"I have a surprise," I tell Dante as we're walking into his room on Sunday.
"Alright," He looks amused and immediately eager to see what my surprise is.
"Well, I remember that you said that if I got a boner tattoo, you'd get the bunny tattoo," I begin. "And I really want to see that cute little bunny on your arm forever."
"You did not," Dante says with a growing grin on his face when he realizes where this is going. I make sure that his door is shut so that we're in his room just the two of us. My sides still burn from the tattoos that I'd gotten yesterday. On my left, I got two thorns on my rose which were small and not a big deal but I got a completely new tattoo on my other side, to the side of my boob.
"Well, I found a loophole," I explain to him. I sit my bag on the chair in the corner of the room and I wait until I'm sure that he's watching me before I start taking my shirt off. I don't do it to be sexy but it's the only way to show him my new tattoo. It's an outline of a bone, like the kind a dog chews on, and on the inside, there is a long R.
"That's not a loophole, that's cheating. It doesn't count," He shakes his head at me with a small laugh as he looks at the tattoo that is still red. "Going by your logic, all I have to do is get a bun and then a y at the end."
"No, this isn't vulgar and a bunny isn't vulgar. I did the best that I could, you owe me one bunny," I demand hopefully. I know that I kind of cheated but I can't get a penis tattooed on my skin. I especially wouldn't be able to explain that to a tattoo artist. Just getting this 'bone-r' tattoo was awkward. And I know that it was a stretch that he'd go for it, I still don't expect him to, really, but I figure that even if he doesn't get his bunny, I'll have my boner and if I get out of this thing alive, I'll have something to remember him by.
It sits right next to my Russian tattoo that is hidden under my tattoo makeup, ironically enough.
"That wasn't the deal," Dante shakes his head at me.
"I got the boner."
"No, you got a bone with an R inside," He debates.
"It's a pun," I defend as I put my shirt back on because I just got here so we're not going to be shirtless for a while, it's time for us to just be together. "I'll talk you into it eventually."
"I doubt it," He responds.
"I brought something else for you too," I change the subject, taking a little blue book out of the bag that I'd brought with me. I've assumed that I'm spending the night tonight so I brought clothes to wear to work tomorrow which means that my bag is stuffed to the brim with everything that I need for an overnight stay.
"What's this?" He wonders, looking over the book curiously.
"Well, you like to read," I remind him even though he obviously knows that about himself. "And this is my favorite book. Now, it's no Shakespeare or Hemingway because the last time that I had a favorite book was when I was little. So it's a kids' book."
"The Little Prince," He reads the title.
"My mom used to read it to me all of the time when I was young," I explain to him. "It's why I have the rose on my side. Anyway, I had more than one copy of it so I figured that you could have one. I don't think that you'll actually read it but maybe you'll like it. It's really good."
"Do you have your sketchpad?" He wonders.
I frown in confusion at him, not understanding where that came from. "Yeah. Why?"
"You can read it to me, and I'll draw you," Dante decides. "That'll be interesting."
"Okay," I say with a small laugh, thinking about how interesting it would be to see how well he can draw and I also want to know if he likes this story because it really is my favorite. Granted, I haven't read a real book since I was in my early teens so I don't have much to base it off of but this book still does mean a lot to me because it reminds me of my mother.
I get out my sketchpad and I hand it to him as we sit on his bed like we had those few days ago when I had drawn him and he had read to me his favorite poems.
I take The Little Prince and we situate ourselves so that I can read and he can draw. I then clear my throat and I start reading, "Once when I was six I saw a magnificent picture in a book about the jungle, called True Stories. It showed a boa constrictor swallowing a wild beast."
We stay like that for hours, until I am done reading him my favorite book and he has finished his drawing of me laying on his bed. It's not the best drawing but I can definitely tell that it's a person with hair and boobs, holding a book. I like it.
"We should get dinner," Dante suggests as he puts the small children's book on his bookshelf. It looks comical, the bright blue spine sticking out against all of the thick books in dark, mature colors.
"I'm okay with whatever you're in the mood for," I decide, not feeling particularly like eating any specific food.
He doesn't tell me what he decides on, he just sends somebody a text and then we're lying down on his bed together, the sketchpad and book put away now, and we're not even kissing or getting steamy at all, we're just lying under his comforter and I listen to him tell me about his day yesterday.
As I was sneaking into his lake house, he was sitting in meetings for his father and then as I was getting my tattoos, he was buying some new suits. It's not an incredibly exciting day but I soak it all in, I listen to every word. I just keep thinking that I don't know how many of his words I'll be able to listen to, so I want to listen to as many as I can to remember him as vividly as possible.
I know that I've been trying to tell myself that it's possible that he will come with me if I run but I eventually have to face facts—that's just not going to happen. I can't really believe that I thought that it ever could. Like I could just tell him who I am and that he could ever get over that. Not just about who I am but also about how much I have lied to him since the day we met.
But then there's still that little part of me that thinks that maybe he can understand. He follows his father just as blindly as I follow mine, so maybe he'll understand that I had to do it because it is what was ordered of me. He could even offer to help me find out what happened to my mother.
