I am stronger than I thought.
“Stop!”
I shove him back, and we gape at each other, our lips swollen and hungry. The air swirls with the heavy mists of our breath and a few errant snowflakes, and I ignore the curious students who walk around us.
“What?” Nico gasps. “What is it?”
He reaches for me again, but I step out of his grasp, backing farther down the sidewalk.
“I do fucking care,” I huff at him, still trying to catch my breath. “And that doesn’t change the fact that you’re still going to break my heart.”
And with that, before he can whisper another word that will make me stay or surprise me with another kiss that’s sure to paralyze me for good, I turn on the heel of my boot and run the last few steps into the dorm. This time he doesn’t follow, and I force myself not to look back to see if he’s still there.
~
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nico
The next day, I switch buildings with Flaco. I must look like an even bigger idiot than I thought, because he doesn’t even put up a fight about missing out on the modeling agency. It should feel like the jackpot. I get to be the hot delivery guy to a floor full of eight-foot-tall Amazons who’d all like to go slumming in between TV executives and the CEOs they’re escorting in between modeling gigs. But even after I get two numbers slipped to me on the first day alone, I couldn’t care less.
All I see are big blue eyes with a sweep of black lashes. A heart-shaped mouth that’s a puzzle-piece match to mine. Layla.
The rest of the week and the next drag on, and every day I try something, anything, to make me stop thinking the way I do. I go out to Jersey, but all I can see is her there. I come back to Manhattan, but I only wish she were with me. I spend the entire weekend helping my mom weed through her magazine collection. I take extra shifts at AJ’s and even volunteer to work the door Sunday night at another club uptown.
I even volunteer to watch my sister’s kid, Alejandra, at night and in the morning, because I’m not sleeping anyway. It’s a good idea at first––Allie’s a great distraction. But then it gives Maggie a minute to patch things up with her boyfriend, and by the next week, they move back to his apartment. So now I’m alone at my place again, with nothing but my thoughts and my sketchbook. And there’s only one thing I’ve been interested in drawing.
By Friday the next week, I am breaking the fuck down. I take my lunch break in the truck, watching the entrance of the Fox and Lager building like a fucking stalker. It’s been over a week since I last saw her, and like a junkie, I need my fix. I tell myself that it’s because I just want to make sure she’s okay. She didn’t look like she had totally recovered from the flu. I want to make sure she’s taking care of herself.
Flaco, like the friend he is, keeps me company, eating his sandwich like a horse and shaking his head at how pathetic I am.
“I told you,” he says through a mouthful of chicken cutlet. “She looks fine. She was out sick a few more days, but she’s been there all week, and she looks fine, mano.”
I set my sandwich on the dashboard of the truck. The pastrami tastes like cardboard anyway.
“Nico,” Flaco says. “Why don’t you just tell her?”
“Tell her what?” I’m absent, keeping my stare glued to the glass double-doors of the building. If I look away, I might miss her when she arrives.
Flaco smacks me on the shoulder. “What do you think? That you’re fuckin’ in love with her.”
My head snaps at him like it was on a slingshot. “What?”
Flaco rolls his bug-eyes. He’s a tall, skinny dude with big eyes and lips like a frog. Flaco, another word for skinny in Spanish, isn’t his real name (which is actually Juan). But he’s been a skinny fuck since grade school and never grew out of it.
“Don’t play,” he says simply. “I been watchin’ you fall all over yourself for NYU princess. You in love with her, bro. Don’t deny it.”
I frown. “That’s crazy. I barely know her.”
“Psssh, whatever,” he says, tossing his gangly hands up in the air. “That don’t mean shit. My parents got married four days after they met. They seen each other across the club, and blammo! That was it. Next stop, Atlantic City.”
