CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (2 page)

After all, men certainly cannot be called
complicated.  A conversation just a few months later may serve as an example.

At the age of sweet sixteen, and under the
effects of a mysterious self-destructive force, Marika asked Valerio, one of
the boys from
The Rook Café
crew, for advice.  Strictly confidential.

Valerio, who was tall, thin, handsome,
sure of himself, and had the reputation of being a Latin lover, gave her exactly
the advice she should have expected from him.  “Kiss him!  If he isn’t gay, he’ll
kiss you back.”

“
Serves me right for asking.  ‘If he
isn’t gay he’ll kiss you back?!’
”
she thought, miffed.  “
What was
I thinking going to Valerio?  He doesn’t understand the first thing about
women, this wanna-be Hitch!
”

Her seventeenth birthday party was a great
success.  Taking advantage of her parents’ absence – they were in Verona for an
organic wine expo – Marika invited the entire group over to her house for pizza. 
She organized games in the big front yard, and she and Carlotta set up
mountains of junk food for her guests – gummy bears, soft drinks, chips,
marshmallows, and ice cream, all meagerly accompanied by the fresh fruit kebabs
that her grandmother had prepared before being exiled from the kitchen by her
granddaughters.

At the beginning, everyone horsed around
like kids, but that evening marked the beginning of many love stories within
the group: it was the aura of the warm country house, the heady scent of summer
jasmine coming through the double-doors, the soft light from oil lamps that
brought a feeling of olden times, and the music, which rose and fell with every
emotion the young lovers were feeling.

Marika was wearing a pair of skinny jeans,
fashionable ballet flats, and a blouse the color of red wine.  For the
occasion, she had left her long, “almost straight” hair loose, rather than
putting it up in its usual pony tail, and had gone for a natural look with her
makeup: dark mascara, bringing out the natural colors of pistachio and hazelnut
in her irises, some gloss on her full lips, and blush on her cheekbones, plus
two drops of French perfume that she had “borrowed” from her mother.  She
looked beautiful, and the desire that was burning inside her flamed from her
eyes, giving her a bit of a mischievous air.

At exactly 7:20, Matteo arrived.  He had
come straight from the practice field, and his still-damp hair made him look
even more devastating than usual.  He paused at the entrance to say hi to his
friends, his eyes scanning the room for the birthday girl.  Finding her in the
middle of a tiff with Livia over the seating arrangements, he headed her way.  “Sorry
I’m late,” he smiled, freeing her from that annoying barnacle clinging to her
side.  “Coach held a team meeting with the players and managers to talk about
the upcoming season.  From now on, every game is like the finals: there are
some major league scouts who have started to show interest in local teams.” 
His eyes were burning with the fire of ambition born from this unexpected,
dreamlike opportunity.  “Happy Birthday!”  He leaned over and placed a soft kiss
on her cheek.

“Thanks,” she stammered.  “Do you think
they might come to see you play?”

“Who knows?”  He shrugged his shoulders
and for a moment was lost in his own dreams, until he turned to look at his
friends and said in a loud voice, “So, when’s dinner?  I can hardly see
straight I’m so hungry.”  He pretended to faint and staggered toward the table
to munch on something while waiting for Carlotta and Dario to get back with the
pizza.

Quickly taking advantage of the fact that
Matteo was alone with his chips and candy, Lucrezia slid over and glommed on to
him like a piece of gum under his shoe, drowning him in compliments and
flirting shamelessly.

There was no doubt that she knew what to
do with boys: she was the undisputed champion when she tossed her long curly
blonde hair and pressed in close, batting her heavily made-up eyelashes, or
better yet, shifting her hips to reveal more naked skin than was already
visible.  A master of becoming the center of attention, she wanted nothing less
than to be the focus of every guy in the room, attaching herself to each one of
them like a leech.  She’d been working on Matteo for months... in the meanwhile
she had been – in every sense of the word – with Valerio and Marcello, though
not necessarily in that order.  She hated to waste time.  Her motto was: a
rolling stone gathers no moss!

