“He supports her financially, no?” Luca asked, frowning.
I burst out laughing. “No! Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, because it isn’t funny. It’s just that he always needs money for himself, and it would never occur to him to give any to his child.”
“The courts?” Luca suggested.
“No, I won’t get involved in that stuff.” I shook my head hard. “Maybe it’s leftover from how I grew up on the illegal grow operation, but I don’t want anything to do with courts, police. Even hospitals. Nope.” From the face that Luca was making, he disagreed with my choices. “I don’t need or want his help, with money or anything else. Ty and I started dating when I was fourteen and I thought we would be together forever, but he didn’t want to have a baby, and we broke up. It was for the best,” I added quickly. I thought of Ty’s words again, how having Nola “wasn’t gonna work” for him. “And that’s why it’s not good to have a relationship,” I concluded.
“I don’t follow you.” He took out a small spoon and sampled what looked to be algae in his bowl.
“I mean, they’re too much work and you just get screwed in the end. Is that why you broke up with your girlfriend, your fiancée?”
He stopped stirring. “How did you know about that?”
I thought as quickly as my tired, amaretto-soaked brain would allow. “Um, because you told me you just got out of a relationship. Remember? When you thought I was trying to get you to marry me or whatever when we went for coffee?” Good, I hadn’t spilled the beans about reading up on him in the Starhurst Academy magazines.
Luca looked at the green goo in the bowl for a while before he answered. “That’s who I was going to see that night when I ran into you with the drunk guy, when you hurt your ankle. My ex-girlfriend moved here from Italy to try to get us back together.”
“Oh, wow!” And I was worried about him finding out that I had read stuff about him in magazines? I had nothing on this chick. “So, you broke up with her, and she wasn’t happy about it?”
“I broke up with her, when I found out that she was cheating on me.” He held up his index and pinky fingers, scowling terribly, and said something in a language I guessed was Italian. Corn something.
I mimicked the gesture. “What does this mean?”
“Horns. She put horns on me,” he explained. He reached and folded down my fingers, still with the ferocious look.
Oh, of course. Horns.
“It means she made me...” He stopped. “It means she was unfaithful. I ended it, because, of course,” he continued, his voice rising a little.
“Well, of course!” I agreed. “I mean, you couldn’t stay together with a woman who would do that to you.”
“She did it with a friend of mine. And a waiter she met on a business trip to Rome,” he groused, and I shook my head understandingly. The woman was a total idiot, and I could totally sympathize with Luca. I knew, personally, how it felt to be jacked up like that by someone you loved. Yup, I meant Ty. “I moved back here,” Luca went on, “and then, about a month ago, she let me know that she had accepted a job here too, in Tiburon, working for a boutique investment firm.”
And, confused again, I assumed that it didn’t mean that this woman was putting money into clothing stores?
“She had been reading up on me to keep tabs on what I was doing here. She looked me up and found out information about me,” he said angrily.
“Gosh. Who would do something like that?” I shifted in my seat and drank the amaretto. Certainly not me.
“Somehow, she got my new cell number, and she begged me to come see her, getting hysterical.”
“Tears,” I said, understanding. “Tough to take.”
“Yes, and it wore me down. And I was going over to her condo, and thank goodness, I ran into you and Rocky that night.”
“Stoney.”
“Yes,” he said again. “It brought me to my senses. Just because I’m alone, it doesn’t mean I have to run back to Vesa.”
Vesa. Sounded like a total bitch to me. “No, don’t run back to her. Don’t run after any woman. Why should you? You’re a catch, and you must know it.”
“Well,” he said, and kind of shrugged and threw up his hands.
“No, totally. You are! But I get that you don’t want to get into a dating-slash-girlfriend thing right now. You just got out of it with her, right?”
“A few months, now. Maybe ten. Or twelve.”
“She’s still chasing you around after a year? Wow. I’m impressed by her persistence.”
