I look at my reflection. My hair has been blown into soft, silky waves, which the hairdresser has braided into a fishtail look over one shoulder, leaving a few escaped tendrils to frame my face. It’s a style that looks a lot less complicated than it is, considering the number of pins and amount of hairspray she used. But the overall effect is ethereal and romantic, and fits the floaty white gown with the gold threaded embroidery over the bodice and down the skirt that’s hanging in the salon’s dressing room. Bibi brought it back after yesterday’s shopping expedition with equally adamant insistence that I wear it instead of the four-year-old dress I still had from my senior prom. I fought it at first. After all, I used to love the light-blue dress with the sparkly fabric and color made my eyes pop. But it was the kind of dress that a high school student would buy, made of cheap polyester materials in a trendy design, more like dress-up than real life.
Bibi’s dress is for a woman, not a girl. And when I tried it on, saw the way the embroidered chiffon floated over my curves, accentuating without looking tacky, and the way the combination of white and gold actually made my eyes look even bluer than normal, I knew one thing: Nico needed to see me in this dress.
“Eu gosto,” I tell the hairdresser, giving her the thumbs-up. “I love it.”
She nods, then points to the smaller station in the far corner of the salon where one of my cousins is having her makeup done and says something in Portuguese. It’s a little faster than I’m used to, but the meaning is clear: I’m next.
* * *
The banquet takes place at a rented hall close to Luciano’s university, in a circular building with open-air walls through which we can see into a park that surrounds it. In the center of the room, a DJ is spinning all the greatest hits from the last few decades, while most of the graduates and their families are still mingling, getting drinks from the open bar on one side or enjoying hors d'oeuvres from the buffet at the other. Even though the class had all of twenty-five people in it, it seems like the entire law school and their families showed up to celebrate. It’s true what they say. Brazilians like to party.
I stand a bit awkwardly with my cousins around one of the tables that are laid around the dance floor in the center of the room. It’s empty, but Carolina has assured me it will fill soon, once everyone is drunk enough. The boys are nowhere to be seen. We’re a little early, having come straight from the salon.
“You almost look like a bride,” Carolina says, looking me over again critically. “Your eyes…gah! Do you wear contacts?”
I shake my head.
Carolina exhales again. “I’m so jealous. I wanted to get contact to make my eyes blue like yours, but Mamãe, she says no, not while I live with her. For now, anyway.”
I look down at my dress, then back up. I look good––I know that––but I haven’t been this dressed up in ages, maybe not ever. I look like money in this expensive dress and the diamond earrings my aunt lent me. But that’s not what I care about anymore. If I ever did.
“You don’t think it’s too much?” I wonder, suddenly worried she can see past the light chiffon to the truth. Nico and I haven’t told anyone about our new engagement. So far it’s just been our sweet secret. I’ll have to tell my dad before I leave, but right now, it’s been nice to just have it between us.
Carolina shakes her head. “No, no, it’s perfect. I was just teasing, you know?”
I exhale. “Okay. Do you know when the boys will be showing up?”
Carolina shrugs. “They were coming from Guarapari, so it’s hard to say. Maybe they find some traffic, I don’t know.”
“Wow.”
His deep voice, the only one speaking English, curves through the air and wraps me in its warm embrace. I turn around and I’m immediately blown away. I forget sometimes how well Nico cleans up. And…wow is right. For him, not me.
Unlike most of the other men in the room, who are dressed, as my father stated, in standard black-tie regalia––black tuxedos with white shirts––Nico’s in his all black suit, with a matching shirt, tie, and vest. I’ve seen this suit before. It’s his only one, the all-black ensemble he wore at Thanksgiving, which was also his uniform when he worked at a swanky club in LA. But I haven’t seen it since he moved back.
He should be a shadow, but instead the monochromatic outfit just makes his skin glow. His thick black hair has been tamed a bit, swept off to the side slightly, and the sole bit of color in his outfit is a red pocket square. He looks elegant. Maybe a little dangerous. And he’s all mine.
