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Italy sucks.
Lena is barely a week into her ‘free at last’ victory tour and here she is, sweat-drenched and stranded in an Airbnb that looks far more on the decrepit side of charming than the pictures on the website had made it seem. The vespa she’s rented to make her trips to the grocery store a little easier has proven impossible to maneuver up the steep road into town, the weather isn’t at all what she had been promised it would be, and now, at the infernal hour of 3pm, when even the bumblebees in the garden are napping and the quiet seaside town up the road has gone entirely still, her cottage’s air conditioning unit has decided to follow suit, releasing one final death rattle before giving up the ghost.
Lena strips down to her underwear, lies down on the terracotta tile in the kitchen and debates the merits of doing the same.
Her stubbornness wins out, in the end. Refusing to give her family the satisfaction of knowing their derelict daughter crumpled at the first hint of hardship, Lena brushes off her sophomore-year Italian and calls a repair service. There’s a knock on the door not an hour later, and she leaps from the bathtub filled with cold water she’s been soaking in to answer it, gasping at the promise of breathable air.
It’s only after she’s opened the door that she realizes the t-shirt she’s thrown on leaves little to the imagination, the water droplets clinging to her skin turning the fabric almost translucent. Now it’s true that modesty is an inconsequential thing in the face of 110 degree heat and 80% humidity, and Lena shouldn’t even care, considering she’ll likely never see this guy ever again—
but.
Lena hadn’t counted on the handyman being a woman, and an uncomfortably hot one at that.
They’ve sent her an amazon, Lena thinks, tall and broad and impossibly blonde. She’s dressed like a character from a gay porno movie, tight denim shorts and a clean racerback tank leaving an unnecessary amount of glistening skin on display, and she possesses a sort of lopsided, angular energy that reads significantly north of feminine. Even through her heat-addled haze, Lena can feel it beckoning to her.
“Signora Lena, giusto?” the woman confirms, dragging widening eyes over Lena’s figure before extending her hand. “Kara.” When her warm, callused fingers brush against Lena’s own, she feels at once far too exposed and also like the little clothing she is wearing is a blasphemy of some kind.
She also finds she has lost the last bit of Italian she’s managed to retain. “Sì, sì,” she stutters urgently. “Entrami, prego.” Come on in.
The handyman — Kara — freezes abruptly in the doorway at Lena’s invitation, coincidentally crowding Lena where she’s backed into the brick wall to allow Kara to pass. Her gaze flashes up from Lena’s body to meet her eyes with sudden intensity. There’s an attractive pink tinge to her cheeks that Lena doesn’t think was there before.
Lena doesn’t understand what’s happening. Kara’s close proximity combined with the infernal heat of the cottage already has her sweating again. Shouldn’t even a demigod understand the meaning of an emergency? Why is Kara staring at her like Lena is three scoops of gelato and Kara is trying to decide which flavor she wants to try first?
And then — oh. Oh no. Oh, fuck me, Lena thinks — which hilariously, mortifyingly, is exactly what she realizes she’s just told Kara to do.
“Entrare,” she corrects, panicking, practically yelling it into the poor woman’s face.
To her credit, Kara looks amused rather than offended, a bright, generous smile blossoming on her face. She blows at a golden lock of hair that’s fallen over her forehead, rolling her eyes in an exaggerated (and, apparently, international) gesture of relief. It’s so disarming it makes Lena want to prove that she’s capable of behaving like a normal human person.
“Mi scusi,” she apologizes, now fighting to survive the burn of embarrassment on top of the scorching hotness of the woman across from her and the sweltering temperature inside the cottage. And then, in an effort to blame the broken air conditioning unit for their misunderstanding, “Io sono molto, molto caldo.”
A bright bark of laughter startles Lena out of her self-reproach and straight into righteous indignation. When Kara glances at her and realizes Lena isn’t entertained, she makes an effort to compose herself. “I’m sorry,” she snorts, her English lacking even a hint of an accent. “It’s just that— I agree. You are very, very hot.”
The words hit Lena like a bucket of ice water. “You’re an American?” she yelps.
“In my defense,” Kara says, holding up a placating hand, “I didn’t realize you were, too.” She manages to somehow appear both serious and casual when she follows it with a smooth, “and while we’re being honest, I would have taken you up in a heartbeat, if you’d been serious.”
