Page 92 of My Dark Fairy Tale
The patron saint of cooks, butchers, winemakers, restaurateurs, and basically anyone involved with food or beverage had been essentially barbecued for refusing to hand over goods to Roman officials and instead giving them to the poor. Now Florentines and Italians everywhere celebrated him by hosting barbecues themselves.
It was slightly morbid, but then, much of Italian culture seemed to embrace sin and darkness instead of shunning it the way we often did in the States. I’d grown to love that aspect of Italy most of all. It was hard to feel shame or insecurity when human flaws were so readily accepted.
The festival also had the distinction of being on August 10, the day thecocomerata, or Perseid meteor shower, was supposed to peak, which I was thrilled about. Back home, we spent that weekend at Gun Lake every year, lying in the sloping grass yard toward the dock, head to head, holding hands and counting out the shooting stars. It had been a tradition since before I could remember, and this would be the first summer I wasn’t at the cabin to do it with Mom and Dad.
The first summer they weren’t speaking to either of their daughters, one by choice and the other not.
I had texted my mom and tried to call, but Elizabeth Stone could be just as obstinate as her husband, and the only reply I’d received wasmake peace with your father.
But with every day I spent in Florence, I seemed to move further away from peace with my father and toward being at peace with myself. The last three weeks had flown by in a watercolor blur of sights and experiences. Running through the streets of the city with Raffa and Ludo, timing our sprints up the hill to Piazzale Michelangelo and seeing if I could beat them both with my quickness despite their longer legs. Admiring the frescos at the Cappelle Medicee while Raffa regaled me with dramatic tales about Florence’s most famous family, the Medicis. Getting gelato on the hottest day of the summer, Raffa pretending to trip and spilling his treat on my chest. Pulling me into a dark alley to lick the melting cream off the upper swells of my breasts and fuck me with one hand slipped up underneath my skirt.
We shopped at the famous Mercato Centrale, and Raffa convinced the men at a butcher shop with a sign that said “eat meat—it’s good for your sex life” to teach me how to cut the perfectbistecca alla Fiorentinafor our dinner. He knew what foods I avoided for my kidney health without asking when we picked out produce, and he admitted he had done some research on my condition so I didn’t have to lay everything out for him. I kissed him so hard he had to brace himself against a display of tomatoes, and he crushed the fruit beneath his hand.
Later, cooking with him as if we’d always occupied the same kitchen, singing to an eclectic mix of Taylor Swift (because Raffa needed to be inducted into the fandom), Sufjan Stevens (my favorite artist), and Pavarotti (Raffa’s favorite singer).
When Raffa had to work, I explored alone or spent time in the library beside his offices, studying Italian and writing to Gemma about my adventures. One day, I realized I had never recovered my postcards to her from Signora Verga’s apartment, but when I asked Raffa aboutit, he said Ludo had packed everything the police had not taken that had been left behind.
It was strange, but I quickly forgot about it, throwing myself into every moment so I could pull out my memories like their own postcards, vivid and nostalgic, when I was back in Michigan.
Our sex life was passionate and voracious. I woke up wanting him, already reaching for him, and went to bed tangled in his limbs, sticking to him with sweat and happy about it because I wanted to be that close. But as the days wore on, it took on an intense, almost feral edge.
One morning, I bit the junction of his neck and shoulder so savagely as I came that I broke the skin and drew blood. Raffa was far from angry—in fact, he looked smugly proud—but I wondered at how far I’d come from the shy virgin and considered, almost apprehensively, how far I had to go in falling into the dark heat of eroticism with Raffa.
There was nothing we did, no way he touched me that I did not love. The same silk scarf I’d worn driving the Ferrari now tied around my eyes as Raffa used his mouth on every inch of my skin, front to back, head to toes, for hours. The slick press of a thumb into the tight vise of my ass as he fucked me from behind or the finger that traced the bulge of his cock in my mouth, slipping onto my tongue along with it just so Raffa could see me struggle to take more.
It wasn’t right to say I had a submissive streak; I was assertive about my desire. I pushed into the office one day while Raffa was on the phone speaking in German, and I dropped to my knees beneath the desk to suck him off because I’d read about it in a book once and wanted to try. I hopped up onto the kitchen counter while we were cooking, raising my skirt up to my hips to show him I wasn’t wearing anything beneath. Asking him to eat the whipped cream we’d made for a strawberry dessert off my skin.
But there was no denying Raffa had been right. I loved being his doll, bending and surrendering to his commands so I could receive the sweet taste of his praise and the even sweeter reward of the orgasm he made me earn.
We fit in this the way we seemed to fit in all things.
By the time August 10 rolled in and I was set to leave in two days, I almost couldn’t breathe for missing him, and I hadn’t even gone yet.
If I’d grown more morose as the days grew shorter, Raffa had grown more removed. He spent long days in the office, only emerging for dinner and the odd night out to explore nearby restaurants and bars with live music because we both liked to dance.
It was such a strange sensation, to be so in love and so heartbroken simultaneously. To experience the fiercest joy alongside the deepest pit of despair.
“Enough,” Martina snapped as we were chopping tomatoes for the caprese salad side by side in the kitchen.
We were listening to Italian pop music Martina had put on the speaker system, and we had been dancing a little around the kitchen until “Si, ah” came on and reminded me of the night Raffa and I had spent at a local club. It was strange to see a man who preferred to live in luxury and speak about Italy’s historic culture indulge in something so ... young and current. He danced to contemporary music like an idiot, and I loved discovering something he wasn’t stunning at.
“You honestlyreekof sadness,” she declared, thrusting her knife at me a little because she was scary and vaguely threatening like that. But we had become close over the last six weeks, and the thought of leaving her behind brought tears to my eyes like a struck spring in soft earth.
It was too much an echo of losing Gemma.
I did not have many friends, and Martina, along with Renzo, Carmine, and Ludo, even Servio and Annella, had become my Italian family. Maybe if my parents were currently talking to me, the idea of leaving wouldn’t have felt so much like abandonment.
But it did.
“Oh,tesoro,” she murmured, seeing the tears in my eyes.
The knife hit the cutting board with a clatter, and suddenly her arms were around me.
Martina wasn’t a hugger, and she didn’t seem to enjoy being touched unless it was Renzo or Raffa doing it. Raffa had explained that she had trauma that made her distrustful and uncomfortable with most people and left it at that.
So the hug felt like a moment.
And I took it for all it was worth, throwing my arms around her and then tipping my head into the crook of her neck.