His gaze burns over me as he takes in my dress, my hair, the jewelry, even the dainty gold cross gifted from Bibi.
“Damn,” he murmurs under his breath, pulling slightly at his collar. When his eyes finally meet mine again, they gleam. “Wow. You look insane, baby. For real, you look amazing.”
I blush under the heat of his gaze. He doesn’t hold back, just continues to stare in awe—an emotion he rarely hides when he feels it, but which I haven’t seen this naked before.
“Thanks,” I whisper. “You—you look—I mean…gah.”
Behind me, Carolina laughs. “I think she mean you look nice too,” she clarifies before walking away.
Nico takes my left hand and strokes my knuckles, lingering over the bare ring finger. “Sorry I’m late.”
I shake my head a little. “Please. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“We had to wait for your dad to get back from the airport. And then, well…let’s just say he wasn’t too happy when he remembered I didn’t have a tux.” Nico’s mouth twists sardonically as he remembers. “He cares a lot about what other people think, huh?”
The clouded expression makes my fists clench. I hate that look, that lingering insecurity that comes out every now and then. I hate anything or anyone who makes Nico feel like anything less than the amazing person he is.
“He cares too much,” I tell him. “It’s his Achilles’ heel. I think you look incredible. Isn’t that what matters?”
Nico brightens, a shy smile replacing the frown. “You bet your ass it is, sweetie. So riddle me this: do you care too? Or would you be willing to dance with me on an empty floor?”
I glance at the dance floor, which is indeed mostly empty with the exception of a few younger attendees and an older couple swaying off to the side.
I turn back. “I am always willing to dance with you, Mr. Soltero.”
* * *
An hour later, the dance floor has filled up along with us, and we’re both a little sweaty and worn out after dancing to song after song that could probably be pulled from cheesy pop albums of the eighties and nineties.
“I gotta say,” Nico calls before he spins around on his heel. “I wasn’t expecting to get down to Shania Twain on my first trip to Brazil. It’s like they didn’t get out of the nineties pop hell, huh? K.C. would be freaking out down here.”
I giggle. “I think it’s just this DJ. You don’t ‘feel like a woman’?”
Nico grins. “Nah. But I liked watching you scream it with everyone else. You’re so cute when you sing, baby. Off key, but really damn cute.”
I shove him in the shoulder, which he just takes as an excuse to pull me closer. As if on cue, the Spice Girls stop singing, and for the first time, the DJ puts on a slower song. Mariah Carey’s “Honey” isn’t anything that’s going to kill the mood, but the tempo, a little slinkier than the manic pop songs, gives Nico an excuse to pull me closer, swaying me back and forth to the lazy rhythm.
“What is it with you tonight?” he murmurs as he starts to roll his hips in a way that obviously comes from the years of practicing salsa in his mom’s kitchen growing up. “You look…you look different. Something’s different.” He spins me out, then pulls me back in. He looks across the room to make sure my dad is still engrossed in a conversation with a few other men, then sneaks a quick kiss. “You’re fucking glowing, baby.”
Now is the time. I should tell him now, right? But before I can, Nico stops dancing and reaches i
nto his jacket pocket, though his other hand remains firmly on my back, keeping me close.
“I, uh, picked something up the other day,” he says as he withdraws his hand. “I saw it and thought of you. I was going to wait until we were back home, but…” He looks over me again, taking in the apparent beauty he hasn’t stopped talking about for the last hour solid. “I don’t know. Something…I feel inspired. I want you to have it now.”
He opens his hand, and what I see makes my heart stop.
It’s a ring. A simple gold ring that gleams against the fine lines in his palm. It’s delicately engraved, like the gold has been spun together to weave an imperfect, yet perfect design all the way around the thin band.
I look up. “Nico…”
Nico chews on his upper lip for a second, then gives me a shy smile. “I know it’s not a diamond, Layla. One day I’ll get you one, I promise. If that’s what you want, baby, I’ll do whatever I need to do to buy you the biggest diamond in Manhattan, I swear to God. Layla, I just want to make you happy. That’s it—”
I lay my hand over the ring, a gesture that stops his babbling.
