Page 32 of The Enforcer

14Zoe

A hot showerwill fix most things.

This is the kind of self-care advice my mother gave me as a stressed-out teenager, and she was usually right.

Unfortunately, the water in the bathroom only ever gets to slightly above lukewarm. I might have been okay with that but for the tiny ass shower stall that reminds me of transportation pods on spaceships in movies. Maybe Italian showers are where they got the idea. I always thought I would feel claustrophobic in them as a kid, and twenty-something years later, I know that I’m right. That’s some comfort, at least, but not much.

I have to deal with the indignity of wrapping a plastic bag over my head to protect my hair from the showerhead that pours directly into the stall. And I cringe every time my body slides along the shower walls. I don’t want to seem ungrateful — my parents raised me better than that — but if this is how this little mob vacay is starting, I don’t know how long I’m gonna last.

I didn’t even want to agree to this whole hide-out situation. I thought I could suck it up because, honestly, it seemed better than returning to the Council of Aunties and being grilled on how not one but now two women in our family are currently MIA in Italy. But if this little jaunt into a bad chick-lit film adaptation keeps going downhill like this, I might have to consider calling in reinforcements.

Maybe I need to get the big guns, aka Auntie Mabel. The thought makes me shudder right around when the warm water gives out.

I sigh at my wholly unsatisfactory shower and step out into the bathroom and realize that there’s just one more indignity I need to endure. There’s a tall cabinet at the corner of the room, and I open it to find it surprisingly stacked with towels that smell like detergent and sun. I smile right up until I pull the largest one out and realize that I might be able to get this thing around one thigh, but that’s about it.

My mouth falls open in shock, but then I have to shake my head because what did I really expect after that claustrophobic ass shower?

I use the towel to dry my body and then go through my regular skin and body care routine. I might not feel like myself, but I can at least smell like my favorite melon body butter and take comfort in doing my full five-step skincare routine. It’s the little self-care things.

I step back and look at myself in the small well-lit mirror behind the pedestal sink. Well, what I can see of my body, which is mostly just from the tip of my chin to the bottom curve of my stomach, which hides the top of my mound.

Looking at myself puts a smile on my face. Some might call it vanity, but I believe in loving myself first.

I turn to the side and enjoy the profile.

I don’t ever plan to have kids, so the advice I always gave Zahra and Shae and will one day pass onto their children—

Oh my God, Shae’s pregnant!

I remember that in a rush of shock that saps me of every bit of reserve energy I have left. I decide to fret about that later, after I’ve eaten and had a good night’s sleep. Anyway, the advice I plan to give to my nieces and nephews includes that one should never miss an opportunity to take a good but tasteful nude.

Thankfully, unlike most of my mother’s advice, I always follow my own.

I reach for my phone and take a burst of my body from as many angles as possible. The fact that this mirror cuts off my face is ideal; I hate having to edit every single picture to obscure my face before I send it out.

Oh, but then thinking that makes me sad. For the past two years, I’ve had a regular place to send my nudes. I didn’t have to wonder what Tyrone or Kevin would think of my body or pictures because I knew they loved them. They loved them so much that they’d sometimes project them onto the wall of their bedroom so we could all admire me while we fucked.

I’ve managed not to think about my exes for a few hours — because of all the drama — but now that I have, I feel like the world is crumbling underneath my feet. I don’t even look at the obviously spectacular images I’ve taken. I don’t have the heart.

I throw the too-small towel over the shower door to air dry and decide to walk to my bedroom alone.

I forgot about Alfonso.

Alfonso

“Mi raccomando, calpestami.”

I’m not hard up for a woman; never have been. But Jesus Christ, I’ve never met a woman like Zoe. It’s not just the way her thighs and stomach jiggle as she walks, the way her soft brown nipples harden in the cool air, or the fact that when she realizes that I’m standing in the kitchen, arms full of containers of my mother’s cooking, including some pasticcini, and a cloth bag with fresh bread dangling from my lips, she freezes, turns to me, and smiles.

“Oh good, I’m starving,” she breathes. “Give me a second.”

That’s it.

There’s no shocked gasp or desperate attempt to hide all that beauty with her hands. Just stuttering steps as she realizes she’s not alone, a small grin, and then a slow glide into her bedroom.

“Dio mio,” I whisper when she’s gone.

I begin to reheat the various dishes Nicola shoved into my hands, but it’s as if someone else is controlling the movement of my limbs. Someone else uncovers each dish. Someone else decides which dishes should be cold or hot. Someone else slices the loaf of bread. Someone else searches in the kitchen drawers for a grater for the block of parmesan Nicola shoved into an empty space in my overloaded arms. Someone else prepares Zoe’s dinner because I’m too preoccupied remembering every curve of her body while also, futilely, trying to will my cock to deflate.

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