Hello!
I'm finally done with PART 2! This here was a hard child to bear.
First of all, let me say thank you for all the nice comments and encouragements I received with PART 1. I'm always very, very glad to receive your thoughts about it, the positive and the constructive criticism too.
I understand some people didn't like part 1 all that much, thought it too lenghy and overly stretched. I hear you. Thank you for letting me know where I could do better. I just felt the need to set a good foundation for this story. I didn't feel like I could go on without explaining the characters. Who they are. Why they are. Where they were, etc.
Anyway, to those of you who didn't like it (I imagine you won't be coming back) thanks for not being mean about it.
Ah! And about an editor. I tried to get one with the 'English being only a second language thing'. No one ever wrote back to me.
@fawnsage, you're always reading my stories, so let me give you this warning: I'll hurt people. Sorry. I'm mean, you should know that by now. In the end everyone's happy, though. Promise
Anyway, part 2 is full of action. And it sets the tone for the parts to come.
I hope you like it. Forgive any mistakes.
XOXO,
Nana.
*****
LAURA
Stealthily, I swung my legs out of bed, put on my robe, and tiptoed my way out the room. I cast one last lingering glance at Rocco, sound asleep in my bed. His olive skin, contrasting beautifully with the white silk bed sheets tangled around his legs, begged me to crawl back in with him. He was snoring softy. A rhythmic, deep sound synchronized with the risings and fallings of his chest. My fingertips itched with a desire to touch the little curly hairs covering it. He made my bed warm, full and inviting. As tempting as the invitation was, though, I had to tend to my dinner otherwise there would be no dinner to speak of. I closed the door and walked down the stairs, leaving Rocco to his much deserved sleep.
He arrived yesterday. Since then we had dined, talked, fucked, then fucked some more. Not necessarily in that order. The talking part was probably the longest. Or at least it had felt like the longest part, at the end of which we reached an agreement. We would give this thing between us a fair chance. We would try and see where that would lead us. Once upon a time I had thought the long distance thing to be a mistake. Now I was going to do it.
Still, an uncertainty was gnawing at me, like the tiniest of stones in my shoe. Rocco was everything I could ever want. The perfect man. I had no reason to complain or wish for more. Nor the right to do it, either. Hadn't I told Riley I wanted to have someone in my life only a month ago? And now here was Rocco, offering it all to me. In spite of that my mind insisted in enumerating all the reasons why, in the future, our relationship would perish.
He lives an ocean away! He travels too much! You can't leave the bistro! You'll be more apart than together!
You haven't even told him you want children, yet. What if he doesn't want them?
Look at you! This has barely begun and you're already doubting it will work!
How do you even feel about him? Are you in love with him?
Not in love. I wasn't in love with him. Not yet, anyway. I liked him very much. Attraction, and not just physical, was what was drawing us together. Rocco was...well, he was perfect! No other word for it. He was everything I wanted. Everything I had visualized when I had imagined my faceless and handsome future.
But wasn't it Freud or one of those guys who said something about how when people have all they ever wanted they get bored and depressed? Because, once you have it all, you have nothing else to wish for. You become a wantless, ambitionless creature. You get bored. Empty.
Don't be stupid, Laura.
In my kitchen, I focused on preparing my lamb ribs to blot those useless thoughts out. I tossed the meat, some shallots and poured most of the contents of Rocco's Merlot into a casserole. There were about three fingers of the burgundy liquid left in the bottle. The ticking clock on the wall told me it was way too early to be drinking, but I paid it no mind. I was a nerve wreck. I needed the dinner party I was throwing for Rocco to be perfect. After weeks of building him up I finally had the opportunity to introduce him to my sister. And to Riley. At the thought of him I raised the bottle to my lips.
Riley who had, seemingly, disappeared.
Whenever I called him, if he happened to pick the phone up, he'd say he was busy writing, Class A bulllshiter that he was. His damn writing and creativeness were always the excuses he employed. He never wrote anything at his apartment though. Mostly, he wrote at the bistro. And the last time he had been at the bistro, about two weeks ago, had been weird, to say the least. He just sat there without his computer, talked about little, meaningless things like
"Oh, looks like rain."
and stayed for scarcely one full hour. If I happened to ask
"What have you been up to lately?"
, he'd answer
"Oh, nothing, just trying to write."
He was avoiding me. And I was letting him.
I told him I wanted babies and
someone
. Now he was all weird. I had no idea what his problem was. Actually, I kind of did. I had surprised, even scared him with my revelation. I could put myself in his shoes. I probably would have reacted the same way he did had the woman I currently slept with, my best friend, told me she wanted children in the next five years. Although how that would concern him so much was beyond me. I hadn't asked
him
to do it.
Could that be what was wrong with him, then? Did he think I wanted
him
to have
my
baby?
On that same night I returned from Paris, about two months ago, he had, according to Clementine, been at the bistro with a
very beautiful woman
. A beautiful woman I have never heard about.
But then again, why do you think you should've heard about her? She is most likely just a friend. Riley is allowed to have them. You don't have exclusive rights in that department, you know. He is not obligated to tell you every damn thing he does!
And even though I knew all that, I couldn't shake the feeling that that very beautiful woman might be the reason why he had disappeared for an entire month. Or at least one of the reasons.
The other reason might be that I had wanted him to.
The understanding that we needed time away from each other became the elephant in the room after I finally acknowledged to him my future aspirations. Telling him all that had felt to me like confessing to murder. That he surely wouldn't be at the bistro the next day was an unspoken consensus between the two of us.
We've known each other for too long, we were together all the time so, naturally, this kind of thing had happened before. The avoiding each other. The needing some time apart. Albeit never quite like this, nor for such a long time, either. I had seen him once, only once, the entire month. An entire month after I had spent thirty whole days in another continent. So, in total, I had seen my best friend twice in sixty days.
I missed him so much I was going insane.
I was used to seeing him every day. It was strange to peek from the kitchen into the bistro's main area and not find Riley's gleaming glasses behind his computer, his fast fingers incessantly hitting the letters on his keyboard. I was used to his presence. Missing him wasn't natural. It almost physically hurt.
As I placed my casserole into the oven, my eyes fell on the old, stubborn stain that maculated a section of the tile. Ever since Riley broke a bowl of tomato sauce that stain had been there. A constant reminder of him. A reminder of that night I had been too busy with my hands on him to mind cleaning it before it permanently marked my spotless floor.
