Casa Bianchi

“Dio mio... Fabio... più forte...” (Oh god... Fabio... harder...)

He listens. He always listens to that part.

He is above me, his forearms planted on either side of my head, his weight familiar, his rhythm steady. My legs are hooked high around his waist, ankles crossed at the small of his back, heels digging in to urge him deeper even though I already know exactly how far he’ll go. My nails rake down his back — not hard enough to mark, just enough to feel something. His cock fills me steadily, sliding in and out with the same familiar drag, the same slight curve that hits the same place every time. No surprises. Never any surprises. I close my eyes.

He pushes deeper, and I tilt my hips up to meet him because that is what I do, because my body remembers even when my mind wanders. It is not bad. That is the honest thing. It is not bad. It is just... known. Every angle, every sound he makes, every moment before the moment. I have memorized him without trying to.

He groans softly against my neck. I feel him everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I dig my fingers into his back, and he moves harder and for a moment — just a moment — something sparks. Something real. I arch up against him, and he buries himself deeper, and I let out a sound that surprises me a little. Good. I think. There you are.

“Più forte,” I say again. (Harder.)

And he gives me that too.

His chest is pressed against mine, his mouth open against my neck, breathing hard, losing the rhythm a little, finding it again. His hips push into me with an urgency that is almost enough. Almost. I wrap my legs tighter around him and pull him in, and he groans again, low and deep. Almost. I keep thinking. Almost. Like something is just around a corner I can never quite reach. I tilt my hips differently, trying to find it, and for a second I think I do — a sharp bright thing that makes me gasp — and then it softens again into warmth. Into familiarity. Into Fabio.

I feel him tense above me, his whole body going rigid for one long moment, his hands gripping the pillow on either side of my head, his breath ragged against my skin.

He lifts his head and looks down at me.

“Come sempre?” (As usual?)

“Sì,” I say. “Vieni dentro.” (Yes. Cum inside me.)

He does. A long exhale, his whole body shuddering once above me, heavy and warm, and then stillness. He stays there a moment, forehead dropped against my shoulder, catching his breath. I look up at the ceiling over his shoulder. There is a small crack up there. Near the light fixture. I never noticed it before. Or maybe I noticed it a hundred times and keep forgetting.

Then he rolls off and back onto his pillow, and I stay there, staring up at that crack, the sheets warm, my body already settling back into itself.

“È stato bello,” I say. (It was good.)

“Ti è piaciuto?” (You liked it?)

“Sì.”

“Bene. Dormi.” (Good. Sleep.)

And just like that, he is gone. Not gone gone. Just... asleep. The way only certain men fall asleep — instantly, completely, without a single loose thread left hanging. Like they leave the room without moving. I have always been a little envious of that. The ability to just stop. To close your eyes and be done with the day. I cannot remember the last time I fell asleep without lying there first for an hour, thinking about things I have no business thinking about at midnight.

I turn my head and look at him. Fabio. My husband. The man I have slept next to for — how many years now? I don’t count anymore. Counting started to feel like an accusation.

He is not ugly. I want to be fair about that. He is handsome enough. The kind of handsome that is easy to overlook, like a word you have read so many times it stops meaning anything. Some men get better with age — silver hair, deep lines that look like character. Fabio will go bald. It is already starting, at the temples, a slow retreat. I noticed months ago and said nothing. What would I even say? Tesoro, I think you are losing your hair. And then what? He already knows. Men always know and never say anything either. Maybe that is something we have in common.

I reach for my phone on the nightstand. 1:47. Of course. I lie there another minute, listening to him breathe. In and out. Slow and even. Already somewhere else entirely.

I get up.

The balcony door makes that small sound it always makes — a soft resistance before it gives, like it is reluctant. I step outside, and Milano opens up in front of me, all lights and distance and the low hum of a city that never fully sleeps.

La mia città. (My city.)

That is what I used to call it when I was little. My city. I was born here. I grew up in these streets, learned to ride a bike in the Parco Sempione, had my first cigarette behind a bar in Navigli at fifteen. Milano is in my blood the way things are when you don’t choose them — you just are them. And yet. And yet I am thirty-six years old, born and raised in this city, and I scan supermarket barcodes for a living. Scanned. Past tense now. Even that is gone.

I light a cigarette. The first drag is always the best part — the only part, really. Everything after is just habit. I lean on the railing, exhale, and watch the smoke disappear into the dark.

Thirty-six. I think about that more than I should lately. It is not old. I know it is not old. But it is old enough to feel the distance between where you are and where you thought you would be by now. At twenty, I had a whole life mapped out in my head — vague and luminous the way plans are when you are young enough not to know any better. I would have a career. A real one, something that meant something. I would have a child by thirty, maybe two. I would have a life that felt like mine.

Instead. Instead, I am standing on a balcony at two in the morning in my underwear, counting the things that didn’t happen.

Fabio drives his taxi through these same streets every night. He knows every shortcut, every one-way, every corner of this city the way I do. Two people born in the same place, living the same small life inside it. We should have been more, I think, and then immediately feel guilty for thinking it. More than what? More than each other?

I look across at the building next to ours. Close enough that sometimes I feel like I could reach out and touch it. The windows are like small televisions — other lives, other evenings, other people’s ordinary.

One light is on.

I notice it the way you notice things when your mind is quiet and has nowhere else to go. Third floor, second window from the left. The curtain is open. Not all the way — but enough.

I should look away.

I don’t.

A woman. A man behind her. He has her hair wrapped around his fist — a full grip, fingers twisted deep into it, pulling her head back just enough to arch her throat toward the ceiling. She is on her hands and knees on what looks like a bed pushed close to the window, and he is behind her, fucking her with a focus that is almost violent in its intention. Not violent, I correct myself. Just... decided. Like he knows exactly what he is doing and has no interest in doing anything else.

His hips snap forward, and I can see her whole body rock with it. She drops her head, and then he pulls it back up by the hair, and she lets him; she wants him to, I can tell from here. Her back is arched deeply, her arms trembling slightly with the effort of holding herself up. She is not holding herself up for balance, I think. She is holding herself up so she can push back against him.

And she does. Every time he thrusts forward, she meets him, matching him, demanding more of it. Her mouth is open. I cannot hear her through the glass and the distance, but I can see her lips moving, and I can imagine the sound well enough. I can imagine it very well.

It stings before I notice it. The cigarette burns down to the filter. And it stings my fingers.

Cazzo. (Fuck.)

Cazzo la mia vita. (Fuck my life.)