“Do friends dry hump each other in their sleep?”
Nico groans, loud and long, into his elbow. The movement makes the tattoos over his right bicep ripple. I try not to drool.
“Fuck,” he whispers loudly. I know he’s struggling to keep it down because his family is still asleep. Then he looks at me with a dagger-like expression. “You called me, you know.”
I scowl back. “Do you wish I hadn’t?”
“No. Yes. No. Fuck!”
Nico sits up, and the covers fall down. His white t-shirt isn’t leaving much to the imagination, and neither are his boxer briefs. Jesus, he has really been working out in LA.
“I’m glad you called,” he says. “But you shouldn’t have been up there in the first place. Layla, I don’t know what kind of shit your boyfriend”—he spits out the word, like it gives him a bad taste in his mouth—“is into, but he should know better than to send his innocent girlfriend in his place to deal with a fuckin’ gangster!”
“I see. So you think I’m too ignorant and stupid to understand what was going on?” I ignore the fact that I didn’t actually know what was going on. Gangster?
“Fuck—me cago—no, I didn’t mean it like that.”
But I’m already swinging my legs out of the bed and searching for my shoes. I slept in my clothes last night, too wary of what might happen if there were only a few pieces of underwear between Nico and me. Nico’s feet hit the floor with a thump, and then he’s coming around the mattress to stand in front of me.
“Layla.”
I look up, and despite the anger I feel—at him, at Giancarlo, at myself for even being in this situation—I still want to do what comes most naturally. Nico’s dense, close-cut hair is sticking up a little around the crown of his head, and there’s a solid day and a half’s worth of black stubble on his cheeks and chin. He rubs his eyes, which have shadows underneath them. But his lips look so soft and full, and all I want to do is throw my arms around those broad shoulders and kiss him until neither of us is mad anymore.
Okay, I want to do a lot more than that.
Nico puts his hands on my shoulders and stills me. I look up, expecting to see disdain. Condescension. Someone who thinks I’m stupid, because in my heart, I know I’m being horrible to someone who helped me last night. But all I see is concern and maybe a little frustration warring across his face. His eyes drift to my mouth again, and without thinking, I lick my lips. His eyes dilate.
“Fuck,” he murmurs as he closes them. He exhales forcefully, then looks straight at me. “Don’t go back there.”
My mouth drops. That was not what I was expecting him to say. “What?”
“I—” He rubs the back of his neck uneasily. “You don’t—I mean—look, I wasn’t going to say anything, but there’s a chance I’m moving back to New York. I don’t know when. But possibly within a few months. You don’t need someone like him, Layla. Not when you and I...”
“What do you mean, there’s a chance you’re moving back?”
The words seem to crackle in the air. I’m honestly not sure if I really heard him say that.
Now Nico’s the one who looks guilty.
“Ah, yeah. I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
I don’t say anything. Just wait for him to say whatever this is.
“It’s...you remember that EMT test I told you about?” he ventures.
I still say nothing. He blinks, his expression black and uneasy. Suddenly I feel like I’m made of glass, about to shatter.
Nico takes a deep breath. “It was, um, actually the FDNY entrance exam. I took it last November. And then...well, I did pretty well. Actually, I did great.”
“Of-of course you did,” I murmur, more to myself than to him. “Of course you did.”
“Well, um, yeah. So I was called up this week to, um...keep interviewing.” He keeps going, now in a sudden rush. “I had the physical on Tuesday. The psych interview is today. You should have seen me the last few months, baby, I’ve been working out like a beast. It’s basically all I do, other than work. Anyway, they seemed to think I did well on that, and now the psych interview is this morning. I still don’t know...I don’t know. I have a record, and they may decide in the end that someone with a history of assault isn’t worthy of the FDNY. But I had to try, you know? It’s...it’s what I’ve always wanted...”
For a long time I sit there, taking in his words. Nico’s quiet now, watching to see what I’ll do. He chews on his lips and cracks his knuckles—he’s never been good with silence.
