2. THE ALWAYS-GIRL
GIOELE
My first memory is of flat, white, wooden boards aligned horizontally. They shone in the sunlight, and below them, grass fluttered in the breeze. The grass appeared in iridescent stripes between the boards too, but right where my fingers grasped the fence, I saw her.
At best, you remember glimpses of what happened to you as a small child. These memories can seem ordinary today, but at the time, they meant the world. When I shut my eyes, I can still see her toothless smile as she crawled up to stand on the other side of the fence. Silvina peered at me, her toffee-colored baby gaze syphoning a light I’d soon be addicted to.
Age doesn’t matter when it comes to love. I believe you’re born with it, that it’s part of your DNA. It’s about who you are. It’s about who she is. It’s a chemical reaction, some implosion that amalgamates your soul with hers.
Circumstances can make it hard to reach your twosome. Growing up in a rigid Italian family, for one. Growing up mafia. Your love being your cousin. Three out of three, and I can tell you: you’re pretty much fucked.
My mother is a saint, but as strong-willed as they come, an even match for my father. She’s observant, a keen spokesperson for tradition, for religion, and everything she deems right. When it’s wrong in her eyes, it’s goddamned wrong.
“Do you remember the summer you were thirteen?” I stroke Silvina’s hair so it stays put behind her ear. She can’t object to this sort of touch, platonic as it is. I haven’t told her, but I like my stolen peeks of a perfect shell shape in the seconds it takes her to toss her mane back over her ear.
We’re so careful, nothing like we were in high school. I don’t touch her at all in front of our parents. Undoubtedly, they’d want to force distance between us, afraid that we’re not keeping it together. If it were up to me, we wouldn’t. See, I don’t give a fuck, which Silvina knows. In the right mood, she even tells me, “You care too much, just not about what’s important.” I disagree. She’s the only thing of importance around here.
“Do you remember?” I ask again while she gets up. Momentarily, she leaves me in favor of her kitchenette to grab tea. I don’t want tea. All I want is her.
“Yeah. It was the best and worst summer ever.”
“Ma was a bitch that summer,” I say, knowing what she’ll say back.
Silvina puts two mugs down between us. For a moment, she considers whether she should play it safe and crisscross on the rug at the opposite side of the coffee table. I’m relieved when she sighs and takes a seat with me on the couch.
“No. Zia Carola was just trying to keep us apart,” she tells me. “She saw that we were getting older, and it wasn’t just children’s play anymore. She was being a good mom and aunt.”
And there it is, out in the open. The whole big fucking elephant that makes me want to kill something with my bare hands. Since I was two, I’ve loved Silvina with every damn fiber in my body. She was just a baby when I realized that no one could make me feel as right as she did.
“It was the doctor thing,” I say to make her blush. “Remember that too? It wasn’t like we hadn’t played doctor before. She just didn’t know.”
Silvina rolls her eyes but can’t help smiling. It’s one of her secret smiles, the kind that curls one corner of her mouth higher than the other, making her lips uneven. My heart implodes.
“She overheard us,” she says.
“Yep.” I cross my arms like Ma does when she means business. Tip my head back and glare down my nose at my invisible self, on the opposite side of the table. “Gioele. Come here.”
“Stop it.” Silvina groans and half-covers her face, but she can’t help squinting between her fingers to see my reenactment of our first train wreck.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I ask in my mother’s slight Venetian accent. “Oh, nowhere. Silvina and I are just going to pick pine cones in the backyard.” I blink, exaggerating my innocence to make Silvina giggle. She’s already mortified.
“No, that’s not where you’re going. I heard you. You were planning to go to the stables and play doctor, and I can assure you that’s not going to happen. There will be no checking out each other’s— each other’s…” I cut myself off and restart the way Ma did back then.
Silvina and I can’t decide if she was trying to say “bodies” or “privates.” Either way, Silvina couldn’t take it. She ran off before Ma could finish.
“You have to admit that was crude.” I nod to Ina mia. “There are more diplomatic ways to ensure a boy doesn’t inspect a girl’s vagina.”
