10. PLEASURE & HAPPINESS
We’re here. Ciro’s arms are laced around me, watching the ocean over my shoulder. I hunch it upward. Light stubble tickles me and makes me smile.
“You’re so perfect.”
“I’m going to end up conceited if you don’t stop.”
“What’s the problem? You’d be the hottest conceited bitch out there,” he says, and I break out laughing. He squeezes me close. I don’t think life could be any better than the two of us standing on this romantic balcony of the Santa Barbara Castello.
Palms wave on both corners of our sphere, which is terracotta-tiled and stucco-white, with a wrought-iron glass table and stuffed recliners. Behind us, our room exudes understated luxury, a self-assured style with the interior design palette of a pro. Earthly, creamy colors going toward sunny.
“All I want,” Ciro says, “is to spoil you. I want your eyes to cross with happiness.”
“Ha!” Because what do you say when aqua-greens are steady on you and flecks of golden excitement materialize in them?
“I don’t do cross-eyed.” Yes, I’m a comeback pro.
“It is not in my nature,” I add to really dig my grave.
“No? Tell me about your nature then. I want more. And more and more.” His lips trail up my throat until he finds my earlobe, and I shiver.
“I brought you here because I love this place,” he says when I don’t answer.
“You’ve been a lot of times?”
“A couple. It was a while ago though, and the Castello deserved a second chance. Everything you could possibly want should be available to you here. Do you like it so far?”
There’s a bubble of happiness quivering at the top of my chest. I need to stop it from taking over. It feels dangerous, like I’m losing my connection with the ground. It doesn’t stop me from confessing that I adore this place too.
“I mean, look at the view.” I raise a hand ominously and draw the horizon while the sun makes a spectacle of itself by lowering slowly into the water.
“I know.” His voice vibrates against my spine. For a second, I allow myself to consider everything the world could possibly present to me, and how, of all things, it made someone so amazing fall into my lap.
There’s a knock on the door.
“I’ll be right back,” he whispers, and I bob my head.
In seconds, the sun drowns, and the moon conquers the night. It shines now, from the embers left behind by the sun, and his groupies—the stars—twinkle to make him look his best.
Ciro returns, panther-silent and barefoot. His hand goes out in front of me, a beverage in an elegant glass extended.
“I wanted to celebrate tonight. These four days without you have felt like weeks, and I hope it wasn’t as bad for you as it was for me.”
He lets out a chuckle. “Okay, if I’m to be honest, a small part of me wants you to have suffered as much as I did.”
“Oh no worry. I missed you so much.” I lean the back of my head into his chest. “What is this? Champagne?”
“It is. You like champagne, right?”
“Sure do.” I’m glad we’re still facing the ocean. I can’t imagine my overly enthusiastic grin looking better from the front.
“Baby girl,” he coaxes like he’s heard my thoughts. “Turn to me.”
I swing slowly, feeling his arm lower to my waist. I link around his neck, but I can’t meet his gaze. I hold my drink high instead and we clink glasses.
“Real crystal?” I say.
“Is it? Sure got music in it. Pi-n-n-g,” he mimics. Then he kisses me. Languid strokes of his tongue against mine, lips and moisture until my breath tightens and his exhales work with mine. When he pulls away, he’s winded.
“Cheers, boyfriend.”
He glides his nose up mine and finds my forehead with his lips. “Fuck. That’s the best thing I’ve heard all month.”
Ciro angles our heads back, side by side, chin to chin, mouth to mouth. Through semi-open eyes, I watch him lift his glass above us. The fizz of champagne meets both of our lips, and he seals us around it all. I smile, sputter, gulp. It comes out of my mouth, dripping down my chin and onto his white shirt. He laughs.
“You’re not exactly a pro at this,” he tells me.
“I’m not a pro at anything.”
“At love you are.”
“Whatever you mean by that,” I say.
“You’re intoxicating.” He kisses droplets of champagne off my chin, my throat, and moves down my neckline.