“I just...I just...” I shake my head, back and forth, trying to register what he’s telling me.
He’s coming back. He’s coming back to New York. And he knew all this time that he was trying to do that. Every time I asked to be together, he knew.
He knew. And he always said no.
Suddenly, it’s hard to breathe. I suck in the air, hiccuping around each breath.
“Layla?” Nico sits next to me, worried. “Are you all right?”
“I...can’t...” I take another deep breath. “I can’t believe that you are doing this to me...again!”
Nico’s brow screws up in confusion. “What?”
“Did you know?” I demand, my voice already choking up. “Did you know that you might be coming back? Have you known this whole time?”
“What? I, well—” He’s stumbling, unable to put together a complete sentence.
“Of course you did,” I continue without waiting. “You applied. You took a test. You knew even then that you had made the final cut, and you didn’t tell me?”
“I just...Layla, do you have any idea how many times I’ve applied for the FDNY over the years? This was a long shot. I still can’t even believe I got this far!”
“Who the fuck cares?” I snarl. “You don’t get it, do you?” My voice cracks, and I can feel my chest cracking right along with it. “All I’ve wanted is you. All year. Ever since you left. And every time I’m starting to think about moving on again you pop back into my life, every time, sweep me right back in, make me love you, all just to leave me. I can’t take it, anymore, Nico!”
He sinks down onto the bed with a dazed expression, like he can hardly believe what he’s hearing. I can hardly believe it myself. I look around frantically for my shoes. I just want to go. I want to leave and bury myself under a mountain of blankets. I want to find a place in this world, this life, where this ache in my chest can finally go away.
“Layla.” He says my name slowly, deliberately.
“I have a boyfriend,” I say, though the words are weak.
“Who, that asshat from Argentina? The guy who robs his girlfriend blind and lies the fuck about it?”
“Shut up.”
“No.” He kicks at his shoes lying on the floor; they flop over.
I spy my boots behind a box and make a grab, hopping wildly around the room while I put them on. “Come back to New York,” I say. “Don’t come back to New York. But whatever you do, don’t do it for me.”
The words bite; they don’t sound nearly as indifferent as I intend them. I’m crying too hard to look apathetic anyway.
“Layla, please. I’ll—listen, I’ll be back in a few months. In May. I don’t live with Jessie anymore, baby. I’ve been staying with K.C. for a while now. I just...tell me it’s not too late. It’s you and me, Layla. You and me. You can’t tell me that you and fuckin’ Evita have anything on that!” He squats down, cups my face between his hands. “You don’t need him. You have me.”
I lean into the touch—that warm, familiar touch. Nico has always been a furnace when I’m with him—he radiates heat all the time. I close my eyes, enjoying the roughness of his callouses against my skin, the gentleness of the thumb lightly brushing my cheekbone. When I open them, he’s giving me that look—that Nico look, black and fathomless, but open and full of love. Love he’s never given completely, but that I wanted so badly.
“I don’t want to be alone,” I admit, for the first
time that I can remember.
And I don’t. Because being alone hurts. It reminds me that the person I want to be with doesn’t want me back. It reminds me that even if he loves me, he still chose a life without me. Without us. And every single time I think of it, it’s like he drives a knife further and further into my heart.
“Baby...”
“I don’t want to be in love with you anymore,” I whimper and fall into his chest.
He starts for a second in surprise, but quickly folds his arms around me, holding my shaking form as the tears fall before I can stop them. I start to shake violently, as much for the pain of loving him as for the pain of admitting I don’t want to anymore. Giancarlo might say mean things. He might yell or shout or throw the occasional dish. But nothing hurts more than this man’s love. Or, I should say, nothing hurts more than loving him.
I jerk away, pawing at my face. I’m so tired of crying for this man, for the pain of being without him.
“And if you aren’t hired?” I ask. I can see the suggestion hurts him, just like it hurts me to say it. Nico would be a brilliant firefighter—he’s a natural hero. Any fool could see that.
