To Be Yours Again-Chapter 220 Out of my system

*LORENZO*

Danica screams as she climaxes. It’s a cock-hardening sound. Her fingers are clenched around the sheets. Her head tossed back. Her mouth open. I kiss her clitoris as she writhes beneath me, then her belly, her navel, her stomach, and her sternum as she mewls, and taking her cries into my mouth, I ease into her.

*********

My phone buzzed. And without looking at the caller ID, I know it’s Carla. I’d promised to see her. Ignoring the phone, I gaze down at Danica, who is dozing beside me. She’s becoming quite demanding in bed, and I like it. Leaning down, I kiss her shoulder, and she stirs.

“I have to go out,” I murmur.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to see a friend.”

“Oh.”

“I need to talk some things through with her. I won’t be long.”

Danica sits up. “Okay.” She glances out the window. It’s dark.

“It’s six P.M.,” I tell her.

“Shall I make something for us to eat?” “If you can find something. Please.” She smiles. “I’ll do that.”

“If you can’t find anything, we’ll go out. I’ll be about an hour.” Reluctantly I throw the quilt aside, get out of bed, and start to dress under Danica appreciative gaze.

I don’t tell her that I’m dreading this meeting.

**********

“Good evening, young master,” Blake says as he opens the front door to Carla’s family’s mansion in town.

“Hello, Blake. Is Carla home.”

“I believe she’s in the morning room.”

0Great. I’ll see myself up.”

“May I take your overcoat?”

“Thanks.” I slip out of my coat, and he folds it over his arm.

“Something to drink?”

“No. I’m good. Thanks, Blake.”

I vaulted up the stairs, turn left, take a deep, steadying breath, and open the morning room door.

Even if she lost her brother who was close friends with me, I cannot continue to entertain her pestering me. I have to set boundaries so my girlfriend wouldn’t get upset

************

Danica examines the chaos that is the walk-in closet off Lorenzo’s bedroom. The drawers, the racks, they are all bursting with his clothes, leaving no room to store hers. She takes her duffel bag through to the spare room and proceeds to unpack, hanging her new clothes in the small armoire.

Placing her bag of toiletries on the bed, she wanders through the apartment. Everything is achingly familiar, but now she’s viewing the place from a new perspective. She’d always thought of Lorenzo’s home as a place of work. She had never dared to imagine that one day she might be living here with him. She’d never aspired to live in a place as grand as this.

She does a twirl in the doorway of the kitchen, feeling giddy and grateful, and happy. It’s a precious and rare feeling. She still has so much to figure out in her life, but for the first time in a long time she’s hopeful. With Lorenzo at her side, she feels that no obstacle is insurmountable. She wonders if he’ll only be an hour....She’s missing him.

She runs her fingers along the wall of the hallway. The photographs that had been hanging there have disappeared. Maybe they were stolen during the burglary.

The piano!

She races into the living room. It’s still there, unscathed. Breathing a sigh of relief, she switches on the lights. The room looks fresh and clean, his record collection in place. But the desk is bare, the computer and the sound gear gone. Here, too, the photographs that used to hang on the walls are missing.

She walks with trepidation toward the piano, scrutinizing all its parts. Under the glow of the chandelier, it’s glossy and gleaming, newly polished, she thinks.

Placing her hand on the ebony, she walks around it, stroking its sweeping curves. When she gets to the business end, she notices that his compositions are gone.

Perhaps they’ve been tidied away. She lifts the lid and presses middle C: it’s a golden sound that rings through the empty room, seducing her, calming her... centering her. She sits down on the stool, shakes off her feelings of solitude, and begins to play Bach’s Prelude no. 23 in B Major.

************

*LORENZO*

Carla is sitting by the fire, staring into the flames, huddled in a tartan throw. She doesn’t look around when I walk in.

“Hi.” My subdued greeting competes with the crackle of the fire. Carla angles her head toward me, her expression forlorn, her mouth turned down in sorrow.

“Oh, it’s you.” she says.

“Who were you expecting?” She hasn’t risen to greet me and I’m beginning to feel a little unwelcome.

She sighs. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking

about what Erick would be doing now if he were here.”

From nowhere my grief emerges and smothers me like an itchy woolen blanket. I shrug it off, swallowing the lump that’s sticking in my throat.

When I get closer to her, I see she’s been crying.

“Oh, Carla...” I murmur, and squat beside her chair.

“Lorenzo, I’m can’t do life without my brother. I feel so alone.”

