I hang my head. “I know.” I sigh. “But, come on, you know how it goes. Your mom is Catholic too.”
It’s a stupid excuse, and the look on Nico’s face tells me he thinks so too. “Yeah, she is. And she knows exactly where I’m living. She lights a candle, prays for our forgiveness, and then she’s done with it.”
“Yeah, but your mom doesn’t pay your rent and your tuition.”
“Maybe your mom shouldn’t either, then.”
We stare at each other, wrapped in a standoff. I feel terrible. I know hiding this is the wrong thing to do, and I hate it.
“Is that what you want?” I ask quietly. “I’ll do it. But it will make things really hard. I’ll have to drop out, probably. Apply for loans until summer or maybe fall semester and graduate then. I’ll have to delay graduate school for another year if I do that.”
Nico blinks, and the hardness in his face softens. “Would your dad really cut off your tuition if he knew?”
I shrug. “He’s threatened it for a lot less.”
“And you think your mom would tell him?”
I bite my lip. “Nico, it’s just that my mom thinks I’m only barely able to stand up again by myself. She sees my last relationship as one that I need a lot of space from. If she knew that I had jumped right into living with you”—I pause when I see another round of hurt fly across his face—“not that I think that, but you know how she would get, well…she might…Nico, it probably would be the reason she’d finally call my dad.”
Nico opens his mouth like he wants to say something else, but then his eyes drop, and he closes it.
“Fine,” he says as he gets up. “I’m going to go get dinner. You have a bunch of other mail on the table, by the way.”
“Please don’t leave mad,” I say, grabbing for his hand as he sidles around me.
He stops, and again, the hardness in his face melts a little as he looks at me. He leans down and gives me a kiss on the forehead.
“How the fuck can I be mad at a face like that?” he murmurs. Then, with a quick squeeze of my hand, he swipes his jacket off the floor and leaves.
My stomach is still in knots when I get off the couch to retrieve the rest of my mail. I hate that I made him look like that. There’s nothing in the world I want to do more than shout to everyone I meet that I hit the freaking jackpot in New York City with Nico Soltero.
But my parents are a different story. On top of being conservative, Catholic, and, in my dad’s case, ridiculously strict, they’re also bitter after going through their own painful separation this last year. My mom likes Nico okay since she knows his role in extracting me from Giancarlo last spring, but she’s definitely not too keen on seeing me jump back into anything serious. Since moving back to Brazil, my dad went from being overbearing to virtually absent in my life. I can only imagine him roaring back in with a vengeance if he found out I was living in sin with a firefighter seven years my senior.
The thought makes me tingle. And probably in a way my parents would definitely not like.
I flip through the mail I missed last month, sorting out spam from bills until coming to a large, stiff envelope. But it’s not the weight of it that stops me. It’s the familiar handwriting on the front.
The apartment door opens, and Nico comes back in carrying a plastic bag containing my soup and his beef broccoli. He sets it on the kitchenette counter and starts grabbing plates, only stopping when he realizes I haven’t moved from the table.
“Hey,” he says. “Everything all right over there?”
“I’m…I’m not sure.” I shuffle into the kitchenette and hand him the letter. Nico squints, stumbling a little as he reads aloud my father’s terse, slanted script.
Layla,
It has been too long since I have seen my daughter. Your cousin Luciano graduates from medical school at the end of summer term, and there will be a celebration before Carnaval. You should be here too, to be a part of your family. Everything has been arranged. It is the right thing to do.
I look forward to seeing you soon.
Your pai
Nico hands back the letter, and for a moment, I run my finger over the word “pai,” the Brazilian term for “dad.” My father has never used it with me. We visited his family once when I was in high school, and after hearing my cousins call their fathers the same thing, I tried it with him and was shot down immediately. “Father,” he always insisted, but when that eventually failed, he accepted “Dad.” After he proclaimed most of my life that I am American, not Brazilian, it seems that now he’s finally ready to open up that side of his life to me. Maybe he really did need to leave in order to do it.
