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I shake my head. “No. He said all’s been well, every day so far.”
“Then try to relax.” She squeezes my hand lightly. “Please.”
The last thing that I expected was for Gia to hold my hand of her own volition. The feeling of her fingers curling around mine is good, and I do feel myself relaxing, just a little. It surprises me, how much such a small touch can do. I’ve touched this woman in ways more intimate than any other man ever has, and yet, I’ve so rarely touched her in the small ways that feel somehow more intimate than fucking. Maybe it’s that I’ve had sex with plenty of women, but I’ve rarely held anyone’s hand, or touched the small of their back as I guided them into a room, or laid a hand on their thigh. Touch for the sake of lust, to slake desire—that I’ve had my fill of in my life. But soft, sweet intimacy is something that I can’t recall the last time I partook in.
I fold my hand a little more firmly around hers, and follow her further into the market.
Gia is clearly delighted by all of it. We stop at a hat seller’s stand, where she looks through a variety of wide-brimmed beach hats before settling on a white straw one to match her dress, with a blue chiffon ribbon wrapped around it. She sets it on her head, tilting her face up to look at me. “What do you think?”
“You look adorable,” I tell her frankly, and she wrinkles her nose at me.
“I don’t want to be adorable.”
“What else should I call it?” I reach up, tipping the brim of the hat up so I can dip my head beneath it, and without thinking, I rest one hand on her waist, pulling her closer. I lean in, and brush my mouth against hers.
I feel her gasp. I feel the instant she leans into me, her hands coming up to press against my chest, but she’s not pushing me away. For the first time, there’s no resistance from her. Nothing other than her soft lips parting under mine, her tongue flicking out hesitantly to meet mine. She tastes sweet, a little sharp, like the mimosa she drank this morning, and my head spins with a sudden, desperate need for her. I nearly slant my mouth over hers, deepening the kiss, until I feel someone bump into me, and I remember where we are.
My arm goes around Gia’s waist as I break the kiss, steadying us both as the crowd moves past, and I straighten as I look down at her. Her cheeks are flushed, her chest heaving slightly, and her eyes are wide.
She looks as if she’s a little in shock.
“That’s the first time you’ve kissed me since the wedding,” Gia whispers.
That can’t be true. I run back the list of our encounters through my head—the fraught wedding night, the moment when I lost my control in the workout room, the night she convinced me to take her virginity entirely, her catching me in the bathroom, yesterday afternoon when I lost control with her. And I realize, with something approaching shame, that she’s right.
I haven’t kissed her since we stood at the altar, on our wedding day.
In some deep, hard-to-reach part of myself, I think I knew it would change things. That kissing her again would mean something. And it did. At that moment, I wasn’t thinking about whether I should or not, about whether kissing her was something I ought to be allowed, about whether it fit into the set of boundaries that I built for myself around our marriage.
I saw her face, her smile under the brim of that ridiculous hat, her nose wrinkling with annoyance at my choice of words, and her eyes narrowing, and I wanted to kiss her. It had been so simple, and I hadn’t thought about it at all.
“Do you want me to kiss you again?” I murmur, still holding her close. The crowd is flowing around us, and I hear a few murmurs of annoyance, but I couldn’t care less.
“Maybe later,” Gia breathes, and I see her throat tighten a little as she swallows. “I want the rest of our day. And if you kiss me again, I think we might end up back at the villa.”
She isn’t wrong. I pull back, letting her lead me through the crowd, my head still spinning with what just happened. I’m lost in my thoughts until Gia pulls me abruptly back to the present, waving a hand at me as she stops in front of a stall.
“I got this the first day we were here,” she says. “You’ll love it.”
I nod numbly, handing her my card and letting her buy whatever it is that she wants. We end up at a picnic table with two small bowls of fruit, covered in a sprinkling of lime juice and chili seasoning, and a large cup of lemonade.
“It’s sweet and spicy and a little sour with the lemonade. Try it,” Gia urges. “It’s so good. I could eat this every day.”
I reach down, taking a bite. The flavors explode over my tongue, and she’s right. It is delicious, different from what I normally eat, but nonetheless incredible. “You’re right,” I tell her, taking another bite and reaching for the lemonade. “I should ask Frances to learn how to make this.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea!” Gia exclaims, taking the cup out of my hand. “That would be amazing.”
Something tugs in my chest at that, a realization that it’s the first domestic thing we’ve ever talked about happily. It’s a small thing that shouldn’t mean all that much, but in our circumstances, it feels like it means everything.
We linger a little bit longer in the market, before tossing away the cup and bowls and heading to the beach. I can’t help but think that actually being out on the beach isn’t all that appealing—it’s sandy, and the light wind that’s sprung up means it takes us a few minutes to get the blanket that we brought spread out and held down. Even so, there are still grains of sand on it. I feel strongly that I’d prefer looking at the water from our pool deck. But Gia is clearly excited about the beach, and I promised her that today would be whatever she wanted it to be.
When she starts to reapply her sunscreen, I mind being out here less.
I can’t help but look as she rubs it over the curves of her breasts, down her sides, over the long stretch of her legs. I find myself curling my fingers into my palms, aching to rub my hands over her body the same way, to be the one smoothing the lotion over her skin. The thought of the security out here the last few days, watching her while she does this, sends that simmering burn of jealousy through my veins, and I have to grit my teeth against it.
Gia turns to me a second later, a smile on her lips. “Put some on my back?” she asks, and I’m all too happy to acquiesce.
We lay out in the sun for a little while, both of us with books that we brought along. I have to admit, once I get past the irritation of the occasional burst of sand blowing onto the towel and sticking to my skin, it’s nice to be out this close to the water. The crash of the waves is closer here, and the sound of the seabirds darting up and down the beach, and there’s a different feeling to it than lying out on the deck. Still, I know for sure which I prefer.
