Rewind and Play

1996

---

Alice

“Hey you two!”

I jumped back like I had been electrocuted.

There didn’t seem to be that much space left between Samuel and I, I noticed suddenly.

I could smell Samuel’s beery breath on my cheek, as well as his smoke and wood scent. I would have found it comforting if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was getting nervous and couldn’t understand why.

With a small smile, which seemed strangely a little sad, Samuel moved away from me and turned toward the person approaching us.

Nico landed in front of us. Despite being short, he moved with a swagger that I respected big time.

I could see Nico assessing what was happening in this remote corner of the garage. He looked… Interested? My palms started sweating.

“What up.” He was looking at me, expectant, although I wasn’t really sure what for.

“Hey, Nico,” I said, also not really knowing what else to say, considering I had exchanged a grand total of five words with him, ever, three of them being “Happy birthday, Nico.”

I was doubly flustered when I felt Samuel leaving my personal space.

He gave me a small wave, backtracking from us, mouthing: “He’s all yours.”

For a split second, I was disappointed that Samuel was leaving me behind. But before I could reflect on that, Nico had taken the place of my friend. Actually, he entered exactly the same spot, standing as close.

Except, I didn’t really know this guy.

Everything felt slightly off: the smell was just not right, some Lynx derivate that was way too strong; on top of it, a Dolce and Gabbana cologne that I was pretty sure I had smelled on my father (yuck). Nico was smiling knowingly and leaning in, nothing like Samuel’s casual charm, more like a gangly duckling.   

That was a harsh thought, and I felt my face warming up. I had to get a hang on myself.

“This is a nice party you have organised” said Nico then, with a small laugh, a hand going through his black hair. He did have lovely hair.

“Thanks, it’s great that you are having fun.”

“You look lovely in the dress; I certainly should have paid more attention to that body in school.”

Oh.

Did he just compliment my body? True, the delivery was as unflattering as it could be, but even I could see that was meant to be a compliment.

I was slightly star-struck from being in the presence of my crush. I could only smile, in what I hoped was not a creepy way.

“So, how do you know Sami…uel?” I ended up asking after a short, but exceedingly painful, silence.

Nico gave me a one-shoulder shrug: “School together here in Castelnuovo. Then I went to the Liceo because I want to be a solicitor like my dad. He went to… Can’t remember.” He waved the end of the sentence away.

There was something about the way Nico had spoken that rubbed me the wrong way.

“I see. Why did you come tonight, then?”

It came out harsher than I meant and Nico looked at me, slightly taken aback.

Then he shrugged again and, without further notice, he just leaned further into my personal space and caressed my cheek with the back of his finger.

I froze, like a fish finger in a box.

How did I go from mumbling a frazzled happy birthday to being on the verge of having his tongue in my mouth?

Was this the norm at parties?

Had Samuel said anything to him? Why did this even matter?

My spiralling stopped when Nico did, in fact, kiss me. This is what I wanted, wasn’t it? So, I tried to stop overthinking and enjoy the moment.

He had a big mouth and he knew how to use his tongue, unlike some of my previous experiences, who just seemed to believe there was no difference between a tongue and a drill.

His lips were soft, and his hands were placed on my shoulders, quite chastely.

After the initial surprise, I started reciprocating because sure, I was a nerd, but I was also a teenager, with hormones and the like, and who was I to I throw away such a gift?

After what had felt like quite some time, Nico allowed me to come up for air.

Almost gasping I said, not for the first or the last time trying to be funny at the wrong moment: “Oh, thanks for the birthday gift…”

Fortunately for me, Nico was either too slow or not interested in what I was saying, so he only smiled vaguely and made the motion to go for my mouth again.

Quite alarmed at that point, I asked: “What are you doing?”

“What do you think?”

“Eh…”

I looked around. This was not the way I had dreamed for this to happen. Granted, I had not really thought of any real-life scenarios which would include Nico kissing me, because he was too close to being day-dreaming material. I now realised I had only had a crush on the idea of Nico and that I had really liked his sparkly green eyes, but I did not know what to do with the actual Nico.

Over his shoulder, I could make up Samuel’s silhouette in the opposite corner of the garage.