He looked a little bleak. “I wish she would give up. But then she cries, and says how sorry she is…”
“Once a cheater, always a cheater. People can’t change. Like my ex, Ty.” Now I mimicked the shrugging/hand throwing move. “He’s a gambler. At the moment, he’s totally in debt, wanting me to help him out.”
“Stay away,” Luca told me. “Don’t give him any money.”
“Oh, of course not. No, never.” There was a pause during which I played with a cookie crumb, staring at it intently.
“How much did you give him tonight?” Luca asked.
The shame. “Almost a hundred dollars. Almost all that I had on me, but I saved my emergency twenty to buy dinner for me and Nola.”
He made a very exasperated sound.
“Exactly,” I said, switching to his camp. “How could I have done that? What do I care if Ty is scared of the people he owes? He’s a grown man and he can take it. And if he can’t, he shouldn’t have bet money that he didn’t have.” Easy for me to say now, when I was down $98.
“Is that why you gave him the money? He’s being threatened?”
I looked into Luca’s blue eyes, sky blue rimmed in navy. “I don’t know,” I confessed. “It’s not like he hasn’t lied to me before. But I think he’s in pretty big trouble, yes.”
“We’re a couple of idiots,” he said.
“Yup. You’re running back to the woman who gave you tusks and terrifies you by crying. I’m giving money to the guy who blew the last chunk of change I handed him on a three-horse parlay. It was supposed to buy a suit he needed for a job interview. Never, never bet a parlay,” I advised. “They’re for suckers.”
“That’s good information. Thank you.”
“Any time.” I finished the glass of amaretto. It could have been the second, or the third, but whatever the number, I was feeling pretty good. “Rocky,” I suddenly scoffed. “You always call him that. And his real name is Bob.” I snorted. “I’m glad it worked out for you, running into us that night, but it sure didn’t for me. You know, all I wanted was the easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Something simple and fun. And I ended up sitting in the emergency room with Rocky. I mean, Stoney, which was not at all simple and fun. The opposite, in fact, of simple and fun! And no action for me,” I finished sadly.
Luca laughed. “It’s been a while for me, as well.”
“Really?” Were women in San Francisco blind?
“I don’t want to be some kind of gigolo.”
I started to laugh, too. “A gigolo? Who says that? And what about just having a good time? You’re a catch, Luca,” I told him again. I thought for a moment. “You and I could…no.”
“What? We could what?” He waited. “What were you going to say?”
“I was just thinking, I mean, we’re friends, right? Neither of us want anything else, nothing long-term, no romance and lovey-dovey.” I thought of my friend Lanie, and how I had pushed her to be friends with benefits with her roommate. Why couldn’t I do that? Lanie wanted it to turn into something, but Luca and I could keep it on the up and up, i.e., no real attachment. “We could totally bang, just for fun.” My stomach suddenly flipped and my mouth got dry. Banging Luca. Oh.
“Did you just say we could totally bang for fun?” Luca started laughing so hard he had to sit down in the chair next to me.
“I hope you’re laughing at my word choice and not the idea of having sex with me,” I said indignantly.
He
calmed down. “I just—yes, your word choice is unusual, and thank you for that offer, but I don’t think it will work. Do things like that ever work?”
“If both people are committed to keeping it clean and aboveboard, with no expectations of a real relationship or any feeling stuff, then why not? We’re both adults. You would be like Stoney, but on a regular basis.”
“Thank you, thank you very much, for comparing me to that man. And thank you again for the proposition, but no. I can’t imagine that emotions wouldn’t get involved, and that’s not something either of us wants.”
I got up from my kitchen stool and wavered a little. Uh oh, too much of that amaretto, but not enough to prevent me from realizing that maybe by tomorrow morning, I would have some regrets about what I had just said to him. “Never mind, then,” I said haughtily. “The offer is withdrawn. There are probably more Stoneys in the sea for me. You just think a woman wouldn’t be able to screw like a man, do it and leave, because we’re busy crying and getting ready in the bathroom for hours.”
