The Unforgettable

“Don’t go,” Carlo whispers into my hair tightening his arms around me.

I reach out on the bedside table for my phone and turn the 7:30am alarm off then I turn around and face the messy haired Carlo.

“I have to go to work,” I say softly.

“I’m not so sure I can drop you off,” he replies teasingly.

I smile a little and bite my lip thinking it over, “how about you drop me off at home to grab some things I forgot, I’ll drive myself to work, maybe stop home again hopefully I won’t have to, drive back over and tomorrow we play hooky. That way also, you can give your patients a warning of cancelling.”

He runs his thumb across my cheek, “don’t go” he repeats.

I poke my lower lip out, “I’d stay if I could.”

“So, do!” he pleads.

I lean in to kiss him, he pulls me close and we lie there wrapped in each others arms for a while longer. After falling asleep again I jolt awake, hurriedly grab my phone and see it’s only been ten minutes, plenty of time. I sit up, his eyes open and he looks up at me.

“There is no changing your mind is there?” Carlo asks.

“I said tomorrow,” I shrug.

He sighs then sits up lying his head on my shoulder, “I suppose I should get ready as well.”

I just smile at him and nod, we both take quick showers, (I seriously don’t think I’ve taken such a quick shower it had to be under five minutes) and head to the car.

Carlo pulls out and drives us toward town, “I can give you a ride to work if you’d like,” he looks over at me.

I shake my head, “no it’s okay. You do basically everything else for me,” I laugh a little. I shrug, “besides I’d like to drive, I haven’t driven in a while, I think I may have forgotten I’m always being driven around.”

Also, I’d like to be under the radar as much as I can. I’d hate to attract the wandering eyes of Barb or my manager again, they’ve been looking at me funny since that day in the cafe. . . I can’t tell Carlo the real reason because he’ll only become upset, I’m actually a little nervous from not driving in so long.

We pull up into my driveway in no time, I unclick my seatbelt and kiss Carlo.

“I’ll see you uh. . . When are you done with your appointments?”

He closes his eyes thinking then shakes his head and looks through his phone, “I know that I have a few sessions back to back from eleven to three then I have one long session with an older woman. That’ll go for a couple hours and doesn’t end until seven-thirty.”

My eyebrows knit together, “you’ll be off later than me?"

He sighs then nods, “if you’d like to come to the office when you get off and hang out that’d be nice. You could probably even stay during the session and speak with Ms. Mabel, she’d think you were beautiful.” I blush and he continues, “she’s a rather interesting woman, many great stories, grand adventures she’s been on.”

I smile, “that sounds nice.”

He shrugs, “or you’re welcome to come back here, whichever you feel like doing by the end of the work day.”

I nod, it sounds so limiting, but I don’t think about it too much.

“Well I’ll let you know when I get off. I love you.”

He gleams with happiness his smile spreads wide, “it’s beautiful when you speak those words to me, I love you too.”

He leans in and kisses me again longer than the first one, I have to pull away with a giggle and he smiles at me with yearning eyes.

“Get out of here before I drive off with you still in the car,” he chuckles a little although he looks serious.

I shake my head smiling, collect my things then get out with a wave, he blows me a kiss then I make my way up to the front door. When I step in I look at the clock on the wall, it’s 8:10 plenty of time. I walk through the quiet apartment collecting things forming a pile on the bed. When I think I’m done I go to the closet and grab my old school backpack. When I open it I see it has a couple notebooks, I pull them out to see one notebook’s from my old Photoshop class and the other one is from my English class.

I flip through the Photoshop class notebook, glance over the side notes I made of the shortcuts for the tools in the program. I feel a little nostalgic I guess, but then I feel sad. I miss school, maybe, I highly doubt it, but maybe I can enroll in school some day, I don’t know what I’d do though. . . I guess that’s really something to worry about later.

I toss the notebooks to the side and they land on the pillows and I stuff some clothes I forgot into the bag, my brush, a couple of scrunchies and my blue bootie boots.

My phone vibrates in my butt pocket and startles me, I take it out and see it’s a text from Chris.

