My body starts to feel colder each second Oliver stays silent. I've worried and pondered of his feelings for me for quite some time. I need either a new opening or closure; something to get me through. Although there's only one I might be able to handle tonight. I feel the possibility of horror weigh down my bones like cement being poured over my body. In reality, there's only one response that would truly make sense. I think back to the first night we slept together, and smile slightly. We were most definitely in something much deeper than a fling, but I needed to hear it. I needed him to say it.
Then he sighs, and as his breath moves back in I know he's about to tell me. I prepare myself for the worst; he speaks, "There was a night during our last few days together; I had woken up just before the sun came up. You looked like you had been sent down from heaven itself when I saw you. Your hair was messy, your breaths were soft, your face was sweet. All I wanted to do was feel you and prove to myself that you were really there. So, I sat down on your side of the bed and just held your hand. You never woke, but as I sat there a feeling came over me; the deepest sorrow I've ever experienced. It started at my finger tips and moved through me like a boulder crushing me all at once. It was heart break. It wasn't like anything talked about in the movies or in novels. This was like having my heart torn out in front of me and put on display to be beat to death. I truly felt that I might die if I left. If you couldn't see that I was not only in love with you but completely and utterly in awe by you, then that's on me. I'm so sorry," he pauses, but my entire world resumes. Everything suddenly unfreezes from the time loop it's been in for a near decade. "I- of course I did; I loved you more than I've loved anyone and more than I will. I still love you. Ti voglio tanto bene."
Hearing him say the phrase in Italian shakes me. The only people who have ever used a saying so intimate with me are my parents. It feels unreal. The versions of this moment have played out in a million possibilities, yet this one is unheard of. The way the wind is near silent, the warm air brushing his hair on my face, the scraping of his shoes on the bricks beneath us. I pull back just enough to place my hands at his ears and look in his eyes; pure blue. A color made for princes; mine in particular.
As I study him, he grins and lightly grabs at my wrists, "You have to answer my questions now."
"Oh, do I?" I mock him. "I wasn't aware that I went and ditched you right after spending every moment of our six weeks together, but I suppose I'll tell you what I know."
A bit of his smile fades when I say this, but only because he knows I'll be hurt for a while. I know that if he could go back, he would. "Okay, what did you do after I left? Who are you now? Did you go to college?"
"Woah, woah, woah; one question at a time!" I laugh, but immediately compose myself in a fake professional manner. "I did go to college, yes, for music. As for who I am, I take pride in not knowing; makes life more exhilarating."
"That makes two of us then," he settles into his position as if he's just admitted a deep secret.
"What does that mean," I tilt my smile a bit.
"I guess I just wanted to be more; I don't know; active? With who I am?" he tries to form an invisible object with his hands; all I can assume is the tangible form of his vision, but his hands have distracted me too much to think deeper into it.
"Oh, you mean like this?" I say this, putting my focus (and my hands) elsewhere. The lust in my voice is a quick shift, even for me. Yet, Oliver surprises me still.
"I won't say that wasn't on my mind," a deep smile plays across his face like an antagonistic dancer of some sort of play. Othello's Iago comes to mind.
I mirror him quickly as he stands and turns around to sneak back to the hotel. We mutually decide to enter through a side door to avoid anyone seeing us. Sneaking along the side of the wall proves tedious, however. Oliver keeps tripping, and it takes every part of me not to yell from laughter. "Go!" I whisper harshly, right as he stumbles again.
