Twenty-three. Twenty-fuckin’-three. Me, Nico Soltero, the fuckup kid who at one point wasn’t even sure he was going to graduate high school. The guy who thought he was going to end up delivering packages or pouring drinks for the rest of his life because they were the only jobs anyone was willing to give my criminal ass. I just got an A on a fuckin’ test. Not just any test. The most important test of my life.
And there’s only one person I want to tell.
It’s late, too late, but I’m dialing anyway while I rush around the apartment, my fingers slipping over the keys. Maybe it’s just early enough here that she’ll be up soon. The phone rings four times, and I’m just about to hang up when I hear her voice, faint and groggy.
“Nico?”
I sit down on the bed, tugging off my tie. “Hey, baby.”
“Hey…what’s…up?”
Goddamn. I can just see her. Face a little puffy, bleary from sleep. Her brown-black hair curled from the way she sweats just a tiny bit around her neck when she’s really out. I can see her rubbing her lips, trying to wake up––they’ll be swollen a little, the color of rose petals in the Central Park gardens.
Fuck. Just the thought of them gets me hard. I wish to God I was there with her, wish I could help her wake up the right way. Down, boy. That’s not why you’re calling.
“I just…how are you?”
I don’t know why I can’t get it out. I stare at the paper, looking at the numbers. Twenty-three. Out of thousands. It’s a good number. No, a fuckin’ great number. It means I’m pretty much guaranteed for the series of interviews. And maybe, just maybe, the academy as a cadet.
But then my heart sinks as I realize the hurtles I’m actually facing. This test wasn’t ever going to be the hardest thing I had to face in trying to get this job. I might have been just a minor when I robbed that bodega with some other kids in high school, but the guilty verdict for assault––an assault I didn’t even commit––is permanent. The fact that I lived in a juvenile detention facility is not something I’ll ever be able to erase. And no one is going to think that someone who used to be a criminal could be a new hero for New York City. No one.
I open my mouth, trying to figure out how to answer her question. But then I hear another voice. A deep voice that calls her name.
“Layla?”
I stiffen. “Who was that?”
Layla’s silent for a second. I hear her palm cover the phone speaker while she talks to someone, her voice muffled through her hand. Then she gets back on.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m back. What was it you were trying to say?”
I open my mouth to tell her the news. But that voice––that very male voice––echoes through my head, and I can’t see straight. My fist closes, and the paper in it crumples.
“Nothing,” I say in some feat of magic, since I manage to keep my voice level. “I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas, sweetie.”
“Oh.”
She pauses a second––her thoughts are so loud, I can practically hear them through the phone. I just wish I knew what they were. I wish I knew who that guy was. I wish I was there to kick his fuckin’ ass out of her apartment. Mine, I want to shout, with every bone in my body.
But I stay quiet.
“Merry Christmas, Nico,” she says, her voice small and very far away.
And then we hang up. Because there isn’t anything else to say.
~
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Layla
“Giancarlo, please. We need to go. My friends are waiting for us.”
“Your friends, your friends. That’s all I hear about––your friends.”
I lean against the doorframe of Giancarlo’s bedroom, waiting impatiently for him to finish putting on his shoes. He’s been dragging all evening, clearly unhappy about coming downtown to meet up with Shama, Jamie, and Quinn. My roommates all got back from break last night, but I was holed up at Giancarlo’s apartment uptown until tonight. We ended up spending most of the last few weeks together, cocooned at his place or mine. Somehow I woke up, and it was almost the end of January.
Maybe it’s too soon to spend so much time together, but I couldn’t help but like having him with me when I opened the impersonal checks from my mother and father. I think he liked having me there too when he opened the small package from his family containing some treats from home. We even went to Mass on Sundays. It was…nice. Better than being lonely, even if he is kind of intense.
Like right now.
He sighs. The head-to-toe black he’s wearing doesn’t help his sullen expression. It’s his preferred color, but his skin is too pale for it, though I’d never tell him that. It would just be asking for a fight. And Giancarlo, I’ve learned, doesn’t give up on a fight.
“Do I really have to go?” he demands. “They’re your friends. What do they care about me? I don’t need friends.”
I wilt. This is not how the evening was supposed to go. It’s going to look really bad if I show up at the bar having promised new boyfriend without said boyfriend in tow. And then there’s the other side of the equation: that things between Giancarlo and me don’t seem quite official until someone outside of the two of us actually acknowledges our existence. Sees us. Interacts with us. Approves of us. Giancarlo doesn’t even have a roommate, and since my roommates have been gone…well, let’s just say you can’t live in a cocoon forever.
His cantankerous attitude remains through the subway ride downtown, all the way to the tiny bar, where I scan for my friends from the entrance.
“I don’t know why we are here,” he grumbles as he stands behind me. “I could have worked tonight. Do you have any idea how many jobs I have given up this month to be with you?”
I push him in the side light-heartedly, hoping I can get him to smile. It’s not something he does a lot, but I know if I can get him there, my friends might actually like Giancarlo.
“Dude,” I say. “Lighten up, will you? Don’t be a grouch around my friends.”
