Page 42 of Duke for the Summer

“I haven’t seen these before,” Nate said, running a finger along one of the frames. “Or I don’t remember seeing them. The only time I’ve been up here was that first night, and I was so overwhelmed that I didn’t really look at anything. How old were you, in this one?”

Jacopo looked over his shoulder, the back of his neck prickling. He felt exposed suddenly, and his voice was rough as he said, “Thirteen, I think. Maybe fourteen.”

“This is your dad, right? He was a good-looking guy, before–you know.” Nate tapped the glass. “But I think you look more like your mom. And you’re already taller than him in this picture.”

“Yes.” He was taller than everyone, a gawky, miserable teenager standing out like a sore thumb among his smiling sisters. “Nate,” he said, putting a hand on the small of his back. “Let’s–”

But Nate wasn’t listening. “You grew up in this house, didn’t you? Which room was yours?” He looked down the hall, at the series of closed doors.

“That one.” Jacopo gestured to it. “But we need to–”

But he was already opening the door and going inside, and Jacopo’s stomach flipped as they went back in time, the room almost exactly as he remembered it. The bookshelves were bare, and there were boxes stacked along one wall, so his mother had obviously been using the room for storage, but the cracks in the ceiling were all there, the posters on the walls, now faded and peeling at the edges. The desk where he’d written terrible adolescent poetry. The tile floor that had been so cold under his feet in the mornings, the narrow bed where he’d spent so manynights alone, praying not to be different. And when prayers had failed and he’d given in, so many nights immersed in his fantasies. God, teenaged Jacopo would have given his left arm–his entiresoul–to have a man as beautiful as Nate here, in his room, smiling up at him. The thought made his heart thud painfully in his chest.

He wanted to tell him, then. The thing no else knew, the thing Jacopo hadn’t known until Lucia had emailed him out of the blue three years ago. It would be a relief to say it.

He watched Nate’s eyes travel over the posters on the walls, chewing his lip.

“Whitney Houston, huh?” There was a delighted grin on Nate’s face. “You’re always surprising me.”

“I know it’s not your kind of music.”

“Whitney Houston is everyone’s kind of music. And who’s this blonde lady? She looks fabulous.”

“Lorella Cuccarini. It was–it’s my mother’s music. But I liked it too, as a child.” He remembered helping her cook, when Gracie was just a baby and Alessia was in school, the two of them dancing in the kitchen toQueen of the NightorLa Notte Vola. He pinched the bridge of his nose, surprised to find tears in his eyes.

“And your parents, like, never suspected you weren’t straight?”

Jacopo sat down on the bed, not knowing what to say. A cloud of dust rose up from the blankets as he disturbed them.

“Sorry,” Nate said, sitting next to him. “Is that a sore spot for you? I was joking.”

“I know.” Jacopo traced a thumb down the side of his face, across his lips. “Nate, I–” the words stalled at the end of his tongue. Nate’s pupils were wide, a dusting of red across his cheeks, and desire and something like dread skittered around in Jacopo’s chest.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. It’s just–having you here, in my room…” He trailed off. An urgency close to panic was bubbling under his skin, and he gasped as Nate’s fingers slid lazily down his chest, coming to a stop on his belt buckle. Jacopo was getting hard despite himself. He was dimly aware of the sound of pots clanking in the kitchen below, the TV whispering up through the floor.

“Yeah?” Nate smiled. “Never thought you’d have a guy in here, did you?”

“I–”I have something to tell you. Why couldn’t he say it? Jacopo licked his lips, and then Nate’s mouth was on his, and he couldn’t tell him now, it would ruin this, ruin everything. Nate’s hair was soft under his hands and he smelled like oranges and almond extract, from the kitchen, and Jacopo clung to him, breathing him in.

“I want you,” Nate said against his ear, and it was like sheet lightning across Jacopo’s brain, scorching everything else away. “I want–” he was kissing Jacopo’s neck now, his chest, through his shirt. “I want to be the only one in this bed. I want you to remember me.” Nate’s teeth scraped over one of Jacopo’s nipples through the fabric, making sparks dance behind his eyes.

“I will.” Wasn’t it obvious? It could never be like this with anyone else. Jacopo was ruined. “God, Nate, I will.”

“Good,” he said, and slid to his knees at the side of the bed.

Jacopo closed his eyes, letting out a strangled sob as Nate took him in his mouth. His hands were trembling, and he cradled Nate’s skull like it was something precious. He realized he was pleading, low in the back of his throat, pleading for something he couldn’t articulate as Nate’s lips slid around his cock, warm and gentle at first and then deeper, tighter, until he was fucking into Nate’s throat and Nate was squeezing his thigh,nails digging in hard enough to leave a mark. His other hand, fingers wet with saliva, crept up behind Jacopo’s balls, fingers playing over his ass, and Jacopo hissed, “Yes,” yes, he had never been touched there before but he wanted it, wanted Nate to be the one to do it. He angled his hips up as best he could, a heady sense of danger, of freedom filling him, to be taken like this in broad daylight, with the house below full of people who didn’t know. He felt Nate suck in his breath as his finger slipped into Jacopo’s body, and Jacopo heard himself make some kind of noise, a strangled, wanting noise. It stung and it was strange and unimaginably good, all at once, and he could barely even catalog how he was feeling because his thoughts were burning up and flying away, like sparks in the wind.

It was quick then, uncontrollable. Jacopo was toppling over a cliff, and he relished the fall. Nate’s fingers had found a spot that made his body light up like a power grid, every pleasure point a burning sun, and he was coming down Nate’s throat, coming as Nate let out a little moan, and if he hadn’t been lost already, that noise would have tipped him over, the sweetness of it. Jacopo wanted all of his sounds, all of his moments.

He stroked the line of Nate’s jaw as Nate tucked him back into his underwear, kissing his abdomen, his inner thigh. Nate looked up at him. His eyes were hooded, his smile a little shy now that everything was over. There was a tear track on his cheek, and Jacopo brushed it away with his thumb.

He had to tell him.

*

Jacopo’s hands were still shaking as he came down the stairs, and he shoved them into his pockets, seeing that Papà had joined Gracie in the living room, hunched over in his favorite armchair with the graying upholstery that reeked of smoke. Jacopo studied him from the doorway, this man who had oncehauled fishing nets and been able to wring a goat’s neck with his bare hands. There wasn’t much left of him now, his shoulders thin and bony, his yellowed fingers clenched around a cigarette. There were age spots on his scalp and arms that Jacopo hadn’t noticed before.

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