If I tell you that, actually, nothing big changed between us after making that decision, you probably won’t believe it. But it was true. Nothing changed. We were still David and Margot, and for a good part of that day, we were just the same David and Margot as always, which made me think that there had been something from the beginning…something tacit, intimate, only ours.
We took pictures (and how gorgeous is that one where we’re lying down, hiding my breasts with his arm, both laughing in the reddish sand); we dived in search of little fishes, taking turns with his goggles. We each guarded the bathroom door while the other peed and we ate some sandwiches, which we both filled with tzatziki, turkey slices, and chips. There were no rules by his side. Any imposition could be challenged with a “Why?” If my mother had seen me this happy, she would have died.
The room was freezing when we got back, maybe because they had left us a plate of fruit and they didn’t want it to rot.
“The energy waste at this hotel is bordering on irresponsible,” he muttered. “I’m gonna snitch to Greta Thunberg.” He popped a grape in his mouth and smiled as he chewed. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Me too.”
“With me?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Ask me in a few days.”
I headed toward my bathroom, but David ran over, caught me in his arms, and spun me around.
“Stop!” I screamed playfully.
David tried to open the door onto the patio with me on his back, a pretty hard job since I was wriggling, trying to get away.
“David, seriously, I have to go to the bathroom,” I complained.
“Quiet for a sec.”
I kicked him and accidentally hit the door, which finally opened wide. David grabbed me tightly and ran to the pool without thinking twice: still wearing his shirt, his sunglasses, and his flip-flops. I remember the fabric of my dress floating around me, surrounded by bubbles, and David in front of me holding his breath, his sunglasses still on. I remember those seconds underwater almost more clearly than many of the memories that theoretically should have been my core memories. The light bounced off the blue tiles on the bottom of the pool, and instead of letting go, David’s hands grabbed me tighter so we emerged together, tangled in my legs and panting. Those five or six seconds lasted hours. Sometimes, at the very moment you’re living something, you know you will spend years wishing to live lost in that memory.
And it’s a pity life isn’t a movie where we can choose the soundtrack we deserve at all times. Because right then we deserved to listen to one of those shitty and amazing songs that show you that you’re lucky to be alive and feeling things and even if the timing is off and you’re with someone you shouldn’t be experiencing these things with. You can’t choose to hoard emotions to live them later with the person who everything points to being the right one.
And there, soaked, clinging to each other, smiling, happy…I couldn’t stop looking at him and wondering how it was possible that two conflicting needs coexisted in me: to have Filippo close to me, and David. David in general.
“What?” he asked.
“What song would you choose right now?”
“Does your insurance cover psychiatric needs abroad?” He smiled.
“I mean it.”
“‘Never Tear Us Apart’ by INXS,” he answered firmly, in pretty stiff English.
I took off his sunglasses and put my arms around his neck.
“I don’t know it.”
“Sorry. I’m a sucker for the eighties,” he said, looking at my lips.
“You weren’t even born back then.”
“When they wrote that song, you weren’t either.”
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“I can’t.”
David’s voice came out of his throat a little strangled. I stroked his hair at his temples, and he put his mouth on my chin.
“Let’s take a shower and go to Oia for dinner. Do you want to? We can make it in time for the sunset, and they say it’s the best place on the island to see it. But you drive, okay? I looked it up, and it’s like half an hour on the bike.”
“Can I ask for something in exchange?”
“Try me.”
We looked at each other silently, and like always, we smiled immediately.
“I’ll hold on to that as an ace up my sleeve,” he whispered. “Come on, let’s go or we won’t make the sunset. It’s a date.”
For someone who wanted to get back the fiancé she lost when she ran out in a wedding dress in the opposite direction of the church, I tried way too hard to get dressed for that “date.” I wore a short fringed skirt (very short, when did I even buy this? Oh, right, at some point after I went shopping with David and he gave me wings), and a plain black T-shirt. Simple sandals in black too, with a little wedge. I even put on lipstick. And eyeliner. And I straightened my hair. Yes…I made too much effort for that date, but the thing is…I really wanted it to be a perfect night. Maybe it had something to do with how disastrously the night before had ended. Maybe it had something to do with my stupid need to make everything flawless enough to justify its existence.