“I don’t want a diamond,” I tell him, keeping our eye contact solid so he knows I mean it. Then I look down. “I want this. It’s so perfect, Nico. It’s simple and beautiful. It’s so us.”
“I want you to have it,” he says. “I didn’t do it the right way the other day. I didn’t get to tell you how beautiful you are to me, inside and out. How brave. How much I love the way you open your heart to the world, again and again. How much you want to make it better. How you inspire me to be better, every damn day.”
His words make me giggle, the awkward kind that only happens when you feel so much your chest might split open. I reach up to swipe away a few errant tears that spring unbidden—not from sadness, but from joy.
“Layla,” Nico says, tugging me just a little closer. “Will you marry me?”
I bite my lip, then hold out my left hand. “Of course I’ll marry you, Nico Soltero. Tonight. Tomorrow. I’m yours, body and soul. Don’t you know that by now?”
He slides the ring on my finger, and it fits, just like I knew it would. Nico knows me sometimes better than I know myself—why would my ring size be any different?
“What are you thinking?” he asks tentatively.
I look back up at him to find, even now, a little insecurity playing across his chiseled features. “I think I’m the luckiest freaking woman on the planet right now,” I say honestly.
Nico grins, that signature smile that lights up every room he’s in. That lights me up. “I think we need to celebrate. I’m going to get some champagne from the bar.”
He turns to leave, but I tug his sleeve back. “Just…just water for me, okay? I don’t want to drink.”
His face screws up with immediate concern. “Baby, you’re not going to go crazy if you have a glass of champagne with me. Come on, it’s our engagement. We should toast, don’t you think?”
I shake my head. He thinks I’m stopping him because I’m afraid of taking a step backward, to that dark, crazy time when I was spiraling without him. That I’m so scared of going there that I won’t even have a cocktail. But that’s not it.
“Layla,” Nico says, taking a step closer. “What is it?”
He waits patiently, the expression on his face kind and open. And I know in that moment, that nothing I could tell him would ever push him away. Nico loves me, loves us, unabashedly, with all that he is. There’s nothing to fear.
So I open my mouth to tell him the truth, the news that’s going to change both of our lives. The news that has me petrified and overjoyed all at once. That I’m dying to share and at the same time, terrified to say out loud.
“I’m—”
“What is that on your finger?”
Before I can say a word, my father comes charging through the crowd, his voice booming over the music. He storms between Nico and me and grabs my hand, the one with the gleaming new piece of delicate gold jewelry, practically ripping it off my arm Behind him, Nico’s face turns black. He really doesn’t like my dad, and clearly he’s not cool with the way he’s touching me at the moment.
My father, however, doesn’t care. He shakes my finger, and the two veins over his temples look like they are about to burst.
“Layla,” he demands. “What. Is the meaning. Of this?”
Chapter Thirty-One
Nico
I freeze. We both freeze. But I don’t miss the way Layla takes a step toward me, like she’s looking for shelter. I hate that her own father makes her feel that way, but I get it. Goddamn, do I get it.
“What?” Dr. Barros shakes Layla’s hand, then drops it like it’s burning.
He takes a long drink of something that looks like whiskey, then sets his empty glass on a nearby table before standing up, swaying a bit. Great. He’s mad and shitfaced.
“What is the meaning of this?” He lets out a long string of Portuguese, and from the way some people’s eye bug out, I’m guessing it’s pretty foul.
“W-we’re getting married,” Layla says.
She holds out her hand with the simple ring that barely stands out in this room full of rich, flashy ladies with even flashier jewelry. But the gold on her finger still gleams in the light.
“Nico asked me. And I said yes, of course,” she tells Dr. Barros, sticking her chin out a little in this fuckin’ adorable away that would make me want to kiss the living shit out of her if I wasn’t so worried about her dad right now.