"What are you thinking about?" Dante asks me when he can tell that my mind had drifted off.
"Nothing," I answer automatically but then I add, "Just thinking about how much I like you, and how much I don't want to ruin it."
"What do you mean?" He persists.
"Just that I don't want to lose you is all," I try to explain. "And I always have this dread that you'll realize some day that you just absolutely hate me."
"Why would I do that?"
"What if..." I trail off before I sit up and look at him so that I can see his eyes. And then I continue, "I told you that I was Russian?"
He frowns at me and I stop breathing, just to wait for his reaction with complete stillness. After he frowns, his eyes go wide and his nostrils flare a little bit. I can tell that his body tensed up just at the mention of Russia and after he took a moment for his body to react in a very defensive way, his lips finally part and he starts to talk. "What?"
Well, he sure didn't like that at all.
"They fought each other in World War II," I say to him. "Italy and Russia. And you seem to be pretty into your Italian heritage, you obviously aren't a big fan of Russians."
His body relaxes again, "Oh. Well Italy was on the wrong side of that war so I don't think that we, as Italians, still have a grudge over Russia specifically for that war."
"Then why'd you get so wound up there for a second?" I question him but I laugh so that he thinks that I'm just kidding. "Do you only hate Russians or is it all of the Allies?"
"I'm not a huge fan of Canada," Dante informs me. I lie back down on his chest and I think that I can still feel his heartbeat beating at a faster pace after I had said 'Russian'. I guess that answers my question about how he might react to me telling him who I am. He nearly had a heart attack when I suggested that I could be Russian. What would he do if I told him that I am the heart of the Russians that he hates?
"I've never been to Canada," I tell him. "But I do love maple syrup."
"Okay, that's disgusting," He says jokingly. "We're over."
"I'm serious," I say but I laugh anyway. "Is there anything that I could do that would make you hate me?"
"If you want to leave, you can just leave, you don't have to play games," Dante assures me.
"That's not why I'm asking and you know it," I look up at his ceiling and I feel his heartbeat on the back of my head, almost soothing me a little bit. "I just want to know if there is anything."
He doesn't answer right away and I would eat off my own arm just to know what he's thinking right now but eventually, he just answers with, "No. There's nothing. If either one of us does something to fuck this up, I'm sure that it'll be me. So you shouldn't worry so much."
It's incredibly ironic how wrong he is.
I drop the subject by starting up with the tattoo thing again, trying to convince him that he needs to get a bunny rabbit tattooed onto the little space that is free on his sleeve. He doesn't seem to be budging on the topic though, when there's a knock on the door and then a man is entering the room with a cart of food, which is how our food was delivered when we had Chinese food too. It's very fancy, I don't even eat like this at my home. I have somebody else cook it for me but I at least go down to the dining room to get it myself.
"Smells good," I say as Dante gets up from the bed to thank the man who brought us this food and once the man is gone, he rolls the cart to the bed.
"It's chicken marsala," He tells me when he can tell that I'm not sure what it is. I don't think that I've ever had chicken marsala but I have heard of it before.
As we're cutting up our separate pieces of chicken, I tell him, "There's nothing that you can do to make me hate you. If you want away from me, you're just going to have to leave. There's nothing."
"I'm sure that I could think of something," Dante responds dryly.
"Alright. You could sleep with somebody else," I decide. "I guess I wouldn't appreciate that very much but other than that, I think that I'm pretty much in love with you."
"We don't have to talk about this, it's really kind of depressing," He says abruptly, his voice even gets a little louder.
"Okay," I take a bite of the chicken. "What do you have planned for tomorrow?"
And so our dinner conversation isn't that exciting, just talking about our work at the office tomorrow. We plan together that we can stay in bed late and get to work late and then just stay later to make up the hours just so that we have some extra time to cuddle in the morning.
It sounds like a good plan.
It's a good night that we have together. We mostly just talk, he shows me the game room that they have in the house and we play some old arcade games for a little while (and I win most of them) before I start feeling sleepy and so we return to his room down the hall.
There's a normalcy to the night we share that I've never known. Getting ready for bed together, talking about how our days went yesterday and how they're going to go tomorrow. It's incredibly calm and like I just said, normal. It makes me feel like I could wake up every morning and hear Dante tell me about his day and his plans for the next. I could spend my entire life being normal with Dante.
"Tell me that you love me," I demand of him that night as we're lying together in his bed. He looks at me quizzically, the lamp beside his bed illuminating the space around us in a dull light. I start to explain, "I want to hear you say it. I know that you said that you aren't going to say it because you don't know what love means but I think that you do love me. So just trust me, and say it."
He looks up at the ceiling and then says, "You're needy," But I know that he's joking.
I don't say anything after that. Maybe I am being needy but this is my one and only chance to ever be needy and so I'm going to take it, and I'm going to need him.
It takes him a few minutes but eventually, he leans closer to me and kisses my cheek before whispering, as if he's afraid that anybody else in the world can hear him if he says it any louder, "I love you."
It's dark and he isn't looking at me, he can't see my smile as I easily respond with, "I know."