Page 65 of Lucas & Melissa Falling in Love
Chapter 22
One week after our arrival, two days after my father’s return home from the hospital, he sits at the head of the table for our family’s Sunday dinner. The atmosphere feels like a holiday or a wedding. We are celebrating, I realize, our gratefulness for the return of Dante Fierro’s health.
The meal, cooked by my mother and sisters, includes three courses and my mouth waters for the traditional Pasta Bolognese, the tantalizing scent rising with the steam from the dish.
Melissa laughs at something Theresa says and I see my father watching them, pensive. Then he clears his throat. With a flash of insight, I know that whatever he’s going to say, it’s going to disturb the atmosphere and I hold my breath.
“How long are you staying with us, Melissa?”
“We haven’t finalized plans.” I answer for her.
Melissa looks at him and then at me and says nothing.
“LetMelissa answer for herself, Lucas.” He smiles at me. Then he returns his unnerving gaze to Melissa. I’ve already let her off the hook with my preemptive answer, so I’m more annoyed than concerned.
“I don’t know. It’s as Lucas says.”
“Why would you need to return?” My father says. Now my annoyance ratchets up to something more.
“I have a job. At a bank in New York City. I’ll need to return there. Soon.” Melissa stops and my father waits, watching her as if expecting her to say more. He puts a hand up to silence me because he knows I want to jump in.
Melissa continues, more conversationally now. “I’ve been in touch with the bank and managed to delay my start date, but I can’t delay much longer.”
“How much longer?” My father asks the question that I want to hear the answer to.
“A few more days.” She looks at him when she says it, but she’s talking to me.
My father nods, flicking a glance in my direction and gives me a look like he’s telling me I have something to take care of.
He says, “Then we’ll have to make sure these last few days for you are very enjoyable.” He launches on a discussion of sights in the area and even includes shopping in Milan as a possible excursion, getting Rosalie to join the conversation.
I eat the meal, smile and nod, but I can’t shake my disappointment at the prospect of Melissa leaving. She knows this and is extra solicitous of me, engaging me in quiet teasing, keeping her thigh close against mine the entire meal and occasionally touching my leg, running her hand up along the inside seam of my pants and caressing my cock through the fabric. It’s enough to keep me from sinking wholly into disgruntled silence, enough to distract me into playing along with conversation, but not enough to keep me from contemplating whether we have a future as a couple.
It’s a puzzle that’s gotten more complicated and I’m sure now this complication was a big reason I didn’t reveal my family to her sooner.Didn’t I always know I was going to return here?
* * *
“I need to go home,Lucas. I looked at flights and I can change mine to leave tomorrow.”
We’re in bed, but the sleepy afterglow of lovemaking is dispelled by her conversational bomb. I sit up and look at her. After her teasing at dinner, she had me so hot, we went right to bed. If my family minded, they didn’t say. I know that she’s been using sex to deflect my mood, but I don’t care. We both know the deflection is temporary. We are both conflicted between enjoying our time together and angsting over our future. At least I am.
“Tomorrow? You’re planning to leave tomorrow and you’re telling me now?”
“Don’t be angry with me.” She sits up, her hair mussed, her cheeks still pink, a slight sheen of perspiration on her forehead and above her kiss-swollen mouth, the evidence of multiple orgasms scenting the air around us.
“I’m not angry.” I had been, but I shove my hand through my hair. Whatever anger there was recedes, uncovering the slash of sadness caused by her words.
“I’ll come back,” she says, but I cut her off.
“I’ll go to New York with you.” I can’t call New York home any longer. Not since my return to Modena and Fierro Motor Cars and my family. A yawning hole tears at my chest, the place where Melissa is supposed to be, part of the fabric of my home, in my heart and filling my life, in my bed every night.
“You will?” I feel her excitement like a shot of encouragement to my bedraggled heart.
I nod. “There are things I need to do in New York too.” And I realize this is true. I left behind all my dreams, abandoned them as if they had turned to dust under the weight of my family legacy.
“Your sculpture,” she says, summarizing all my dreams in one vision.
“I’ll stay a while, but then I’ll be returning to Italy. Forever.”