“Let’s try again.” Suddenly he has us leaning against the front wall of the porch, my head back against his chest and my mouth meeting his in some Cirque-de-Soleil knockoff. His glass is empty and on the ledge. He appropriates mine and extends it above us, ready to let go into our joined mouths. My stomach quivers with humor.
“Ciro! That you up there?”
The shout is out of place between the stars and the moon and the champagne. I’ve got a small river snaking down between my boobs. Ciro lets go of my mouth to stare out over the parking lot below us.
“Hey. Yeah.” His hands tighten around me. He swings me toward him so that I lean against his body while his attention remains on the convertible below us. Five people. Three women, two men, all in party mode.
“It’s me, Marko!” one of the guys screams like we’re on the tenth floor instead of the third. “Is that Silk with you?”
“No.”
“I had some serious flashback there for a second,” the other guy shouts equally loud, causing the girls to titter. “Same hair and figure. Ya know. How long has it been?”
“Not long enough,” Ciro says with me tensing in his arms. “Guys, we gotta go. Have fun, all right?” I twist my head for a glimpse of his face. In the moonlight, its planes are smooth, but his eyes have gone freezer-still.
“Yeah, dude! The lady you’ve got up there, she’s not just work, right?”
One of the girls guffaws drunkenly. “Ciro would never bring work to the Castello. Have fun, guy-guy. May love destroy the shit out of youuuuu!” she screams, and everyone hollers and waves before they round the corner to the parking garage.
We’re quiet afterward. Ciro’s arm is warm around me as he leads me back into our room. The moon still shines out there, but there’s something tempered about it now. He lowers me to the bed. His eyes know where my mind is, with a girl named Silk.
My stockings were bought for this getaway. I let him roll them off, his fingertips blunt and heated. I need him on me. My thighs open when he sinks down and buries his face into my neck. Strong arms burrow under my body and lift me. We entwine. We revel in our yin-yang.
“I’m sorry.” His apology puffs against my skin, soft and warm and sad.
“Who was she?”
“My ex-wife.”
I could get up. Sit by the window with some distance between us. Instead I crush him closer. She was before me. We’re good as long as her memory isn’t in his veins.
“Are you over her?”
He moves my knees back and makes them touch my boobs. He watches me in the quasi-gleam of the moon. He’s blue. I’m blue. We look like magic, and when he lowers over me, we become magic.
“Hey, boyfriend?” I ask sweetly, eyes as big as I can make them, which is pretty wide. I personify the Pacific. Here’s to hoping nine-o-clock breakfast light does me justice.
“Yes?” His head slumps low over my hand, kissing every knuckle. Eggs and bacon rest on a seashell-adorned plate on the nightstand. A caffelatte, same pattern as the breakfast plate, teases next to it. Ciro only sees my hand.
“So, you know how I’ve told you about Matthew in high school?”
“Yeah?”
“You’ve told me not very much about your exes. Like Silk, for instance. Feel like sharing?”
Ciro’s exhale is long. It reaches the bottom of his stomach, and like everything else about him, it causes my hormones to riot.
“Silk was a fellow performer. She came into the biz about five years after me. I was established, but she, she was this new fresh blast of air rushing through my genre. People wanted to work with her. She won the debut actress of the year award.” He waves his hand in the air quickly, fending off my questions. “Not an award you’ve heard of. No SAG or Oscar. But it’s a big one at our level.”
He shifts the breakfast tray to the night table. Our bodies roll, and I’m on my side with him next to me. His mouth finds the crook of my neck, and a hand strays down my hip. Kneads, massages, and finds the inside of my thigh.
“Silk and I got to know each other at a release party. We started hanging out and found that we had things in common. Troubled pasts, for instance.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Five years or so?” He thinks before he says it, and I find that I’m happy he doesn’t give me a full-on, down-to-the-hour countdown.
He toys with me, sliding himself against my opening. I let out a moan. It’s the strangest thing to be made love to while your boyfriend recounts a past relationship. It’s hard to concentrate when—
“Ahhh.”
