That was what Maia was doing, I realized. She was making major, grown-up decisions about her life just like I had at her age. I still thought she was choosing wrong, but she thought she was doing the right thing, and if she was anything like me, arguing with her wasn’t going to make a difference. I wiped away tears with a clean t-shirt and put that on the dirty pile, too. How much emotional upheaval could one woman take? I wasn’t going to help Maia plan her wedding to her idiot boyfriend, and I wasn’t going to tell her that she never did wrong, but the thought of not seeing her anymore, or not seeing her baby? Just, no. I blew my nose on a rag and threw that one away.
As I started the next load with one hand, I texted Maia with the other, saying that I would call her soon and that I thought we should talk more. And she answered almost immediately that yes, she really, really wanted to. I was feeling infinitesimally better as I looked at my phone, and then I heard a little noise, a little brush of a shoe on the carpet in the hallway. Instead of leaving the laundry room, I stepped behind the open door, and waited.
Holy fuck, there he was! I was going to catch the laundry jerk in the act of screwing with my clothes, and nail him to the wall. I held up my phone and started filming him as he walked quietly to the dryer I had just started up and carefully swung open the door. He pulled out the clean, damp clothes and made a pile on the floor. That dickweed! I was so angry, my hand shook holding the phone.
He looked around and stood still, as if he was listening. Then he unzipped his pants. Oh, Jesus. He pulled out his penis and started masturbating over our clothes on the floor. I almost puked, thinking about his jism on our stuff.
And suddenly I knew. “You disgusting piece of shit!” I yelled, and came out from my hiding spot. “It was you! You were the one who spewed on my door, you put the nails in my tire! You chopped up my daughter’s bike!”
He froze there, dick in hand. In a split second, his face changed from shock to ferocious anger, and I realized the error of accusing a psycho while alone a room with him. I screamed at the top of my lungs, which startled him and gave me about two seconds of a head start. It was not enough, but I ran out of the room and down the hall, still screaming. He leaped on me from behind like a jungle cat and I fell directly on my face, letting out a huge “oomph!” when my forehead connected with the cement floor covered by the thin carpet. As soon as I got my breath back, I started shrieking again, and he swore at me, and gave me a kidney blow with his fist that stopped my noise.
“What in the world? Jolie?” I heard Eva say, and then there was a huge thump. The guy on top of me jolted and slumped over on my back, a dead weight. Panting, I scrambled out from underneath him and scooted away. Eva stood over him, tiny Eva, with her biggest doll in her hands. It was broken because she had used it to crack the living shit out of the laundry pervert’s head.
∞
“I really am fine,” I told Luca. Eva had called the police, and then her next call had been to him. “And actually, it’s lucky that I came to the hospital to get checked for a concussion. Because otherwise, I would never have known that I had a fracture and that’s why my ankle has been bothering me all this time.”
“I can’t believe you have a broken ankle. You’ve literally been running around on a broken bone and you’d never gone to the doctor,” Luca said.
“Yup. I don’t care for doctors and hospitals. And I’ve been here way too much lately,” I said, looking around and thinking about my visit with Stoney. “But the good news is that I don’t have a concussion, the bruises will heal, and I got this nice boot to wear to fix my bone.”
“I’m happy that you’re seeing this as glass half-full,” he answered. He was still gripping my fingers tightly. In fact, he had only let me go when they took me back for the x-ray. “I, on the other hand, am not very happy with the events of the day.”
“The police arrested the pervert guy. They have the whole thing on video from my phone. Well, the whole sound recording of it, anyway.” The picture had gotten a little wonky during the chase and fight section.
“I listened to it and I heard you screaming. I heard the sound of you falling.” Luca leaned forward from where he sat next to me on the bed, and kissed me again. Then he hugged me, and I was totally good with us staying just like that, me tucked safely in his arms. “Jolie. Thank God, thank God you’re all right.”
