A month and a week without sex. That was totally why I was starting to find David attractive. I mean. I’m lying. I always found him attractive, but in the way you can appreciate someone’s beauty without any real interest. But now…in that moment, in the pool with the fucking little black bathing suit (it was short and gave him a scandalous ass), David was turning me into a little slut.
Compared to Filippo, David was tiny. Filippo was six foot four; he had a wide back, big strong arms, basically a ridiculously impressive dude. I had said it many times…going out to dinner with Filippo was like having dinner with a movie star: he got all the attention.
David, on the other hand, how tall was he? Five foot nine at most. And he was skinny. His shoulders were toned, and his arms were sinewy, definitely the result of hauling cases of bottles and heavy flowerpots, but he was skinny. Not scrawny, but…
But he did have a pert ass that, damn, made him look like a snack. And his face. He had a nice face: brown eyes that shone with their own light, a soft mouth, a cute nose…
“Are you listening to me?” I heard him shout.
Gotcha.
“What?”
“Earth to Margot?” he teased. “I was saying I have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise? What kind?”
Stop thinking with what’s throbbing right now, please, Margot.
“A surprise. But it’s for later. I bet you’re gonna scream and everything!”
Margot. Stop thinking with your clamshell.
“You’re going to burn.” I changed the subject.
“You are too.”
“I put on sunscreen.”
Don’t ask me to put sunscreen on you, please.
“I did too.” He pointed to his shoulders. “Here.” Then to his nose and cheekbones. “And here.”
“You know that’s not enough?”
“It’s enough if you’re going to take a nap.” He shot me a saintly smile.
What did I do to deserve all this temptation? Fuck.
“You already took a nap on the boat!”
“But we’re on vacation, remember?”
He swam over to me with a teasing expression on his face, and I yanked my legs out of the water before he could tug on them and pull me back into the water. My mistake. I left room for him to hoist himself up where my legs had been and climb out.
Shit.
“Let’s go?”
And why was David suddenly taking it as a given that we would take a nap together?
The plates with our leftovers were still on the table on the terrace, next to the pool. We went into our respective bedrooms to get changed. I stayed there, with the door closed, sitting, hoping David would get into his bed and fall asleep. I mean, it’s not like anything would happen just from lying on the bed to take a nap or…chat. We had already done that. In his room in Athens, we had talked for a long time every night before we went to sleep, and we had even touched on sexual topics, but…
But back when we did that, I wasn’t feeling the call of the jungle, that was obvious.
I had to focus. It was all because of Filippo’s message and that “I miss your lips,” which could simply mean “I want you to kiss me” or “I want to see them wrapped around my cock again.” I liked his cock. I mean, he was my fiancé. I was going to marry him…makes sense I liked it, right? He was an elegant Italian with the body of a fucking Viking. Of course he got me wet, and…I wondered how big David’s cock was. He didn’t have small dick energy at all. Maybe a little thin. I didn’t like skinny dicks…they were like…puff. No. He said once he was happy with his size, so…it wouldn’t be outrageously huge, like Filippo’s (fucking perfect fairy-tale prince), but it was still a good sausage. Girthy. Erect. A show-off…the kind that turned into a chorizo, a grower, not a shower. The kind that got really hard in your mouth…
“Margot…” David whispered, opening the door.
“What, you can’t sleep alone?” I snapped, a bundle of nerves.
“Hey!” he complained, surprised. “What’s up with you, you loon?”
I leaned back and whimpered. Please…I didn’t know what it was like to be horny without having Filippo on hand. Well, I did, before Filippo, but I didn’t remember anymore.
“Hey…” David lay down beside me, looking at me. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“No, not nothing. Something’s up.”
I turned my head and looked at him. How could I ever explain this to him? “I’m a little worried,” I confessed.
“About Filippo?”
The last time we fucked had been a quickie in the kitchen, I remembered. It wasn’t bad, but it wouldn’t have won any medals. I remember I had said so to him, giggling. We had been in a hurry because Filippo was going on a work trip to Barcelona and his train was leaving in an hour.
“Yes.” I nodded. Being horny because you hadn’t gotten laid in a month and a week counted as being worried about your partner, right? That wasn’t a lie.