Giancarlo just glares at me. “You think this is a joke? You think it’s cheap to take you out, buy you things? Pay for the privacy of my apartment? Do you have any idea how much this night will cost me?”
My cheeky smile falls as I turn to him. “Hey, I’m sorry. I wasn’t making light of you. I was just trying to get you to lighten up so you can enjoy yourself. And like I keep telling you, you do not have to pay for me at all.”
He just pushes his glasses up his nose, but his glare doesn’t waver. I take a deep breath. There’s a tightness in my stomach when he does that, and I don’t know why. A knot of tension that never quite dissipates, bad as I want it to.
“Layla, are you my woman, or not?” he asks, pulling me close to him.
I bite my lip. Shit. There’s that question again. I place my hands on his arms and rub up and down, hoping to calm him. I had hoped things would be better tonight.
“I didn’t mean it,” I murmur into his ear. “You’re not a grouch. And I am really grateful that you’re here.”
Giancarlo remains stiff for a few more seconds, but slowly I feel him relax a bit under my touch. “Good,” he breathes at last. “You have no idea how scared I get sometimes. You say things like that to me, and I worry I’m going to lose you. I don’t know what I would do alone, here in this city, without you by my side. I need you, Layla.”
It’s something he started saying a lot, and I only recently learned the price of not returning the sentiment.
“Say it,” he said, only two nights ago, when I was making an innocuous stir fry in his kitchen. “Why can’t you just say it?”
I frowned as I dropped a handful of sliced peppers into the pan, letting the sizzle pop and crackle through the air. The question wasn’t out of nowhere, although usually it would come up either after we’d just had sex or when he would appear after a night at his job and had had a few drinks. I didn’t know if it was because school was starting again or that my friends were returning, but there in the ki
tchen was the first time he’d ever asked me like it was an average, everyday request.
“It’s only been a month…” I started slowly. “Not even. And you want me to say I’m yours? Aren’t we moving fast enough already? We went from a first date to practically living together in the space of three weeks.”
It was hard to admit, but I had been there before, hadn’t I? I had fallen for a man within a day of meeting him––head over heels within twenty-four hours of our first date. A man who, in the end, didn’t want me the way I wanted him.
“I need you,” Giancarlo said again, pacing up and down the small, tight space. He stopped behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, nuzzling into my neck, his breath warm and heavy. “I need you, Layla. I don’t know why. I don’t know how. But I do. I need to know you’re mine, amor. Say it.”
I took a deep breath. My body didn’t melt into his embrace––instead, I stood stock-straight as I felt his growing erection against me. Intensity turned him on, I knew. But I didn’t like the way he conflated that intensity with love. The lines between them became very blurry.
“I…”
Giancarlo pulled away and then leaned against the counter so he faced me. “It’s just us now, don’t you know that? No families. Nobody. We only have each other. If I lose you, I’ll…I just need to know, amor. I need to know you belong to me.”
But I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t tell him I was his, couldn’t say I belonged to someone else. I’m honestly not sure I could ever say that to another person.
Except one.
The thought entered my head before I could stop it, and I pushed it away and turned back to the vegetables, hissing in the pan. The sound echoed through the air, taking up the space where my words should have been. Why couldn’t I just say it? He so clearly needed me to. And it did feel so, so good to have someone want me the way he did.
But my mouth wouldn’t move. I stared at the vegetables, feeling Giancarlo’s temper building beside me, a powder keg ready to burst. It was strangely familiar––my father, of course, was the same way, with a temper that would turn to shouting if you pressed the wrong button. I winced, bracing myself for an onslaught.
Suddenly, the spatula was swatted out of my hand, and before I could say anything, the pan was slammed off the stove and into the wall in the corner. Flecks of hot oil bit into my skin, and I jumped back against the sink.
“Ow! Okay, okay, okay!” I shouted. “I-I need you too, I guess. Is that what you need to hear? Jesus!”
Giancarlo stood next to the still-red burner on the stove, its coil as red and angry as his face. He hurled the spatula at the pan, and I stared at them both, bewildered by the oily vegetables now staining the walls and the linoleum.
“Don’t placate me,” he bit out, then stomped out of the apartment, slamming the heavy door behind him.
It took me five full minutes to stop shaking, to get down on my knees and clean up the stir fry, to go without eating because that was all the food in his apartment, and I was too scared to see what he would do if he came back to find me gone. And he did come back, several hours later, smelling a little of Malbec and something else I couldn’t place. He scooped me against his big body, full of apologies and sex. And in my daze, I accepted both.
“There she is! Layla!”
I snap out of the memory and scan the bar, a little place on the Lower East Side where Shama wanted to go tonight. She and Jason broke up over the break, so Fat Black’s is off-limits for a while, at least for her. I’m glad they’re done even though my friend is heartbroken. Getting a text in the middle of the night from your naked boyfriend wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s fucked up when the text was clearly sent by the woman naked with him.
It was Quinn’s voice I heard. A second later I spot all of my roommates waving furiously from a booth.
“Come on,” I say and pull Giancarlo with me.
They’ve met before, of course, but it’s been a long time since that night in September. Jamie’s snuggled into Dev’s side, and Quinn and Shama stand up to give me tight hugs.
