“Then what?”
She gestured for me to come closer to her. I approached slowly.
“I’ll put my arm around you and you can put yours . . .uurgggh.” She delivered a loud, frustrated-sounding sigh and then looked at my body as if it might jump at her and maul her. I took a small step backwards, giving her the space she clearly needed. Perhaps I’d downplayed how bad this all was to Vincenzo. Because even when faced with a medical emergency, she still didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Not even if a bird had hung a dead, decaying mouse on the thorn that was now in her foot and she was headed towards sepsis.
“Okay, fine, come back.” She gestured to me again and I inched my way over. I waited for her to touch me first. She made a show of sighing and huffing as she draped her arm over my shoulder and then moved closer to me, until we were standing side by side. I waited for her to tell me what to do next.
“I suppose you should—uuurgggh, I can’t believe I am going to say this—just put your arm round my waist. Now! Do it!” she declared, sounding really put out, and I bit back a smile. I knew I shouldn’t be finding this funny—she was bleeding and hobbling—but fuck she was cute. And I knew I shouldn’t be finding her cute either, because that just seemed so patronizing in the worst way possible, but fuck it!She was.
I slid my arm round her slowly and rested my hand on her waist. The effect this physical contact had on me was immediate and dizzying. My head swam as my fingers wrapped round her soft hip. God, I’d forgotten how her body felt in my hands: warm and delicious. And this seemed like the most inappropriate time to remember that, but it was unavoidable. We started walking together, me lifting and supporting her with each step she took, trying to push all those thoughts aside as I focused on helping her.
“I can’t believe this,” she muttered as we walked together.
“It is making this easier for you,” I offered as consolation.
She huffed in response, and I glanced down to look at the way my hand sat on her waist. It looked good there. It felt good there. And most of all, it felt right and familiar there.
I got her into the villa and placed her on the couch. By this stage her face was contorted in pain, which stirred something deep inside me: a primitive, caveman-like instinct to protect her. Once I’d found the first-aid kit, I sat cross-legged in front of her on the floor. I gestured for her to give me her foot and when she did, there was only one thing to be done.
“You know I’m going to have to pull that out. And we don’t know how deeply it’s gone in.”
She nodded. “Make it quick.”
“I will,” I said, and then lowered my fingers to the thick white thorn. She winced immediately. “Sorry.” I hated hurting her like this, although I’m sure the pain I was causing her now was nothing compared to the pain I’d caused all those years ago.
“Ready?”
She nodded and before she was able to finish the move, I pulled as fast as I could.
“Fuck it!” she yelped, and instinctively pulled her foot away.
“Sorry, let’s get your shoe off.” I pulled her foot back and started undoing her shoelaces. “While I have you like this, somewhat incapacitated and unable to run away, I want to take this moment to really, truly apologize to you. I should have told you who I was the second I saw yourIDphoto.”
“I’d like to know why you didn’t?”
I peered up from her foot and then gave her a look that I hoped portrayed the obviousness of the answer. But when she didn’t acknowledge it, I knew it was time to address the pile of Everest-sized elephants in the room.
“Well, after what happened, you know, and then me leaving like I did, I . . .” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how lame and vague they sounded. “Sorry. This isn’t easy to talk about,” I admitted. “But I suppose we need to. It’s time. Maybe that’s the problem—we haven’t actually talked about it.”
“You never gave us the opportunity to talk about it,” she said snappily.
She winced as I took her sock off, blood immediately dripping from the wound. I pulled some cotton-wool balls out of the first-aid bag and applied pressure to her injured heel.
“So should we have the conversation now?” I asked.
“No time like the present.” She leaned back on the couch while I cradled her leg and foot, waiting for the bleeding to stop.
“Okay, then, I’ll go first . . .” I took a deep breath and tried to start. “Funny, I’ve rehearsed this conversation in my head a million times over and now I don’t know where to start.”
“The beginning is always best.”
“Fine.” One more deep breath. “It was really bad, that night. The sex. It was a fucking disaster. And it has haunted me since it happened. I’ve had actual nightmares about it.”
“Me too,” she confessed, and I didn’t doubt that at all.
“I think we’d put too much pressure on ourselves,” I said.
“I agree. We’d waited so long and built it up so much in our heads,” she replied. “Maybe we should have just done it like everyone else back then? Quickly. Ripped the bandage off.”