Matteo, for his good fortune and
especially for Marika’s, had shown no particular interest in Lucrezia, and he
didn’t disdain from revealing all the gory details of her pathetic flirting
attempts.

At 8, Carlotta and Dario entered with a
stack of pizza boxes in their hands, arguing loudly with each other.

Dario sat down next to Matteo, while
Carlotta dragged her cousin away from her ridiculous gawking.

“Hey, not so hard!” she complained to
Carlotta, upset at losing her visual on Lucrezia even for a second.  “What’s so
important that it can’t wait ‘til after dinner?”

“I can’t stand him!  He’s such a pain! 
Every time it’s just the two of us he’s a total buzzkill.”

“Who are you talking about?” she asked,
pretending to be interested.

“Hello?  Marika?  Anyone home?... Dario of
course, ever heard of him??  Lame and annoying?”

“And so?” she blurted, anxious to get back
and check on
those two
.

“He keeps going on and on with his theories
about how Valerio is an asshole who would sleep with anything that moved,” she
huffed.  “But I’m totally into Val.”

“You want the truth?”  Marika came at her
with the classic backstabbing question that expected no answer.  “I think Dario
has a crush on you, and he can’t stand listening to you go on and on about
Valerio.  And admit it... he’s totally right about Val.”

Carlotta’s cheeks reddened more than usual
on hearing her best friend speak to her like that.  “I can’t believe you’re
standing up for that moron.  Come on, he’s barely even a man!”  She threw up
her hands.  “Valerio is so freaking hot, but Dario is just....”  She wrinkled
her nose in disgust.

In truth, Dario wasn’t at all ugly.  He
was shy, and often hid his face behind his dirty blond hair, which he kept cut
at carefully irregular lengths, and his name brand glasses.  You couldn’t say
he had an athletic body, and we have to admit that he was a bit of the bookish
type, but he had a long, thin, sinewy physique that wasn’t bad to look at. 
Graceful in his movements, he was very sweet, very thoughtful, and one of the
few boys who would listen to you when you spoke.

Secretly, Marika hoped that Carlotta would
one day take notice of him: they would be perfect together, like two opposites
that attract and complete each other.  She was tall and curvy, with natural
cinnamon red hair, a temperament that sometimes got out of line and tended,
perhaps, to be a bit overly-sensitive, but which would compensate for him: deep
and romantic, but no less of a man than Valerio.

Out of the general din, a chant was raised
from the table invoking the birthday girl to sit down with everyone for dinner.

Between one bite and another, the guys
were busy firing off comments about soccer and other sports while the girls
occupied themselves with gossip, fashion, and the latest teen drama shows on
TV.  Lucrezia was the only one who didn’t pay any attention; she was too busy
laughing at Matteo’s jokes and trying to find a good excuse to make physical
contact with him.

“What do you think, Marika?”  Sandra’s
soft voice was almost imperceptible to her ears, focused as they were on the
All
Lucrezia All The Time
radio station.  “Should Blair end up with Chuck or
Dan?  Or with the prince?”

“Huh?”  She turned toward her girlfriends
with the look of someone who had just woken up after partying all night.

“Hey there!  Earth to Marika!”  Carlotta
tried vainly to bring her center of gravity back into the solar system.  “Fine,
have it your way.  When you come back down give us a call, OK?”  she said,
giving up on her cousin and diving back into the gossip that had run on without
a pause.  “What were we saying, girls?”

Marika couldn’t take her eyes off those
two, and had become totally disinterested in everything else.  Even worse, the
hormonal storm that was heaving up inside her meant that she could no longer
hide her feelings.  Worse than a heat flash in menopause!

Without wanting to, she began to stare
fixedly at them until Matteo, who knew her well enough to see that something
was wrong, waved at her to come and join them.  “What’s up?” he asked,
squinting his eyes.  “You haven’t moved a muscle in ages, you look like a
Barbie doll.”