“We missed you!” they both yelp as we all sit down. I relax a little. It’s good to know that Quinn and I don’t have to be weird now.
“Guys,” I say, tugging on Giancarlo’s hand to pull him into the booth with me. Reluctantly, he follows. “This is Giancarlo. Giancarlo, this is Quinn, Jamie, and Shama. And that’s Dev, Jamie’s boyfriend.”
Dev gives a tip of his head, but turns quickly back to Jamie to resume their reunion as well. Quinn and Shama turn to us, openly assessing Giancarlo, who remains tense.
“So, Harry Potter,” Quinn says, “Layla says you’re in school. What’s your major?”
“Who is Harry Potter?” Giancarlo turns to me, ignoring the question.
“You don’t know who Harry Potter is?” I ask. “Those books are huge right now.”
“He’s a wizard!” Shama pipes up. She cocks her head, looking at Giancarlo. “Yeah, I sort of see it. I mean, he’s not exactly the little schoolboy type, but the glasses and the scarf…good call, Quinn.”
Quinn smirks. Giancarlo scowls.
“Maybe he’d like Voldemort better,” Quinn remarks dryly as she stirs her drink. Shama and Jamie start to laugh.
“Quinn!” I hiss.
She shrugs. “Anyway. Major, V-man?”
Giancarlo clears his throat. “Business.”
“Oh? What kind? Finance? Econ?”
Again with the throat clearing. “Um, finance, I think. After I finish, I will go back to Buenos Aires and learn my family’s business.” He turns to me with a sober look. “Layla will come with me too.”
He gives me that long, slow smile that makes my insides melt a little, and it almost distracts me from the fact that he thinks I’m going to move to a completely different hemisphere with him. Almost.
“What’s that?” I ask as lightly as I can. “This is news to me.” I grin at my friends, trying to play it off as a joke, but no one looks amused.
“Whoa,” Jamie says as she breaks from a kiss with Dev. “Did I hear you’re moving to Argentina? That’s awesome! And your dad will be so happy since you’ll be closer to Brazil, right?”
“Is this true?” Quinn’s voice is a lot more sober than Jamie’s, but I do find the courage to look at her.
Feeling the tension radiating around the table, but especially from the tall glass of intensity sitting next to me, I chew on my upper lip for a minute before answering.
“No,” I say. “It’s just an idea I guess.”
I don’t even have to look at Giancarlo to know that he’s glaring at me. His message tone rings––a loud blare that can still be heard inside the club. He checks it, then shoves it back in his pocket.
“I have to go,” he says as he stands up. “Come. We need to talk.”
And with a curt nod at my friends, Giancarlo tugs me back out of the booth and through the club without even giving me a second to grab my coat from the hanger. It’s not until we’re back outside on the sidewalk that he whirls around, the tails of his long black coat flying behind him like a cape.
“What the fuck was that?” he demands, nose tinged red with anger. A couple entering the lounge sidesteps away from him, even though he’s not even shouting.
Arms crossed, I hold myself tightly, shivering in the icy wind. I’m wearing a thin sweater and jeans, and it’s thirty degrees outside. “What are you talking about?”
“You think I like being made a fool? Is that why you brought me here?”
“N-no!” I proclaim. “Come on, please. Giancarlo, we were only joking around. That’s what we do.”
“And you? Joking around?” he comes closer, grabbing my arms and pulling me to him. “I wasn’t joking when I said I wanted you with me. I always want you with me, Layla. Don’t you feel the same for me?” His hands drift up my neck, clasping me there and turning my face toward his. “No,” he says, before I can reply. “You don’t take this serious. I can see it in your face.”
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He releases me with enough gusto that I fall back a step or two. I’m so cold that my teeth are chattering, but my mouth falls open anyway in shock. Is he serious right now? I’ve been with him literally every day for the last month. How could he possibly think that I’m not serious?
“I should walk away while I can,” Giancarlo snarls. “You’re only going to ruin me, I can see it. Nothing but fun and games to you, like a child.”
“No!” I finally burst out.
The tension that’s been stewing in my stomach finally flowers into something more explosive. I couldn’t say why, but the idea of him walking away, of leaving me, just like everyone else always seems to do, is suddenly too much to bear. It’s enough that it shutters the anger at his unfair accusations, at the feeling like I’m being railroaded into this conflict whether I want it or not.
“I’m serious,” I say reaching out for his sleeves. “I’m serious. You just took me off-guard with the Argentina comment, okay? But you know I’m serious about you, Giancarlo. You must know that.”
He lets me pull him close, but remains a statue as I press slow, tentative kisses around his jaw. There is no response, and his skin there, the skin he keeps meticulously shaved, is chilled in the wind. At last he takes a step back and draws his knuckles slowly across my cheek. I lean into the touch, not daring to break eye contact as he levels his cold stare at me.
“I don’t believe you,” he says, as he pushes my face roughly to the side. “I have to go. Maybe that will give you some time to consider what you really think of me. Maybe then you’ll appreciate what we have.”
And with another scowl, he turns and walks swiftly down the street, coattails flying. I stand there, shivering in the wind hurling down Houston until he disappears around the corner.
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