Because I know that look. I’ve worn it a few too many times myself. It’s the look you get when you’re about to explode.
“Married,” Dr. Barros repeats, and I can practically see the steam coming off his head. “To—this?” He gestures at me like I’m a piece of fuckin’ furniture. Like I’m a thing, not a person. “No. I forbid it.”
“Well, that’s too damn bad,” I pipe up. I can’t help it. I’m so tired of this guy treating me like I’m less than him, treating Layla like she’s a fucking puppet. He has no fuckin’ right. “Last I checked, Layla and I are both adults. And I’m pretty sure you haven’t given a shit about her for the last year and a half anyway.”
Layla shakes her head at me, clearly telling me to shut the fuck up. “Dad. Please. Let’s just talk about this somewhere quiet…”
“He’s a criminal,” Dr. Barros states a little too loudly, and the word causes another few onlookers to murmur a little.
Slowly, people around us are taking in what’s happening. The dance floor is growing still, even with Montell Jordan blasting on the speakers.
It takes everything I have not to stare at the floor when the English speakers in the crowd look at me with renewed, slightly fearful interest. No. I’m not guilty of anything but falling in love. That’s not who I am anymore. It’s not who I’ve been for a long time now. Maybe I never was.
“What are you talking about? Of course he’s not,” Layla snaps as she comes to stand in front of me. It makes me proud. My baby is valiant, guarding me from her dad. In her white and gold, she’s an angel, but the good kind, like Gabriel—the kind that don’t fuck around, you know?
“You think I don’t look him up? You think I don’t find that he was in jail?” Dr. Barros demands wildly, his English uncharacteristically sloppy, the work of a few too many scotches. “Layla, he is nothing. He comes from nothing. He is becoming nothing. He is not good enough for you!”
“He’s a hero!” Layla hisses defiantly, reaching behind to take my hand. “He’s a firefighter in the best city in the world. He saves lives, every day, and he definitely saved mine. What do you do besides give women bigger tits?”
A laugh bursts out of my chest before I can stop myself. I should be angry—fuck, I am angry. But the look on Dr. Barros’s face when his daughter says the word “tits” in front of a whole bunch of fancy rich Brazilians is fuckin’ priceless.
“That’s enough!” he shouts. His face reddens even more as he looks around.
Yeah, the dude has definitely been pitching back the sauce. “We are leaving. Now.”
“No,” Layla replies.
“Sim.”
“No!”
“Layla, we are going!”
Dr. Barros grabs for Layla’s wrist and jerks her forward, twisting her arm painfully and forcing her to kneel slightly next to him. Any trace of humor disappears completely, and just as fast, blood roars in my ears when Layla tries to fight it, her face contorted in pain as she does.
Oh. Hell. Fuckin’. No.
It takes me less than a second to dart in between Layla and her dad, grab his wrist, and twist it enough that he has to let hers go. I thrust him away from her, allowing Layla to step backward behind me, suddenly released. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice her rubbing her wrist where he had grabbed it. Now I’m the one barely holding onto my temper.
“Get out of my way,” Dr. Barros orders. “This doesn’t concern you. This is a family matter.”
“Well, then it does concern me, Dr. Barros,” I say. “Since Layla is my family, sir. And I’m hers.”
He turns to me with a face full of rage, and surprises me when he walks close enough to make us almost nose to nose.
“You will never be her family,” he informs me through capped, white teeth. “Never. Not you. Never someone like you.”
I grind my teeth. I don’t like this guy at all, but I never wanted him to hate me. This isn’t someone Layla may ever be able to walk away from. You just can’t ask someone to do that with their own dad. I don’t want Layla to hate me either for messing up their relationship more. Because when I look at her, see her blue eyes full of curiosity, fear, but always, always trust in me. In us. I don’t doubt it anymore. In fact, the insinuation that we’re not inextricably bound together makes me pretty fuckin’ angry.
Bad Idea: The Complete Collection Page 99