When we met in the villa’s little living room, David seemed surprised.
“Wow…you look so pretty.” He pointed at himself awkwardly. “Should I change?”
I looked him up and down. Some pretty worn jeans and a black T-shirt. I went over, pulled on it, and found the ever-present hole, which made me smile.
“No. The whole grunge thing looks good on you.”
And I meant it. I didn’t care if he wore a perfect white button-up and tight pants. I didn’t care that I could see the band of his boxers because the waist of his jeans drooped down even though he was wearing a belt. I didn’t care.
The plan seemed idyllic. I couldn’t think of anything more perfect than watching the sun go down at the northwest end of the island, sitting in some restaurant embedded in the cliff itself, holding a drink, looking at each other…but the thing about plans is that they rarely go as expected. The first thing was the skirt…which was not stretchy and gave me a lot of trouble getting onto the bike. A lot. So much that either I had to go back and change or ride pillion in my panties, or I would have to drive. I wasn’t prepared for half an hour of driving, but…I wanted to wear that skirt. It was the outfit that went best with the idea of the evening I had in my head.
The second problem, besides the nightmare I had with that infernal rattletrap, was that I’d forgotten David and I weren’t the only two people on the face of the earth after all. I had never traveled like this, to a place like Greece in the middle of high season, so I wasn’t used to having to elbow through to get a glimpse, in the distance, of a tiny corner of the sea. So I didn’t even think about the possibility that Oia would be crammed with people who had come with exactly the same intention as us.
The entrance into the town was already pretty backed up, but when we finally managed to get through, there wasn’t a single restaurant, bar, or terrace with a free table. Not even a stool to sit on to watch the sunset. The streets were full of tourists (which we were too, by the way), and the only place we found to watch the sunset was in the parking lot where we left the motorcycle when we arrived. And to cap it all off, we’d have to find a gap through hundreds of heads. And I better not even mention how hot the evening was. The backs of my legs were dripping sweat, my upper lip, my forehead, my neck, between my boobs, and even my underboob.
“This is unbelievable,” I muttered, disappointed, patting my upper lip with the back of my hand, trying to dry the drops of sweat on my mustache. “Where’d all these people come from?”
“Princess…” David laughed. “I know it’s hard to believe, but we’re not the only people on the face of the earth.”
“I know that,” I grumbled.
“Margot…this is normal. This village is probably in every guidebook, and tourists aren’t exactly known for being the most original.”
I shot him a side-eye and felt ridiculous when I thought about the fact that I had come up with this plan after seeing it on an influencer’s Instagram. I had constructed an image of this date that I was dying to have with David entirely from a stranger’s photo, which was probably incredibly posed.
“Well, this sucks.” I stamped my feet grumpily.
“Just because you’re used to seeing everything from the seat of honor. Here’s what we can do…”
I turned back to him.
“Let’s go back. We’ll go through Fira, pick up a pizza, and we’ll go back to the room. We’ll listen to music, chat… We’ve barely used the terrace in the room.”
“We spent half an hour getting here,” I grumbled.
“Margot…there are two types of people in the world: the kind who complain and the kind who look for a solution. Which do you wanna be?”
“Right now, the kind who complains.”
David cracked up, drawing looks from everyone around us. He was so cute when he laughed. He was so cute at golden hour, when the shimmering light started to tinge everything. He made me feel so free.
“You wanted to see the sunset,” he said, babying me.
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s a good thing the sunset happens every day. Come on, my little baby, come with your doggy; he’s hungry.”
I pulled his arm, resisting.
“A pizza and Spotify isn’t my idea of a perfect evening.” I was still whining.
“Why does it have to be perfect?”