“No, Jolie—”
“Watch and learn.” Now that he was sitting, we were close to the same height. I was going to show him how this would go. I leaned over and put my mouth on his, pressing our lips together. I kissed him.
We looked at each other, our faces close. My breath went even faster.
“See?” I gasped, standing back up. “Nothing. No emotion, barely any feeling at all. That’s how it would be, but more nudity. Goodnight, Luca.” I walked grandly from the kitchen, carefully keeping one foot in front of the other in a straight line. I had made my way into the garage before Luca came to find me.
“The bedroom is this way,” he mentioned, and showed me.
“Thank you,” I said, quite a bit less grandly, and I when I managed to get there, I settled down next to Nola and fell right asleep.
Chapter 6
Well, fuck. I had kissed Luca. I had propositioned him. I put my arm over my eyes to block out the grey morning light, unwilling to accept those statements as fact. Like maybe, I could just stay in this bed—his bed—and if I never left it, then all that extremely embarrassing behavior wouldn’t have happened.
“Mama, where are we?” Nola sat up next to me, staring around the room. “This isn’t our house.”
I nodded at her and rubbed my head. “No, it isn’t.” I sighed and it morphed into a yawn. “We stayed in San Francisco.”
Knocking on the door made me sit up, too. “Jolie?” Luca said from the hallway. “Are you awake?”
“Yes,” I called hoarsely. “We’re up.” Kind of. “We stayed at my friend Luca’s house,” I explained to Nola. “Remember how the tire was flat on our car? The tire was so broken that I couldn’t fix it last night. Luca will drive us home.” I gently tugged one of her curls. “Come give me a hug.” I needed it.
“I have to go to the potty.” She looked a little desperate. We adjourned to the bathroom and I cleaned up both of us as much as possible, which was no easy feat for me with the meager makeup and hair options I had brought in my tiny, going-out purse. I produced a very unsuccessful result with myself.
Luca was knocking again, and when I opened the door, he was all clean and shiny, his skin a little flushed. He looked…hot, and not the temperature, I didn’t mean. “Are you ready?” he asked. “We need to hurry.” But then he knelt down, smiling. “Hi,” he said to Nola. “I’m Luca. Do you shake hands?”
She clung to my leg like a sloth but did extend her little fingers for him to squeeze gently. “Hi,” she answered softly.
We hurried to his car and hurried through the city. It took Nola a while to get started in the morning, but once she woke up more, she had a lot of questions about where our car had gone, where she was, where we were going, etc. I explained things again in the rusty voice which eased a little once Luca handed me an insulated cup of coffee, sweetened and with milk. “Thank you,” I told him gratefully.
“I took too long running, or I would have made breakfast,” he commented.
“Oh, thank you, but that’s ok. I don’t eat breakfast, and Nola doesn’t get hungry until she warms up a little, usually on the way to school.” I spoke very stiffly. Every time I looked at him, I remembered leaning over, and pushing my lips against his. Jesus.
“I’m hungry now,” my daughter said promptly.
I sighed.
Luca started asking her questions about her school, I thought as a distraction. He asked what she liked to do there, about her teachers and her friends. “My best friend is Sammy, he’s a nice boy,” she parroted me. “He’s good at coloring.” She went through everyone in the class. Luca listened patiently, commenting now and then about what she said.
“I have one person at school who is my not-friend,” she concluded. “Horatio. He pulled me and I fell on my butt.”
“Nola,” I intoned.
“My bottom,” she corrected.
“He pulled her legs when she was hanging on the monkey bars, and she fell,” I explained to Luca.
“Then he pulled my hair so I wouldn’t tell,” she expounded.
“What?” Luca was outraged. “He’s threatening her to keep her quiet? Is this child involved in organized crime?”
Despite myself, I almost started laughing. This whole situation of us in the car with Luca after having slept at his house, what I had said and done in his kitchen, now him accusing a three-year-old child of being a made guy, and all of it with my teeth not brushed…I could hardly deal. I took a moment to pull myself together. “I’m going to talk to her teachers. Nola knows that she needs to tell them things, if Horatio doesn’t want her to or not. Right?” I turned to look at her in the back seat and got almost immediately car sick. Stupid amaretto on a half-hamburger stomach.
