Page 89 of I'll Look for You, Everywhere
Our fights have a very temporary shelf life. We’ll start like this and eventually one of us will ask a neutral question. Like, ‘Do you know the time? Oh, and by the way, is this thing over yet? I’ve been dying to tell you about what’s been happening.’
Tonight is our last night in Alassio and the wedding is in two weeks. I watch Magdalen walk back from the gelateria with Anika, wearing overalls and a turquoise scarf around her chest – she’s sunburnt on her forehead and nose. My daydreams now consist of putting sun cream on her shoulders and washing salt water out of that beautiful fucking hair in the shower. She licks the gelato dripping down the cone and I audibly mutter under my breath.
‘Jesus.’ I try to look anywhere else to distract me and end up catching two men with thinning hair chain-smoking cigarettes near the entrance of the gelateria ogling at Magdalen with no shame. But she’s completely oblivious. Anika narrows her eyes at the men, immediately shutting them up. But my Magdalen still doesn’t look, doesn’t even know what’s happening as she continues to lick her gelato. There’s something about her lack of awareness that makes me inexplicably fucking sad.
Coming up to my table while Anika looks at keychains outside one of the shops, she plops down in the furthest chair from me.
‘Excuse me?’ I ask. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Munching,’ she says, and wraps her lips around the tip of the ice cream.
‘Magdalen,’ I say, my voice inexcusably low.
‘Yes?’ She flutters her eyelashes, and this time when she licks the dripping cream she stares directly at me.
‘Are you flirting with me?’ I ask, turning my chair slightly to face her.
‘That depends.’ She wipes some of the ice cream on her lips with her finger slowly. Achingly slow. And it’s such a beautiful sight, innocent and seductive, I’m scared of what I would do to keep her always looking at me. ‘Is it working?’
‘It always works with you.’
Unable to stand the distance, I reach out my foot and hook my toes underneath her chair, pulling her towards me.
She yelps and almost drops the cone, but recovers quickly enough when my hands slide up her thighs to steady her.
‘I’d like to taste,’ I say when she’s close enough, and lean forward in my chair, wanting to put my mouth where hers was. To lick the ice cream with the taste of her still on it. Her eyes are wide, and the sunburn on her cheeks makes them greener.
‘By all means,’ she says, and puts the gelato between us. I wrap my hand around the one holding the ice cream and she sucks in a breath. ‘Déjà vu,’ she whispers, and I know she’s remembering the ocean, my hand over hers, guiding her as she touched me.
I gently squeeze her hand and bring the ice cream to my mouth, looking closely at her while I dip my tongue to the top and rotate our hands to get a full taste.
Magdalen squirms in her seat and I’m immediately hard when I think about her being turned on by me. ‘How is it?’ she asks shakily, her eyes trained on my lips. I lean back in my chair to keep myself from throwing the ice cream on the floor and ripping that bandana off her.
I muse over the question. ‘I’ve tasted sweeter.’
She smiles that smile where her upper lip almost touches the top of her nose, and I grip the chair to stay seated. ‘Now you’re flirting with me.’
‘Always am, sweet girl.’
A plastic bag is thrown down on the table, breaking the trance between us, and Anika coughs loudly. ‘The sexual tension between you two is radiating through the entire fucking town.’ She pulls up another chair and sits between us. ‘I know Dante and I gave you our blessing, but for the love of god can you not give the poor ice cream a joint blow job in the middle of the street?’
‘Anika!’ Magdalen slams her back against the chair to create some distance between us and looks around worriedly for Dante.
‘Don’t worry. He’s trying to flirt with the lady at the tabaccheria.’
‘Isn’t she like seventy years old?’ I ask, wondering if it’s the woman I’m thinking of.
‘Yeah.’
‘And we’re not going to acknowledge that him flirting with a seventy-year-old is a little weird.’
‘Nah,’ Anika says, and bites down on her cone. ‘He’s done much worse.’
‘True,’ Magdalen and I say at the same time.
Anika stares at us for a moment before rolling her eyes and says, with a mouth full of gelato, ‘Oh, gag me. They’re speaking at the same time now. Listen, I know I’m the one that inadvertently pushed you two together, but I’m going to need you to not be this disgusting. You’re turning into Lucia and Maio.’
‘So sorry, it won’t happen again.’ Magdalen places her hand on her heart. ‘I swear.’
