Sliced Trees and Dead Words

32 - Proving this is more than the result of unfortunate circumstances.

- WOLFE -

"Ciao, Wolfe," Emilio said, reaching down to shake my hand—a major contrast to earlier this evening when he straight up refused to. "Benne grazie for the pasta shuta."

All four of them have flitted in and out of speaking Italian and English all night, and once they were done speaking about me (as I assume was the reason they were excluding me from those conversations, especially when I heard my unique name being mentioned a few times), Luna started translating for me, and I was surprisingly able to remember quite a bit of it, thanks in large part to Luna's brown lips doing the speaking.

"Prego, Emilio," I said, attempting my best accent to say 'thank you' as I had learned how to pronounce throughout the night, and which he had given me permission to call him by. Luna smiled kindly at my effort, which I assume meant it was awful, and her parents chuckled as they proceeded down her front steps and on towards their car in the driveway behind Luna's. Siella's was long gone considering she had left about half an hour ago, claiming she needed to have an early one to get up for gym before work, which I learned this evening was something to do with accounting. I personally couldn't imagine anything more boring if I tried, and I stack bricks on top of each other all day.

Luna remained standing close by me, as she had been all evening, even allowing me to hold her hand under the table for a while after she relaxed a little once her dad actually started talking to me and I was able to make him laugh a few times talking about concrete mishaps, which he seemed to appreciate seeing as he was a concreter himself and none of the women in his family had any idea about anything concrete-related.

Marcella, who is kind but just as fierce as Luna and clearly where she inherited it from, was already seated in the car with the door closed when Emilio turned back to us on the porch and yelled something to Luna with an accompanying sternly pointed finger at the two of us and a mention of my coglione, which I interpreted as a firm fatherly warning against my balls. Marcella, having heard his loud voice through the door he held open, yelled something at him and tugged at his shirt to pull him into the car and directed a pointed finger at him instead.

Laughter rose up beside me, and I turned instead to face Luna who was watching after her parents reversing out of her driveway, her mother still firing something at her father the whole time.

"Do I get a full translation of his threat against my balls?" I asked her, watching her laughter die down and her devilish dimples return in full force, seemingly highly amused at the finer details of her father's warning.

"You sure you want to hear it?" she said, the corners of her mouth twitching excitedly. She wanted to tell me, but she wanted me to want to hear it more. I nodded at her, and waited to hear the fate of my testicles if I were to ever hurt his daughter. "He said if you lay a finger on me in any way, he'll cut off your balls and bury them in cement to hide the evidence."

Her eyes were twinkling under the starlight and with the pleasure she had just received from retelling her father's intentions to murder me. "I fully expected a lot worse," I chuckled, unable to look at anything other than her mouth when she started cackling madly again. When she noticed and was able to stop herself from laughing, it became a lot more apparent that Luna and I were now alone at her house, after subtly flirting most of the evening, sneaking quick touches here and there under the table like teenagers when no one was looking, and following our earlier hallway conversation about us. Luna quickly realised it too, and began her retreat into the house, with me following behind her, my eyes struggling to focus on anything other than the swaying of her hips as she walked to the couch and sat down, scratching Medusa's head behind her ears and leaning over to take her shoes off.