Mafia Desire (Erotica)

Amy blushed again, but not as red as she had been. I looked down at the tablet. The screen was on a website of a world famous art critic. The article talked about how successful Theron Cain’s new exhibit was and talked, at length, glowingly, about the work of a new artist named Adam Matheson. My jaw fell open and I looked up at Theron who was now grinning ear to ear.

“What?” Asked Amy. I passed her the tablet.

“That’s not the only one, either.” Theron said. “I’ve read nothing but positive reviews all morning.”

“Holy shit.” I replied.

“… Matheson’s work exposes the unspoken visceral truths of the human condition.” Amy read aloud from the article, grinning at me like a madwoman.

I cocked an eyebrow at her.

“What the hell paintings was he looking at?” I asked as Theron burst out laughing.

“Let’s get some food, we can look over reviews later.” Margaret spoke up, amused, but clearly hungry.

“Definitely,” I agreed, having not eaten since before the show last night.

“What time is your flight?” I asked Amy, suddenly remembering that she was supposed to return to the States today.

“In about… six hours,” She said, looking down at her phone to check the time.

“Are you trying to get rid of me already?” She teased.

“Hell, no. I’m just thinking about how long we have to decide how we’re handle everything, logistically speaking..” I replied.

Over lunch, we worked out that Amy would go back to Portland that night after all, in order to get things ready to be able to join me in Greece. When I got back to the island, I’d work on getting things ready for a second person to share the apartment for a while, until we could find something a little bit larger. Then I’d likely fly to Portland to help her get things sorted out and packed.

At one point during the meal, Amy got a phone call. I watched in mild amusement as she excitedly told Courtney that she had, indeed, found me in London. There were a lot of half finished sentences machine gunning back and forth across the phone line, and Theron began snickering. I wasn’t far behind him, earning both of us stern looks from Margaret. Amy was nearly bouncing in the booth when she told Courtney that she was moving to Europe to live with me.

After lunch, I made arrangements to meet back up with the Cains after seeing Amy off at the airport and we parted company so that Amy I spend time together before she had to leave.

“When did you get to London?” I asked, taking in the amount of clothes she had spread across the bed in the hotel room. Most of them had been packed already, and for reasons unfathomable to me, she had unpacked just to return them to her bags a few minutes later. If Theron was right and there were a lot more shows on the horizon, I suspected I’d see a scene like this play out many times in the future.

“Friday afternoon. Why?” She asked as she started stacking the clothes in her suitcase.

“Just noticing that you still pack three times as many clothes as you need.”

“Oh shut up.”

I picked up a heavily creased piece of paper, that had fallen from her luggage. It had been folded and refolded so many times that it practically fell open in my hand. It was a printed page from the gallery’s website promoting our exhibit. It mentioned Theron most prominently, but stated that the exhibit would also feature “new works by American abstract artist Adam Matheson.” My name had been circled on the page with a pen multiple times and had several question marks drawn next to it. Little feminine looking hearts were doodled along the edge of the page as well as what I thought looked like a couple of flight numbers.

“Snoop.” Amy said, looking up from her packing.

“Stalker.”

“Gonna get a restraining order?” She asked playfully. Her hair sliding forward across her face as she packed.

“I don’t think I have to worry too much. You’re not very good at it.” I smirked.

“Well, I didn’t have much to work with, jackass.”

“I haven’t been called that in a long time.” I chuckled. She laughed too, and we fell into a comfortable silence for a few minutes while she finished packing up the last of her stuff. It was so great hearing her laugh. Being called a jackass gave me a warm familiar feeling in my heart. Most of my life, that had been a term meant to annoy me. In some ways, it still was. But it’s funny the meaning had changed over the years. And how badly I now realized I had missed the moniker.

“Do you still talk to our parents?” I asked.