“When is Carnaval?” Nico asks as he opens up his box of beef broccoli and starts eating directly from the container. “And what did he mean by ‘everything has been arranged’?”
“He means this, I think.” I pull out an airplane ticket, the old-fashioned kind that are still printed on card stock, hand it to Nico.
He flips it over and back again, examining it. “This is three weeks from now.”
I nod.
Nico’s mouth quirks a little. “You leave the day before Valentine’s Day.”
I glance down, suddenly guilty. I shouldn’t go. It’s Nico’s and my second anniversary of sorts. Our first one since coming back together. I’m not going to miss that.
“Layla.” Nico’s deep voice calls me back. “You should go. Brazil? Of course you should go. This is great, baby. You should be happy.”
Happy. It’s a funny word. But as I look at the sturdy, mint-green paper of the ticket, all I feel is dread. Trepidation. There’s an inquisition waiting for me in another hemisphere, and he has a barrel chest and responds to “Dad.” He’ll look at all of the progress I’ve made over the last six or seven months and rip it to shreds. To my dad, I’m never quite enough.
We bring our food to the dining table and sit down, and before we’ve eaten anything, I know what I want to do.
“You should come with me,” I blurt out.
Nico frowns through a big bite of broccoli. “What, to Brazil?”
I brighten, full of vision. “It’s the perfect idea. He can’t say no to someone who just flew four thousand miles to meet him. Even my dad would have to admit that’s a pretty great thing to do.”
“And what am I supposed to do when I get there?”
I grin. Yes. I like this idea. I more than like this idea. Suddenly, facing my father again without Nico next to me sounds impossible. “You’re supposed to tell him how much you love me. And then we’ll tell him that we’re living together, and there isn’t a damn thing he can do about it.”
His black brow arches high. “You must really think I’m whipped, don’t you?”
My mouth drops. “Oh, I…” Shit. I hadn’t thought about that. I didn’t mean to imply that he was at my beck and call or anything like that. Anything but.
Nico chuckles. “I’m just playin’, baby. But honestly, even if I get the money together for a ticket, I don’t know if I can swing the time off. Rookies don’t really get their pick of the schedule, and I have no vacation time. Nada.”
“What if I paid?”
With a mouthful of rice, Nico gawks. “Hmm?”
I nod, even more convinced. “I have enough in my savings. I could swing it, and you could pay me back later if you really want to. Everything else would be taken care of, like he said. We’ll probably stay at his apartment, or maybe my aunt’s if there isn’t room. We’ll eat with them, so there won’t be a bunch of extra expenses. No car, we’ll be right by the beach. We’ll go to my cousin’s thing, and then come back. Or, you know, you could do stuff on your own if you wanted a break—”
“Layla.” Nico pushes his food to the side, stands up, then lifts me bodily onto the table so that he’s standing between my legs, my hands on his shoulders. “Do you really think I’d go with you to Brazil and then ditch you?”
I push my fingers through his thick black hair, so densely curled I a
lmost can’t do it.
“Please don’t make me go alone,” I whisper. “I want him to meet you. I want him to know the real man in my life these days. The one I can’t live without.”
Nico gazes up at me, his dark eyes wide and uncertain. Then he presses his forehead to mine and sighs.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “It’s those damn Bambi eyes. I can’t say no.”
I blink when he pulls away. “Does that mean you’ll come?”
He sighs, even though his mouth quirks on both sides. “It means I’ll try.” Then his eyes drift down to my lips, which I just happen to lick at that moment.
There’s that hunger again—not for food, but for something else. Something in both of us that we can’t ever seem to sate completely.
Nico traces his nose across my chest and places a kiss on my sternum. “If I go.” Another kiss on the shoulder. “You’ll tell him?” One more on my neck. “And your mom too?”
He looks up with gleaming, hopeful eyes, and I clasp his face gently.
