Trying Not To Love You - Amabile Giusti Page 0,101

out early?’ I ask her in turn.

She frowns and assumes that pugnacious expression that I know all too well, that frown like she’s about to shoot someone.

‘I asked you a question first, mi amor,’ she says, with those splendid killer eyes on my face. ‘Did you miss me?’

‘I did miss you,’ I reply, but as soon I do so, I realise this is the first time I’ve ever lied to her. To tell the truth, in the last few weeks I have done nothing but think of someone else, but seeing her now and suddenly remembering everything that unites us, I realise that this is my woman, and her alone. We have a hundred universes in common. She’s my salvation, the cure for the evil that devastated me. The cure for Penny. ‘I am you and you are me,’ I add, stroking her side. We used to say it all the time – it was our special way of saying ‘I love you’. I say it and I think I’m free, that for me there is only Francisca, here and now, and that at last I am sure.

Francisca smiles and gets to her feet. She moves around the room naked – supple, muscular, solid, exciting. She takes one of my cigarettes from the pack on the table, brings it to her lips, lights it and takes a puff.

‘You’re a sight, mi amor,’ she says finally, looking at me. ‘Yes, they let me out early, so I decided to surprise you, and luckily you didn’t surprise me back. I thought I’d find that little chica here in your underwear.’

I laugh, and as I laugh, I seem to be struggling, as if my cheek muscles aren’t cooperating.

‘Did you fuck her?’ she asks, watching me carefully, her cigarette between two fingers, blowing smoke from the corner of her mouth.

Then I take a cigarette from the same pack and light it by touching the tip to hers. I sit on the edge of the bed and hear myself say, ‘I just kept my cock warm for you, but why don’t you stop the interrogation now? I feel like I’m back in prison.’

Francisca’s tickled and just starting to laugh when there’s a knock at the door.

I don’t have time to think as she throws on my T-shirt and opens the door with almost-violent urgency.

Behind the door is Penny with a radiant smile on her lips, a smile that immediately dies. She looks at Francisca, looks at me, then at Francisca again. She understands in three seconds that everything is finished. Assuming there was anything to finish, of course. She stutters then leaves, apologising.

And as she goes, I hear my mind scream, Penny! I clench my fist, fight the instinctive urge to chase after her, to stop her on the stairs. It wouldn’t make sense. I don’t owe her any explanation. My woman is Francisca, this long-legged warrior, not the small fragile thing that just left. We were just having fun – it was quite clear from the beginning. I owe her nothing, let alone explanations. I will never see her again. That game is over forever.

25

She stayed where she was, leaning against the front door, curled into herself, for what seemed like forever. It seemed to her that for this whole time she had been unable to think of anything – and maybe she hadn’t even breathed. Her mind was obscured by pain and panic. It was over, all over. She would never see him again, never kiss him again, never touch him again. Marcus and Francisca would be leaving very soon. They were a perfect couple. A damn perfect couple.

And Penny was a real idiot. Only an idiot could have believed – albeit for a handful of dazzling hours – that a man like Marcus could be something more to her than a fling. What had fooled her? The secret torments of Edward Rochester? What a complete idiot she was.

After that infinite time, during which every little creak made her jump because she secretly harboured the hope that Marcus would come downstairs and tell her he loved her, loved her, loved her, in spite of Francisca, against Francisca, against the entire fucking world – she got up and shut herself in the bathroom.

She stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, then dried herself with slow, mechanical movements, and finally slipped into her grandma’s bed. She didn’t want to stay in her own room – there were too many memories imprisoned between those