Touch (The Pagano Family Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  Their mother had always given her a glass of orange juice after an episode. Manny had no idea why, but it had come to mark the time when the badness was over and everybody started putting things back together. The palliative effect transcended her little breakdowns. Since she was eight, orange juice had made her feel calm. It was better than Xanax.

  “Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Dimi.”

  “I love you.” He got up and went to the fridge. She started picking up pill bottles and stood to put them away.

  “Love you double.”

  oOo

  Manny spent Fridays in her car, driving to private clients who had their massages in their own homes. Her clients on this Friday were all in Providence, from before she’d moved to Quiet Cove, so now she had a long drive in morning traffic to start her day.

  This morning, she had to get an extra-early start, because she had to make a couple-mile walk into the heart of Quiet Cove to collect her car from the lot on Gannet Street. Then she drove back and dragged Dmitri off her sofa.

  He was with her part of the way, but they didn’t talk much. He was by no definition a morning person, and she’d needed to be up and out by eight o’clock. So he’d clutched one of her travel mugs of coffee and leaned his head against the window, his beanie pulled low over his face. When she’d dropped him off in front of his place, he’d rolled to her side, kissed her cheek, then rolled himself out of her car.

  Once he closed the passenger door, Manny waved and pulled away, cranking up the stereo. She didn’t mind a long drive, not even in traffic. Nobody could touch her, and she had some time to do some thinking.

  This morning, she definitely had some thinking to do. The episode she’d had last night wasn’t in itself all that unusual, though it had been a while—nearly a year—since she’d lost that kind of control. But still, going mental in a piece of shit bar—not her first rodeo. In fact, it had ended up being pretty low-key, despite the fact that the dude with the big nose who’d grabbed her had probably needed some stitches.

  He deserved it.

  Dmitri thought he’d grabbed her ass—she’d heard him say as much to Luca and the bartender—but actually, he’d grabbed her front, getting a handful of her pussy. She barely remembered anything after that, until they were in the back room.

  The asshole and his buddies had stood around the tall two-top next to her and Dmitri, and he’d started being annoying right off the bat. At first he’d just been a typical bar flirt, leaning down to whisper that she was hot, or ask if she was with Dmitri (she’d said yes, just to try to get him to back off), or offer to buy her a drink. She’d told him, straight out, to fuck off, but he was one of those ‘no means try harder’ bastards. The bar was too crowded by then to find a different spot, and Dmitri wanted to finish his drink, so they’d switched places, putting some distance between her and her new stalker. Then, on his way back from the bathroom, he’d leaned in and grabbed his handful, and Manny had gone into overdrive.

  Luca had sort of…rescued her, she guessed. But that was a problem, or it could be. He knew she was also Emma, the massage therapist, and the last thing she needed was for him to go around spouting off about the psycho bitch who’d totally overreacted to some ‘harmless flirting’ and almost started a brawl at Quinn’s.

  But Dmitri said he wouldn’t. Because he knew her story. Or, at least, the bones of it. Because her brother had told him.

  That bothered her. A lot. It wasn’t something she liked people to know—and Dmitri was wrong. It didn’t make her seem less psycho. It only gave a reason for it.

  Still, she cared more this morning than she should. If Luca didn’t tell anyone, then it didn’t really matter if he knew. Did it? No—why would it? He was just a guy. Just some dude she’d met a couple of times. She didn’t see him becoming a regular client, because he was Heather’s. So she could probably live the rest of her life and not see him again. Or, if she did, it would be just in passing. So who the fuck cared what he knew about her?

  She did. Why?

  Because she kind of liked him, a little. Maybe. She’d felt comfortable with him during the massage. She’d felt like she could read him, and she hardly ever felt that. It was like what you saw was what you got with him.

  People said that all the time about themselves—I’m an open book. What you see is what you get. I tell it like it is.—but it was always bullshit. Manny knew, because people were always shocking the shit out of her, never doing or saying what they meant. Social interaction was like this giant board game, and everybody had the rules but her.

  They’d thought she had autism, the first couple of years after she was adopted. Then, when she’d started moving into adolescence, at about ten or eleven or so, and she got violent, they’d begun looking for other answers. Reactive Attachment Disorder had still been a fairly new diagnosis at the time. She and Dmitri were among the first wave of children adopted a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union, when news began to break about the conditions for orphaned children in Russia and the former Soviet republics. Like Ukraine. Orphanages filled to bursting with children, who were left to languish in bare cribs or in sullen, rotting, grey rooms.

  RAD was so much worse than autism, as far as Manny was concerned. It basically meant that she was trapped in a body and mind that craved human connection but had no fucking idea what to do with it. And there was no way to heal. While normal babies were getting snuggles from their families, Manny had lain alone in a crib. While normal children were being played with and read to and taught the ways of family love, Manny had sat alone on a dingy iron bed, rocking herself. When she had been touched or interacted with in any way, it had been brusque and efficient at best and abusive at worst.