“We can tell him together,” I say.
Nico’s face is blank while he chews on his lower lip. He looks scared. It’s not a look I recognize.
“Would you believe I’m not usually the guy girls want to take home to meet daddy?” he jokes as he presses his nose to mine. “Seriously, NYU. What’s he going to think?”
“He’ll think you’re the kind of man who takes care of his girl,” I say. “And if he doesn’t, he can stay in his hemisphere when we go back to New York together. Because he might have everything to say about my life…but I belong here. With you.”
“And what would he think if he knew I was doing this to his daughter, huh?” A big hand snakes underneath my pajama shorts and takes a thick handful of flesh that makes me hiss.
“I don’t know,” I purr as I tip my face up to his waiting lips. “What would Carmen think if she knew the things I do to you?”
A low chuckle emerges from the back of Nico’s throat, but he maintains the kiss for a few more seconds.
“Why do you think my mother goes to Mass three, four times a week, NYU?” he asks just before slipping his tongue around mine in that dance I know so well. “She’s praying for my poor, corrupted soul. And now, yours too.” He kisses me again. “Welcome to the family, baby.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Nico
The next day, my brother, two sisters, Layla, and I are all crowded into one tiny office at Family Immigration Services, which is housed in the third floor of a walk-up in Spanish Harlem. Ileana, the caseworker assigned to our mom, is holding the newest letter from the Treasury Department, tapping insistently on her beaten-up desk with a pencil. She looks pretty much the way you’d expect a social worker to look: a granola-eating white lady wearing a wrinkled blouse and a sweater that looks like she borrowed it from her grandfather, with mousey brown hair and a mouth that moves too fast.
Layla sits next to her desk, watching with keen interest as Ileana flips through all of the paperwork we’ve submitted trying to get this damn permit. I can’t help but chuckle a little bit when I think of the fact that this is going to be Layla in a few more years. My girl has absolutely no idea how gorgeous she is. Inside this ugly, tiny room, she shines like a diamond.
Layla catches me watching her and gives me a shy smile. I wink, give her body a look up-and-down, and she immediately blushes.
“Coño,” Maggie puts in, shoving me hard in the shoulder. “Stop undressing her with your eyes. You’re embarrassing yourself.” She turns to Selena, who’s trying hard not to laugh. “He acts like no one is here. I feel dirty.”
“Gata, I didn’t say anything. You always gotta read so much into things, don’t you?” I retort, though I don’t drop my gaze. I’m enjoying the way Layla’s biting her lip and squeezing her thighs together.
“Ahem.” Ileana calls our attention as she sets down the paper.
And as much as I’d like to keep flirting, I turn to the desk along with the rest of my siblings, all dirty thoughts flying out of my head. This is too important.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” asks Gabe. He rubs his chin, which is showing signs of a goatee. I smirk. My little brother is actually starting to get some facial hair.
“It’s not great,” Ileana says frankly.
She leans back in her chair and surveys all of us, looking everyone in the eye. It’s one of the things I like about this chick—she might look like a mouse, but she’s a firebrand, and she’s never treated anyone in my family with anything less than respect.
“Look,” she continues. “We had a window last spring, because the new adjustments were passed in June. But they didn’t process the family license before then, and since June, the administration has pushed through much stronger restrictions. Basically, they’re grandstanding, you know? Creating conflict where there is none to get people all riled up. You know, so we’ll conveniently forget about the human rights violations they’re committing all over the Middle East.”
Maggie and I raised our brows at each other as if to say “here we go again” while Gabe shakes his head. We’ve all heard Ileana go off about the current president more than once, usually about the current war. I don’t know. It’s not really pertinent to our situation.
“So, what’s left?” Layla asks as she picks up the different letters of rejection. “What else can we do to help Carmen? She has every right to be here by U.S. law. It’s ridiculous that losing a piece of paper when she was two will force her to live in the shadows for the rest of her life, especially when she has every legal right to be here!”