“I really am fine,” I told him again, and rubbed his back. He was going to need a lot of assurance. “I asked Eva to call you right away so you would know. I didn’t try to keep anything from you and I won’t.”
“Always call me. For everything,” he said into my hair. He kissed my head, repeatedly. “And you and Nola will come stay with me until we find a new apartment for you. Or you can stay with my parents, if you don’t think it’s appropriate to be at my house.”
“You’re going to foist us on them?” My voice was a little muffled, since I was speaking into his shirt. He hadn’t let go yet.
“My mom already invited you.”
“Luca?” I pulled away from him a little so that I could see his face. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything before.”
“I’m sorry I left you this morning, so angry. If I had been there—”
“I still would have yelled at the guy jacking off onto our clothes.” I shuddered. “Yuck.”
Luca’s face hardened.
“I’m fine,” I reminded him. “And you’re here, and the guy’s in jail, and your mother is super sweet. But, um, I did want to talk to you about something.”
“Everything ok?” the nurse asked me, sticking his head around the curtain that separated me from the next bed. “We almost have your discharge paperwork done, so you’ll be ready to go soon. The doctor is working on getting you the referral to the headache specialist.”
“Thank you,” I told him, and he nodded and went on to the next patient. I took a deep breath. “So, anyway, I did want to talk to you,” I repeated to Luca.
“Jolie?” Eva stuck her head around the side of the curtain too, followed by Nola. “The two of us are going to the gift shop. Again.”
“I’m just about done here, Noles,” I assured her. She had been upset to see me hurt, but Eva had kept her from seeing the reason for it and, of course, she didn’t understand the danger I’d been in. So now, she was mostly upset about the broken doll, but Luca had been pretty sure that it could be fixed. Or secretly replaced. Now the focus of Nola’s interest was the gift shop, with the hospital teddy bears wearing scrubs. Luca held her up so she could hug and kiss me, and she and Eva trotted off. I saw him pass a wad of cash to Eva, too, so I felt like one of those bears would be coming home with us.
“Luca. I really need to talk to you,” I said firmly.
He sat back on the bed and held my hands, looking expectant. “Yes? Tell me, piccola mia.”
“Hey! No way! It’s Julie, and, uh, the big guy!” Damned if Stoney wasn’t getting rolled past in a wheelchair. “I know them!” he explained to the woman pushing him. She shook her head and didn’t stop, even though Stoney kept talking. “They’re fans of mine! Did I tell you that I’m a singer?” He broke into one of the numbers we’d heard him cover at the bar.
I lay back against the pillows, exasperated. “Seriously? Stoney is interrupting us too?”
“I’ll close these all the way,” Luca said, and pulled around the curtains. He returned to his seat next to me on the bed. “Talk, quick, before someone else comes.”
“What do you think he’s here for?” I wondered, then focused. “Ok, yes.” Breathe, Jolie. “Luca, I don’t think that we should be friends anymore.”
“What?” His mouth fell open.
“No, no. I mean, I don’t think that we should be friends who have sex anymore.”
“Ok, Jolie, I—”
“I’m not saying this right!” I rubbed my head, because it did hurt, even if I didn’t have a concussion. “I mean, I don’t think we should be just friends who have sex anymore.”
�
��I totally agree. We are not friends who have sex, for sure.”
He still wasn’t getting it. I took another deep breath. “Because, Luca…”
“Because we’re more than that,” he filled in. “We’re friends, but much more.”
My heart skipped a beat. “You were the one who didn’t want another woman in your life,” I reminded him. “You didn’t want a girlfriend, or even a date.”
“You were the one who wanted to paint ‘no relationship, none’ on your wall. You kept thanking me for my friendship, telling me all the time how glad you were that we were friends.” He shook his head. “Friend. I’ve never hated a word so much as I did that one. If you had said it one more time, I was going to lose my mind.”
“You are my friend. And also, more.” I sat up and took his hands. “You know, I’m not really that person. The ‘no relationship, none’ person. Not with you.”