I haven’t met Flaco’s parents, but he’s told the story a lot. We talk a lot of shit about girls, but you don’t grow up listening to mambo kings and bachata ballads without becoming romantics at heart. His parents are actually still together after they met at an early Hector LaVoe show up in the Bronx. Love at first sight, the way Flaco tells it. It’s easy to imagine––salsa is sexy as fuck. I bet a lot of babies got started at those concerts back in the day.
“Still,” I say, even though I’m back to staring at the building. “It’s not the same thing.”
And it isn’t. I met Layla in the middle of my delivery route, not a sexy concert. Flaco’s parents are cut from the same cloth––both Puerto Rican, both new immigrants, both living in the same neighborhood. Layla and me, we’re from totally different worlds.
“Whatever,” Flaco says as he turns back to his sandwich. “You a fool in love, bro. No doubt.”
Layla arrives at one-fifty, ten minutes before her shift starts. I see her walking down the street from the subway entrance. She looks...good. Skinny, but good. Better than I want her to look now that we’re split. I really am a selfish bastard.
She glances nervously toward the FedEx truck, and I’m glad we have tinted windows so she can’t see me watching her like some Fatal Attraction psycho. Fuck, I’m freaking myself out here.
Still, I take her in, follow her every step. She’s so serious, her big eyes scanning around, already with the watchfulness New Yorkers have so they don’t get taken for a ride. Everyone in this city is suspicious, and Layla, even though she doesn’t have that jaded edge to her yet, has already learned to be cautious around strangers.
She doesn’t smile. Even from across the street, I can see that the twinkle in her eyes is dulled. I want to tell myself it’s just because she was sick, even though I know better. A couple of construction workers catcall her––the kind who will catcall anything with a skirt––and she ducks her head as she passes, but doesn’t show the fear I know she must have. I clench my fists, fighting the urge to jump out and shield her from their whistles, maybe even teach some of these assholes some respect. I have sisters. I know how scary these streets can be to women, especially young pretty ones like Layla.
My eyes skim over the determined set of her shoulders, the sway of her hips, the way she glances from side to side as she walks. I’m not watching in a sexual way, although I feel that too. Fuck, how could I not, especially now that I know the way our bodies fit together? But now it’s more like I’m making sure she’s all right, just making sure she’s healthy and happy, like I want her to be. I’m a man obsessed. A man...fuck me. A man in love.
Shit.
Flaco’s licking his chops, looking more like a frog than ever as he watches realization dawn on my face. He gives me a pat on the back, the way you might comfort a kid who just lost his favorite stuffed animal.
“There you go, papi,” he says with a rueful shake of his head. “Now you just gotta tell her.”
I bang my head on the steering wheel. Flaco’s right. This changes everything.
~
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Layla
After a week and a half of not seeing Nico, I’m feeling completely normal and also completely terrible. I still miss him. How crazy is that? It’s been almost as long as the time I actually knew him, and I still feel like my heart has been torn out of my chest.
It doesn’t help that every time the new FedEx guy comes in, he stares at me like a kid who just lost her puppy. Flaco––he says that’s his name, even though it makes Karen laugh––has big, expressive eyes, not unlike a frog’s. When he’s done flirting with Karen in Spanish (apparently, they’re from the same neighborhood), he nods at me every night and clicks his ton
gue, like even he thinks this situation between me and Nico is ridiculous. Every time the doors open at six, I find myself praying it’s Nico who’ll roll in today’s packages, not Flaco.
But it never is.
By Saturday, I’m fed up with my shitty mood, and so are the rest of my roommates. We’ve got a few more weeks until midterms, so this is our last chance to get out and party for a while, and I’m determined to make the best of it.
“Bitches,” I announce on Saturday afternoon after I get back from the gym. “Where are we going tonight? Because I am done feeling sorry for myself over a freaking FedEx guy.”
“Jesus. Fucking finally,” Quinn says from the couch, setting her pencil down on her book with satisfaction. “I was wondering when you were going to snap out of it.”
I toss my ponytail over my shoulder and put my hand on my hip. “Someone tell me where the party is tonight, because I am bringing it. End of story.”