I blushed. I felt stupid. Maybe he just wanted to drink a beer and go to sleep, and I…I had taken the whole “date” thing very literally, just because we had kissed the night before. And talked. And almost…
“Hey…” David hooked his right arm around my waist and jiggled me until I smiled. “Things can’t be perfect just because you want them to be. There are a lot of factors, and we’re just two humans.”
“But—”
“I don’t need everything to be perfect. I only have one request for tonight, and that’s to spend it with you. There’ll be many more, and maybe, if we’re lucky, one of them will be completely perfect. We won’t have to plan it.”
I smiled reluctantly.
“You look beautiful,” he whispered. “But not because of the skirt or the lipstick. You’re beautiful when you’re free, and when you get angry and you want everything to go the way you hoped…”
I covered his mouth and saw him smile.
“Don’t say things like that to me.”
“Okay,” I heard him say, his voice muffled by the palm of my hand, and I let go. “Let’s do something. Unzip your skirt.”
“What are you talking about?” I exclaimed.
“Come here.” He pulled me over to where the motorcycle was, opened the seat, took out the two helmets, and got on.
He threw his hips forward and kicked up the kickstand. Needless to say, that move with his hips made me like one of those monkeys who snatch things from tourists: crazy.
“Unzip your skirt and get on behind me,” he insisted. “I’m sure the fabric will give and you’ll be more comfortable.”
“I’m going to flash everyone and their mother.”
“That’ll make it even more refreshing.”
I undid the zip on my skirt and shimmied it down my thighs. He was right, that way I could sit behind him, open my legs a little and snuggle into his body without having to show my ass the whole time.
“Ready? Think about what you want on your pizza, babe, because tonight I’m paying.”
And with the laughter he stole from me, he set off, and while we were going as fast as the rented motorcycle allowed, we left behind hundreds of people and a trail of giggles.
The sunset discovered us in the curves on the main road that led to Fira. We didn’t see the sun sink into the sea, and we didn’t toast with a good cold wine in a place with air-conditioning. But I wouldn’t trade that moment for anything in the world. The feeling I had leaving there and realizing that we could make the ordinary something special. Oh, David’s scent wafting into my face and both of my hands around his belly…
We bought a pizza and a couple of diet sodas and some cookies. We had dinner sitting on the sun loungers, quickly and hungrily, bolting it down before the pizza got cold and wiping our oily fingers on toilet paper. The part of Margot that I had built from romantic speeches and rom-coms died when I realized that, in the end, that part’s existence wasn’t sustained by anything real. Perfection is romantic by pure chance, and the most beautiful things are always ephemeral. And in that imperfect scene, actually, I didn’t miss anything. Not cloth napkins or duck magret. Well, maybe the napkins.
When we finished, we lay on the loungers and looked up at the starry sky. I had never been that into astronomy. But maybe that’s only because no one had told me, the way David told me, with a slow but passionate voice, the myth of Andromeda.
“Andromeda was the daughter of Aethiopian royalty. Her mother, who had a pretty big ego, declared that both were more beautiful than the Nereids, the nymphs of the sea. They were very offended and went straight to Poseidon to complain: ‘Come on, either you do something or we’ll go out and explain it to these narcissists ourselves.’”
I giggled like a kid.
And he told me more and more things about a monster; about Perseus, who later became a king; about the withering love he felt when he saw Andromeda chained to a rock, ready to be devoured. And I was gobsmacked…by the history, by his lips conjugating every verb, by the way he narrated all of it, like he had it all stored in his head, alongside those names of plants and flowers, all coming together to make him the perfect person he seemed to be.
“And that one there, follow my finger…is Andromeda’s constellation.”
And, leaning against his chest, I pretended to find the stars that made the group while I thought about how luxury sometimes had nothing to do with stuff.
I hated every single one of the mosquitoes buzzing around our ears that forced us inside so we wouldn’t be bitten. I was having so much fun I didn’t want the night to end. I felt stupidly disappointed because, well, in the end, the “date” had gone great, but subconsciously I had been expecting more. It’s interesting the capacity humans have to say one thing and do exactly the opposite.
