“Wait!” he exclaimed, and I froze in mid-reach. He got on his hands and knees and crawled around the crate to me, and then he kissed me, deeply, passionately, before sitting down beside me and handing me a piece of bread. He got one for himself, too.
It took me a minute to regain the power of speech, my heart pounding and electricity shooting through my body. I asked, once I’d calmed down a little, “To what do I owe that moment of passion?”
He smiled at me cheerfully and said, holding up his slice of bread, “We’re both about to end up with truly offensive garlic breath. I have a theory that since we’re both eating the same thing, it’ll cancel itself out. But just in case I’m wrong, I wanted to do that before it became totally disagreeable to kiss me.”
“Good thought.”
As we ate our meal, Dante entertained me with tales of his bimonthly poker game. It included many prominent San Francisco business leaders, almost all of which, apparently, had to be watched like hawks because they were total cheaters. It was in that poker game that he’d won the bar from Bud Flannigan a few months back, and the same game in which Jamie’s husband had gone on to win it from Dante.
When all the food was gone and Dante had polished off most of the bottle of wine, he pushed me onto my back on the floor and kissed me as he lay partially on top of me. A tremor of desire went through me even as part of my brain started to gear up in panic, just in case it turned out that we’d reached the wild monkey sex portion of the evening.
He said, “I think my theory about the garlic cancelling itself out because we both ate it has proven to be sound. What do you think?”
“I think you’re right.” I carefully unwound myself from his arms and got to my feet, stalling for time. “I’m going to get this cleaned up. And then I quickly want to check those sacks we brought back from my parents’ house. I want to make sure there aren’t a few bags of actual garbage mixed in that might start attracting mice,” I said with a little shudder (because mice are pretty much the grossest thing in the world). I grabbed the containers from our dinner and carried them through to the kitchen.
The pasta had come in heavy plastic containers, so I decided to wash them and keep them as dishes. Dante came into the room carrying some of the wrappers from our meal and deposited them in the trash. He raised an eyebrow when he saw me washing the containers, then opened a cupboard and took a peek inside. It was completely empty. “Ah,” he said, answering his own unspoken question about what I was doing.
It took only a couple minutes to tidy up after dinner, and then I dried my hands on my jeans and went and took a look in a couple of the big black garbage bags. The first two contained most of my wardrobe. When I opened the third bag, I went very still.
Dante noticed this immediately and crossed the room to me, gently touching my arm. “You ok, Charlie?”
“Yeah,” I answered automatically.
“What’s in that bag?”
It took me a minute to answer, and when I did I said softly, “My childhood.”
Dante leaned over and tugged the bag open. Inside were all the framed photos of me as a child from my parents’ house, and all the photo albums from when I was growing up. And there were stacks of report cards and school projects and drawings, mementos and keepsakes. I pulled a bent and wrinkled drawing out of the bag. It was one I’d done at about the age of six or seven, a crayon sketch of the house I’d grown up in, the house I’d broken into just tonight, bright flowers in the front yard and a cheerful yellow sun overhead. “They’ve completely gotten rid of me,” I whispered.
I’d been trying so hard to be brave about all of this. To just deal with it. I kept trying to tell myself to be mad, not hurt, because somehow that seemed like a better response to what my parents had done to me. But I was hurt. More than that. I was devastated.
A few tears rolled down my cheeks, and I brushed them away with the back of my hand. Dante put an arm around my waist and handed me yet another clean, white, monogrammed handkerchief. I burst out laughing at that, but it sounded slightly hysterical. And in the next moment, I was doubled over and sobbing.
I dropped to my knees, wrapping myself into a little ball as wretched sobs shook my body. Dante wordlessly knelt beside me and wrapped his arms around me and rested his head on my back, holding me securely.