He was turned, talking to someone who looked like… Vittoria, maybe?

“Are you going out with Marchetti?” The question shook me out of my reverie.

“What? No, we are friends,” I answered truthfully, despite the recent, puzzling, events, which were already starting to acquire a dream-like quality.

“So, can we go out?”

I was so thrown and surprised by the question that I could only answer: “Sure…” before Nico’s tongue found its way to my throat again.

---

And that was how I found myself “going out” with Nico.

The main difference in my life was that Nico was often commuting to San Giuliano on the bus, now. After the initial shock, I had been quite elated with the perspective of spending time with my crush, finally.

The joy, however, started to wear off almost immediately. As it turned out, Nico was not big into talking, or trying to get to know me. I was not complaining for getting some tongue-action, but…

It used to go this way: I was there quite early, that had not changed. I was already listening to something when Nico hopped on the bus, later than me but, it must be said, earlier than last-minute-Marchetti. I would, then, try to struck up conversation, either about music, or, after a while, anything I could come up with.

Except, Nico only wanted to fondle and kiss me, which, even at stupid o’clock in the morning, is nice, but also, maybe, not what I wanted to spend a whole half an hour doing. Plus, it required an inordinate amount of oral hygiene.

By the time I was in school, my jaw was aching. Also, there was no follow-up on our morning meeting. We weren’t seeing one another at any other time; we were just in for the two trips. At school, we were sticking with our own people and at no point had Nico suggested we saw one another in the afternoon, despite being next door neighbours.

Each (rare) morning I wouldn’t see him on the bus started to feel like a respite.

This also meant that I was not sitting next to Samuel anymore. Of course, he was still there, greeting me every morning with a smile and a wave, but he was also now sitting on his own at our seats.

He didn’t seem to mind the new situation, but I sure as shit saw a twinkle in his eyes, a slightly evil twinkle whenever he caught me holding hands with Nico, or whenever I was trying to hide my very real need to stretch my jaw. He seemed to always be looking when that was happening.

Of course, since we were now an item, Nico and I were respectably sitting near the front of the vehicle, directly under Samuel’s gaze.

Once, I asked Nico what kind of music he liked. Such a big mistake. He liked reggae. Reggae! It was the only type of music I actively detested. If you asked me, the only people allowed to like reggae were the inhabitants of Jamaica.

And so, quite shortly after he had dropped the reggae bomb on me, I realised that I needed to put both of us out of our misery. I couldn’t believe I was thinking that, but talk about “careful what you wish for”. 

When I finally made my mind up, I felt quite good about it all.

Pity I made a right mess of it.

---

Samuel wiped tears of mirth from his eyes and could not stop laughing, the fucker.

“There’s no need for that!” I exclaimed, turning to face the window with a huff.

“I’m so… Actually no, I’m not sorry. Have you told anyone?” asked Samuel, trying, and failing, to keep his composure.

Samuel was the first person I had told this. And from the reaction I was getting, the last one. I would bring this to the grave.

“No, I haven’t.” I mumbled, my back still turned on him.

“Don’t do it, ever.”

“Message received.”

It had been a very long day, since The Accident.

Catching the afternoon bus, I had shuffled along the bus, taking my seat as quickly as I could, before Nico could come in to glare at me; when he had arrived, he had found Samuel’s face first. He was sitting on the aisle seat and kind of shielding me from him.

I would have thanked him for that sort of protection, if he wasn’t acting the way he was now.

Samuel started reading in a whisper that could not mask his astonishment:

“Dear Nico, I wanted to write to you to tell you that I don’t think our relationship is going very well. I think we should both take some time to reassess the situation, but for my part I believe we work better as friends than as boyfriend and girlfriend. I thank you for the time spent with me. Best wishes, Alice”

I shrunk in the seat, trying not to touch Samuel’s leg. When he had seen me in my usual spot, a small line had formed between his eyes, but he had just said “Hey Ali,” and slid next to me without further comment.

The touch of his knee against mine confirmed that I had taken the right decision, if nothing else. That tiny little contact sparked more awareness in my leg in two seconds that the whole of Nico’s tongue in my mouth in the past weeks.