It seemed like we were going to say goodbye in the living room, but when I went to close my door, David blocked it.
“Wanna come listen to music in my room?” he asked. “It’s still early.”
I nodded. I couldn’t even speak. In my mind, I was grinding on him with a talent I can promise you I don’t actually possess. Please, we’re so cool in our imaginations.
“Give me a second, okay? I’ll be right there.”
I took off my makeup, put on my creams, ran a comb through my hair, put on perfume, brushed my teeth, put on a different, shorter nightgown, and took a few deep breaths before I went out. Ten steps separated his room from mine, and I never walked more certainly despite being barefoot.
I found him lying on his bed, fiddling with his ancient iPod. He smiled when I went over and offered me a headphone.
“Welcome to Nostalgic Music 101 In this class, we’ll be studying the themes present in the best songs of all time written twenty or thirty years ago. Ready?”
“Ready.” I lay down next to him and put the earbud in my ear.
“This is the one I was telling you about this afternoon,” he said, lying opposite me. “It’s called ‘Never Tear Us Apart,’ and it’s by an Australian group called INXS.”
David, a kid who was closer to twenty-five than thirty, who poured drinks on the weekend in a dive where ninety percent of what they played was reggaeton, listened to songs from the eighties on his dated iPod, ballads that would never go out of style but that hardly anyone knew anymore. I stroked his rough cheek, and he moved closer, chasing the caress.
God. Wasn’t he so handsome? He was. How had I not found him cute the first time I saw him? With that enfant terrible air, the bad boy who makes any honorable daughter fail a couple of subjects, a bartender who elicits sighs and doesn’t even care about the age of the mouths expelling them.
I don’t know if David understood enough English to know that the song had a lot of us in it…or the us that the romantic part of me wanted to imagine, but it made me excited. A kind of teenage excitement and nothing mature on my part? Obvs. An excitement that made me feel really alive? That too.
He edged a little closer. I did too. We smiled, like two fools.
“This is called, ‘I Want to Know What Love Is,’ and it’s by Foreigner,” he whispered, not moving away.
“English is your first language, right?” I laughed.
“Are you making fun of me?”
“A little.”
I admit, I was the one who started it. I nuzzled my nose against his, begging silently for him to kiss me. He put his hand on my cheek and brushed his nose against my chin, my lips, and my nose again, but he didn’t kiss me.
“Sorry…” I mumbled.
“Why are you sorry?”
He looked into my eyes, and our mouths were centimeters apart again.
“I think I’m too close,” I answered.
“It seems like you want to get a little closer.”
I pulled away a little, feeling rejected, but he eliminated the distance, coming closer.
“You clearly want to do it, so why are you putting the ball in my court?” And when he spoke, his mouth was almost brushing against mine.
“You’re a dick.”
“I’m not. Just…”
I didn’t let him finish. He tasted like mint when I put my tongue in his mouth, and he responded more passionately than I was expecting. He moaned, and it seemed to be out of relief, at the same time as he slapped his iPod aside to press himself against me; in one of each of our ears, we still had the headphones plugged in, and the music was still playing.
I slung my left leg over his hips, and suddenly David let gravity and desire overcome him and rolled on top of me.
“Oof…” he panted, looking at me, before he pressed his mouth against mine again.
His tongue was moving so slowly in my mouth, it felt like he was unraveling me. The way he kissed was mind-blowing. David was still kissing as passionately as he had at fifteen, I knew it. For him, kisses hadn’t lost their power, as often happens once you try sex. For him kissing was erotic, sensual, sexual, a carnal act. He somehow confirmed this by the way he kissed my neck and his hands seemed to come alive as they reached for my breasts.
The song changed in our ears, and he balanced on his arms over me, smiling slyly.
“Wanna know what this one is?”
“I don’t give a shit.” I laughed. “But you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“‘Love Bites.’” And suddenly, he was biting my bottom lip. “Did I say it right, professor?”
“Terribly. Kiss me,” I demanded.
