The Italian's proposal

Chapter 5

Melody sat in the back of the car, next to a pleased Timothy. Could it be the most perfect name? Maybe. He could have been named Christian and had a room for wild, forbidden sex.

She blushed just thinking about that sitting next to the most sensual man she’d ever seen in her life.

“Are you all right? You look red,” he was worried, maybe thinking something was wrong with her because of the baby.

Oh, Greek God, if he knew he got me like this. He was thinking about the baby she was carrying in her womb, about her safety and security, it was more than anyone she knew had ever done, including her parents. She found out when she was a month pregnant, she didn’t know how to tell her parents, and all the more reason she might have had, considering that they had reacted in the same way she had calculated. She knew them, she had made the right decision by delaying the news, so they had not been able to force her to terminate her pregnancy.

Twenty-two years old! She was not a girl, she was an adult, newly adult, but one, after all. She was responsible for her actions, actions she had committed under the influence of alcohol and the heat she felt between her legs for being in love for the first time. A fictitious love that had not been reciprocated. She never thought that what she had read about in the romantic novels could happen to her, so cautious, having her first boyfriend while in college and look what a disaster she had ended up in.

Just another one of the bunch. One for the collection of idiots who lost her virginity to the first idiot who paid attention to her.

It was going to be medieval torture for her to be locked in the car with him.

“I’m fine,” she said looking out the window.

“Why don’t you have health insurance if you’re pregnant? Doesn’t Doyle pay you enough? I can talk to him to get that taken care of. No woman should have to go through necessities while in a state of gestation.”

“State of gestation,” she repeated as if it were a joke.

“What? Don’t tell me you don’t know what gestational state is,” he commented wryly.

“I’m not stupid. I’m in college and studying veterinary medicine.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot. Your eyes say enough, and your intelligence shows. What I don’t understand is why you don’t have health insurance.”

He wasn’t going to let it go. Melody had tried to distract him, making fun of his correct way of speaking and expressing himself. It was obvious that they were from different worlds. He, from a refined and polished one, one where everything moved with money, and she from one where parents slammed the door in their daughters’ faces for a misguided love affair.

Melody was used to getting from college to home, those had been the rules to be able to study at a college that was relatively far from home. In the end trying to get out of her parents’ skirt and excessive care had ended in a colossal and epic disaster, as she had fallen in love and let herself be duped by the worst. Life had repaid her desire to walk away in spades. She had walked away from the stranglehold of her parents as she used to call it, but she had also walked away from her life, from her family.

She had met Richard in her second year of veterinary school, she was immediately attracted and excited, an instant had been enough to make her wish he would at least give her a look and exchange a couple of words with her, and he had. Richard had shown her more than interest, he had given her the attention she had so longed for and without realizing it, in less than a week she had fallen in love with him.

For Melody it had been a thing of fate, of life, of heaven. A man like him, charismatic, with dark eyes that guaranteed a life of adventure and eternal nights of absolute pleasure. She, who had only lived through romantic books, had finally seen what they said so much about. Belongs to (N)ôvel/Drama.Org.

That was the problem of parents raising their children absorbed in their world, in a world invented by them and managed at their whim, trying to take care of them from adversities and ailments, they hid from her that there were harmful and malicious people, people who took advantage, wolves dressed as lambs.

“I have no insurance, period,” she finally replied after considering giving him the real answer.

Her father was a wretched and heartless man who had left his youngest daughter to the good of God.

“You know, I’m beginning to think that’s your natural humor. Hateful and snooty. Tongue-tied and ready for anything.”

Melody rested her eyes on him for a second and felt small next to him. She wasn’t tall at all, nor did she have a petite body and even less so now that she was expecting a child. Her body was getting bigger in areas she wouldn’t have wanted, she was sure to have stretch marks and scars for life. She knew because she was beginning to understand that life was not a fairy tale and she was not a princess of romantic stories.

“Congratulations,” she growled.

“Now what for?”

“For thinking you know me.”

It was hard for her to believe the situation she was in at that moment. Sitting in the car, next to a sexy Italian, with gray-green eyes, hair like a Nordic god or some angel of the trumpet players.

It was even silly to wonder if he was single, for a man like him, with his impeccable clothes, his confident way of walking and with the money and beauty he had, it was impossible that he was somehow not engaged. Surely, he had a magazine wife and two children waiting for him at home, dining in a perfect house, with a table worth the cost of his entire veterinary career in college.

Something else that had been cut off like water or electric service. Her father had taken it upon himself to let her know that she would never again receive a dollar to pay for college credits.

“You are banned from this family until you learn to make the right decisions. Like you’re an adult. Which you were already supposed to be!” That had been all her father had said when he found out.

Her mother had been the emissary of all her father’s requests and interests for a long fortnight.

“My girl don’t be stubborn. It is for your own good. That still doesn’t feel.” These were the phrases her mother would say to her since the morning began.

Her parents never referred to their child as a person, as an entity, as a baby. For them he was just a burden in her bright future.