But I still need to know the answer to that question. I need to know what he wants from us.
“Are you—are you coming back to New York? Are you coming back here?”
Nico opens and closes his mouth, like he wants to say yes, but then his chest deflates. “I—no. No, I’m not.”
And there it is. The answer that’s been breaking me from the start. The reason I need to convince me that he really doesn’t feel the same way about me as I feel about him.
We stare at each other for a long time, and it’s almost like time acts as a magnet. The longer we stare, the closer we get, until our lips are almost touching. Suddenly all I can think about is that those lips showed me what love felt like. That maybe I never knew what that really felt like until I met him.
That maybe I never will again.
And then our lips are touching. I’m not sure if I start the kiss or if he does, but quickly, it takes over both of us. And just as organically, his hands are back on my skin, sliding up and down my legs, up and down my body like he’s trying to commit every imprint to memory.
He’s warm. So warm. When the world is literally freezing, and the people in it offer the shelter of an igloo, this man heats my soul like fire. He pulls me flush against him so we’re chest to chest, legs against legs, so my soft parts meet his hard ones, and he throbs against my core.
“Layla,” he utters before taking another kiss, and then another one as he turns me toward the bed. His hands slip down, take a firm hold of my ass, that body part he seems to love so much.
“Nico,” I whisper against his lips, soft and sensuous, that pillow over my face. “Please,” I murmur against him, arching up to rub myself against his cock. I want him. My body craves kindness. It craves love. It craves a man who won’t hurt me, even when he’s angry. A man who won’t leave me when I’m at my most vulnerable.
Which, I realize, is exactly what he’s going to do. If we do this, it will feel good, so so good in the moment. I’ll lose myself in him in the way only Nico can make me do. But afterward, we’ll be right back where we are: he’s getting on a plane back to LA, and I’ll be here with guilt eating a hole through my stomach, feeling more lost, more alone, more hopeless than ever.
“No,” I say against his mouth. And then I pull away. Tears stream down my face in hot tracks. The glass is shattering. “I’m sorry. I just...I can’t anymore.” I suck in a desperate sob. “Please. I need to go.”
Nico covers my hands with his, holding them against his chest for a moment. His thumbs brush over the tops of my palms, and we stare at each other, caught again in each other’s thralls. When it’s just us together, things seem so simple. Him. Me. Everything else just fades away.
“Five minutes,” he relents as he steps away to grab some clothes. “And then we’ll leave together.”
We ride the 1 train downtown together, and Nico holds my hand the entire time. I don’t argue. I’m too weak to say no. It’s platonic, I tell myself, even though I know it’s a lie. I insist it doesn’t matter that I spent the night in this man’s bed. We didn’t do anything.
Nico plays his thumb over the ridges of my knuckles, and we sway a little on our seats as the train starts and stops, then dips below the street.
“What are you going to tell him?” he asks quietly after we’ve passed a few more stops.
I consider the question. “I...I guess I’ll tell him the truth. That I sold my watch to pay his debt, and I’ll ask him to pay me back. He will. Giancarlo doesn’t like to be indebted to anyone.”
I don’t want to think about what that might mean about last night. Nico thinks Giancarlo sent me there because he’s a coward who couldn’t pay his own debt. But a small part of me, one I’m not quite ready to listen to, says it’s something different. That I was sent to that pawnshop to make a point. To be taught a lesson about control.
Which means that he can’t ever know who helped me out of there. And when I see him again—today, tomorrow, or later this week—I’m going to have to pretend like everything went fine. Like, as he would say, I’m his.
“Just promise me this,” Nico says after the train leaves Seventy-Second Street.
I gulp. “What’s that?”
He pulls a little on the brim of his favorite old Yankees hat, then pulls it around so it’s backwards. It’s something he does when he wants to see me clearly. Or maybe when he wants me to see him.
“The second that guy does anything to you—”
“Who says he’s going to do something to me?” I interrupt a little too vehemently.