He buried his mouth in my neck again, and his right hand, finally, reached my left breast. His fingers dug into me, rubbing his palm against the thin fabric of my nightgown, and then he lowered his mouth to it, until he was blowing against the outline of my hard nipple.
“This song is weird as hell.” I smiled, while he spread my thighs apart and pushed his erection against my monte de Venus.
“Yeah, like me.”
“You like fucking to this music?”
“Yes, but tonight…” He leaned down until his nose was brushing against mine again. “Tonight all I want to do is kiss you.”
“Nobody believes that.”
“Well, you should because I’m just going to kiss you. Well…I might touch you a little.”
“And what are you going to do with that?” I lifted my hips and brushed against his hard cock.
“Grin and bear it.” He smiled. “There’s much more to life than instant gratification.”
“You’re going to drench the bed.”
“I’m going to make out with you until it hurts. I’m going to stroke your breasts until I memorize them. I’m going to rub myself between your legs. And when we can’t take it anymore, we’ll probably find some way to make ourselves feel better within those boundaries.”
My lip was trapped between his teeth, and he slowly let it free, as his hips moved back and forth between my legs. I went crazy, and as I moaned to show him, he kept doing exactly the same thing for a whole song until I thought I was dying. My skin was burning, my mouth was stinging, and my clit was throbbing so hard it was already unbearable. Then, in our headphones, The Police were playing “Every Breath You Take,” and without realizing it, our kisses and movements were in step with the beat.
David knew afternoons lying in the park watching clouds go by. David moved like someone who loses hope of stopping time. David took me back to a time in my life where everything that didn’t matter mattered a little less.
It was inevitable that we lost more clothes because we were getting more and more heated. We were feverish, like those first few times you let someone touch you like you touched yourself secretly, dying of shame. He took off my nightgown, and I pulled off his shorts, but we kept my underwear from the waist down. By the time he placed my arms on top of the pillow, grabbed them with one hand, and put his heart and soul into rubbing against my panties, I had already lost track of the songs that had passed through our ears. Then one came on that I knew: “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinead O’Connor. I had to admit this was the best playlist of throwbacks I had ever heard. The best to make us feel like we were fifteen again.
We kept going with one of his hands clasping both wrists and the other’s fingers digging into one of my butt cheeks, where he had found the perfect point of support to trigger an orgasm.
“Do you think you could come like this?” he asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“You do know. Could you?”
“No,” I confessed.
His mouth found mine again, which was waiting hungrily, and he found a way to let go of my wrist and slip that hand between us. There, right there. My eyes rolled back and then I let go, closing them. I had never even touched myself in such a perfect spot.
“Give me a warning,” he whispered, pulling away from my mouth for just a second.
I slipped one of my hands in and joined the party. I helped him. He smiled into my lips, and his hip found that point to rub himself again. The rhythm started to go faster, faster…and we lost each other’s kisses to give in to the moans and pants that were misting up the windows and gliding across the floor.
I felt my whole body devastated by pleasure. My toes, one by one, from right to left and left to right. The skin on my legs, which were wrapped around his. My cunt, my clitoris. My monte de Venus. The fuzz covering it. My belly button. My nipples. My fingertips…they were all overcome by it: five buried in David’s hair, three slowly watching how everything was unfolding and two rubbing, rubbing, rubbing.
“I’m coming…” I managed to say.
“Can I come?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“On you?”
I nodded, and he whispered for me to watch. My eyes fluttered shut a few times while I came, but I managed to return them to the lighthouse of his eyes until the final thrust, which pulled a suffocated scream out of me. David blinked slowly. Very slowly. Almost as slowly as he had moved his tongue during those first kisses. Then he bit his bottom lip, gyrated between my legs, and buried the fingers of his left hand in my hair.
“Ah…ah…ah…” he moaned thickly.
He moved a little more over me, clumsier every time, until he let go of me and leaned on two arms with a growl. He looked at his cock, he looked at me, in my panties underneath him, and then…he kissed me.
He kissed me until we were both moaning again.
I have no idea what song was playing then, but I felt like dancing.