“Hey, I tried calling when I landed last night.. You were prob asleep, I keep forgetting about the time difference. I have a meeting in 15 mins, I’d like to talk to you… call me when you’re off, k?”

I bite my lip as I stare at the message, I feel so disconnected to him now that he’s not right here, it’s weird. I don’t feel the need to respond so I finish up around the house, lock up and get in the car.

After I turn on the car, go into reverse inch maybe two inches and go back into park I spend the next five or so minutes convincing myself that I won’t crash the car.

I drive to work and it reminds me of the first time my parents let me ride off in the car alone. When I make it to work and find a parking spot I have two minutes to spare, I forgot how terrible parking is here.

I’m at the last hour of work finally and this work day has been excruciatingly slow and tedious. I don’t think I’ve looked at the clock so much, or glanced at my phone or gotten up for a snack or the bathroom. I found any excuse not to do my work today, I seriously don’t want to be here, I should’ve stayed in bed cuddling like Carlo said. I shake my head and laugh to myself. Janine, my hawk of a manager walks by, her eyebrows pull together when she notices me smiling. She glances at my screen to see I’m not looking at a video or some funny article I’m just dumbly laughing to myself as my spreadsheet sits almost blankly on my screen.

This attracts her like the shark she is and she stands over my desk arms tightly folded under her bosom. She gives me a look and my smile that wiped away turning to a disappointing frown is now a slightly annoyed expression.

“How’s your work coming along Gianna?” she asks.

I nod, “just fine.”

“Not slipping up,” her voice takes a high pitch. “Again are we?”

I press my lips into a line and shake my head, “nope,” my lips make a popping sound.

She makes a sound, “I’m happy to hear it,” her eyes flash to my screen again then she clicks off in another direction.

I roll my eyes, as I bumble through finishing the spreadsheet the last hour of the day is finally over, but I ‘m not done yet. I spend the next twenty minutes clicking around, entering formulas, opening different files and finally finishing up the spreadsheet and by the end of it I have a headache, but I’m finally free.

I clock out and shut the computer down, collect my stuff and leave the building, when I approach my car, two cars down stands Janine. Why, why do I keep running into her? She’s standing in the open doorway of her car holding her keys and staring at her phone. She could very easily become victimized, knocked over the head left on the ground and her phone and car, gone. Oi, those are the things I think about when I’m in public alone. . . But if I move quickly enough maybe I can hurry in the car and get away from this threat.

I start speed walking when I’m one car down and my heart starts racing when I finally get there I fumble with the keys and insert the key in the door because the car beeps if I use the fob. I get it unlocked, start the car and she looks over, she waves. I haven’t turned my head in her direction so I could very easily pretend that I didn’t see her. I turn to my door and close it, but before it shuts I hear her voice shouting my name.

I sigh, she’s going to know I ignored her, shit. I groan a little and sigh again rolling down the passenger window.

“Hey Janine.”

“Gianna,” she walks over to the car and leans in. “I thought you were going to drive away,” she smiles.

I smile back shaking my head, she bats her caked eyelashes.

“This is a surprise, you staying late. You get behind in work?” she feigns concern.

I shake my head still smiling, “just thought since I had the car that I wouldn’t be rushed.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah you are driving!” she exclaims in sudden realization nodding her head.

Yeah. . . What the fuck do you want lady? “Well-"

“How’s Chris doing, I haven’t seen him in a while. . . Though I have seen you with another guy,” her voice inflects like she’s really questioning her memory on if we saw each other in the restaurant.

“Chris is fine,” I nod not acknowledging her comment. We both stare at each other then I shake my head dismissing the conversation, “alright I have to go now. See you tomorrow!”

I can tell she wants to say more, but she just straightens from leaning in the window and says bye with a smile. I hurriedly drive away before she finds something else to bring up.

“This isn’t good,” I say quietly to myself.

I pull out in traffic, get a little down the way until I’m at a red light.

“You need to stop daydreaming and slacking off!” I exclaim. “She’s gonna just keep coming at you fishing for shit if you give her a reason. Get your shit together,” I slap my hand against the steering wheel.

