Page 35 of The Enforcer

15Zoe

The shower doesn’t makeme feel like myself. Dinner was good, but it didn’t soothe my aching muscles. The wine was good but not life-changing.

But as soon as I hear that familiar, comforting hum of my favorite clitoral sucking toy, I feel like myself for the first time since I arrived in Naples. I haven’t even touched the toy to my body or slipped my hand underneath my t-shirt to caress my breasts, but I’m already sighing. I pull the waistband of my sleep shorts away from my stomach and slip my right hand between my legs. I use my thumb to change the settings and circle my mound with the toy, just appreciating the feeling of vibrations against my body.

For some people, masturbation is a means to an end, a way to get off quickly, to orgasm as a pressure valve relief. I never leave home without a very small, very powerful bullet for hectic, stressful days, where all I need is ten minutes in an empty bathroom to come quick and hard, and then I’m ready to get back to the rest of my regularly scheduled life.

But that’s not how I prefer to masturbate.

My pleasure should be a production. It deserves care, attention, and planning. I take getting myself off seriously, and I don’t accept less care and attention from any of my partners. That’s yet another thing I’m going to miss most about my exes. The only people as serious about me getting off in whichever way I needed was them, and I loved being with people who allowed me to reciprocate that care.

After the breakup, an international flight, an aborted shooting, and an escape along the coast, I need my vibrator to take my mind off of everything more than ever. I thumb my vibrator settings again and move the head over my clit. That jolts my mind and body into the here and now. I shiver and groan. I press the toy against my clit and my head into the pillow. I shove my left hand under my t-shirt and pinch my nipple. The ripples of that sharp pain radiate out through my body.

I haven’t even come yet, but my limbs are feeling looser, my eyes are drooping, and my lips are wet with my arousal.

I won’t last long.

Normally, I would feel sad about a quick come. Like I said, my pleasure should be a production, but sometimes the production is having a quiet dinner of amazing leftovers with a big, silent man who makes sure I eat first and subtly spoons more of the dishes I enjoy onto my plate. Sometimes, the thing that makes me wet enough to easily push two fingers into my cunt is being carried to bed by a man who supports my weight easily and seems to enjoy holding me in his big, rough, capable hands. Sometimes, it’s just being tucked under the sheets because my recent breakup left me feeling hollow to my core, and I haven’t had any time to process my sadness. Sometimes, the care and attention I need is having someone whose gaze I can feel even in a dark bedroom hand me a bag of my favorite toys.

And maybe if I was less physically and emotionally tired, I’d have pulled Alfonso into the bed with me and taught him how to use my favorite toys on me. Maybe, if things weren’t so strange, I would have invited Alfonso to help me forget all the chaos for the rest of the night.

Alfonso

If I were a worse man, I would have crouched outside her door. Apparently, the nuns were wrong about me, and I’m not as bad as they said and I came to believe.

I don’t go far, though.

Someone has to clear the kitchen table and put up the rest of the food and wash the dishes. Someone has to make sure that the front door and windows are locked. And so, I do that. I also pull out my phone and check in with Giulio and Salvo.

It’s a good sign that Giulio responds quickly to my message. I’d expected him to happily barricade himself in his apartment with Zahra and ride out the storm of whatever the fuck is coming between her legs. Maybe that’s the plan for later, but tonight, he surprises me when he sends a picture of him and Zahra in Piazza Garibaldi, small cups of gelato in their hands.

He tells me to show the picture to Zoe and to enjoy our vacation. I nod, looking up at the door, remembering all her softness in my arms. I could go knock on her door, beg to be let inside, and crouch by the bed to show her this picture, and then, maybe, I could ask her again if she wanted the toys or if there was something else — someone else — I could offer.

Thankfully, Giulio sends another message and stops me from making that particular mistake.

“While you are in Positano, make sure to swim in the sea. You need to gain some perspective.”

I send him a rude emoji in response just as Salvo’s message arrives.

“Enjoy the sea and remember that the things that seem most important sometimes lie.”

Whatever that means. Maybe I’ll ask Giulio tomorrow.

I finally decide that it’s time to go to bed. It’s been a long day, and now that my mother certainly knows that I’m back home, tomorrow will be even longer. I shut the lights off and turn toward my bedroom. That’s as far as I get.

It’s as if my hearing improves in the dark.

There are parts of Naples that never sleep — that never get dark enough to hide a couple of teenage boys sneaking out of the house at night to go party on a secluded beach, where the darkness is somehow deeper than it should be but never quite complete. But the quiet up here is a living thing, full of the sounds of living beings — insects, neighbors toasting one another in the night, cries, boat horns on the seas. A large city like Naples can’t replicate it, and sometimes, I miss these sounds while I’m away.

But the quiet is shocking now, maybe because Zoe’s here, maybe because I can still feel that cloth bag in my hand and guess what she’s doing. I feel wide awake. And with the lights off, I can hear the soft electric hum coming from her room, and my resolve to go to bed disappears.

I’m rooted to this spot in the kitchen, one hand on the light switch, the other holding my mobile phone in a death grip. I want to move closer. Once again, I consider walking back to her door. I know I’m not as bad a man as I imagine, but I wish I was. I wish I could throw her door open. I think about it. I want it.

But this floor is old, and it creaks. I’m terrified that the hum will cease at my first step.

So, I stand there and listen to that hum, desperate for more, and Zoe gives it to me.

Her soft moan is too polite. It’s contained and muffled as if she’s worried that I might hear, and that undoes me.

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