Page 5 of Beautiful Life
Pain shoots through my head as I bring my hand up to my eye. I try my best to get up and scurry to my feet as he stumbles back to find his equilibrium. Finally getting my legs under me, I’m only able to see with my good eye. The black tunnel is endless in front of me with nowhere else to go and I’ve got to get away. It’s not just him. I can’t take the noise. The crying is getting louder and louder with no escape. I start to run—to where I don’t know, but there’s nothing else for me to do but run. Away from him. Away from the crying. The crying is so deafening I can’t hear my feet hit the ground. That’s when I feel him again, his hands at my back…
My whole body jerks in my soft bed where I’m curled into myself, Mia is in my face nuzzling my ear. I’m sweating, breathing hard, and the covers are tangled around me.
I bring my hand up to calm Mia. “I’m sorry, girlie.”
Again. It happened again. It’s always the same, but not really.
The same.
Yet different.
I’ve never been in a tunnel before. The noise is always the same. It’s is too much. I can’t get the noise out of my head even after I wake.
Looking at the clock, it’s four-forty-five, still early. Maybe I can go back to sleep. I roll over to readjust the covers and wonder if I ever make any noise during these nightmares that have been haunting me for weeks. I can’t seem to shake them. Gabby hasn’t said anything about it, but her house is enormous and my room is in the basement on the opposite side of the house as theirs.
I’m not looking forward to today. It’s Thanksgiving and Gabby is hosting her massive family this year. She thinks it’s time she had a holiday family gathering in her house again. It will be the first since her parents died but she said she’s ready. The last four years have been hard for her so I’m happy she’s taking these steps. I’m pretty sure the difference is being with Jude.
As I lay here, I try not to think about still being married. My divorce didn’t pan out in five days. It’s being held up in court with all kinds of lame excuses from Preston. His lawyers are extremely creative to say the least. Tony isn’t happy with any of their offers, leaving me in divorce limbo. Mia does her best to snuggle in tight and I pray for dreamless sleep. Or nightmare-less sleep at least. There’s a big difference. I stopped letting myself dream a long time ago.
*****
“Leigh, you look tired. Go sit down, we’ve got this.”
I look over at Gabby and give her a small smile as she’s pulling dish after dish out of her double ovens. I don’t know why I think I can help with only one arm so I take myself to the great room to get out of the way. The mountain of food on the island that will be the Thanksgiving buffet is growing by the second.
Gabby Carpino’s family is huge. Her grandparents had four boys, one being Gabby’s dad. Those four boys married and had a mountain of kids, although Gabby is the only one without siblings. I can’t keep track of all Gabby’s cousins. Now, all those cousins have started having their own mountain of kids making the Carpino mountain enormous. It’s not just a big family, but a close one to boot. And when I say close, I mean they’re fixtures in each other’s lives.
Living with Gabby the last six weeks has been pure torture for me with the Carpino family.
They’ve tortured me with love, kindness, goodness … really the list could go on and would include every Fruit of the Spirit. This comes to them naturally. However, being on the receiving end of love and compassion doesn’t come naturally for me, so all their forms of kindness are forms of torture because I don’t know how to handle it. But the Carpino who’s torturing me most is Tony.
I’ve come to refer to this in my head as Tony Torture.
It started four weeks ago in his conference room when I “changed my mind” about how I was going to handle my divorce. Since then Tony has started hanging around Gabby’s house a lot. And by a lot, I mean all the time. He hasn’t shown signs of Chameleon Tony since that day in his office. No, Tony’s torture has been delivered with soft looks, sweet smiles, and casual caresses.
The casual caresses are the worst. I don’t remember Preston ever touching me that way, even in the beginning when I could pretend things were good before his touches came in the form of pain. Every guy I was with before Preston had their mind on different kinds of touches that only brought them gratification. Tony’s caresses are like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
I’ll never forget the first of Tony’s torturous caresses. It was shortly after I changed my mind that day in his law offices. It was Halloween night. Gabby’s door bell was ding-donging constantly with the tiny trick-or-treaters making their rounds. Jude was with Gabby, doling out candy while I was trying to be a good one-armed houseguest and clean up Gabby’s kitchen after dinner.
Tony saunters in the kitchen with a beer in his hand and frowns at me. “You’re gonna get your cast wet. Let me do that.”
In practiced fashion, I didn’t look up from the sink. “It’s okay, I’ve figured it out.”
This is where I made my mistake. I really need to start paying attention, because all of a sudden, Tony moves in behind me, brushing his chest up against my back as he reaches around, flips off the water, and plucks the cleaning brush right out of my hand.
His lips come to my ear, making me shiver, his breath tickling as he spoke. “You shouldn’t put pressure on your arm and you really don’t want to get that cast wet. I’ve got this.”
I do my best to turn without touching him which is impossible since he’s at my back and my side brushes his chest. He’s looking down at me but not into my eyes, rather at my eye that is now healed where Preston hit me. Bringing his hand up, he brushes the backs of his fingers down my temple and under my eye with only a hint of a caress I can barely feel, but still leaves a wake of heat in its path.
“It’s healed.” He states the obvious. Then he looks from my eye and gazes into my eyes. “Gems.”
I close my lids slowly because I feel that caress down to my soul. A caress so perfect, I don’t even know how to process it. It’s like nothing I’ve experienced and I want to savor it.
“What?”
“Your eyes,” he goes on. “They look like emeralds. Precious gems.”
My heart skips a beat and I side step around him. “You can clean the kitchen.”