I glance out of the window to my right, to see in the car next to me there’s a teenage boy staring at me from his car. In embarrassment, I shrink down a little in my seat and turn the radio up facing straight, the light can’t take any longer to change.

The headache is thumping harder as I drive down the road and I begin to feel weird and clammy, I’m just going to go to his house I don’t think I’d be pleasant company in front of an elderly woman right now.

When I get to his house I go to the bathroom downstairs and look around to see if there is any advil or any sort of pain medication. I don’t find anything in the bottom cabinets and I open a drawer on the opposite end to find several pill bottles. There’s an orange bottle that looks prescribed so I skip that, Bayer back pain medication, Claritin pack, finally Excedrin!

I pull out the bottle and shake a few into my hand, I pop them into my mouth and slurp up faucet water. I pull my shoes off and push them against the wall like before. I pad my way through the house, look at the time on my phone to see it’s 6:45, Carlo’ll be here soon. My head’ still pounding, I decide to go outside and lie on the hammock that hovers on his back porch. It’s nice and breezy outside not too cold, I think it’ll be perfect.

I climb into the hammock and swing a little, I close my eyes, the wind blows and my hair gently tickles my face. I take deep breaths and fall into a rhythm then I fall into sleep. I’m not sure how long I was asleep, but I wake up to Carlo’s warm hand on my cheek and him whispering my name.

“Gianna,” he whispers again.

I sit up a little to feel I still have the headache and lie back down wincing.

“What’s wrong my love?” he leans in closer.

“I have a headache, what time is it?”

“7:45.”

“Really? Did you just get back?”

“Yeah about five minutes ago, I saw your car but I couldn’t find you.”

I give a sad smile, “I’m sorry.”

He presses his lips to my forehead, “I’ll run you a bath and return for you when it’s ready, keep resting.”

He straightens and leaves not a second later my eyes are shut and I lie there half asleep waiting. When I wake back up it’s due to the feeling of motion, I open my eyes to see Carlo has me in his arms carrying me to the stairs.

“I could’ve walked,” I say sleepily resting my head against him.

His lips press against my head, “no need dear, I know how bad it feels rocking around a hurting head.”

Carlo repositions his hands then starts up the stairs, I close my eyes to not worsen my symptoms. When we get to his room he places me on the bed, I look at him, he smiles at me then signals for me to undress and disappears into the bathroom. I start prying off my clothes and I didn’t notice that the bath water was still running until it’s turned off. When I get my clothes off I debate whether I should pull my hair up to stay out of the water or leave it down. I decide to leave it down because a ponytail may only make the headache worse so I head down the hallway and stop when I see he’s standing with his back to me. I walk up behind him and wind my arms around his midriff, he jumps and spins around to look at me with wide eyes.

“You have to stop sneaking and grabbing me like that love,” he says rubbing a hand against my bare back.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “what were you doing in here?”

He shakes his, “ran your water and got caught in thought. Come on, let’s get you in the tub.”

I unlock my arms from around him and he guides me to the steaming bubbly bathtub, it’s spilling with bubbles there’s that many.

“Wow, this is crazy,” I say.

He smiles, I step in and immerse my body into the water, Carlo walks over to the wall and turns on these little lights above the bathtub that I didn’t notice until now and he turns off the two other main lights in the bathroom creating a dimmed atmosphere. Then he picks up a little white remote and on starts some soft smooth jazz like he loves. He walks over to me and sits on the lip of the tub, he smiles a cheesy one looking at me amongst all the bubbles.

“Is this okay?” he asks.

“It’s amazing, almost perfect.”

His brow furrows, “what could make it perfect.”

My hand wraps around the tie around his neck and I pull him closer so I can kiss him, “you silly,” I kiss him.

He smiles, “I thought you’d want a relaxing bath, not to be distracted by me.”

“I’m always distracted by you,” I giggle. “Whether you’re here or not.”

He nods, “touché, I the same by you.”

He kisses me then after undressing joins me. He has me sit on his side in front of him so that he can give me a massage. The massage soon leads to kissing and more touching and not long after we’re making love again and it’s just as passionate as the first time.