He brings me an icepack afterward. It’s wrapped in a hotel wash cloth, and he uses it to soothe my private parts. They still think he’s a lot to take in. Ciro keeps saying that he’s sorry even though he hurls me into pleasures that last and last.
The sun vibrates in the window, trying to press its rays past the shadows of the palm trees. We’re sated, just here, with the heat and scents of each other filling the moment.
“Tell me what happened,” I say. “I know what you just did. You sidetracked me.”
“Happened with what?”
“Silk.”
“Ah.” He doesn’t sound happy. His body scoots down on the bed, far enough to find the soft middle between my ribs and my hip. He kisses me there, letting out a puff of air. “It was the usual thing. Falling in love. Dating. Getting married. We were married for two years, but then our careers took us in different directions.”
He’s talking against my belly button. I see the straight length of his nose, his forehead, a sole lock of hair ducking downward, but I can’t see his eyes.
“Ciro. Love?”
He glances up at my endearment.
“Can you come up here to me?”
Silent, he pulls himself high on the mattress again. The vibe in the room tells me he’d rather not have this conversation. I don’t want to hurt him, but I’m pretty sure it’s good for us that I know.
I grab onto fragments. “You said your careers took you in different direction. Where did Silk’s take her, and where did you go?”
I don’t expect his grieved sigh.
“Fine. I’ll tell you, baby. But only because I don’t want this to happen to us.”
“Okay?”
“Promise it won’t.”
I don’t know what to say to that. He chuckles and shakes his head against my chest. Twisting, he sucks a nipple into his mouth, and my body arches on its own until he lets go with a plop.
“Never mind. Jesus, I’m a wuss. I just— would really like a confirmation on the future. You know?”
I start to laugh, because I know that feeling well. “What happened to you and Silk won’t happen to us,” I say. “Spit it out so I know what to stay clear of.”
He sets his chin against my sternum, and I squirm with the tickles. At first, that spreads a smile on his face, but then, slowly, he grows serious.
“It was great in the beginning. We worked together on the same series and got off work at the same time. We’d have dinner with friends, and then we’d go home, watch TV, and go to bed. Rinse and repeat.” He shrugs.
“But once the series was finished, we had to take the jobs we were offered, and mostly it was roles for different companies and in different films. Sometimes, we’d travel for work but never together. It’s how I learned firsthand that you can’t maintain a relationship if both parties don’t trust each other.
“It took us a year to realize that divorce was the only logical solution.” He wipes the back of his hand over his eyes as if covering his emotions. His lips draw downward for a moment, but then they relax again.
“Did she cheat on you?”
“No.” His response is sure and immediate. “She didn’t cheat on me, and I didn’t cheat on her.”
“Good...”
He’s upset, though, and tries to hide it behind blank features.
“She thought I was cheating on her. Over and over she accused me of it, but I’d never betray her mind, her heart, and what we were together, because I really loved her. Anyway. That was a long time ago.”
“How long ago?”
“Silk and I separated about three years ago. The divorce was finalized six months later.”
“I’m sorry.” I put my arms around him.
He puffs through his nose, an entertained sound. “Is this my girlfriend comforting me over the breakup from a former love?” He steadies my face with his hands and kisses me.
“That sounds odd, doesn’t it?”
“It does. Anyway, I learned a lot from that breakup. And from the other fifty.”
“Fifty?” I half-shout, and that sets him off laughing.
“Take or leave.”
“Jesus, how hard are you to be with? I can’t imagine.” My mouth runs off with me, being brutally honest when I continue, “You’re the perfect fucking boyfriend. What is it— Do you get sick of them and move on or something?”
“Ha, no. The relationship goes sick. They don’t last long. Usually—”
He blows his cheeks up and looks at me from under his bangs. “Savannah. Can we do this later? I’d really like to have at least another week with you before we dig into the deep stuff.”
“Oh, yeah sure,” I say. “I’m out of line.”
“No, you’re not. It’s me. I want you to know me better first. I want us to be stronger. I want to use what I’ve learned from all those breakups and keep you, because of all the girls, I’ve never felt the way I feel about you.”
And. BAM.