“What’s going on? Tell me.”
I took a minute to organize my thoughts. I didn’t know what to tell him without mentioning the fact that I had been mooning around for quite a while. I didn’t think it was a consequence of being with him, more like being all riled up with him next to me forced me to find him attractive suddenly.
“Do you think he’s sleeping with other girls?” I asked abruptly.
“Um..” He made a face. “Ask me something else.”
Oy. What a strange reaction.
“No. Answer me.”
“I have no idea,” he replied, settling his head on the cushions.
I propped myself up on the pillows so we were the same height.
“Don’t front. You do have an idea.”
“I have no idea what Filippo might be doing because I don’t know him at all.”
“But…?”
“I know what I would do.”
“Develop this further.”
“I’m not taking an exam,” he defended himself.
“Oh, yes. Yes, you are,” I insisted.
“Fuck…” He pushed his hair from one side to another. “If my girlfriend had left me at the altar and I had proposed a summer apart to figure out whether we should fix it…I wouldn’t be shy about sleeping with other women if the opportunity arose.”
“Imagine if the one who had left you at the altar had been Idoia.”
“Then I would make an even bigger effort to sleep with anyone I could. Plus, I would try to seduce all her friends, her sister, her cousin, and probably some of her younger aunts.” He smiled. “Revenge sex isn’t as much fun, but…”
I grabbed a pillow and turned my back to him. Great. At least I wasn’t horny anymore.
“Margot…” I noticed the warmth of David’s body coming closer. “Idoia is kind of a witch. Honestly, I don’t think I would feel the same if I had gone through that with you instead of with her.” He put his hand on my waist. “Come on…Filippo knows you. He knows you much better than I do. He knows you didn’t do it to hurt him or because you were being immature. You must have gone through something really terrible to dip out like that. You weren’t disregarding anyone or humiliating him. Just…escaping. You were scared. You don’t have revenge sex because the person who you love was really scared.”
I turned around. He was very close. Did Filippo really know all those things? I wasn’t even very clear on them.
“I’m going to ask you one more time. Do you think he’s sleeping with other people this summer?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes,” I responded.
“I think you shouldn’t base your actions on what you think he’s doing, because this summer, like, it’s for you. And it’s an incredible gift. Do and don’t do like you don’t have to explain it to anyone but yourself. I think he’s doing the same.”
He could’ve just said no. That’s definitely what my sisters would’ve said, but David preferred the truth, the whole truth, baked into an explanation that softened the information that could have hurt me, but still the truth when all was said and done. I put my hand on his cheek.
“Fuck, David.”
“Do you hate me?” He smiled timidly.
“No, but when I met you, I didn’t think you had such a good head on your shoulders under that scruffy hair.”
I gave him a kiss on the forehead. I took a deep breath. I turned around and stared at the wall. He stayed there, behind me, with his arm on my waist.
“David…”
“Hmm?”
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Go to your room.”
There was still no point carrying out illogical experiments.
David told me his surprise was outside the hotel. I didn’t understand what he was saying. Seriously. It was like he was speaking ancient Aramaic. What did he mean, outside the hotel? I couldn’t even think of an idea or suspect anything because…what the hell? When had he had time to organize anything? And, above all, what kind of surprise could I expect outside a hotel where we ate, we swam, we took a nap, we showered, we got dressed and left?
“Wait a second, David. I’m going to ask how we get to Fira. The hotel probably has a shuttle or something.”
“No! Wait! Surprise first!”
“Give me a second, David.”
He tugged on my arm, pulled me closer, and then covered my eyes with his hand, leading me to the exit.
“Let go of me, you stupid ass!” I moaned.
The evening breeze greeted me when I assumed we were heading out into the parking lot. I didn’t even have time to think before he let go and yelled, “Surprise!”
The surprise had two wheels and the appearance of not being able to handle both of us on steep slopes. The surprise was white; it had an English name (Twister? Storm? something like that) etched onto one side and two wing mirrors with thousands of mosquitoes plastered on them. It was a surprise that looked terrible, but…I loved it.
“Wait, this is so cool!” I shrieked.
So yeah, in the end he did get me to scream.