“I know that. It’s why you’ve been afraid to tell me things, because you were afraid that you would drive me away from you. Eva filled me in when you had the x-ray. She also said that you told her my penis was life-changing.”
“Well, I’m glad that you and Eva are getting close. She requested details about your penis, FYI. And it is life-changing, FYI on that also.”
He smiled. “It was true that I didn’t want just a date, just some girlfriend,” he said. “But you’re Jolie, and I want you more than anything. I love you.”
Oh, here came the tears. “Do you?”
“I do. Ti amo, Jolie. And you love me.”
“You sound very sure of that,” I said shakily.
“I am.” Luca kissed me. “You and Nola and I, the three of us are going to have an amazing life. I’m very sure of that, too.” We sat as close together as we could on the hospital bed, kissing and talking, with Stoney singing in the background. He really did have a nice voice.
And it seemed like my gamble on life, on love, had paid off.
Epilogue
“Luca!”
Both of our heads snapped up to look at who was calling to him, and holy fuck. Who was this gorgeous woman? Did she fall from the heavens or something?
Luca rose from his seat at our table at the sunny outdoor café. “Ciao,” he said evenly, just as she attached herself to him, kissing his cheeks repeatedly. I mean, we were in Italy, and I was down with him cheek kissing other women. This one was allowed to have two and a brief shoulder touch. But this was more than two…and now she went for his mouth.
Yup, time to intervene. “Luca, who is this person?” I asked.
He disentangled himself from her octopus arms. Forget falling from the heavens; this bitch was right off the sea floor. “Jolie, meet Vesa. I may have mentioned her.”
“Oh yes, Vesa,” I said, struggling to stand, and then Luca had to actually pull my ass out of the chair. This was really not how I had imagined meeting her. First of all, I would have some type of weapon in my hands…
“Luca?” She was staring at my giant stomach. Now she pointed, like I was a zoo animal.
“Vesa, meet my wife, Jolie. She’s just about to have our second child, a boy,” he explained. Our second, because he counted himself as Nola’s father, always. Her bio dad, Ty, hadn’t ever been around, not since he had gotten nailed by the cops in a casino in Calexico on his way to the border. He hadn’t cared when Luca adopted Nola, or when we’d moved to Italy. In fact, since he had realized that Luca was in the picture for good, he hadn’t even dared to ask me for money, which meant that I hadn’t heard from him personally in years. Luca kept track of him through a lawyer, and we sometimes got updates on his parole status.
Vesa was still staring. “I hadn’t heard that you got married,” she said. She had left Luca alone when she had hooked up with the mayor of San Francisco, but apparently, old feelings died hard.
Luca stepped closer and put his arms around me, hands on my stomach. “Really? Yes, Jolie and I got married several years ago.”
It had been a perfect wedding in Big Sur, and Nola had been the best, cutest maid of honor anybody could ever have. I smiled at Luca, thinking about how emotional he had gotten when we had said the vows. His voice had shaken, he meant them so much. He bent and kissed me, and rubbed my tummy.
“Do you live here? In Milan?” Vesa asked. She still seemed stunned.
“We’re just down from our villa for the day,” I explained, and Luca picked up my bag off the back of the chair.
“Cuore mio, we need to get going,” he reminded me.
Time to leave the lovely café behind and waddle my way to the car. Today, Eva would pick up Nola from school and take her to swim team practice. Luca and I had come to visit his mom at her beautiful flat and to shop a little for the baby, on our way to the airport to pick up Maia and her daughter. My cousin wanted to be here for the birth of my son, and she also wanted to see some of Italy.
Maia gone through a hard time in the last few years, as she got her life sorted out. Her marriage had lasted for about 13 months before her husband had decided that, although he still thought Maia was pretty cool, he didn’t want a wife or a kid, and he would rather return to the life he’d had before, with no responsibility and a lot of BMX racing. But she was getting things together now, and in fact, everyone in my immediate family circle was doing pretty well. Well enough that I’d felt like I could leave them and go to Italy for a few years, or maybe, forever. And—
Oh! Now, this was a surprise. Well, fuck. “Luca…”
He was kissing that bitch woman again, but just two this time, both cheeks. “Maybe we’ll run into you again sometime, Vesa,” he told her.