  Her brain never built the connections that recognized loving touch. All touch, to her, was pain and hostility. Aggression. She had to make consciously, every time, responses that were natural and intuitive to the rest of the world.

  After years of therapy, both inpatient and outpatient, she had learned to go through a checklist in her head and could place most interactions in their proper context and then respond accordingly. She’d gotten fairly deft at it, but it was exhausting. And when she slipped at all, she ended up doing what she’d done at the pub last night.

  She spent so much time reminding herself that casual touches were nothing to be upset about, that when somebody actually was hostile, she got very confused. She hated when her family and friends argued, because it fucked with her programming to have loving people behave aggressively toward each other. And the asshole last night, who’d been smiling and sounding sweet right up to the point that he’d grabbed her—well, he’d caused a break.

  People just fucking baffled her. She did not get them at all.

  Except that she’d felt like she did get Luca, like he really was just laying it out. She’d been much more comfortable during his massage, just talking, than she usually was. Of course, she was in total control of the touch, and his eyes had been closed ninety percent of the time.

  She was probably building something up in her head that wasn’t there at all. He was probably just as confusing as everybody else.

  But it bothered her that he knew she was psycho. It bothered her a lot.

  oOo

  She stopped in at home for lunch, hoping to see her folks, but the house was empty, so she rummaged in their kitchen, ate a quick sandwich, left a note, then did her last appointment and headed back to Quiet Cove. She had this Friday night off. The band was practicing for the next night’s gig, but she didn’t have to be there, and she didn’t want to, not after the theatrics of the night before.

  One of these days, she and Gigi were going to have it out. She’d probably land in prison before that was done. Or the psych ward. Again.

  On her way into town, she passed the big construction site on Westerly Road. Luca’s ridiculous, matte black Hummer was there, parked on the road.

  Impulse control was another thing Manny struggled with.

  She pulled over
and got out, then walked straight into the construction zone.

  There were construction guys all over, all of them in red hardhats with the Pagano & Sons logo on them. The day had been hot and sticky, and about half of the guys were shirtless. About half of those really shouldn’t have been.

  One of the guys who should have kept his big belly under cover noticed her first. He stomped over.

  “Hey, missy, what you doin’? You can’t be in here. Too dangerous.”

  “I’m looking for Luca. Luca Pagano.”

  “I don’t care if you’re looking for the Christ child hisself, you gotta get gone.” He thumped his plastic hat. “Y’at least need a brain bucket.”

  “Where can I get one?”

  Beer Belly huffed, squinted, and pointed at a brown trailer thingy off to the side. “There’ll be one in there, I figure. The boss won’t be, though. He’s not bird-doggin’ today. Today, he’s getting sweaty. You get your lid, I’ll scare up the boss.”

  “Boss who?”

  He laughed, showing a couple of missing teeth on his left side. “Who you’re lookin’ for, little dime.” Then he turned from her and walked off, and Manny went to the trailer.

  There was a young, skinny guy at a metal desk in the air-conditioned trailer. He looked up, his features shaping into a look Manny read as surprise as he took her in. “Can I help you?”

  “Um, yeah. I’m here to see Luca. Guy out there said I needed a hat thing.”

  He gave her a different weird look. “You here on business? Because I don’t have you on the schedule.”

  “No, not business. Personal.” Damn, this was a stupid move. Why had she stopped? Why did she even want to see him? And why the fuck was she trying so hard to do so?”

  Then he grinned a grin that even Manny understood. He thought she was there for a fuck. This really was a mistake.

  He pointed to a shelf bolted to the wall, on which were stacked several red plastic hats. “Ones to the left are smaller. Take one of those. You want me to ping him?”

  She didn’t know what that meant, so she said, “No, thank you,” took a hat, and went back outside.

  Luca was walking toward the trailer as she stepped off the little metal steps. She’d basically seen his entire body already, but he still looked wicked hot walking toward her, shirtless and sweaty, in faded jeans, boots, a leather tool belt slung across his hips, and his own red hardhat.

  Holy geez.

  She read his expression as perplexed. “Hey, girl. You got a problem?”

  Why was she here? “Um, no. I just…just…I wanted to thank you. For last night. You were nice.”

  He cocked his head. “I said last night, there’s no need for thanks.”

  “Okay, well. Then I want to apologize for…all that.”

  “No need for that, either.” He reached out, and she steeled herself for his touch, but then he stopped and dropped his hand. “You okay, little bit?”

  His last words made her think of something Beer Belly had called her. “What’s ‘dime’ mean? That other guy called me ‘little dime.’ Should I be pissed?”

  At that Luca laughed, throwing his head back. It was a nice, deep, full sound. “He did, did he? Well, whether you should be pissed depends on how you feel about being objectified.”