Nico sighs. “Okay. If. If he does anything to you...” Any softness in his eyes evaporates. They are black and stony. “You call me. No matter what time it is. No matter what coast I’m on. You call me.”
It’s a look that gives me shivers, but I don’t look away. I can’t.
“We’ll see,” I say in a voice that’s weak. Even saying the words makes me feel out of breath.
“Oh. Okay. But...you deserve the best, sweetie,” Nico says, and when he swallows, a muscle in his jaw ticks. “Don’t let anyone make you believe otherwise.”
Slowly, I nod. He squeezes my hand. I don’t ever want him to stop.
“Fifty-Ninth Street Columbus Circle.” The conductor announces the stop over the scratchy intercom. It’s intelligible only to people who live here and have already memorized most of the stops on the map.
Nico looks up as the train slows in front of the station. The doors open, and he looks at me helplessly.
Then, without warning, he darts in and stamps a kiss on my lips.
“Be good,” he says like always, before I can say anything more, and then skips off the train before the doors close.
The train starts to move again. I twist in my seat, my fingers over my mouth. Nico stands on the platform, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He raises a big hand at me while the train moves away. I set my palm to the window and watch him fade into darkness.
IV
Homeward
Chapter Twenty-Six
May 2004
Layla
The phone buzzes violently on my desk, waking me up from a peaceful sleep, sprawled across the desktop. It’s almost 6:00 p.m. on a Friday, and I’ve fallen asleep on my books. Again.
It’s not a surprise. I haven’t been sleeping well, not since February. Everything these days seems to make me feel uneasy. Every cab that passes seems like it’s about to hit me. Every sidewalk grate feels like it’s about to open up. I often wake in the middle of the night with my heart pounding, but I never know why.
This is the first time I’ve been home all week, since Giancarlo always wants me to stay with him. He refuses to sleep in my twin bed with me, and I don’t blame him. It’s a tiny mattress for such a tall guy. After the incident with the pawnshop, guilt has eaten me alive. And it’s lik
e Giancarlo knows it, sometimes pushing my boundaries, pushing my limits until we’re yelling at each other or I’m kowtowed in front of him, a pathetic mess.
And every time I think I’m ready to leave him for good, he falls to the old gray carpet, blocking my exit.
“Amor,” Giancarlo moans as he wrapped his arms around my knees. I close my eyes at the pain of the word, hearing the echoes of someone else’s voice around it. “My love, I need you. Forgive me. You make me so crazy. Love makes me crazy.”
He tips his face up and lays his head on my thigh. Reflexively, my hands will slip into his hair, and he’ll close his eyes, content now that the storm is over.
Maybe I shouldn’t stay. The hand prints on my wrist still sting, even if I can’t see the red marks anymore. His other words rankle through my head: whore, bitch, puta, not quite tempered yet by time. But he inhales my skin like I’m life itself. Like I’m a drug he can’t quit. And that feeling is a drug to me too.
I need you. His words float through the air, and so do someone else’s. October. I think about it all the time—the month when Nico received the newspaper clipping. He knew he might come back, yet never chose to tell me. So my heart falls every time the realization hits that I never factored into Nico’s decision, though I offered time and time again to adjust my life around his. My heart falls, right into Giancarlo’s waiting hands.
Sometimes I still want to call Nico. And at first, after he left in February, he would call a lot. Every day. Every other day. He’d ask if I’d told Giancarlo what had happened. Asked if I had confronted him about the pawnshop.
I didn’t tell him I’d been too afraid to do it. That I didn’t want to see what Giancarlo would do if he knew I’d called Nico. If, by some trick, he discovered I’d spent the night with another man. Had let him kiss me. Had kissed him back. Had very nearly done so much more.
So instead, I told him that Giancarlo was clean and it was all a big misunderstanding. I told him that I had gotten my watch back, though it’s probably on some other girl’s wrist in the Bronx somewhere.
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