Lost Ones

by Nicole French

  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 a desperate sob in. “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.

  ~

  Part 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 like he 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 i
nstead, 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 I’m pretty sure it’s on some other girl’s wrist in the Bronx somewhere.

  I don’t think Nico believed me, because he asked me again to cut Giancarlo loose. Told me in a frenzy he wanted me no matter what. That even if the FDNY didn’t hire him in the end, that he wanted me to come out there, just like I’d offered last year.

  And that, really, was what did it.

  “Is that what you think?” I demanded, anger simmering inside me, turning me into a keg of gunpowder that had just been lit. “After all this time, you think you can just snap your fucking fingers and I’ll jump to your side! Nico, you had your chance! Again and fucking again! What can’t you understand about that?”

  The words burst out of me like fireworks, and when I finished, I slumped against the wall while Quinn watched from her bed knowingly. I knew better than to expect her sympathy by that point. We were basically strangers most of the time.

  “Layla,” Nico started again, his voice full of mourning. “Please, baby––”

  “I am not your baby!” I shouted directly into the phone. “Stop tormenting me! I am with someone else! Just…” My voice trailed off, losing its fire the more I spoke. Before long, I choked back a great sob. “Just leave me alone,” I whimpered, and then hung up the phone.

  He called again. And again. But by the end of the week, the phone calls stopped. And by the end of the month, the texts did too.

  That was in March. Two months later, my chest feels hollower than ever.

  I rub my face and pick up my phone, then sit up straight as I see the number. It’s not one I recognize, but the area code is familiar––Brazil.

  “Dad?” I perk up as I answer.

  It’s maybe the third time all year I’ve heard from my father. Once after he arrived in Brazil, a brief conversation at New Year’s, and now this. He says it’s because of the cost of international phone charges, but I doubt that’s the reason. He’s been busy. Busy joining a new practice in Vitória, his hometown. Busy setting up a house with his new girlfriend. Too busy for me.

  But last month, my mother informed me that I was going to Brazil for the summer instead of to Pasadena. Considering at that point I had no job lined up for the summer, it was ideal timing. All the anger and pain I’d been harboring toward my dad all year melted away as I realized that he was ready to see me again. That he still wanted me in his life. I’m leaving in a week once the semester is over, with plans to meet Giancarlo in Buenos Aires about halfway through. I can’t wait.

  “Layla, what is this?”

  My dad is always like this––he starts conversations like we’re already in the middle of them, continuing a thought process that started well before we began speaking. No hello, no “how are you doing?” Usually I can keep up with him, but right now I’m silent because I’m trying to figure out what the hell he’s talking about.

  “Layla?” he repeats.

  “What?” I ask. “What’s what?”

  “This grade I see on your transcript. Three point five last term. Layla, this is not acceptable.”

  “Dad, that’s from last semester,” I protest weakly. I’m honestly shocked it took this long for him to say anything about it, but since I’ve barely heard from him all year, I thought it might fly. “It was one B minus. I know it’s not my best, but it was just one B!”

  “And this term? What will your grades be? Cs? Ds?”

  “I don’t know,” I reply lamely. “I really don’t. Finals are next week.”

  It’s a lie. My grades have been falling. I’m not flunking or anything, but I’ve been pulling late night after late night doing whatever extra credit I can to pull up some of my absences. My language classes are good, but the others, my South American history class and Latin American literature, are lagging. I’ll be lucky if I pull a B in either one.

  “Layla, I’m not paying a fortune for you to go to that school so you can screw up. We had a deal. You go to school in this dangerous city, now do this ridiculous major instead of business like we talked about, you have to keep your grades.”

  Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. Maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t slept in my bed in five days, using my dorm like a locker room. But suddenly, I’ve had it. I’m sick of being talked down to, like everyone in my life seems to do. He left. He doesn’t want to finance my education anymore, fine, but this is bullshit.

  “We also had a deal that you’d stick around and be my father instead of calling once every six months,” I retort.

  My father’s silence echoes through the receiver. He’s thousands of miles away, but his disappointment is palpable. The hairs on my arms rise.

  “Is that correct?” he says finally, in that low voice I recognize all too well. My father is calmest when he’s beyond angry. He sounds like that when he’s about to pull the trigger on something truly nasty.