“I keep in touch with mom. It’s tense sometimes. She knows I was still looking for you. She keeps holding out hope that I’ll drop it. Dad, not so much. It’s never been the same. I tried to not be angry with him. I mean, I know we shocked the hell out of them both, but he reacted so badly. What he did to you.” She shuddered at the memory. I was never that horrified by his actions against me. I had worried more about her than myself throughout that whole event. I realized now just how hard it had to have been for her to witness. And it seemed to have burned in her memory. “We just don’t have much to say to each other, anymore. At least not much that won’t lead to a screaming match. He knows I resent him. And I don’t think he’s in too big of a hurry to try to change my mind about it.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know that it would ever have gone any differently. I always knew that our relationship would cost us. No matter how many ways I thought of to try to tell them about us, I always felt like the end result was the same. They just couldn’t accept it. And I can’t even really fault them for that. It’s got to be a hard thing to come to terms with. And it’s not like we exactly eased them into it, either.”

Amy came over and sat in my lap, wrapping her arms around me in a big hug. She smelled wonderful.

“It was worth it though, right?” She asked.

“Absolutely worth it.” I replied, returning her hug.

“Are you going to tell them you found me?” I asked. My fingers ran through her hair affectionately. Her eyes closed and she tilted her head into my hand.

“I’ll need to tell mom sooner or later.” She said with a sigh.

“I can’t just leave the country without a word. Unlike some people.” Amy emphasized the word ‘some’ while giving me a look of fake irritation.

“That should be an interesting conversation. I don’t envy you.” I tactfully elected to ignore the second part of her comment.

“You’re not going to disappear again while I’m in Portland, right?” She smiled while she asked, but I could see the glint of worry in her eyes. “I know it’s a silly thing to worry about. I just.. want to hear you say it, I guess.”

“I’ll never disappear on you again, sweetheart. I promise.”

“You’d better not. I’ll stalk you again just to kick your ass.” She reached for her phone and checked the time.

“How much longer before we need to get you to the airport?”

“I really need to head over there in about two hours.”Content from NôvelDr(a)ma.Org.

My heart sank a bit at the thought of her going away again, even if it was only for a couple of weeks. Hopefully, I’d be able to visit her in Portland sooner than that.

“That sucks.”

“I was just thinking the same thing. You think two hours is long enough for sex, a shower, and a cab ride to Heathrow?” She grinned at me and ground herself in my lap suggestively.

“We can certainly give it a good try.”

* * *

It was hard to let her get on the plane. I got the feeling that it was just as hard for her to leave me behind. We exchanged our phone numbers and she made sure that she got Theron and Margaret’s as well. I held her in my arms at the boarding gate until the flight attendant finally told her to get on the plane or miss the flight.

I stayed at the airport until I saw the plane take off, pondering the turn of events that had occurred in the last 48 hours. We had been reunited for less than two days. And then she was gone again, even if it wasn’t for very long. I resisted an urge to walk to the ticket counter right that moment and book the next flight back to the States. I felt a familiar tightness in my chest that I hadn’t experienced in a couple of years. I sat on a bench with my hands on my knees, staring resolutely at the ground. Taking a few deep breaths, I managed to calm myself down. Finally, I caught a cab back to my hotel and took a long nap.

That night, I met up with Theron and Margaret for dinner. They could barely stop smiling at me the entire time and made me self conscious. Margaret, in particular, was beside herself with excitement.

“It’s going to be a long couple of weeks.” I mused.

“I have a feeling it’s going to go by faster than you think.” Theron replied between bites of steak.

“I hope so. I just need to get a new bed and clean up the apartment a bit. There isn’t a lot of prep work to be done, really.” I thought out loud as I stabbed a piece of potato with my fork and stared at it absently.

“Thanks for being okay with her moving into the apartment with me. It really means a lot.” I added, looking up at Theron.

“Absolutely. We wouldn’t have it any other way.” Margaret spoke up as Theron nodded.

“Did you get a chance to look over any other reviews yet?” Theron asked, knowing full well that I hadn’t.

When I shook my head, he wiped his hands off on his napkin and pulled his tablet computer out again. He opened a website and passed it over to me.

“Matheson is an essential and uniquely American voice responding to the current postmodern condition.” I read aloud, making a sour face at the screen.

“Seriously, where do they get this stuff? What the hell does that even mean? Do these guys just keep a thesaurus on the back of their toilet and make up statements about the stuff they look at? Look at this bullshit.” I motioned to one of the paintings photographed in the article and read from the caption beneath it. “… a raw, visceral look into a fractured mind.’ Seriously? It’s an aborted attempt to paint a goddamned nautilus shell that I added a bunch of godforsaken sponge textures over!”