“Luca!”
He looked over at me, and his gorgeous blue eyes nearly dropped out of his head when he saw the puddle around my feet. “Cazzo! Cos’è quello? Is that the baby coming?”
“Either that, or Milan has sprung a leak. It’s ok, we have plenty of time—”
He was already swinging me up in his arms and running down the street, my purse over his shoulder, yelling (in multiple languages) for everyone to get the hell out of his way.
And I put my arms around his neck and decided to enjoy the ride.
About the Author
Jamie Bennet is the author of a bunch of super great books that you may want to read right now...if that was too subtle, go immediately and find them on Amazon!
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Thanks for reading! Vi ringrazio di cuore!
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Read Lanie and Brooks’ story in THE ONE I’M WITH
“You didn’t have time to get it straightened? Or work on the color?”
“They couldn’t fit me in,” I told my mom, which was a lie. I hadn’t tried to get in for an appointment because I liked my hair the color it was, brown with a little red left over from the summer sun. And since I had gotten older and better at taming it, I didn’t mind my curls anymore. Not as much as I had as a kid, anyway, when at one point I had wanted to shave my head and had sold lemonade and other items from our refrigerator to get enough money to buy a wig. My mom had been too busy to mess much with my hair; she had sent me to her stylist, but on the days when there wasn’t a professional around to handle it, my nanny had pretty much thrown in the towel on all issues regarding my head.
My mom nodded, now clearly disappointed, and twisted my hair into a knot, securing it with pins. “There, now we won’t have to see it as much.”
“Thanks.” My voice sounded dull. I had thought it was fine but now I guessed that she was right, it hadn’t looked very nice the way I’d styled it myself.
She tilted her head. “You know, you have my neck.” She looked at herself in the mirror in front of us and tapped under her chin with her fingers.
“Really?” I smiled. My mom had such a graceful, long neck, like a queen. I turned my head and looked at myself in the mirror to check to see if I did, too.
“Everything else from your father, though.” She bent and put her face next to mine, and it was true. We looked nothing alike, because she was pretty much the feminine ideal of beauty and I was…not. There was nothing wrong, exactly, but I wasn’t my mom. Even our expressions were different: a big smile on her face and a sulky frown on mine which I turned into a neutral stare back at her. My mom’s eyes flicked down. “Lanie, did you stuff your bra?” she asked.
“It’s just padded,” I answered defensively. “A little, subtle padding.”
“Subtle? It looks like you have pillows in there. Very unnatural.”
Which was kind of ironic, given the amount of injections, surgeries, peels, creams, and other aids my mom used to look “natural.”
“This looks grotesque. They have to come out,” she instructed me, and I reached down my dress and pulled the pads—ok fine, I pulled the pillows out. The dress kind of clung, and the effect just wasn’t the same without them. I frowned down at my deflated chest.
“Much better,” my mom approved. “Natural is better. I remember when I was modeling and all the girls were having breast enhancement surgery but I wouldn’t do it.”
Why would she have needed to? She was a size two and her bra was a D-cup. Her pillows were real.
“They told me that I wouldn’t get on MTV without having it, but I did.” She nodded, satisfied. “And I was always glad, later, that I didn’t have to deal with some of the problems from those old implants. Not that surgery is always a mistake,” she added quickly, and I saw her studying my face. She had never pushed me into getting anything done, but I knew that she wouldn’t have objected if I had come up with the idea on my own.
“Thanks for helping me with my hair, Mom.” She had come to my house to check on me and after a while had taken the brush to step in. I knew that she really wanted to help, and I was grateful for that. I just always wished that her assistance didn’t make me feel so bad.
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