  “Y-yes,” I venture, forcing myself to hold my ground. I’m in the right here. I am. I am a grown fucking woman, and I don’t deserve to be spoken to like a little kid. “That’s correct.”

  I study the smudged notes on the desk. Damn, I probably have pencil smears on my cheek. While I wait, I doodle a flower in one corner, then a clock that looks strangely like a compass. Once I realize what I’ve drawn, I scowl and cross it out.

  “Well,” he says. “Since you know so much…you can forget about coming to Brazil this summer.”

  My heads snaps up, and my hand flops to the desk. “What?”

  This is the one thing I’ve been looking forward to––knowing that at the end of this tortuous year, I’ll be studying for the LSATs at the beach, getting to know the side of the family I mostly know through history books. The side of me I want so badly to understand. Portuguese and Spanish are the only classes I’m still getting As in. I was excited to show my father what I’ve learned.

  “Dad.” I try to stop him, all pretense of dignity gone. “Daddy. I haven’t seen you since September. It’s been almost a year! Please, don’t do this!”

  “You should have thought of that before you threw your education away,” he barks.

  I sink back into my chair, feeling like a balloon that’s just been popped. “It’s been almost a year,” I repeat softly.

  It’s hard to believe. So much has happened this year. I didn’t realize until this moment how much I needed to see my dad. How much I need his rough grounding. But this, this indifference, like he doesn’t actually care whether or not I’m there…it hurts more than the yelling. It stabs even harder than any punishment he could conjure.

  There’s a voice in the background––female. Her.

  “Momento, amor,” Dad says to her.

  Again, that stabbing feeling. It’s a pet name I’ve never heard him use for me or my mother because of his strict adherence to English. The only time I’ve ever heard him use Portuguese at all is when we visited his family. Never to us. We were always separate from that life.

  “I have to go,” Dad says, now to me. The anger is gone from his voice, but it’s still firm. Immovable. “You will study in Pasadena, at your grandparents’ house. Find an LSAT class, and tell your mother to send me the bill. My daughter will not fail, Layla. This is your future.”

  The word echoes across miles. There’s no arguing with him, not unless I’d like a worse punishment, like withholding tuition for next year. Poke the bear, and I’m finishing college at whatever Cal State school I can get into. I shut my eyes and murmur my assent. But even after he hangs up with barely a kind word of goodbye, I can’t help but wonder: how can a man claim to know my future when he barely knows me anymore?

  ~

  A few hours later, after I’ve finished an extra-credit paper for my literature class, I hear the arrival of my roommates as they return from the gym. Quinn’s busy jabbering about the summer classes she’s taking so she can double-major in biology and chemistry. All of my roommates are actually staying here
through the summer––Quinn to take classes while Jamie and Shama start their summer internships. Two hours ago, I had a plan for the summer. Now I’m just wallowing.

  “Hey,” Quinn says, visibly cool as she tosses her gym bag on her bed. Shama follows her in and flops onto mine.

  “Did you get your paper done?” Shama asks.

  Out of my three roommates, she’s the only one still reliably friendly these days. Quinn hasn’t forgiven me for staying with Giancarlo after the pawnshop incident, and Jamie pretty much goes along with however Quinn feels.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m just working on some other stuff now.”

  Quinn grabs her towel off a hook and looks over my shoulder on her way to the shower. “Since when are you taking economics?”

  I scowl and shove the papers aside. “I’m not. Giancarlo is struggling in it, so I told him I’d help him a little.”

  At the mention of his name, Quinn’s face grows dark. “I see. So now you’re doing his homework for him too?”

  “No,” I say. “He has a hard time because of the language differences. I’m just helping.”

  Quinn peers at the notes sitting in front of me––an outline for a response paper. I turn them over.

  “Let it go, Quinn,” Shama says. “It’s her choice if she wants to help him.”

  Quinn just wrinkles her button nose and shakes her head. “Pathetic,” she mutters as she leaves the room.

  “It’s…nice of you to help,” Shama offers, even though she’s having a hard time masking her skepticism too.

  I sigh and push my hands over my face. I feel tired. Really tired. “It’s what you do, right? When you lo––care about someone?”

  Almost five months I’ve been dating this guy, and still I can’t bring myself to say that L-word. He says it all the time. Calls me his “love.” His “amor.” Usually after a fight, but still. At least he says it.

  I just…can’t. I take it, like the drug that it is. But I just can’t give it back.