Pete & Daisy

4: Lying to Pietro

"I think that's the last of it," said Daisy to Pete, pushing her hair off her sweaty forehead and surveying the mess that surrounded them.

They had just finished carrying a coffee table up two flights of stairs, and set it down in the middle of the room. The entire apartment was a jumble of their possessions, a maze consisting of furniture, books, appliances, and boxes of who knew what.

Pete looked at her, pushed her into a chair, and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. He held it out to her as she registered surprise. He waved it in her face insistently when she made no move to take it.

"You're flushed, you should relax for a moment," he said. "You do remember that you're pregnant, right? You're carrying a baby?"

Daisy took the glass from him and drained it in one go. She placed the glass on the table and looked at him. "Thank you," she said.

He merely looked at her and opened a box of books. He took some out and began placing them on the shelves, bending and stretching at his task. He had a nice back, broad shoulders and muscles that could be seen clearly under his light blue T-shirt.

Daisy watched for a minute, fascinated.

"Like what you see?" he asked without turning around.

She jumped at the sound of his voice. "Well, you're the only thing in the room that's moving, you know?" she said by way of explanation.

He turned around to look at her, books in either hand, a small grin on his face. "Of course, what was I thinking?" he asked rhetorically.

Daisy huffed out a breath and headed off to the bathroom to unpack in there. She'd just spent the last three hours facing him over various boxes and pieces of furniture as he exerted himself, huffing and puffing and looking generally hot. He also exuded a fragrance, some aftershave she wasn't familiar with that was very distracting. She needed to get away from him for a little while.

She put various unguents and supplies away in the cupboard, opening interesting looking containers, sniffing and touching curiously. She spritzed a small green bottle and discovered the source of his intoxicating smell: It was called Verdon, and it was made by L'Occitane. She knew they made very high-end face and beauty products, but she hadn't realized they made fragrances as well. She sniffed the air appreciatively.

"Hey, Pietro?" she called as she left the bathroom, waving her hand to try to dissipate the smells in the bathroom and cover up the fact that she'd been messing with his stuff. "Um, about the bedroom--"

"You know, I think that our lives are going to be complicated enough outside this apartment, trying to keep up the pretense of marriage," Pietro said from his perch on the stepladder in their tiny kitchen. "I think that here, within these walls, we should try to keep things simple, hm?" He shook his hair out of his eyes. "So how about if you call me Pete, like you told your granny? And I'll call you Daisy?"

She considered his words as she put some silverware in the designated drawer. "Really? I was worried that you'd find 'Pete' offensive; I was going to apologize for that--"

He smiled at her. "No, on the contrary, I like it," he said enthusiastically. "Pete just sounds like a good guy, you know? Like you could ask Pete to go to the library with you if you didn't want to go alone. Or Pete would be the first to volunteer to chop vegetables for dinner."

She stared at him. "Chop vegetables? Really?" She couldn't suppress a laugh.

He nodded, continuing to lay shelf paper on the top shelf.

"Okay then, we'll be Pete and Daisy," she said, nodding herself. She was secretly tickled by the nickname, if the truth be told. Marguerite had always felt unwieldy to her, way too fancy, too much at odds with her five freckles, her crazy red hair, too classy for her frat-boy appealing body. Daisy, though, Daisy she could work with.

"So anyway, Pete," she said, smiling a little to cover her embarrassment. "We haven't really talked about the bedroom." And because of her coloring, her blush was immediately apparent. She crossed her arms under her breasts, a gesture which wasn't lost on him.

"Yes? What about the bedroom?" he asked her innocently.

"Well, this isn't the apartment I thought we were going to get, to be honest, and there's only the one bedroom..." she trailed off uncertainly, her color getting even darker.

He finally took pity and turned to face her. "Look. We're both adults here, hm?" He looked carefully at her. "The couch we just brought up here cost fifty dollars at the second-hand store and has to be at least thirty years old. I don't want to sleep on it, and I don't think you're going to want to sleep on it, either."

She shook her head.

"So the bed is nice and big, we can each have our own blankets, I think we can manage, don't you?" He watched her for her reaction. "I give you my word this is not going to be a problem for me. At all. Is this going to be a problem for you?"

She looked at him. "Really? At all?" She recovered from the unintentional meaning of his words quickly. "No, it won't be a problem for me, either," she said firmly. "We can share the bed."