Page 7 of Disarming Caine

“What’s that face? You look bloody furious.” Thomas bumped my shoulder with his, more forcefully than he should have. He’d also had too much to drink.

Swiveling slowly to look at him, I focused on keeping my balance. Once he became clear, I hollered over the music. “Mario took my phone!”

Thomas laughed loudly and slapped my thigh. “Take it back!”

“I’m far too drunk to do that.” I leaned back on the couch, but the lights flared in my vision and I had to close my eyes.

He patted my knee and vanished into the crowd again. I flagged down a scantily clad club employee and asked for water.

Before she returned, Thomas slid onto the couch, waving a phone at me. “Ask and thou shalt receive!”

I took it from him, appreciating my lock screen for a moment—a selfie of Samantha and me at the airport before she flew home in September. I unlocked it, opening the video chat app. My finger hovered over her face. It was two in the morning in Napoli. Only eight in the evening in Brenton.

“What did you do, Thomas?” My cousin Mario landed on my other side, raising his voice. He reached for my phone, but I pushed him away. “He’s not supposed to call her until tomorrow!”

After two failed attempts to reach into my pocket, I withdrew my earbuds and made the call. I couldn’t wait another day. She’d be so upset from my news, I had to see her when I told her.

It rang and rang until the screen lit up. Her smile was broad, and she looked giddy with excitement. This was so much better than our call earlier in the day. I couldn’t see her eyes clearly, though. The phone drifted to the side, as my feet had done.

“Hey, stranger! You still up?” Her voice was like a quiet song, soothing the ache inside me. I turned the volume up so I could hear her over the music, catching the tail end of a sniffle. “I’m so happy to see you.”

“Samantha!” yelled Mario, leaning toward the microphone on my earbuds. She startled at his volume. “Come va, bellisima?”

Thomas joined from the other side. “Evening, Sam!”

She laughed, waving into the camera. I shoved both of them aside. Taking the hint, they left. To dance, to drink more, to get food in the courtyard outside. I didn’t care.

I ran my hand through my hair, breathing out slowly. Why had I called her without preparing something? How was I going to say this?

“You at La Fiamma?” she asked.

“We’re having a celebration party.” I needed her strength, but she kept moving and I couldn’t lock my eyes on hers.

“You’ve been drinking.” Her voice grew progressively flatter. Her subtle moods were normally easy for me to read, but the alcohol made it difficult.

“Sì, I have.” I shook my head, leaning my elbows onto my knees again. “Too much.”

“That’s not like you.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and breathed her name out as if it were a prayer. “Samantha. Oh, Samantha.”

Her voice quavered. “Is everything alright?”

“I miss you, bella. So much.”

“Yeah, we had this conversation this morning. What’s going on? You said earlier you had to talk to me.”

The waitress returned with my water, and I guzzled it.

“Antonio?” She was so quiet I could barely hear her.

I placed a hand over one ear, attempting to press more of the sound out. Noise canceling features could only do so much against the decibels in the club.

“What are you celebrating that you couldn’t tell me about this morning or on the phone this afternoon?”

I didn’t recognize the room she was in. The light was faint. It looked like a bedroom, but was not in the hotel she lived in. She’d shown me those rooms before. We’d lay on our beds earlier that day, heads and laptops on pillows, chatting for an hour, as though we’d woken up together. I knew her bedroom, and this was not it.

“Where are you, bella?”