandably, and I didn’t say
anything. Once I was closed in the solitude of my room I was angry with myself,
because, without realizing it, I had obeyed Andrea, who apparently manages to
influence me even from another continent.

I
gave myself a talking to - to live my life and not wait for anything or anyone
again - and the next day I phoned him to ask him to come with me to the
barbecue at the twins’ house, where we are now.

All
day I’ve been laughing and joking, but there’s a weight in my heart. I’m
impatient with everyone, even Linda, even myself, for no good reason. These
days I’m not very nice.

Linda
and Marco are talking about England where they’re going in September. And I have
to restrain myself with effort to not tell them to unglue themselves for a
minute, that it’s the entire day that they’ve been holding hands or kissing or
touching in some way. It’s ghastly hot too, doesn’t that continuous contact
make them sweat?

At
least Nic isn’t stuck to the model-pharmacist every third minute. Each of them
does their own thing. Of course, when they actually notice each other, they’re
completely lacking in decency and minors should be prohibited from coming near
them, but at least the rest of the time they are two separate entities.

We’ve
been in the yard, seated at a table in the shade of a tree for hours and hours,
with the remains of the food in front of us – meat, potatoes, salad, watermelon
and a heat wave that won’t let up until evening. I puff, probably for the
millionth time, because Gianca, annoyingly attentive as a mother hen, whispers
in my ear, “Do you want to go?”

I
look at the time. It’s six o’clock. “Yes, let’s go.” Also because I can’t stand
pretending to be in the mood for company anymore.

He
takes me home in his car. We arrived together and have been together all day,
close, like a real couple. Before getting to my house he turns into a secondary
street with little traffic. In fact, it’s practically deserted. It’s easy to
imagine what his intentions are and mine are to content him. Today I won’t pull
back. Today I’ll do what I want, without worries.

He
turns off the car and turns to look at me. “Will you let me kiss you today?”

I
just nod without speaking.

When
he comes closer I don’t pull back. Gianca is a handsome man and I don’t run
away.

His
blue eyes are closer and closer as are his lips. I swallow and close my eyes
for an instant before his mouth touches mine. He begins to give me little
kisses, light and soft. I breathe deeply trying to let myself go, to relax, to
enjoy this moment that I’ve wanted for so long.

Slowly
the kiss becomes more insistent. His breath so close, too close, on my skin,
gets on my nerves.

I
try to relax and let myself go. I get more comfortable on the seat to leave him
room, to give him everything he wants. And I don’t pull back not even when I
feel the point of his tongue graze my lips as though looking for an invitation
and not even when I feel it enter my mouth.

Everything
is going great and I’m not wasting my first kiss at all. The sensation is
pleasant. It would be better if I didn’t feel his breath, but it’s still
pleasant. I don’t know very well what to do and I hope that he isn’t aware of
my total lack of experience. I wouldn’t want to tell him that he is the first
one to kiss me for anything in the world. There isn’t enough trust between us.

For
a second I feel like laughing at the thought that this person has, currently,
his tongue in my mouth, but I don’t feel confident enough to tell him anything
too personal.