“Shut up! Oh, God.”
She makes my heart feel double its size when my descriptions are too intimate for her. It’s the closest I get to her now. I’ll stroke her hair, maybe she’ll allow a quick hug, but mostly it’s sideswiping her with my words.
“Right, I’m sorry. You don’t like that I talk about your vagina.” I send her a gaze she can’t look away from. It’s full of honesty and tenderness, every single thing I feel for her. Usually, I keep it under wraps. I’ve learned my lesson in that aspect; Silvina can’t take it for long if I leave my feelings on display, and so she tosses me out.
Now and then, she lets me sleep over on the couch, but not without a physical consequence. If she lets me stay over and I leave my love for her on high blaze, she breaks out in hives that don’t disappear until days after I’ve left.
“Drink up and go home,” she says, knowing we’re both thinking the same thing. After what happened at the club tonight, I can’t get the love out of my eyes.
I lean back on the couch, my head resting against the wall. I lift my chin, hooding my eyes while I stare at her. As always, Silvina’s gaze drops to my lips. It’s been years since we last kissed, but like me, she remembers like it was yesterday.
Slowly, I drag the tip of my tongue over my lower lip. “It’s a bit far. I’m thinking I could crash here.”
“Tracy’ll be up early, and she’s afraid of you.”
“I’ll camp out in your office chair, then, next to your pillow while you sleep.”
“Right, that’d be smart.”
I chuckle. “We should test if you’re still allergic to me, and if so, to what extent.”
“Uh-huh, makes sense. Like, if I’ll go full hive or end up with just a little sty. Either way, attractive, right?” She hides her smile behind the rim of her cup.
“That’s fine, Ina mia. You’ll always be attractive to me. Catch leprosy and I’ll still want to hug you so fucking tight.”
“Stop it. You’re making me itch.”
“I’ll scratch your itch.”
“Enough, Gioele.”
“I love you.”
Silvina lets me sleep over. She’s right; Tracy does get up early, and she is afraid of me. Face-down on the couch, I study her with one eye open. Most of my blanket lies in folds over my clothes on the floor. Tracy runs her gaze down my body. Most girls approve of the way I look, and Tracy doesn’t seem to be an exception. Until she lets out a small gasp and taps away. Could be that I’m airing out my ass.
“Have a good shift,” I call hoarsely.
“Okay, yeah.” She shuts the door behind her, and I sit up, rolling my shoulders until they stop creaking.
I walk into their kitchen. Silvina’s a pig, while I like shit on the tidy side. I also like her expression whenever I’ve spruced up her digs. I find dishwasher soap and some strong-smelling detergent I can use on the countertops.
You can tell I haven’t been by in a while. I think Morpheus is the only one who knows how to use detergent here. He’s the only guy in the apartment too, which I approve of. He has no interest in Silvina, or in women in general for that matter. Honestly, I’m fucking relieved when Silvina parties with him, because he’s just some dude who could be taken for her boyfriend. He’s not too handsy either, just puts a hand on her hip when he lets her walk ahead of him into a club.
There’s baked-in cheese on the stovetop and some sort of rusty-looking sauce. Bolognese? It’d be a bitch to get off if I didn’t have all the energy to unleash after last night. Fucking John whatever-his-face. Then, Silvina telling me to let her start dating. But who’s she fooling, though? Is it worth it to make out with people she’s not in love with? She loves me.
The countertops turn immaculate too quickly. It’s only six a.m., and Silvina is never fully awake until eight.
I’ve lived in San Francisco for six months, now. I spend the weekends as my cousin’s watchdog and the weekdays supposedly studying law. Interesting, right, considering how my father’s the biggest mafia dog in the pound down in LA?
Overall, it was a good choice for Silvina to move to San Francisco. Her older sister, Gabriela, lives here with her boyfriend. What wasn’t good was that she wanted to leave me behind. She claims it was the hives, but we both know that’s not all it was.
“How long are you going to let them decide over us?” I asked. “When will you realize there’s nothing wrong with two people loving each other?”
“The day we become legal in all states of America?” she said.