The passion in her voice ignites a warmth in my chest. It’s fucked up, but I love watching Layla get riled up like this about my mom, my family, her blue eyes full of fire. I have to stop myself from kissing her right there. I meant what I said last night: she is part of the family now. Moments like this show it more than anything else.
But Ileana sighs, and blows all of those good feelings out of the room.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll keep researching, but we’re running out of options. The best way would be to find someone who actually has living family in Cuba to do this for you. Otherwise, it might be time to start putting together a case for relief. You mom doesn’t know any Cubans in New York?”
Beside me, Layla brightens at the idea, but Maggie shakes her head.
“Mami came here with a Puerto Rican family. She’s been sheltered by Puerto Ricans her whole life. All her friends are Puerto Rican, other than David…”
She trails off, looking at me and Gabe uneasily. David, Gabe’s father, is Dominican, but I haven’t seen or spoken to the guy since I beat his ass and kicked him out of our apartment for beating on Ma and the rest of us one too many times. That was over ten years ago now, but it’s the family’s worst kept secret that sometimes our mom would still find her way up to the Bronx to see him in a moment of weakness. Maybe she still does. None of us really know or want to know.
“What about Luis? Isn’t he Cuban?” Gabe pipes up, giving Maggie a dark look at the mention of David. I know he speaks to his dad sometimes, but he doesn’t mention it to me, knowing there is no lack of bad blood between me and that violent asshole.
I sigh. Everyone in my family has a big damn mouth, but we still keep too many secrets.
Maggie and Selena both look like they want to beat Gabe’s ass at the mention of their father, Luis, who hasn’t been seen since Selena was about three. He’s Cuban, it’s true, but the dude dropped off the face of the earth.
Yeah, you could say our family has some daddy issues. One more thing Layla has in common with us, as it happens. She doesn’t exactly get along with her father either. The dad she wants me to meet. I press my face into my palms. I have no idea how I would be able to do that without punching the guy who broke his daughter’s heart last year.
“One of the girls in my Spanish class has some family in Havana,” Layla pipes up. “I don’t really know her, but she seems nice. I bet she would be willing
to go to Cuba over spring break or something if we could get her the permit.”
“Has she gone in the last three years?” Ileana asks.
“Yeah, she went last summer to visit her grandparents.”
“Then she’s out. The new laws only permit visits once every three years anyway.” Ileana looks at the rest of us. “And let’s be clear. Your mother says she was born in Santiago, not Havana like you originally thought, and they aren’t exactly close. You can’t substitute one for the other. What about the rest of you? Do you know anyone with family in Cuba?”
I shake my head, and beside me, Maggie rolls her eyes at Selena. I could see it all too easily—someone taking our money, a free trip to Cuba, and disappearing on us. Scammers in New York are a dime a dozen; no one in this room other than the two white girls think that’s even an option.
“Then it’s either keep trying with a family application for one you,” Ileana says in a resigned, stern voice, “or we need to turn your case over to a lawyer and get you ready for court. You never know, they might allow one of you a permit. Or else, and I’m not officially suggesting this, you understand, you could also fly there from another country. There’s no guarantees you won’t get caught, and spending any U.S. currency there is illegal, but you can get there from somewhere like Venezuela. Maybe Toronto or Montreal.”
“I’ll do it.”
Gabe glances around the room, his voice grim and determined while he toys with the bottom of his blue t-shirt. The glasses he started wearing this year are slightly crooked over a fierce expression.
I frown. “Mano, you don’t have to do that. We’ll keep applying. Ma’s all right staying at Alba’s. They’re practically having a slumber party over there, you know?”
“Ma and Alba are driving each other up the wall,” Maggie puts in. “I was there yesterday, and I thought they were going to toss each other over the balcony. I don’t care how much you love your best friend. After a while, you need some space.”
Bad Idea: The Complete Collection Page 90