He opened the seat with a key he had hidden in his pocket and took out two helmets…well, they looked like two eggshells split in half. Hideous. They made me feel sorry for them.
“So you can check it off your list!” he said, exhilarated.
“Do you know how many people have worn those helmets before?”
“What?” He looked at the helmets. “Don’t think about that. Come on, get on.”
“You get on first, and then I’ll climb on.”
He waggled his eyebrows and tucked his chin down. “No, no. You’re driving, sad eyes.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You heard me.”
“I’ve never driven a motorcycle in my life. We’re gonna get killed.”
“Well, you better learn because you and I”—he pointed at the motorcycle—“are not going to die on a moped with an engine that size, my love.”
The negotiation lasted minutes. Many. I ended up huffily sitting on the wall with my legs dangling down to prove he wasn’t going to convince me.
“Not today,” I repeated in English over and over, feeling like I was Arya Stark, courageously insisting that today was not the day…to die or even rehearse it.
David proved to be quite stubborn, but…I’m even more stubborn, so we had to find a compromise. He would drive that evening, and I would have to check it off my to-do list starting the next morning.
He hopped on easily, and I gathered up my skirt, not really knowing how to get on.
“I looked at Google Maps for directions. It’s only ten minutes away,” he said, putting his phone in his pocket with the helmet still hanging from his elbow.
“Hey,” I said timidly. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but…I don’t know how to do it.”
“Don’t know how to do what?”
“I don’t know how to get on.”
“You’ve never ridden a motorcycle?”
“No. Only a horse that hated me.”
“Come on, snobby! You’ve definitely ridden something else.” He winked.
“Now’s not the time, David.”
“Hey, I’m not just being stupid.” He patted the seat behind him. “It’s just like climbing onto a dude. You straddle it. You know? Grab my shoulders, throw one leg over the other side, and then put your feet up on the stirrups.”
“What stirrups? Do motorcycles have stirrups too?” I asked, confused.
“OMG.”
He bent over the handlebars, dying of laughter.
“What’s going on here? Are you one of those Hell’s Angels and I never noticed?”
“Who’s never ridden a motorcycle at thirty-two?”
“Me, I guess. Shut up.”
I grabbed his arm and threw my leg over the saddle with the agility of a retired gymnast. My calculations were inaccurate. I think I even got some momentum, so when I landed, I hurt myself in the…well, in the crotch, where all my weight landed with nothing to cushion the fall. I dug my fingers into his arm and rested my forehead on his back.
“I think I broke something.”
“What?” He turned back to me.
“I think I broke my pussy.”
“It comes from the factory with a slit in it, don’t worry.”
I jabbed him a few times while he cackled, and then I settled in as much as I could.
“Ready or should I call an ambulance?”
“We’re going to miss the fucking sunset, you jerk,” I groaned.
“OMG, you’re so romantic today. Hold on to something.”
“What do you mean something?”
“Well, me, the saddle, the part on the back…I don’t know. I don’t want to accelerate and leave you sitting on the road.”
“Oh, god. Be careful, for fuck’s sake,” I whimpered.
My body jerked when he started the bike and accelerated, so I ended up plastered to him. I went to hold on to his waist, but I was a little embarrassed, so I gripped a piece of cloth from his T-shirt in my fist as we headed straight toward Fira. It didn’t take long for him to release the handlebars one by one to put my hands on his belly.
“It’s better this way. This piece of junk doesn’t go very fast, but just in case.”
Have you ever ridden a motorcycle? What am I talking about? Of course you have. I’m the only one here who’s missed out on the experience. And even though I spent a few anxious moments thinking about all the bad things that could happen and how unsafe the helmets looked, in the end I felt safe with David. He was a good driver. He took it easy. The wind snuck down the collar of his shirt, and his scent wafted toward me. And if I shifted a little, I could see his smile in the rearview mirror.
I had spent my whole life listening to my mother say people envied people like me because we have a personal driver, because we travel in first class, and because, sometimes, we even charter private jets and…how sad to realize the real truth. The only thing worth envying in the world is the feeling I experienced riding on that piece of junk, and it took me thirty-two years to feel it; out there you can be free, regardless of what you have or who you are.