Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [90]
His lips find mine, so tenderly that I am compelled to say something. But I don’t want to talk. I want to kiss this man right off this mountain. For the first time in years, I am in my body. I feel my bones, my heartbeat, and my breath. My lips burn into his mouth like hot honey. I am beyond what I am. I am so far from what I know, I don’t even have a name. The air cuts through me as though I’m a vapor. I feel his body begin to move against mine. We roll into the bluebells. I want to let him in. The sun blinds me. Pete covers my eyes and kisses me again. He unbuttons my jacket and slides his arms around my waist. I must have a temperature of two hundred degrees—I am throwing heat like a furnace. I pull away from him to breathe and look up over the ridge. The goats and their herder are gone. There are no witnesses! We are alone. I can do what I feel, be what I am, have something just for me! Haven’t I earned this? Isn’t life supposed to be about pleasure and connection and wild kisses? What else is there? To be alive—but how? Isn’t my husband, right this second, probably having sex with a woman who carries a clipboard and wears too much Charlie cologne? Kiss this man, I cheer myself on. This man understands you.
“Pete. Stop.” I say it so quietly he stops.
“Why?”
“I can’t. That’s the wrong word. I can do this. But I won’t do this.”
“Ave.”
“No. I won’t. I want to. But I won’t. People can’t just do things for selfish reasons. It has to matter.”
“Who are you talking about? People? Do you mean you?”
I shake my head. Somewhere I’ve heard this tone and these words before. Jack MacChesney made the same observation. When someone gets too close, I always talk in generalities and speak on behalf of a large group, in this instance a worldwide community of women who are tempted to have sex with men outside of their marriages. I’m talking about Those Women—I do not say “I.”
“Yes, I mean me. You make me feel good. But this is wrong.”
I button my jacket and tighten the laces on my boots, which loosened when I was rolling around.
“It isn’t wrong. We’re not wrong,” he says quietly.
“No, we’re not. We could be absolutely right for each other. But I have a husband.”
He stands and brushes his hair back with his fingers, as he always does. He walks several steps down the path toward the ridge. I look at him, tall, gleaming in the sun, backlit like an MGM-musical moment—silent, looking at me, waiting for the music to begin.
“Pete?” I kick the bluebells squashed by our kiss-tuck-and-roll back into their standing position with the toe of my boot. “I want to, but I’m not in love with you. I’m sorry. Once there was a man who had one rule. He’d make love only when he was in love.”
“That guy was a saint.”
“No, he’s no saint. He’s my husband.” If only I could tell Pete the truth: Jack Mac has not been acting like my husband, and he’s probably been breaking his own rule all summer.
——
I want to savor my last night in Schilpario, so I go to bed early. After rolling around Heidi’s pasture above Schilpario with the Marble Man from New Jersey, I think it’s best if I take some time to be alone. When I told Pete good-bye last night, Etta and Chiara were with me. They seemed more upset than I did. Pete just seemed resigned to the whole thing. I need my solitude and my rest. I am going home to battle. And I have a hunch that I am going to lose.
I turn over onto my side and try not to remember Pete’s kisses. When I lie on my back, I can feel him on top of me. It’s as though he is right here in this bed. Yes, his kisses were real. And real kisses are dangerous. I could go find him and ask for more. Thank God he lives far away!
Maybe I like the idea of that; maybe I like the idea that Pete will be in New Jersey pining for me. I could have made love to him and evened the score with Jack MacChesney. But