“You’ll regret it as soon as you see the travails a single mother goes through. Don’t think the world is one of those Sandra Bullock movies. The world is not pink! Life is not, Melody! You don’t survive without a man by your side to take care of you. If that scumbag who damaged your life doesn’t love you, much less can you survive alone.”

“It’s not that he doesn’t love me,” she had said the first few days. Then she had realized that she had been stupid to pretend to think that Richard would come to his senses and be with her and her son, forming a happy family.

Melody came back to her reality, the reality she had since she had left home with suitcases.

She looked at Timothy again sideways, noticing his hard features, his eyebrows were crossed, as if something made him uncomfortable, she sniffed slyly trying to find out if hormones had played a joke on her again and the bad smell was escaping from her armpits.

Just a little bit.

She wasn’t worth deodorant anymore; she was destined to be a stinker as long as she was pregnant.

Was she melodramatic? Possibly. A woman with glasses and a governess’s hairstyle was screaming inside her that she was being too hard on herself.

Looking at her gentleman in a suit, she wondered for the first time if she had offended him with her comment about not knowing her. Over the years she had developed the habit of saying at every moment whatever she felt and wanted, whatever she thought at the moment she thought it, not when the argument had passed, not when the heat had gone out of her body. She would shout and offend at the moment when her feelings were at their peak.

Her grandmother Nana used to say that she was nobody’s trunk.

And it was a great truth. She had never been able to learn to lie. The times she had tried as a girl, she had ended up wetting her bed and her father would ask her the next day what she had lied about.

She was an open book with her body expressions and her gray eyes.

But as for that arrogant Italian, she had to admit that he had been nothing but kind and good, he had given her help without her asking for it, except for the twenty minutes he had spent in the coffee shop being intense for his coffee.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled shyly looking down at her legs.

“What do you mean?” he fixed his green eyes on her, and for a moment Melody forgot even her name.

Surely, he was used to provoking that kind of emotional catalepsy in women, it was obvious that it even went unnoticed to him when a woman was attracted to him.

“I’m sorry. Really,” she repeated this time with more conviction.

“Why?” She looked at him sincerely and he narrowed his eyes and turned slightly to the right, devoting more attention to Melody, more than she could handle. The coffee stain on his shirt was almost dry, and she could almost swear that underneath the fabric were hand-carved squares.

She looked at him again, blushing instantly.

“That wasn’t the right answer. Answering in that tone wasn’t right. I tend to speak my mind to anyone. Everything that comes into my head is spit it out of my mouth in a matter of seconds.”

“It’s refreshing to meet someone honest Melody,” he thought a moment and continued, “not everyone has the courage to say things when they are necessary. You’re impulsive, that’s true, but you speak your mind.” It was obvious to Melody that there was something else behind those words. Someone had lied to him and let him trust down.

“That’s not good,” she looked out the window and pretended not to notice the attraction she felt for him, the electricity that coursed through her body and called her to him. “Don’t worry, it’s true anyway. You don’t know me, and you don’t have to.”

“You don’t know that. How about me wanting to get to know you?” he asked surprising her. He looked at her as if what he said, as if what he was trying to say behind those words was as normal as talking about the flu or Sahara dust.

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do!” said Melody sure that she would never see that man again. “We’ll only see each other for... How long until we get to the clinic?”

The car slowly slowed down, and Melody watched as without realizing it, they had already arrived at their destination.

“Well, that about sums it up. You don’t have to know me. Although anytime you want, I’ll return the coffee I dumped on you,” she opened the car door ready to go. “Nice to meet you Timothy, Sorry about your shirt and making you late for your meeting.”

It hadn’t been plethoric, but not a displeasure to have seen it either.

She opened the door and felt a hand rest on her thigh as she prepared to leave.

“Melody,” he called to her.

“What now? We agreed you were going to bring me in. That was it. You want to charge me now? See I don’t have a penny on me, since I didn’t stop by my apartment to get the money and I don’t think you’re the kind of man who accepts payment in flesh and pleasure either, much less from a pregnant woman.”

The chauffeur coughed loudly, and Melody cursed herself for babbling nonsense again, while Timothy looked at her in amusement.

“What? What’s the matter with you now? Stop looking at me and tell me what you want so I can leave. I may not be hurting now, but I’m not going to slack off and waste my time in your fancy car.”

Melody looked over the front seat at Timothy’s driver, this Clark guy seemed to be enjoying the conversation between his boss and her. At least someone was having fun with the situation.

“Melody,” he called back to her.

“What?!” she shouted at him, her eyes widening in anger. She had no patience at all, she liked things to go at their flash speed. Without so much fuss.

“It is precisely because you have no money that we are here. Precisely because you don’t have money is why I’m coming in with you. Did you forget that I know people here who can take care of you without charging you an arm and a leg for the checkup?” he pouted almost pretending to be unhappy with the situation, but his green eyes, looking straight into hers, were enjoying her shocked face. “Looks like we’ll be seeing a little more of each other after all.”