Page 14 of I Think Olive You

“Matteo. Per carità.” It’s a moan against my neck between drugging kisses, and I lose the battle.

It cleaves into me, this pleasure I have no name for. This release is guttural—beastly.

A cry wrests itself from my throat, drowning and desperate. Giuliana’s fingers tangle in my hair, pulling painfully. I respond by biting the curve where her shoulder meets her neck, something I’ve never done before. My cock releases spurt after spurt, jerking gracelessly into her body.

The voice is quiet. Everything is suspended in this moment of tangled, sweaty limbs, depleted and shaking. We collapse and her grip in my hair turns from punishing to comfort. Giuliana strokes down my twitching muscles and I want to stay buried in her heat forever.

We break apart once our hearts have calmed to a normal rhythm and breathing doesn’t feel like a gasp to fill our lungs. Holding her against my body as our sweat cools with the breeze from the window, my fingertips trail against her soft skin. Goosebumps raise where my touch has been.

We’ve made no promises or said anything about what happens when the sun rises tomorrow. Giuliana made it clear this was a one-time thing—which suits me just fine. Do Italian girls expect nighttime cuddles and a sheepish exit in the morning? I’ve never been sober enough to care before.

Propriety churns in my stomach, foreign, and I feel the need to get out right now. The peace I’ve found with her tonight is replaced with something else in the aftermath of her destruction. Something sinister and greedy. So, once sleep claims her and her body settles into another layer of relaxation, I pull myself away carefully.

Picking up my clothes, I sneak out of the room. The fabric against my skin feels wrong. All of it feels wrong. I shouldn’t be doing this. Giuliana deserves better. Hell, they all did, every woman I’ve done this to.

What a fucking asshole. The inner voice accuses and I agree.

This night has been strange and wonderful. A wicked first date—not that I’ve ever taken anyone out on a real one. There’s never been a need and I’ve never wanted to revisit a night of oblivion with the same woman again. But this is clear-headed. No drunken high dulls my senses and I want to go right back in there to immerse myself in her—lose myself in her body and never resurface.

Sleeping with her once isn’t enough. From the pleasure we shared and the way her wit was sharper than my own, I don’t think a one-time fuck could ever be enough. Giuliana’s thrown my careful, cultivated routine into disarray.

And it’s terrifying.

Ifind a hotel, eventually. Wandering back into town, I stumble onto one a few blocks from where I nearly hit Giuliana. Making my way over—no longer keen to explore—I hope for the best. I unstrap my bags from the back of the Vespa and head inside. The proprietor’s English is limited but decent. Between that and my gesturing, I get through the room booking process.

The man types as if he has a personal vendetta against the computer, irritated by my late appearance. His eyes are crusted with sleep and his cheek pillow-wrinkled. After I pay, the proprietor walks me up narrow steps carved out of the ground. I duck my head to get into the doorway. The light bounces against walls that feel too close. They appear to have been built or rather formed out of the edge of the mountain. It would’ve felt cave-like if not for the big window letting moonlight and fresh air in.

They have USB charging ports. Oh my god, I could kiss the fucking floor. I failed to consider the world doesn’t cater to American whims. The converter plays a big part in that. Definitely my biggest mistake thus far.

Your biggest mistake was leaving without saying goodbye or giving her your number.

Shut up. I can’t afford to think about her. Sex got me in this mess in the first place. If I’m going to save my skin, I can’t get caught up like that again.

That wasn’t just any old sex. That was amazing. She was amazing.

Shut up. It’s better this way, for both of us, no matter how mind-blowing what happened between us was.

The proprietor shuts the door behind me on the way out and I collapse on the bed, exhausted, raw. Sleep drags me under without mercy.

When I wake, it’s with restlessness and a hollow ache going further than the surface—past skin and muscle. Something about last night shakes me, rattles me. I did the right thing… didn’t I? Giuliana is better off without me and it’s best we leave it as what it is: one glorious night and nothing more.

But you do want more, which is the problem.

I know Giuliana’s name—nothing else. Without her phone number or address it’s useless, and she said her stay in town is a temporary reprieve from work. She’s probably already left back to her corporate bullshit in the financial sector, I think it was? It’s better I buckle down and focus on the task at hand—the very reason I came here in the first place: the contract and my inheritance. I have to cast her and her stunning body, and those little mewls in the back of her throat when she came, from my mind.

Good luck, asshole. Good luck trying to forget that.

I pull the contract from my baggage, unroll it and set whatever I can find around the room to use as a paperweight on the corners. The contract’s in Italian, because of course. Nothing about this is going to be easy—that much has become obvious. I pull up the translation app on my phone, point the camera at the first page, and try to make sense of the mangled interpretation of legal jargon. All I need is to figure out the location of the property. The rest can wait.

There’s a journal beside the bed I decide to pilfer for myself (never know when the writing degree I fumbled through might come in handy). For now, I transcribe what I understand to be the address onto a pad of paper. Flipping through each page of the contract until I reach the end, I stare at the sprawling signature that used to belong to my father. Grand even in death.

The press of ink to paper was heavy and sure, the swirls of his name signed with flourish and confidence. It’s longer than the one I’ve seen most of my life. Tommaso seemed to have taken his time to sign, to consider. Thomas scribbled the same quick flick of his wrist onto so many papers, indiscriminate.

What stands out from my pathetic and quick translation attempt is two things: first is the address. It’s easy enough to make out even in Italian and, according to another Google search, not too far from Gravina. Lastly, Alan made it sound like my father waited for the endeavor to fail so he could sweep in and take it for himself. It’s the very thing Alan encouraged me to do, but nothing in the glimpse I’ve taken at the contract leads me to believe it was my father’s first intention. Tommaso invested a good sum of money into the venture, and he held a stake in the company. But the language suggests it was an investment for something other than profit.

And that’s the biggest shock of all. Thomas Palmer lived and breathed the bottom line.

With him gone, I have no way of knowing if any of this was true—if the man I glimpsed in this contract could truly have been the father I knew. And if so, what changed him so drastically? What drove him from this place?

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