NERTHUS
“Why don’t you take your brother as well? We will just not give him any candy.” I ask him, and he rolls his eyes.
“No way. He is a total pain and such a crybaby. All a mama’s boy. Ugh, I was closer to my dad. Just like Arawn was.” He smiles proudly, and I squint at Arawn as he scoffs.
“Danny…” Arawn warns, putting out his cigarette.
Danny sways his head from side to side. “We have many things in common. Both our fathers came from Wales.”
“Oh, wow!” I say, listening as he continues to explain something geographically to me that I don’t quite understand.
“But I can talk Welsh, but he never learned.” He turns to me, leaning in while lowering his voice as if he were to tell me a secret. “But it isn’t his fault. He did take him in too late.”
“Danny!” Arawn barks, making us flinch, and I fear that even the fisherman sitting on the rails next to us was about to fall into the water because of the scare.
Danny starts talking what could be gibberish from what I know as I don’t understand a word.
“Uuuuh.” He inhales through his teeth before he tears himself from me and starts running.
Arawn just stands there tilting his head, looking after him with a questioning look.
Giggling, I cross my feet at my ankles, taking another bite from my cotton candy that is nearly all gone. I turn the stick with my candy in the air as he looks at me. “Are you sure you want none?”
He puts his hands into his pockets, stalking closer to me. Shaking his head, he watches me as I put another puffy bit into my mouth. “It’s nearly gone. And then it will be too late. You’ll have missed how good it tastes.”
I provoke him jokingly, turning the stick into the air again.
Grabbing my chin, he leans in to capture my lips into a kiss. My free hand clasps his shirt, while his hand slides beneath our coats to my waist to pull me closer.
He invades my mouth with his tongue, tasting every inch of it. And he surely knows his way with his tongue as the kiss even gets my core to throb pleasurably.
As he breaks the kiss, I’m still in a haze and look up at him with half-closed eyes. My body is about to throw a tantrum, as he speaks, making a shiver ripple through me. “You are right. It tastes amazing.”
“Told you,” I whisper, my gaze still captured by his.
I can hear Danny re-approaching as if he was still miles away, wrapped in a fog. But he is just mere meters away from us.
He is a lot to bear, and he surely can get annoying, but never did I have such a strong compulsion to want to throw him over the rails.
“Say something in Italian, then.” I hear him shout, and Arawn shakes his head.
“What am I? Your circus clown? Or a trained monkey?” His tone signals to me that he is just as annoyed as I am, and I chuckle.
“Don’t be mean,” I whisper, leaning closer to him as I hold onto his shirt.
He laughs as Danny makes a small dance. “Come on! Say something.”
“Sei una testa di minchia!” He says with a smirk, my gasp going down the wrong pipe.
Danny smiles as he looks between us. “You speak Italian?”
“No,” I say, coughing and shaking my head. “I don’t speak Italian.”
“What does it mean?” He smiles back up to Arawn who is caressing my back.
“That you are a boy made out of gold.”
Danny nods, pondering over it before he turns to me. “He did insult me, didn’t he?”
“Probably,” I hold my hand on my chest and laugh.
He swings back and forth, his arms wrapping around him as he turns. “Say something to Amber as well. But don’t be mean.”
Arawn laughs, still holding me in his arms. “I’m never mean to Amber.”
“Sure,” I scoff, and he grins down at me.
“Come on. We want to hear something.”
Arawn groans, looking at him with a dead glare. “As if you didn’t hear enough Italian in your life already.”
I snicker as Danny continues to wail about how he never heard him talking in Italian, making Arawn retort that this wasn’t true.
After a short back and forth, Arawn throws his head back, making me giggle. “You can’t deny him anything as well.”
He clenches and unclenches his jaw as he looks back down at me. I gulp as his gaze makes my nerves sizzle, even if Danny is not able to read the room.
“If I’m the golden boy, what is she?” he asks, jumping on the spot.
Taking a deep breath, he doesn’t move his eyes away from mine for a second as he says, “l’unica donna della mia vita.”
Luckily, as Danny is already hyper about what it might mean, it doesn’t show as I freeze in shock on my spot.
Forcing a smile, I try to calm my racing heart, acting as if nothing happened.
Because nothing happened.
“How about we start going back?” I ask, and they nod, agreeing with me.
I take advantage of Arawn getting distracted from Danny’s acting crazily and slip out of his grasp to walk to the next trash can.
Cleaning my hands with a wet tissue that I took out of my purse, I stand there watching them catch up with me.
The wind blows strongly, making me hug my frame as I look into the void dreamily.
It was just about work, wasn’t it?!
I look at them from afar as they are still fighting over something stupid.
My heart skips a beat painfully as it gets me to think that this might be a blink of happiness.
But I wouldn’t know.
As I never felt this way.
The wind blows through my hair, and I caress the wild strands out of my face.
Arawn now walks towards me with Danny still shouting about something, gesticulating wildly.
Arawn’s smile is gorgeous, and as I watch him, his words resound in my head.
‘L’unica donna della mia vita.’
It’s true that I don’t speak Italian.
I didn’t lie.
But they didn’t let me finish the sentence.
I grew up with a lot of Italians.
I don’t speak it.
But I understand it.
Not when they talk fast about a football game.
But I surely have seen enough telenovelas to recognize a confession.
The only woman of my life.