CHAPTER 2

CARL.

I want to start over... As soon as she said that, I went crazy.

It's difficult to explain what I felt. What she said was a demand, an expression of entreaty. She was asking me for help.

When I approached her table I never imagined touching her. I wanted to, I obviously wanted her from beginning, but I really didn't think this could go any further. That woman with her crazy words and her red confession transformed me into one being of action. That's what happened.

I resolved stay in my apartment that night. My job is usually too competitive and sometimes tiresome; trying to keep it simple. My weekends is to devote to nothing, to stay at home or somewhere else to unwind. I wouldn't be there, I-wouldn't-be-in-that-restaurant. It wasn't meant to be, and I'm not a man to believe in such nonsense of destiny. In fact, I still think that this dinner I shared with her (if we can even call it dinner, because I don't remember eating anything but herself), if it had been planned, it would not have been so perfect.

Seeing a woman alone in a restaurant like La Napolitana is no a surprise to me, because there gather municipal artists to pimps with their mafia's daughters. And those women are always alone at first. If you mix everything, it would a very interesting nigth, but seeing her alone there, waiting for someone on that old and dark wood tables, could be —perhaps— in not a threshing chapter in my life. And something happened when I saw her face. An intense (almost malevolent) pretense was born in me to sit next to her and I quickly realized: she wasn’t ordinary woman, she was unique.

But something else ended up completely destroying my sanity: her venting. And I remembered, was easy to approach her, but the occasion as greatness, transformed everything else an some thick question, difficult, like a tedious problem. What should I do? Her words gave me to understand she is a haughty woman. And I like... oh lord, I really like haughty women. I struggled a lot with myself not to disarm her right ther with my touches and my strong desire. I liked her very much from the beginning.

I already had her under my fingers, she emitting that familiar and amazing scent. In my thirty-five years old I couldn't match this aroma of femininity with all of women who passed through my hands. I settled to cover her from few onlookers, because I wasn't going to stop touching her and at the same time, I didn't want her to feel embarrassed. She had ended up in my hands and the satisfaction was scary.

With my tip wet with her juices, I pulled my hand out of her dress and brought my fingers to her lips. I still don't understand how I didn't die on the spot.

She began to giggle softly, her eyes narrowed. I couldn't help but smile at her, make her taste herself between my fingertips, oh my...

In that delightful way, started one of the best conversations I've ever had in my life.

OLIVIA.

I started dating Alonso (my boyfriend that night yet) seven years ago, I met him in college. We had our time of unbridled passion, then fights, then the suspicions of possible cheating and the many times he left me on board. Those confirmed me an imminent disinterest towards the relationship. A very common story in this society. All this reality joined my simple life: home-work-home. Going out to dinner at La Napolitana, one of the most recognized places of great state Zulia, is usually a notoriously different plan for a person like me. So, how avoid a stranger make me come in front of a pitiful number of waiters and some diners?

This was all so new to me, that I couldn't help myself and blamed the idiot Alonso, my ex, for leaving me stranded once again. Carl went for me in two seconds and in three more I drowned the embarrassment in shared smiles.

Oh, my God, what a shame!

If I was thirsty, he would bring the cup to my lips.

If I touched my forehead, he would press lightly on my waist to give me confidence.

He would whisper anything to make me feel brave and I got that my response to his caresses were not something I would do every day.

God, we're so close, he wanted to be a cocoon to me, but both of us formed a little bubble of mutual protection. Carl and I seemed to be locked in a very small closet, hiding from our parents like teenagers.

I jumped when I felt a prickling cold on the side of my neck.

“Olivia, my name is Olivia," I exhaled quickly under torture of his “icy questions”, smalls squares of ice in pieces of my exposed skin. “I don't... I don't usually do this kind of thing.”

“Fuck, you're beautiful.” He kept caressing me with his ice and I just hissed. “Look how the cold evaporates on your skin... You are so hot and excited..." he said impressed.

I bit my lips.

“Carl, people can see us.”

“Look, I'm not going to invite you to my house, I’ll not persuade you to go to yours either. This night will be over, they'll take us out of here and maybe we not meet again. But I need to know one thing.”

When I listened to him, a tinge disappointment came over me. Would I lose track of him so quickly? I don't know how I got into this situation, but I didn't want to know what would happen if I didn't continue.

“Get that piece of ice away from me!” I begged in a loud whisper. I was so hot that I swear, I felt a kind of paralysis on one side of my body. And his bold laughter, it was almost unbearable that he didn't want to continue the night.

“Tell me something, Olivia. Why does women hide her tears?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, it's normal that your ex did his job very well. He left you alone here, he made you cry... What happened this time? Did he get stuck in the office, or did he make up one cheap excuse?”

I was about to whinnin like a fifteen-year-old girl. Son of a…!

“Get that piece of ice away and I'll keep answering whatever you want.”

Like a direct order, he finally behave and pulled me away from the torture. His questions more like a confirmation of his certainties than anything else because he seemed to know everything about me.

Well, he rather knew all about women, women on that place.

“It's not easy to talk like that, Carl. What does it matter if I cried, if I'll do it here or front of Maracaibo City? Yes, he left me on board again and I let myself be carried away by you.”

He placed his hand on my thigh, like an anchor, and I had to swallow.

My hand on his wrist again.

“I'll not answer questions you seem to know the answer to.”

He began stroking me, sighing and exhaling, just as if were holding himself to not go deep between my legs again.

“May I confess that you make me nervous?”, he spoked.

My face changed from excitement to strangeness.

Nervous?

I managed to pull away a little by placing my palms on his chest to create distance and get a good look at his face.

I detailed him then. Brown eyes, face not so young but too sexy for anyone's taste. Defiant smile, thick eyebrows. I already knew he was tall and now that I saw him better, he was in good physical shape. Confirmed, he's hot.

What did he do for a living and what was he doing there that night? I could also tell he regretted his question. Now that I decide to tell this story today, I remember that moment, our first dinner and I usually laugh at his frozen expression, looking at me, and every time we spent stuck in each other's eyes.

Eventually, a waiter approached us with the bill, he was throwing us out. Carl paid my bill immediately without letting me refute, he adjusted my dress, yes, adjusted my dress, looked me over with his eyes one more time and taking my hands, helped me to get up.

Do you think that I thought about the color hair the waiter had? Or if he had even smiled at us or something? I've no memory of anything like this because I was hiding from the people watching us, I just detailing the impure floor of La Napolitana to not fall off because the hormonal exhaustion I had been left with.

Stranger! A stranger came to me that night and buried himself in my life.

And as we left, as we were touched by the steam of the burning cars outside, as we suddenly mingled with the smells of the street, it became impossible to separate us. It became inevitable to this day.