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CHAPTER SEVEN
ALESSIO
It is the single most exciting sexual experience of my life.
Yes, partly because it is taboo and naughty and forbidden, fucking on the street while the Nadur Karnival takes place nearby.
Mostly, it is Maren.
It is her aliveness, her beauty, her responsiveness and her open need of my body. Her open acceptance of everything I offer her, her open offer of herself. The certain knowledge that she has never offered herself like this before, only to me.
She is mine as surely as I am hers.
We belong together, and I cannot bear the thought that she will leave me.
I cannot bear the idea that I might become nothing more than a memory to her, and so I ask her to stay. I throw all my pride and my caution to the air, to be caught in the wildness of the night, and I beg her to stay. Here on Gozo, here with me.
“I can’t,” she says, and she is crying.
Maybe I am too.
“I’ll come back,” she says in a rush. “After the semester ends, I’ll come back, I swear, Alessio, I don’t want to leave you! But I can’t just abandon them. I can’t just leave my career behind.”
It feels like a knife to my heart.
There is no grand career for her here on Gozo. Could she teach at the university? Perhaps. It’s a small school and positions are rare.
I understand. Her family is in America. Her job is there, her life is there, her friends are there.
Here, there is only me. And it is clear that I am not enough. Not for a woman like this, who seizes life with both hands and learns about it and tastes it, sees it, smells it, rejoices in it.
I understand.
I step back from her. I escort her, silently, around the streets of Nadur, until we reach the shuttle bus to the car park outside town. We ride the bus, silently. She leans her head against my shoulder. I let her, because if she will not stay, she will be gone tomorrow, and I want every touch she will give me. Every moment, every second. Every kiss.
She raises her head for a kiss. I give it.
“I’ll come back,” she whispers, as the bus stops and we rise to get off.
“I promise,” she says as I open my car’s passenger door for her.
“The semester ends in May,” she says as I set off toward Xaghra and the Plenty Hotel. “I just have to fulfill my contract. I’ll come back, Alessio.”
I love the sound of my name in her voice.
Unconscionably, I think about the sound of my name on her lips as her body reached bliss on mine, and I get hard inside my trousers again. Again, I want her again. And again.
I want her for always.
If she wanted me, she would be with me. Jobs can be left. Visits to friends and family can be arranged. But she would have to stay with me, and she will not, and my heart is crushed.
“I would stay if I could,” she says, laying her hand on my thigh. “You look like you don’t believe me,” she adds, her voice worried.
I don’t believe her. It’s always the same, the madness and the adventure followed by the waking up and the return of reality, everyone says so. Karnival will be over, the fever ends, and life goes back to normal
Too soon, I’m pulling up to the Plenty. I start to get out, but she says, “Don’t. Don’t make it harder for me to go.” I turn to look at her. Her beautiful brown eyes are full of tears; tears are tracking down her beautiful face. “I’ll write,” she says desperately. “I’ll email you. I’ll call you.”
She won’t.