~
Since being sick caused me to drop a few pounds, I’m feeling confident enough to slip on a short, body-con, sea-blue dress that normally I don’t have the guts to wear. Jamie flatirons my hair so it hangs in a long, dark waterfall down my back, and I use extra liner around my eyes to make them pop with the color of the dress. With my thigh-high leather boots, I feel ready to kick some serious ass, or at least play some serious game. Anything, really, to get over Nico.
The girls are more than ready to have me back, considering I was so AWOL the weekend before.
“It always feels like one of us is a third wheel when you’re not around, Lay,” Shama privately tells me as we’re walking behind Jamie and Quinn down the hall to the elevators.
I grin. I know what she means. For some reason a group of four just works better. Everyone always has someone to talk to.
We decide to go to a lounge in Chelsea called The Grotto, where Jason, Shama’s boyfriend, is DJing for the night. I try to ignore the fact that the bar is three blocks from a certain music venue where a certain FedEx courier works on the weekends. I try to ignore the temptation to just walk by AJ’s “on my way” to the other venue. But I’ve decided tonight is a perfect night to get the hell over him, and so I decide to do my best to distract myself.
The Grotto is a typical midtown lounge: small and low-lit, with the exposed brick walls and square ottomans surrounding small tables. It’s the kind of sexy place where people sit a little lower to the floor than they would normally, making you feel like you’re almost already in bed with them. Since Jason usually plays electronic remixes of popular songs, an impromptu dance floor has sprung up in the back near the raised booth where he’s mixing tracks, one hand clasping a set of large headphones to his left ear.
Jason looks up when we arrive and winks when he sees Shama, who practically blooms right there on the dance floor. Whatever I might think of the guy, I like that he makes her happy. The rest of us wave to him and find our way to a small table where we can share a couple of ottomans.
“Damn, girl, you lost your ass,” Jamie tells me as we squeeze onto one of the square-shaped cushions together.
“I did not!” I exclaim, looking behind me at where my backside meets the cushion.
My dress definitely doesn’t fit quite as second-skin as it used to, but my booty didn’t disappear in a week and a half. Jamie elbows me, and I look to the right, where she’s gazing.
A small group of three guys sits around the table next to ours, clearly scoping us out. They’ve got that advertising/finance look about them that you see all over New York—manicured stubble, stylishly worn jeans, gelled hair that’s carefully mussed. One guy with glasses and dark facial hair that’s been shaped into a chinstrap around the edge of his jawline is watching me with obvious interest. He’s a bit thinner than the types I normally go for, lacking the big, toss-me-over-them shoulders like Nico’s—shit, I wasn’t going to think about him tonight!—but he’s not bad-looking. Full lips and pretty eyes. Plus, I have a bit of a thing for men who wear glasses.
When I smile at him, he elbows his friend in the side and mouths “Hi” to me.
“He’s cute, Lay,” Jamie says.
Quinn is watching the group too, and I can already tell she likes what she sees. Quinn goes for men who are more polished, like these—guys who look like they could finance more than a few drinks.
“See the blond one in the gray pants?” she whispers across the table. “That shirt was in the Armani spread in GQ last month. That’s a three-hundred-dollar shirt.”
Well, I guess we know which one she likes. The guys stand up, and we pretend not to watch as they make their way awkwardly around the scattered ottomans to where we sit.
“Hey,” says Mr. Armani.
He’s tall and lanky, with combed, dark blond hair and eyes so blue they’ve got to be tinted with contacts. So not my type, but Quinn’s all smiles as she responds with a carefully nonchalant “Hey” in kind. The other one with him, a shorter guy with a big nose who’s wearing a muscle t-shirt, is already making eyes at Jamie. And they say that people of my generation don’t know how to speak to each other.
“Mind if we join you ladies?” says Glasses, looking directly at me. I give him my best flirty, come-hither smile and nod.