Just like that, Lena is caught again, pinned under the weight of Kara’s cocksure smile. “Right,” she croaks, swallowing around the desert in her throat, watching as Kara wets her lips in a move that seems more compulsive than deliberate. It’s devastating nonetheless, the quick pink flash of Kara’s tongue kindling a quickly spreading blaze in the only place left on Lena’s body that has so far remained mostly unaffected by the heatwave.
“Through the kitchen, right?” Kara winks at her, much too smug and far too attractive. She finds her way easily, kneeling down in the basil patch off the back porch — fragrant and vibrant in the midafternoon sun — where she patiently coaxes the ailing apparatus back to life. The unit looks like something out of the nineteen fifties, threatening to fall apart at the first touch of Kara’s hand.
Lena can relate.
Looking for something to occupy herself with, she decides to make fresh lemonade. That’s something people do on hot days like these when dying isn’t an option, right? It can’t be that difficult. The lemons growing in the garden are firm and glossy and exquisitely tart. Lena can feel her mouth watering just thinking about them, looking through the kitchen window where Kara is grunting and twisting and grinding away, the pearls of sweat on her back gleaming in the late afternoon sun.
If Lena makes a point of not changing out of her t-shirt and into something a little more appropriate for company, feeling the bottom hem tickling the tops of her thighs as she plucks the fruit from the branches, well — that’s her business.
And if Kara chooses to make it her own, so be it.
“This is by far the worst lemonade I’ve ever tasted,” Kara tells her, affectionately, after she washes her hands and accepts her drink, standing just a little too close to where Lena’s perched on the kitchen counter. “And I ran a wildly unsuccessful lemonade stand the summer between first and second grade.” She’s all shoulders and smiles, unfairly handsome and too large somehow for the tiny little space Lena’s only just begun to carve out for herself.
Lena thinks she’d like a chance to make her fit.
She barely opens her eyes, busy basking in the once again functional air conditioning’s blissful breeze, but she does trace a very deliberate finger over the freckled forearm Kara has propped against the counter next to where Lena is sitting. “Not sweet enough for you?” she goads.
Kara hooks a thumb under the hem of Lena’s t-shirt, running the knuckle against the bare skin of her hip. She says, “I can think of something sweeter.”
Their mouths are pressed together on the next breath, Lena tugging Kara in by her preposterous hair, Kara slipping an arm around Lena’s waist to slide her in closer as she steps between her legs. Lena can taste the tartness of the lemonade on Kara’s tongue when she licks into her mouth. It forms a delectable contrast to the sweetness of her kiss, the lush richness of her lips.
Lena only manages to remove herself from Kara’s pull with tremendous effort. She knows she’s on the cusp of doing something very stupid, with the way Kara is dragging her thumbs up the inside of Lena’s thighs, but she’s beginning to feel a little more level-headed now that the heat isn’t broiling her brain, and allowing a stranger to ravish her in someone else’s kitchen wasn’t exactly on the agenda today.
It’s only the sixth, maybe seventh item on her bucket list.
So Kara leaves, but not without giving Lena her number, and an offer to help her with any other maintenance emergencies that might arise.
It’s funny how that emergency comes just a day later, well after dinner, when Lena watches as one of her diamond earrings disappears down the drain of her bathroom sink.
“I heard you needed a hand,” Kara grins when Lena opens the door.
Lena crosses her arms in retaliation, well aware of the way the position emphasizes the outline of her chest underneath her lace-trimmed robe. When she sees Kara’s eyes dip down, she smiles, vindicated. She leads her up the stairs and through her bedroom, and Kara has the audacity to look surprised when Lena shows her into the small bathroom beyond.
“I think I saw this in a movie, once,” Kara reflects, her voice clearly amused from where she’s crouched under the sink, loosening the pipe trap with a wrench. Lena has parked her hip against the counter beside her, studying the movement of muscle under the skin of Kara’s shoulders. “And here I was hoping the earring was a lie,” Kara says when she straightens, looking a little flustered as she deposits a freshly rinsed diamond stud into Lena’s waiting hand.
Lena steps up closer, tracing a finger over Kara’s collarbone, feeling her exhale against her lips. Says, “I dropped it down the drain on purpose.”
They barely make it to the bed. Kara knows her way around a woman’s body as well as she seems to know her trade, taking Lena apart with the same dexterity she’d employed repairing the clunky relic in the backyard. Lena draws Kara into her body the way she draws in oxygen when she runs — urgent, demanding — using teeth and fingernails until Kara hits a perfect, almost frenzied rhythm.
Kara stays for breakfast, driving the vespa into town. Lena hitches a ride on the back.
So, okay — maybe Italy isn’t all bad.