She’s up, already? I hear her in the shower, now. I remember what she looks like in there too; Ina mia and I had a few years before they discovered us and scarred my girl for life.
A stab goes off beneath my sternum when I realize I might not know exactly how she looks anymore. It’s been three years and four months since I last had her in my arms in a shower. That is three years and four months too long.
I’ll never forget her smooth, olive-tainted skin, droplets falling down her shoulders and rolling to the tips of her breasts. The liquid would hang there, lingering like it couldn’t bear the separation, before it finally gave up and splashed to the tiles. I’d kiss her, then. Lick new droplets off her skin. Bury my face between her breasts. The water pelted me, plastered the hair to my head, creating a curtain that hid my face down to my chin.
She laughed over me. “Silly Gioele.”
I smiled against her skin, nuzzled her stomach, and tapered downward until she choked on a gah-enough-already! I found soft hair and a softer nub that needed attention. Weakly, she objected until she couldn’t anymore, until her moans became desperate and I carried her out of the shower.
My Silvina. What I wouldn’t pay for her to hide against my throat again with that blissed smirk on her face. Three years, four months, but who’s counting?
“You’re awake.” Silvina breathes it from the doorway, and I look up to find her dressed. Long pants thoroughly buttoned up, a pink shirt under a wide grey sweater that covers her hands down to her fingertips. She can’t hide her neck, though, and it makes her seem fragile. I stray my eyes down her mane, sections divided by the moisture from the shower.
“Morning, Ina mia.” I wave her toward me, readying myself for small talk that’ll make her feel safe. Hell, maybe we can avoid a sty this time. “You were right. Tracy had an early shift, and she’s a tad skitterish around me. What did I do, again?”
Silvina saunters forward in her socks, and to me that’s a reward. She could’ve hidden her feet in a pair of shoes, dulling the memory of how I used to kiss them.
“What do you think? It’s the third time Tracy’s been with us when you’ve drawn blood at a club. She’s not into violence, and I brought her with me because I didn’t think you’d come last night.”
“Yeah? Well, judging by the way she eyed my ass this morning, I’d say you don’t give her enough credit.”
I love the dark flash of jealousy in her eyes before she replies. “Ha, no way. Her boyfriends are up Patrick’s alley, peaceful guys who’d never consider sparring with anything but their mouths.”
“Your sister’s little boyfriend?”
“He’s not little.”
“In spirit, he is.”
She scoffs. “Just because he doesn’t fight doesn’t mean he’s got less spirit.”
“Hmm. Maybe it’s just less feelings.”
With one hand inside the cupboard, Silvina stops all movement and looks up. For the first time this morning, her molasses stare meets mine and remains there. I can’t even describe what that does to me. “Just because he doesn’t feel the need to clock people in the face at every turn doesn’t make him less anything.”
“No? Gabi is pretty. Not fucking divine like you, but pretty.”
She struggles with a pan inside the cupboard, but she can’t wrestle it out from behind the bigger ones. I drop to my haunches, my speed giving a bounce-back before I nudge her knee to give me room. For a second, her eyes flutter shut while she enjoys our connection. But then she shifts to the side, letting me take the three bigger pans out of the way so I can pull out the one she wants. It’s her egg-scrambler pan.
“That has nothing to do with it, and you need to get that memo too,” she murmurs. “You need to stop beating guys up just because they like the way I look.”
He tried to kiss you, goddammit. His hands were all over you! “You want Gioele’s Kick-Ass Scramble?” I ask.
“I guess, since you’re here anyway.”
“Get me a red bell pepper, a green onion, and the seasoning salt. I didn’t see any butter in the fridge. Do you only have margarine?”
“It’s just as good with margarine.” She says it smirking, because she knows I’ll object. Fuck, I want to hug her.
“It’s four grades below perfect with margarine, but I’ll make do if it’s all I have.” I angle my head high and play-glare down at her. “I’m about to cook for my favorite girl, and she can’t even provide me with the ingredients. Porca miseria.”
My using her father’s favorite cussword makes her laugh. “Let’s borrow Tracy’s. I know she has butter in her drawer.”