I take her hand in mine. “I know. But he wouldn’t want to see you so devastated.”

Pained blue eyes meet mine. “I don’t know,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

She leans forward so she’s facing me and in a conspiratorial whisper says, “I think he meant to kill himself.”

I squeeze her fingers. “Carla. That’s not true. Don’t think that. It was just a horrid accident.” My eyes meet hers, and I’m trying for my most earnest look, but the truth is, I’ve had the same thought. I can’t let her know that, though, and I don’t want to believe it either.

Suicide is too painful for those of us left behind.

“I keep going over that day,” she says, searching my face for answers. “But I have no idea why...”

Alas, neither have I.

“It was an accident,” I reiterate. “Let me sit.” Releasing her, I slump into the chair opposite hers, facing the fireplace.

“Do you want a drink? My parents are getting divorced, I feel so out of place here. That is why I’ve been calling you.” Her words have a bitter edge that I ignore. I don’t want a fight.

“Blake already offered, and I declined.”

She exhales and turns back to stare at the flames. We both do, each of us lost in the pain of losing Erick.

I had expected the third degree from her, but she’s not forthcoming at all, and we sit in an uneasy silence. After a while the fire dies down. I get up and place another couple of logs in the grate and stoke the flames.

“Do you want me to go?” I ask. She shakes her head.

Okay, then.

I sit back down, and she tilts her head to the side, her hair falling across her face until she tucks it behind her ear. “I heard about the burglary. Did you lose anything important?”

“No. Just my laptop and my decks. I think they smashed my iMac.”

“People are shitty.”

“They are.”

“What were you doing in Vali?”

“This and that....” I’m trying for humor.

“Well, that’s illuminating.” She rolls her eyes, and I glimpse a flash of the spirited Carla I know. “What were you doing in Vali?”

“Escaping from gangsters, if you must know.”

“Gangsters?”

“Yes...And falling in love.”

*****************

Danica explores the kitchen cupboards and drawers, looking for something to cook for supper. She’s not examined their contents in any comprehensive way before. But as she goes through them, she notes that the utensils are all clean and the pots and pans are pristine.

She suspects they’ve never been used. Two of the pans still have the price stickers attached. She finds a few groceries in the larder: pasta, pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, some jars of herbs and spices. Enough to make a meal, but these ingredients don’t inspire her. She eyes the kitchen clock.

Lorenzo will be a while yet. She has time to go to the local store to find something a little more enticing for her man.

A silly grin spreads over her face.

Her man.

Her Lorenzo.

At the bottom of the armoire, she finds the Ziploc bag that she’d stuffed in John’s old rugby sock, the bag that holds her precious savings.

Taking out some notes, she slips them into the back pocket of her jeans, grabs her coat, sets the alarm, and leaves.

**************

*LORENZO*

“What?” splutters Carla. “You? In love?”

“And why would that be so improbable?” I note that she doesn’t continue her line of questioning about “gangsters.”

“Lorenzo, the only thing you love is your dick.”

“That’s not true!”

She cackles. And it’s good to hear her laugh, but not so good that it’s at my expense. Noticing my less-than-enthusiastic reaction, she tries to bring her amusement under control. “Okay, so who’s been on the sharp end of it?” she says indulgently.

“You don’t have to be quite so crude.”

“That’s not an answer.” 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

I gaze at her, and the warmth and humor slowly fade from her face.

“Who?” she presses me.

“Danica.”

She frowns for a split second, and then her eyebrows shoot up. “No!” She gasps. “Your cleaner?”

“What do you mean, no?”

“Lorenzo. She’s your fucking cleaner...literally!” And a dark cloud crosses her face; a storm is brewing.

I shift in my seat, irritated by her response. “Well, she isn’t my cleaner anymore.”

“I knew it! That time when I met her. In your kitchen. You were so weird and attentive toward her.” She spits each word out like venom. She’s horrified.

“Don’t be so dramatic. That’s not like you.”

“It is like me.”

“Since when?”

“Since my brother upped and killed himself. You promised to be there for me,” she hisses, her eyes glassy with animosity.

Shit.

She went there. She’s using Erick’s death in an argument.

I gulp down my shock and grief as we glare at each other, the air between us ripe with our unspoken thoughts.

Abruptly, she turns her attention back to the fire, her contempt evident in the stubborn line of her chin. “You should just fuck her out of your system,” she grumbles.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get her out of my system. I don’t want to. I’m in love with her.”