Before she had the chance to say anything,
Lucrezia butted in.  “She’s just a spoiled little girl!  If she can’t have all
of your attention for herself, she pouts.”  She placed her hand on his knee,
stroking it as if it was the most natural thing in the world.  “She must be
pissed because you prefer my company to hers.”

“Oh drop the soap opera dramatics,” he
said to Lucrezia, cutting her off and standing up noisily from his seat.  “I
don’t prefer anyone’s company.  Come on,” he said to Marika, taking her by the
arm and leading her to the gazebo under the fuming gaze of the local drama
queen.

The touch of Matteo’s warm, golden skin
was enough to knock out any remaining sense of reason in Marika, leaving her in
the hands of hot, secret shivers and a thundering heartbeat.

It was a lovely early summer evening, 70
degrees outside.  A light breeze carried intense natural aromas up from the
valley, and the chatter of the cicadas created a pleasant background aria.  “OK,
we’re free of
Sharpay
,” he said, referring to one of the many nicknames
they had given to Lucrezia over the years, this one stolen from High School
Musical.  “So what’s the problem?”

“Oh, nothing....” She was laughing inside
at the name she herself had given her rival.  “It’s just that I can’t stand
her!  She’s such a know-it-all and so stuck-up.”

“Lucrezia has always been like that.  You
never know what she really thinks.  She talks nonsense and does everything she
can to annoy you....”  He gazed into her face with those limpid, honest eyes.  “And
it appears that she’s been successful this time.”

A pause.  Each of them was trying to read
the other’s thoughts. 
How strange!
  Up ‘til this moment, a glance had
been enough for them to understand each other.

And so Matteo took a step onto shaky
ground.  “You’re not afraid of her, are you?”

“I’m only afraid of losing you,” she
admitted, giving in to an uncontrollable impulse.  She lowered her face so as
to conceal her true feelings and tried to throw up a desperation shot: “As a
friend, I mean.”

“Of course.”  His joking tone told that he
was making fun of her for having said the obvious, laughing at her and her
silly insecurities.  “But why should that ever happen?”  He pulled her toward
him, pinching her waist and thighs in an instinctive game of possession,
treating her like a snake that swings and sways to the sounds of its
enchanter.  “You’ve been my best friend forever.”

Squirming under his grip, Marika
considered whether this was the moment to make the leap, like Carlotta had been
telling her to do for ages, or to take a step back, considering how she had just
won the consolation prize of
Best Friend of the Year
....  Game Over!

But before she could decide what to do,
Marcello interrupted them.

Marcello was a few years older, tall with
wide shoulders and a narrow waist hidden somewhere amid his sculpted abs.  He
had dark, wild hair that hung to his neck, and black, penetrating eyes.  His
face was rough-cut, accentuated by a wiry goatee and a hard-set jaw.  After
finishing vocational school he had found a job in the warehouse at a
lumberyard.  He was a mysterious figure, and rather rough in his ways.  He
loved freedom – his freedom above all – and motorcycles more than anything
else.  He played soccer too, as a striker on the same team as Matteo.  For a
while now, Carlotta had suspected that Marcello had some kind of
not-easily-defined interest in Marika, but she hadn’t mentioned it to anyone,
considering the strangeness of the source.

“Pardon the interruption!”  He hit them
with all his sarcasm.  “I didn’t know this was a private party.”

“Ha-ha, very funny.”  Marika slid from
Matteo’s arms, chirping gaily, “Don’t be such an idiot!”

“You looking for someone?” Matteo asked.

“Take it easy!” he needled.  “It just
looked like your priorities, at the moment, were set on something else, or am I
wrong?”

“I don’t see how it makes any difference
to you,” Matteo replied coldly.  “Or am I wrong?”

It was obvious that something had come
between the two friends, and the tension in the air was thick.  “Come on, guys,
knock it off.”  Marika herself had noticed the hostility in their voices.  “Let’s
go back inside, Carlotta is calling us for the cake.”

She headed toward the house and Marcello
turned to follow her, when he felt himself being held back.

“Cut it out with this crap,” Matteo warned
him in a friendly tone.  “It’s getting old.”