But even if it didn’t feel like we were stealing time, in a way we were. There were other things waiting for us in Florence, and then back in New York once we were done. And a few kisses didn’t make a life, much as I might have wanted them to.
When we had finally checked into our pensione in Florence after enjoying a simple cliffside dinner in Manarola and then hiking back to the car, it was nearly midnight. Nina was yawning every few seconds as we walked the stairs to the rooms I’d booked side by side.
“Well, this is you,” I said, handing her one of the keys when we came to a stop.
She looked down at it for a moment, then back up at me. “We’re not staying in the same suite?”
“It’s a smaller place. They didn’t have suites with multiple bedrooms.”
She blinked. “Does it…does that matter?”
I paused. Was she saying what I thought she was saying? Could it really be that easy?
“Well, I know you let me kiss you and all, but I didn’t want to presume that means we’re going to bed together, doll,” I replied easily. “But I’m not going to argue if that’s what you want.”
If I sounded too eager, I really couldn’t help it. Ever since that kiss, innocent as it was, I’d wanted to show her how badly I’d missed her in every other way. Still, I had the sense she was a bit like a deer at the moment. One false move and she’d take off in the opposite direction.
She worried her bottom lip for a moment.
“Hey,” I said, reaching out to take her fingers. “What is it? You can tell me.”
She looked at our hands, connected. “What would you think if…Matthew, do you think you could bear it if we only slept together? For now?”
I knew what she meant. That she couldn’t handle another frenzied, almost violent coupling in the dark of night. At the party, there had been a sense that if we didn’t find our way together there on the rooftop, we might have killed each other instead. We were two champagne bottles, shaken and ready to burst with need. Selfish, only willing to take what we needed without thought for the other.
I hadn’t been able to give her what she needed then. But I was sure I could do it now.
“Of course,” I said.
Her shoulders sank in relief.
“But I’m going to keep the other room for now,” I continued. “In case—in case you need some space from me, all right?”
Nina frowned, and for a moment I thought she might tell me to return the key. Maybe I’d get what I really prayed for in that church, and she would throw her arms around my neck and tell me she loved me again and that I was crazy for thinking she’d ever want to be apart from me.
But instead, she nodded. “Good thinking.”
We went into the room, then awkwardly took turns in the bathroom, waiting for each other to change into pajamas like we were hostel roommates, not people who knew every inch of each other’s bodies intimately. It felt wrong. Stiff.
But it was what she said she wanted.
“Is this all right?” I asked her when I emerged in a pair of boxer briefs but no shirt. Usually I didn’t sleep in anything at all, so I figured this was a compromise. The idea of sleeping fully clothed honestly made my skin crawl.
And yeah, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least trying a little for the hungry expression I saw then. Nina’s gaze devoured down my bare chest, lingering over the muscles of my stomach that I kept up like a carefully tuned machine.
“Um, yes,” she said like she had something stuck in her throat. “I’ll just get changed myself.”
While she got ready for bed, I decided to make us a couple of nightcaps. It was late, but I was a little worried, if I was being perfectly honest, about sharing a bed with her. She didn’t know about my occasional nightmares—or the fact that they had been returning since September. Maybe if we knocked ourselves out a little harder than usual, they wouldn’t come tonight.
I turned the small radio on the nightstand to the first station that had something decently relaxing, then poured a couple of fingers of the grappa I’d purchased in Riomaggiore into the water glasses on the bureau. But when the bathroom door opened, I stopped what I was doing. I couldn’t see anything but her.
Her hair was mussed, her face scrubbed pink and free of makeup. She wore only a thin, white silk nightdress that reached to mid-thigh and curved along her small breasts and delicate waist like a ribbon wrapped around a package. She looked beautiful. Simple. Perfect.
“Dance?”
Nina’s mouth opened slightly in surprise as she looked at my now-extended hand. “I…really?”
Doubt was written clearly across her face, warring with the desire that was undoubtedly written across mine.
“It’s just a dance, doll. No harm, no foul.”
“So you say. But you’re shirtless, and I’m in my underwear.”
Her thin blonde brow arched. There’s my girl, I thought to myself. I couldn’t help it. I loved bringing this side out of her.
She shook her head in that same way Nonna did whenever I was teasing her about serving day-old amaretti. Scamp, she’d call me. And she was right.
Nina knew it too.
But instead of shooing me away, she called my bluff and took my hand. And there was that electric spark, the one that never failed to skip through our fingers when we touched. We had tried and failed to ignore it so many times. But I was done.
Nina approached with the grace of a trained debutante, looking for all the world like she wasn’t in her nightgown and bare feet,
