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Reluctantly, I relieve myself, stalling as I wash my hands and scrub them clean. I splash my face with cool water, wiping it dry with a hand towel before slowly returning to Giulio’s bedroom.
Giulio is sitting up, rubbing at his face and yawning. “Fuck, what time is it?” he asks, as if I have any way of knowing. When I don’t answer, he fumbles for the phone charging on the nightstand and shakes it awake. He scowls at something on the screen and taps for a few seconds, then sets the phone aside again.
“Ugh. It’s too early. But Damien’s gonna be here soon.” Giulio looks up at me. “He doesn’t trust me to be on time. For some reason.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I say a little dryly, feeling unsettled by the direction my thoughts had taken in the bathroom. My stomach grumbles, and I blush, looking away from him. The meals I get at the club are passable, but I always feel like I’m hungry only a few hours after I’ve eaten.
Giulio stares at me for a few seconds before chuckling. “Guess we should have breakfast.” He yawns again and climbs out of bed, completely unashamed of his nudity.
I cross over to where he’d tossed the ridiculous schoolgirl costume before bed the night before, pulling it on. It’s better than walking around naked, at least. “That would be nice,” I say cautiously. “Do you need me to cook?” I’m no five-star chef, but I can make a decent breakfast if he has the ingredients for it.
He walks over to the nearby dresser and pulls out a pair of boxer briefs. He pauses after he’s put those on and sighs. “Fuck, if not for the meeting…”
He disappears into the closet. When he returns, he’s wearing a pair of khakis and a simple shirt. It’s not formal, but it does look a bit nicer than the jeans he’d been wearing the previous night. No socks, though.
He takes his phone and sticks it in his pocket, then leans against the dresser to look at me. His eyebrows go up. “Y’know, I actually have other clothes for you. Unless you’d rather stick with that.”
I blink at him, surprised. “You do?” I say, a little dumbly. “Yes, please, I’d prefer other clothes.” I realize too late that they might be even worse, but then… This is pretty bad.
“Yeah.” He goes back to the dresser and pulls out a pair of much smaller underwear, but still in a boy cut. “I don’t have bras, but… do you need one?”
My cheeks go hot at that, and I resent the reminder of how flat my chest is. “I still wear a bra under normal circumstances, yes,” I say irritably. Mostly so my nipples aren’t poking out through my shirts, but still.
“Okay, I’ll tell Damien to buy some so I can keep them here.” He tosses the panties at me, then walks back into the closet. I quickly pull the underwear on before he can change his mind, then follow him.
I’m surprised at how small the walk-in closet is. I had expected something much larger, more along the size that my parents had in their bedroom. There’s plenty of storage, but not an excessive amount.
Giulio pulls a container out from underneath a rack of jackets and pops the lid off. I’m shocked to see women’s jeans and shirts. None of them are overly fancy or skimpy. It looks like casual wear. The only odd thing about the clothes is that the designs are a bit old-fashioned.
He holds up a pair of jeans against my waist. “You’re a bit taller, but… I guess it’ll work. Roll up the bottoms and make it seem like you wanted them ankle length to begin with.”
I wonder whose clothing this is, or if he keeps it around for girls he brings home in case something gets ripped or lost. I don’t ask, though, instead taking the skirt off and replacing it with the jeans. It feels so good to wearpantsthat I just enjoy the feeling for a moment before leaning down to roll up the bottom cuffs.
Next, he hands me a t-shirt with a strange logo on it. The back says it’s a band tour souvenir from the early 90s.
There’s no way he would have been old enough to attend a concert back then. “Whose is this?” I blurt out. I regret it instantly, afraid that he’ll get mad at me for prying and take it all back.
But Giulio only shrugs casually. “My mom’s. She was really into music. Can’t say she had good taste, but y’know.”
I turn and take off the blouse, pulling the t-shirt over my head. It fits well enough, even if it is a little short on me. It surprises me that Giulio’s father would’ve been okay with his wife wearing clothing like this. “Your dad let her out of the house in casual clothes?”
His expression darkens. “My old man wasn’t around enough to notice, not back then. Besides, some of these are from before she met him. A few times, she snuck out in nicer stuff and changed before she got to the venue.” Giulio snorts. “And once, she took me along. I guess I was eight or nine? I don’t know how she convinced the bouncer to let me in. That wasnota child-friendly event.”
I’m fascinated by how he speaks of his mother. I can’t imagine someone like that marrying Emilio Pavone, but then, she might not have had much of a choice, and that makes my own features darken. “Did you have fun?” I ask, folding the discarded shirt over my arm and following him out of the closet and out of the bedroom.
“Yeah.” Giulio says as we make our way to the kitchen. “We both got band shirts. That my old man ended up burning, when he found out where we’d been.”
I shake my head. “That’s just cruel,” I say. “But at least he couldn’t take the memories away from you.”
“Nah, he just had my mom killed a few years later.” Giulio stops by the kitchen counter and laughs. “Sorry, shedisappeared. Who knows what happened to her!”
“Is that what you plan on doing to me?” I ask him, unable to help myself. “Making me disappear once I’ve had a few of your children?”
He doesn’t react at all. He simply pulls out some things from the fridge and sets them on the counter between us. “Doesn’t that depend on you? Damien’s convinced you’d make a good mom, and he is stupidly into you, so I don’t think your murder is in the plans. But he’d never forgive you if you betrayed his idea of you, y’know?” He pauses and stares at all the ingredients. “Pancakes or waffles?”
“Waffles,” I say, but I’m distracted by what he said. “What do you mean, betray his idea of me?”
Giulio taps on his phone, then sets it on a little stand that’s next to the stove. “Y’know. If you ended up not getting pregnant, or if you were a bitch to our kids.” He grabs flour and sugar from the nearby pantry, and I watch in fascination as Giulio Pavone actually starts cooking.
