“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Ten. Would that be considered big?” she asks, her eyes sliding down to my waist.
“Cristo,” I grunt. “What the hell’s wrong with you, cara?” I add, the Italian word for ‘dear’ slipping from my lips.
“I just want to make sure I got the proportions of my drawing right,” she says with an oversized, childish frown as her hand drops from her mouth and she yanks open her sketchbook.
And I immediately drop my hand from her wrist, my entire body feeling boneless at the sight in front of me.
2
Gabriella
Gio’s entire body freezes before he growls something under his breath, then finally something that passes for words slips from his lips. “What the…”
“It’s you,” I quickly respond, knowing he knows exactly who it is. I’ve drawn him as almost a cartoonish superhero, with oversized muscles despite the fact that his muscles are already oversized. He’s leaning forward, propping up the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The picture in and of itself is good, nothing you wouldn’t get from one of those people who sit outside on a summer day and sketches you for ten bucks. Where I deviated is when it comes to one tiny thing, or in Gio’s case, not tiny at all.
“Did I get the dimension right?” I ask, flicking the eraser of my pencil toward the cock in the drawing. “I guessed about ten inches. Am I close?”
With dad napping in the other room and Gio’s eyes looking me up and down like he was just released from an Italian prison, I know I’m playing with fire. And I hope to get burned.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks.
“Too much time on my hands and no one to put my hands on?”
“What?” he asks, half of his face scrunching together.
“Undersexed and over-sexualized.”
I’ve only got one more week under this roof and I’m not pulling any punches. I’ve seen pictures of Gio and my dad for years, all throughout my time growing up. The man has been my fantasy since before I knew what fantasies were.
“Has your dad seen this?” he asks, almost letting the word Daddy slip from his lips. I want him to say it, I need him to say it. The way he called me bambi already set me off, and it’s not because it’s my favorite Disney movie of all time. I know what bambi means in Italian, and from the look
in his eyes when he said it it’s more than just a term of endearment he’d throw around to anyone.
“Not yet,” I slyly reply.
“Grazie a dio.”
“Should we show him?”
“No! Madonna e dio, no!”
“You don’t like it?” I tease, trying my hardest to get him to say something positive about it, about my work, and hopefully continue down that path and eventually say something positive about me. All I need is for him to confess his feelings and I’ll be all over him like a wet dishrag.
I don’t have time to waste, and need to turn up the heat on this sauce I’m trying to get cooking between us so he devours me like he did that lasagne I slaved over, prepared to exact Italian specs.
I’m completely infatuated with this man and the life he lives. He puts off this ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude, but underneath it all I know he does…and it’s obvious he does from what’s trying to break free from underneath his clothes.
The man is six foot five inches of pure scariness, but that scariness leads to a kind of obsession I want to feel directed my way. This isn’t the kind of guy you bump into every day, especially in the suburbs. As a matter of fact, I’ve never met anyone like him, and I only met him a few hours ago.
The way he commands any room he’s in, despite this being our house, excites me. The way my dad defers to him looks up to him both physically, and the way he speaks with him turns me on. Gio has more masculinity in his little finger than guys my age do in their entire bodies.
I clench my fists and wipe my sweaty palms on the sides of my body.
“It’s…original,” he finally offers up.