“I know. But the monkey bars...” Nola sighed.
“You’ll get across them, Noles. We’ll practice this weekend,” I told her. Even if we didn’t have a car, we could walk to the playground.
Luca made a dissatisfied, snorting sound, and muttered something in Italian. “Was she hurt?” he asked me in a low voice.
“She has a little bruise on her tiny, cute butt,” I whispered back.
“Mama!”
“Her bottom,” I corrected.
When we got to our building, Nola and I ran to get dressed as fast as we could while Luca waited in our living room. It seemed small and cramped after the airy, furniture-free spaces of his house. I didn’t want us to be late, and I also wanted him to see how fast women could get ready, so I flew through my AM routine. I went so fast that I was re-doing the shirt I’d buttoned wrong as I walked out into the living room. Luca was busy in the kitchen, and Nola was sitting on a chair talking to him a mile a minute. She had put on her clothes while I was in the bathroom, and I noticed that she was not wearing what I had laid out for her.
“Noles, what do you have on?”
“My princess dress.” She had gotten it for her birthday when she turned two, and had loved to distraction ever since. However, it was a size too small and also hideous. I had only kept it because I had a terrible time throwing things out, but I really should have tossed it. I really, really should have.
I sighed. “Fine, you can wear it, but you have to wear your sneakers.” There were horrible, slippery high heels that went with the dress, that also didn’t fit her. And of course, she loved those too.
Nola smiled happily. “I’m so fancy. Mama, you should wear your dress.”
“Go get your socks on, please.” She scampered off. “What are you making?” I asked Luca curiously.
“Egg sandwiches on toast with fruit on the side. For both of you, because you should start the day with something, Jolie.” He frowned at my loaf of bread. “There’s too much sugar per slice. And sodium.”
I took it from his hand. “Thank you for making breakfast. I’m sure the bread is fine.” I glanced at the clock. “We need to hurry. Nola, give it some gas!”
In the car on the way to her school, Nola pree
ned and talked about her beautiful dress between bites. She usually wouldn’t eat eggs, but she took this one down because she was so distracted by the novelty of the morning. “I will be the fanciest person at school unless Tori has her fancy nails,” she told us. Tori’s mom was a manicurist so she did have nice nails, much nicer than mine. “Tonight you can wear your dress,” Nola suggested to me. “We can both be fancy.”
“My one, singular cocktail dress,” I explained to Luca. “She likes us to get formal for dinner.”
He smiled. “I see. I’m sure you’ll both look lovely.” He glanced down toward the floor, toward my feet. “You were limping a little as you went up the stairs. Have you been back to the doctor about your ankle?”
“It’s fine. I just need to rest it for a while.” I took the last bite of my egg sandwich, too, and didn’t feel compelled to explain that I hadn’t been to a doctor in the first place about my injury. “That was delicious. How did you make the eggs taste so good?”
“I cooked them,” he said, and started to laugh. “You don’t seem to do much of that. There was hardly anything in your refrigerator except an old jar of pickles. They looked off, so I checked to see if there was a date on the jar, and they were expired. I threw them out for you.”
“Hey!”
“I didn’t even know pickles could get expired. How long have you had them in there?”
“Those were perfectly fine. I was going to finish them for dinner tonight.”
He shook his head and said something that hadn’t been part of my Italian vocabulary lesson from the night before, but I somehow knew that it was not complimentary to me and my eating habits. I stuck out my tongue at him. No matter how good his egg sandwich had been, he wasn’t in charge of what I ate. I, myself, was barely in charge of what I ate.
“You know, I could have gotten a rideshare,” I commented. If they accepted payment in used clothing. I still didn’t want to dip into my savings, even though I knew I would need to in order to pay for the tire repairs. “You didn’t have to do all this, chauffer us around and make us breakfast.”
Double Pop Page 9