“You’ll have to get your own seats,” I say. “We’re already squeezed onto ours.”
“Can we get you some drinks first?” he asks.
Shama volunteers to go with the guys to help them bring back drinks—honestly, it’s more to make sure nothing extra gets put into them than to actually help carry them to the table. None of us have had the pleasure of being roofied, but we’ve all known someone who’s experienced it at some point.
The boys return with our orders, and I happily accept my whiskey and soda from Glasses, who pulls up another ottoman to sit next to me.
“I’m Blake,” he says over the din of the bar where Jason has started to pump up the dance music.
He reaches out to shake my hand, and I resist yanking my hand from his weak grip. There’s nothing worse than when a guy’s handshake feels like a dead fish; it doesn’t bode well for the strength of his other body parts.
“I’m Layla,” I tell him, and take a long sip of my drink.
It’s a little bitter, just the house generic, but I can’t afford the good stuff. Mixed drinks just go down way too fast.
“That’s quite a drink you’ve got there, Layla,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows with a mild frown and look at his drink, which is a mostly-juice cranberry vodka. Gross. Honestly, that’s sorority girls’ bread and butter when it comes to drinking—it’s one step from a cosmopolitan. This guy might as well announce he’s got a vagina with that drink.
Me, I can’t with super sweet girly drinks, with the exception of the occasional margarita or caipirinha. My mom’s a total wino, so it’s my dad who gave me the taste for whiskey. In Brazil, we attended formal functions with his family, when one of my cousins graduated from secondary school or college. It was customary to place a bottle of scotch at every table in addition to the open bar. That never failed to lead to some crazy party and some of the best nights of my life. To me, whiskey always tastes like a really good time.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl order straight liquor before,” Blake continues.
He winks at me knowingly, as if my drink is some huge joke. What the hell? Is he serious? I know I’m not the only woman in New York who enjoys hard alcohol without a fruity accompaniment.
“It’s not straight whiskey,” I correct him. “It’s mixed with soda. You know, the bubbly water?”
This guy is already getting on my nerves. Deep down I know the reason I’m being kind of a bitch isn’t really because my drink choice doesn’t fit Blake’s gender stereotypes. He’s just like any other guy—grasping at straws to make conversation with a girl in a bar. He’s nervous, just like they all are.
No, I’m being a bitch because Blake just isn’t what I want. His hair is floppy and too long, not short and cle
an cut. The line of scruff around his jaw bristles, and his eyes, even behind those glasses, just don’t flash the way Nico’s—
Damn it, Barros! Without thinking, I slam the rest of my drink and set the glass down on the table with a clink of ice cubes.
“Whoa, there,” Blake says. “You’re a live one. You need another, honey?”
“Sure.”
I stand up. Blake’s eyes rake over the contours of my body. I never should have worn this dress. Even in the shadows of the lounge, the clingy blue silk basically puts everything on display. I follow him to the bar and stand behind him as he flags the bartender’s attention.
“Hey, you want to take a shot with me?” he calls over the clamor.
I nod. Why the hell not? It’s going to take some serious beer (or whiskey) goggles to make this guy—or any guy, I’m starting to realize—look good tonight, and I really need someone to take my mind off you-know-who.
The bartender pours us a couple of kamikazes and we toss them back after clinking the shot glasses together. Inwardly I cringe at the sickeningly sweet mixture as it goes down, but free drinks are free drinks. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that.
Blake hands me my second whiskey and soda, which I shoot down almost as quickly. Blake’s only taken a few sips of his second cranberry vodka when I grab his hand, ignoring the clammy, limp-fish texture more easily this time. I can feel the alcohol thrumming through me, and I need some body-on-body contact to get rid of this yearning I have for a certain other, very hard, tattooed body. Someone whose hands have probably never been clammy in his life.
“Let’s dance!” I yell. The bar is filling up really fast, and people are feeling Jason’s current mix.
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