  “Please?”

  “He was calling you a ‘ten’—like on a hotness scale, one to ten. You got yourself an admirer.”

  Oh. Gross. And then her mouth ran off with her brain. “Only one?”

  He’d been smiling; now he stopped. “Did you come for anything else?”

  She’d thought he was one to lay all his cards out, but now she could tell he was doing what everybody else on the planet did, and tucking them away. Damn, she hated that. But it was stupid of her to try to flirt. She didn’t even know why she was doing it, and for the first time, she felt ashamed that she’d tried to get with him last night. That had been a kind of apology/thanks gesture, but she’d wanted him, too. For herself.

  She usually didn’t feel ashamed of taking sex when she wanted it. She needed to be in control of all that, she was fucking useless at the mating rituals, so she just came right out and said what she wanted. If the guy didn’t want it, then fine, whatever, at least everybody knew where everybody stood.

  She hardly ever felt shame, period. Probably because she was usually too confused about what would have been ‘appropriate.’ Regret, yes. She sometimes felt that. But not shame.

  But now, suddenly, she was ashamed.

  “No. Just thanks and sorry. Have a life, or whatever.” She took off her little red ‘brain bucket,’ tossed it to him, turned on her heel and stomped back to her car.

  About ten feet from that safe space, Luca’s big hand came around her arm. She yanked free reflexively and spun around to see him take a step back, his hands up in front of him. The letters of the tattoo across his ridged belly seemed to glitter through the perspiration over his skin.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. How old are you, Manny?”

  It didn’t occur to her to consider such a question rude, or to be coy about her answer. “Twenty-eight. You?”

  “Thirty-four. I thought you were a lot younger.”

  “I get that a lot. I’m little.”

  “You busy for dinner tonight?”

  “What?”

  “I’m asking you out for dinner. You eat, right?”

  “Yeah…why?”

  “You’re interesting. It turns out you’re not just this side of jailbait.” His grin widened to Cheshire Cat status. “And Norm’s right—you’re a dime piece.”

  She considered that and decided she liked it. “Um. Okay, I guess. But I won’t drink.”

  He nodded. “I think that’s wise. I can go a night sober. Happens occasionally. I’ll pick you up around eight?”

  A new, exciting thought occurred to her. “You said you ride a Ducati?”

  Still grinning like he was in on some joke she didn’t get, he cocked his head. “I do. You want to ride? You’ll have to hold on to me.”

  It was so weird to think that this guy knew about her thing with touch. She felt intruded upon and relieved, both at the same time, yanking her thoughts back and forth. But he knew, and he was still asking her out. That was maybe the weirdest part of all.

  “I’m okay when I’m doing the touching. It’s the other way that takes some work.”

  He winked. “I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll see you at eight, little bit. Wear jeans and boots.”

  She nodded and headed to the driver’s side of her car. Then she turned and called to Luca’s retreating back, “Hey!”

  He turned around and stopped, waiting.

  “Don’t think I’m gonna fuck you just because I offered last night. I don’t know yet if I’m gonna fuck you tonight or not.”

  That wide grin again. It meant something. It was cocky. Yeah—she thought it was cocky. Maybe. Was that supposed to piss her off? Then he tipped his head, like part of a bow. “Noted. I don’t know if I’m gonna fuck you yet, either. We’ll have to see how it goes.” He nodded to the back of her car. “Fascinating bumper stickers.”

  And then he turned and walked away.

  5

  Before Luca could cut the engine on his Duc, Manny was out the front door and trotting down the steps. She looked good—jeans and those red Docs, as he’d instructed, and a sheer black top, with a red satin bra under it. She was pushing her arms into an old-style leather biker jacket, lots of zippers and buckles, as she crossed the bare lawn.

  The jacket was a good idea, one he’d neglected to mention. The weather had been particularly hot this summer, and he himself wasn’t riding with leather, but he was glad to see her with it. Maybe she’d ridden before.

  “Hey, little bit. Ready for a ride?”

  “Hey. That’s what you’re calling me? Little bit?”

  “That bug you?”

  She popped her hip and cocked her head, giving him a considering look with those piercing ey
es. “No. I’ve been called worse.”

  He grinned and handed her his helmet. Rhode Island’s helmet law only applied to passengers, and Luca only used his when he rode in Massachusetts or other neighboring states. Or when his father might see.

  “Have you ever ridden before?”

  She turned the black, full-face helmet over and moved the straps out of the way. “No. But how hard can it be?”

  “You can make it hard for me, if you’re too tense. Just hold on tight, and follow my lead. Don’t work against me. And keep your feet on the pegs.”

  “I’m all set.”

  She pulled the helmet over her head, and Luca couldn’t help it. He laughed. It was far too big for her, and she looked like a freaking bobblehead doll, that little body under his big, matte black helmet.