Samuel had looked at me, one eyebrow quirked, expecting an explanation.

“Can I interest you with some Smiths?” I had asked instead, offering an earbud.

“Sure. I imagine you can understand that I also want to know what happened before we get to Castelnuovo.”

“I know. Give me five minutes, it’s not eh… Easy.”

I had waited the maximum amount of time I was feeling comfortable with, then dropped a small folded piece of paper in Samuel’s lap.

And there we were.

“Did you actually write ‘Best wishes’? No, that’s not my first question, although, I mean, it is a pretty spectacular way to close this particular little letter. My first question is: were you actually sitting next to Nico when he was reading this?”

The conversation, due to its confidential nature, was carried on in whispers. Mainly because the offended party was sitting a metre and a half away from us.

“Aha” is the only thing I felt like saying at this point.

“But…why… Ok. I know I am about to ask a possibly stupid question, but why did you think it was a great idea to break up with him, with a letter, sitting next to him while he was reading it?”

This called for something more than a grunt: “I didn’t feel confident I could go through with it if I had to talk to him. I thought maybe he could convince me to not break up? He’s nice after all, and so I thought to write down my thoughts… And then once I had given him the letter, just after I had done it, I realised I was kind of trapped there with him, sitting next to the window, and I just sat there watching him reading and …”

“Getting upset?”

Oh, he had gotten upset all right. He had crumpled the piece of paper in his hand and thrown it at me. In a hushed voice he had whispered-shouted how insensitive it was that I was getting rid of him in a bus, via letter (and what a shit letter at that), refusing to engage in direct conversation. I didn’t have the time to reply to any of his (mostly fair) accusations, because he got up and stormed off to the back of the bus. At that point, we were almost arrived and, fortunately, I managed to avoid any further interactions with the other passengers until after school.

“Yeah, he didn’t take it well.”

“I saw him moving back and was he… crying?”

“He might’ve a little” I murmured, kind of wanting to drop the subject at that point.

A little nudge on my shoulder made me turn in time to see Samuel’s expression turning from amused to gentle.

“Would you do me a favour Ali, next time you do this?” he asked, his big hand landing on my shoulder.

“I won’t go out with anyone ever again and, also, anything if we can please stop talking about it.”

“Just do the talking, it’s harder but the person won’t be as pissed off as that. Also, please, never leave me like that. If you grow to not like me anymore, just tell me.”

The hand had a reassuring weight and Samuel left it there for a bit, warming up my shoulder.

He removed it then, turning to face forward again: “I’m sure you left him because he likes reggae,” he stated, a smug expression on his face.

“Well, reggae is an issue, I am not going to lie to you,” I replied, anxiety starting to ease off a tiny bit; “If you really want to know, I didn’t have much in common with him, including our music taste. And despite his decent tongue action…”

“Too much information!”

“… You asked for it. Despite his decent tongue action, good tongue action is not good enough by itself to keep me interested. Plus, he smelled too much.”

“He… what?”

“He wears a very strong perfume, which is, by the way, the same perfume my dad uses, so… Ew.”

“Are you into that sort of thing or what? It’s not the first time you talk about sniffing people up.”

“Is it? I suppose I do have a strong sense of smell…”

Samuel turned slowly towards me: “Ok, miss nose police, how do I smell?”

Once again, Samuel Marchetti was catching me off guard: “Eh, ok?”

“Only ok?”

“Why does it matter?”

“I’m just checking. I wouldn’t want you to ditch me because my taste in music is not up to par or I smell like your father. Do I smell like your father too?”

He leaned towards me, exposing his neck.

Oh fuck. I could see his heart beating in his neck, a quick flutter that made my mouth go dry. Gulping, I leaned in a fraction. He smelled good, but I knew that already. I was so close that, if I leant in a bit more, I could have bitten his neck. Which is what my mouth was itching to do.   

I was so absorbed by the moment that I failed to notice two things.

One, that we were back in Castelnuovo.

Two, that Nico was now glaring at us: “So you weren’t going out, were you?”

Samuel looked up, puzzled, just in time to catch the furious expression on Nico’s face before he turned and stormed out.