Page 52 of I Think Olive You

Her hands grip the countertop. The curve of her back presses against my chest and I feel like I’m going to burst out of my skin, as if this emotion is too much to physically contain.

“Tell me you think about it, too. Put me out of my misery.”

I hear the hitch of her inhalation—the shudder as it leaves her lungs and her body eases against me. Wrapping my arm around her, I pull her tighter to me. Splaying my hand across her soft stomach, every hot curve of her is pressed against my body. My lips find that spot beneath her ear, along the side of her neck—the one I know will raise goosebumps on her skin.

Giuliana whimpers. Her hand raises up to grip my hair, arching her neck to fall into the sensation.

“Tell me.” Please. I can’t be alone in this. I can’t stand it.

“You’re being cruel,” she says. It’s bordering on a sob—an angry huff—and a malicious part of me delights in knowing I affect her as much as she does me. Her hand drops from my hair, clutching the countertop again.

“You’re the one driving me to madness. Watching you every day. Seeing the sunlight catch on your hair. Hearing your laugh, watching it flow through your body. Your hands teaching mine, showing me the care you coax into something from nothing. So close and not close enough.”

My hands stroke down the outsides of her arms, prying her grip from the counter and threading our fingers together. I work our hands into the dough, feeling it give beneath us, and her body moves against mine as we do.

Heat rises within my core and I know it’ll go unanswered, unsatisfied. But this is more than I hoped for and more than she should allow. It’ll only wreck us more when I leave.

“Matteo, we can’t.”

“We won’t. Let’s just have this moment, no further.”

I can tell she’s thinking about it—considering the ramifications of letting down her guard and crossing this line, even if it’s just a tiptoe.

“I miss you.”

It’s an admission I hadn’t planned to make, one that isn’t very sensical considering I’m closer to her now than I’ve been in weeks. But it holds true. I want so much more than this. I want it all.

Giuliana nods. There’s no more talking. She can’t say it—can’t give in to this—no matter how much we both might want it. We stand like that, getting the dough ready. Working it, rolling it, our bodies undulate in their own kind of dance that serves only to seduce, never satisfy. I’m acutely aware of our bodies touching. It’s impossible to tell how long we’ve been here but the sun dips toward the horizon and Giuliana turns the pasta e fagioli on the stove to a bare simmer.

I stand, shadowing her, caught in her gravity as we pretend time doesn’t exist. She works the dough into a longer, rectangular shape and places it into a pan. Spreading the pan with olive oil that I’d die to lick off her fingers but don’t.

“When it’s done resting, I’ll chop the tomatoes, sprinkle them over the surface, and crack salt over the top. For now, we give it a few hours to rest.” Her voice is husky, overly loud after our weighted silence.

Giuliana shows me how springy the dough is, both of us creating divots on the top that are supposed to add to the texture. I don’t step out of her orbit until she has to cover it and put it aside to rest, and it astounds me how far a few steps take me. We won’t have a moment like this again, not so close to harvest. Not with everything riding on this succeeding.

I’ll finish up the renovation (as much of it as I can) and get the papers signed over to her. No one, least of all me, will take this from her—from her family. And I’ll tuck these moments away for when my mind threatens to drown me in hate. I’ll know what I had here, what I chose to protect, and it will be enough.

“It’ll take a while, likely overnight before we will bake it. There's nothing else to be done now.”

Just like that the spell is broken. Giuliana wraps her arms around her abdomen, as if to shield herself from something—from me. I nod and turn away before I do something else we’ll regret, like sampling her lips and losing myself.

The sunset paints the sky like a bruise, purple and red that melt into flame.

I stand there until my body feels like a stone and the cool breeze clears my mind. In the distance Isabella calls for Chiara to come back to the house. They must be getting ready for dinner, the soup somehow not appetizing after all that.

Chiara’s little legs come bounding up the hill, and she pauses to look at me while catching her breath. She smiles up at me and I know she’s about to launch into a breathless ramble about the kittens. But she stops, looking at me, puzzled. Isabella calls out for her again and she shrugs, rushing toward the house.

Chiara looks over her shoulder as she goes, giggling, the words almost lost in her haste. “Matteo… why do you have flour in your hair?”

My slip—my selfish indulgence—has the benefit of extra space between me and Giuliana. Since the night we spent in the same room—that night and every one that followed—I’ve dreamed of her. Tangled limbs and sweet kisses, that elusive idea of my nickname on her lips, all of it haunts me. I wake up aching and hard, and angry at how ridiculous it is. After our night in the kitchen, it took a cool shower to even touch the fire she’d ignited, but even that wasn’t enough, and I lost myself in my hand with her name on my tongue.

I’ve never been this caught up in a woman before. Maybe for a night or two but this—repeated torture in the form of dreams—is new. And it just makes me crave her. The closer I want to get, the further she pulls away. Or at least that’s how it feels.

Logically, I know she’s dealing with preparation and the proverbial hanging sword that is Umberto. It’s on her to oversee the details that will make for a successful and efficient season, which means testing out the weird raking tools for shaking olives from their branches.

Inspections are underway on the nets to catch the fruit, and the rows I’ve gotten so used to walking will soon be covered by a sea of synthetic material. More and more people show up to the grove and I have no idea what to expect. We’ve spent so much time on what goes into making a good product and the result of all this work, but the big day is upon us and I’m wholly unprepared.

So, I do what I do best and procrastinate. Giuliana lets me. The distance between us is a canyon of words unsaid and yearning unsatisfied.

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