Hearts and Bodies- cmbyn

Part Four

My mother met me at the train station and I was back where I started. We walked arm in arm without much of a destination in mind, her smiling her comforting smile every now and then.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" She offered softly after quite some time.

I wasn't sure. I didn't answer for a while and she'd probably assumed I'd decided not to answer. Really, I was just trying to form a coherent idea of what actually had happened because the previous twenty-four hours had gone by in a complete blur.

"I found Oliver. I told him that I loved him."

Her face changed. Her smile faded and her mouth contorted into a little "oh". She reached out to my face, as if to brush an eyelash from my cheek, but just pressed her warm hand against it.

"Elio..." She sighed, a frown upon her brow.

"He told me that he loved me too."

"But you knew that already, didn't you?"

I furrowed my brows, "He never told me before."

"But it has always been so clear. To me. To your father. The love that the two of you shared radiated beyond you. When the two of you were here together, I loved your father so much more intensely because your love made me love. He never had to tell you. You never should have asked."

"I didn't ask. He told me because he wanted to. We stayed the night together and I thought that meant something to him. But he left because he felt ashamed. Ashamed because of me."

"Oh, Elio... I don't think he was ashamed of you. Oliver comes from a world where he was taught to be ashamed of loving someone like you."

"A man?"

She paused, "Yes. Unfortunately, yes."

Upon returning home, my mother asked if I wanted to sit in the garden with her and watch the sun set. I didn't. I told her to enjoy the company of her friends and that I would just get an early night.

The room didn't smell like Oliver like I had expected it to, nor did it smell like Michael, who had sweated on the sheets just two nights before. It just smelled of home- the sweet, warm Italian air. As soon as the door was closed behind me, I stripped off the shirt that seemed to be suffocating me as it stuck to my skin and I threw it into the old wardrobe where it had once hung so neatly. Discarded in the bottom, was a pile of material that I had grown accustomed to seeing but had never previously thought to inspect. I picked it up, hesitant at first, wondering for a moment if somehow it was something of Oliver's that I'd missed before. How long had it been there?

It was a dress. A little golden sundress, probably left by Rosina, who had been my father's last student guest. She was tall and thin and Italian, with legs for days and a long flat stomach. In fact, I remembered her wearing the dress as she laid on the tilted edge of the pool- heaven- with a cigarette between her pouty lips. That night, after some wine, she'd grabbed my crotch under the table and whispered for me to meet her in her room. I hadn't, fearing that she was either too drunk or too desperate for the night to be worthwhile. Probably the former, as it seemed impossible to me that a woman like that would ever have to be desperate for some male attention, especially a man nearly ten years her senior. I looked at the dress a moment, wondering if I had missed an opportunity by rejecting her advances that night. Then, without really knowing why, I held open the straps and stepped in, removing my shorts underneath.

Of course, I didn't fill it the way Rosina had, with the curves of her waist and her bouncing breasts that had dared to spill out over the top. Rather boxy and gangly, I had never been more aware of my male physique. Before slipping the dress on, I had wondered whether I would feel strangely pretty or completely ridiculous- I decided that it was somewhere in-between. I began prodding myself, thinking if only I filled it a bit more here or if only this area was a little smaller. If I had breasts and curves and pink pouty lips, would Oliver still be ashamed to love me? If I had wide hips, hair down to my back, long fingernails on dainty hands, would he have thought twice about leaving?