Page 92 of Cara & Gian: The Guzzi Duet

“What do you want, red or white?” Gian asked, holding up two bottles of wine for Cara to choose between.

“I thought we were grabbing beer?”

“We are, but you like wine more. Which one?”

Cara eyed the two bottles and said, “Which one do you think I’d prefer?”

“The red for tonight. White for a meal.”

“Lucky guess.”

“Or I pay attention,” Gian replied just as fast, slipping the bottle of white wine back on the shelf. “Red wine is good for rich dishes, too, you know.”

Cara crossed her arms as she rounded the corner of the aisle, plucking the red wine from Gian’s outstretched grasp. “How can you say you love someone when the only thing you’ve ever done with them is fuck?”

Gian cleared his throat, glancing at a customer in the next aisle who looked their way. A simple glare from him sent the patron heading in another direction, fast. Then, his gaze was back on hers, the intensity pinning her in place.

“You know that’s not true,” Gian muttered.

“What—that all we do is fuck? It’s very true.”

“Wrong. We do a hell of a lot more than that. I can’t help that all of the things we do happen to get mixed up in the fact we like to fuck a lot, Cara.”

“Well—”

“So I’ll never read to you in bed again, or in the bath, or anywhere else. We won’t stay in bed, talking and talking and fucking talking, about everything and anything that comes to your mind. I’ll act like you don’t enjoy being quiet, and that you smile even when you’re sleeping. You don’t need to tell me shit about your mother and father, or your brother, and never mind even thinking about saying something when it comes to your dead sister. I’ll pretend like I don’t know shit about what you like, the things you do, or who you want to be when you graduate in a year. And—”

“I get it,” Cara interjected softly. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Be more specific.”

“I’m being difficult, Gian.”

“Clearly,” he responded dryly.

“Say it to me again.”

“Say what?”

“What you told me in the car earlier.”

“That I love you?”

“Yes, that,” Cara said.

Gian didn’t hesitate. “I love you, Cara.”

His inflection didn’t change a bit. Neither did his expression. He said those three little words so easily, as though it should be obvious to her, him, and the world that he felt for her in that way. He felt so deeply, so intensely, that he could tell her he loved her privately in a Mercedes, where no one could hear or in a liquor store, where a cashier waited for them to pay and customers milled around.

He said it.

He said it like he meant it.

He said words Cara didn’t understand.

Oh, she got the love bit—that she understood well. Too well, probably. She understood that he did love her, because she felt that way, too. She felt alone when he wasn’t there, she heard his voice in her dreams, and she felt him all around her when he was gone. She missed him constantly, she worried where he was when he wasn’t with her, and her best moments had been spent in comfortable silence and sweet whispers with this man.

Of course, she loved him.