“What’s gotten into you?” Cole says, pulling me into the adjoining gallery so he can kiss me deeper and harder. “Whatever it is, I like it …”
I tilt my head up, running my tongue along the side of his neck, all the way to his ear. Then I murmur, “I took a little drive this morning. Stopped in Bakersfield.”
Cole goes still, his hand resting on my lower back.
“Oh, really?” he says, no hint of play in his voice now. “Did it satisfy?”
I hesitate, really considering how I feel.
“It feels right,” I say, at last. “It feels good.”
I can feel him smiling, his face pressed close to mine.
“Because it is,” he growls.
Epilogue
Cole
Venice
1 Week Later
Bust Your Knee Caps – Pomplamoose
Spotify → geni.us/no-devil-spotify
Apple Music → geni.us/no-devil-apple
Mara and I stroll along Salizada San Moise in the heart of Venice. It’s the middle of Carnevale, and everyone around us wears full costume. A grinning Arlecchino in a colorful diamond-print suit dances in the doorway of a glassworks shop, and a white-coated Pulcinella serenades us from the balcony of the Bauer Hotel. Even the gondoliers punting the famous canal boats have dressed as characters from the Commedia dell’Arte.
Mara wears a black velvet jacket and breeches, brocaded in gold. A magnificent scarlet ostrich feather adorns her tricorn hat, and her pale white mask stops above brilliant scarlet lips.
She looks like a pirate queen. I’ve never been more enthralled by her.
Carnevale is the perfect environment for my pleasure kitten. She’s soaking in the wild sea breeze, the scent of fresh fried moleche, and the chaotic color and music of the street fairs bursting out of the narrow alleyways between the opulent old buildings.
Had I come here in my twenties, as an artist alone, I never could have appreciated the beauty of this place. Great cities are living things, and people are as much a part of their architecture as the buildings themselves. If I’m not here to laugh, and drink, and dance, and fuck on my own gorgeous balcony overlooking the canals, then why am I here at all?
I needed to feel that I was like one person to realize that I’m not so unlike the others.
Mara is my other half. Not my twin, but the parts of me that were missing.
I always thought the sense of emptiness that plagued me was the reality of the human condition. I never imagined the hole inside of me could be filled by someone else.
In all my arrogance, I missed a basic truth that other people already understood:
Everything is better when you share it with someone else.
Nothing feels insurmountable when you aren’t alone.
It’s so optimistic that I’d be embarrassed to say it out loud. And yet it’s how I feel. I’m vibrating with the joy of it, until every color, scent, and sound around me seems a manifestation of what I’m experiencing inside.
I’ve never felt so much a part of something. I am the happiness of the day, and the day exists to buoy me up.
Right as I’m thinking that, some drunken oaf stumbles into my path, dumping his spritz down the front of my trousers, drenching my brand-new Italian leather loafers.
“Scansarsi!” He shouts. “Brutto figlio di puttano bastardo Americano!”
Since I speak Italian flawlessly, I catch every word of that insult.
I turn to Mara, that old anger already blazing in my eyes.
The drunk stumbles alone toward a dark alleyway. I could easily follow after him. In the chaos, no one would remember another Rugantino in a black mask.
Mara follows my gaze, her eyes flicking ahead the alleyway, vibrant and alive beneath the smooth white porcelain of her mask.
Before I can move, she dashes ahead of me, seizing the drunk by the shoulder. She plucks the plume from her hat and draws it across his throat in one sharp motion, the scarlet feathers liquid bright against his neck. The drunk—insensible to manners, but fully alive to horseplay—pretends to stiffen up and fall over dead in the gutter, clutching his throat dramatically and making dramatic gurgling sounds.
“There,” Mara says, rejoining me, her feather tucked back into her pirate hat. “I got him for you.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Saves me the trouble.”