—John Webster
IT WAS SILVER, TINY, AND reflective. I could almost see my face in it. Gianna’s dress, of course. Long feather earrings, green heels, with her hair piled on the top of her head and no makeup but red lipstick made up her ensemble tonight.
“ . . . If you’re going to do it, do it with a male stripper. Trust me on this one.” She was talking to my fifteen-year-old cousin Emma, who sat at the kitchen island sipping punch through a straw while looking bored.
All my aunts conversed about Adriana’s bachelorette party as I sat off to the side and across from Nonna at the table, with a cup of coffee in front of her. We’d only heard that tiny bit of Gianna’s conversation before my family’s noise drowned out the rest.
I shook my head, slightly amused, but more unsettled. The words Oscar Perez had whispered in my ear earlier sank to the pit of my stomach. He’d pulled me aside once more to tell me to smile, that it would complement my belleza—whatever that meant. I didn’t speak Spanish and I never wanted to. The beautiful language sounded harsh and invasive from his lips. I hated when someone told me to smile, as if a smile of mine belonged to them and not me.
He never had clarified why he’d be upset that I ran away and slept with a man, but there was only one reason I could ascertain: He thought he was going to marry me. It was hard to imagine Papà would agree to it considering Oscar wasn’t even Italian, but why else would I have sat next to him at dinner when I never had to before?
“You are unhappy.”
My gaze coasted from the scratches in the wooden table to Nonna’s brown eyes. I shook my head. “No, I’m not.” I would never let a man like Oscar Perez steal my happiness.
“You are not a good liar, cara mia.”
I didn’t respond, uncertain of what to say.
“The littlest problems seem so great to those who are young,” she lamented. “I used to worry like you, you know. Do you know what it got me? Not a thing. Do not waste your time on things you cannot change.” She stood up, bracing a hand on the table. “I’m going to bed.”
“Goodnight, Nonna.”
She stopped, turning to me. “Do you know what you need to do when you are unhappy?”
I didn’t want to argue with her that I was not unhappy, so I raised a brow. “What?”
“Something exciting.”
“Like?”
“I don’t know. Maybe smoking cigarettes with handsome young men.”
Ugh. A smile pulled on my lips. Only she would think of Nicolas as a young man.
“Goodnight, tesoro.” Nonna winked.
The candle’s flame danced, a bleak reminder of false smiles in the orange, mesmerizing light. Sheer curtains blew in the light summer breeze, and a lamp cast a soft glow against the wall of shelved books. Frank Sinatra leaked under the library door so quietly it could be a distant memory of a similar night half a century ago.
I sat with my legs folded against my side in a seat by the fireplace, a book lying on the arm. I hadn’t read more than two pages until I’d given up and rested my head against the chair and stared at the candle filling the room with the smell of lavender. My heels lay forgotten on the floor, the white bows unraveled across the red oriental rug.
I’d escaped the kitchen as soon as I could, my mamma’s talk about the wedding an annoying noise that became louder and louder until I needed silence. It wasn’t even about Oscar Perez anymore. It was about words unsaid and a future uncertain.
Like the hard shell of a coconut, the Sweet Abelli shielded the real me from the world. It couldn’t be cracked without strong tools. Lowering that barrier bared a part of me not many had seen—a me that felt. A vulnerable me. I wasn’t sure why I let Nicolas Russo see that side. Maybe it was because his indifference made me believe he didn’t want to crack me.
My eyes shot up when the click of the library door hit my ears, and, as if my thoughts had conjured him, Nicolas stepped in.
When his gaze came up from the floor and he noticed me, he stopped short. For a second, I thought he was going to turn and leave without a word just because I was here. His stare was an indifferent, condescending one—like he’d come into his library to find a servant in his chair. The man really wanted nothing to do with me. Well, I didn’t like him either. Truthfully, it was mostly because he didn’t like me.
His gaze narrowed. “Why aren’t you at the party?”
“Why aren’t you?” I countered.
He ran a hand down his tie, watching me in a calculated way, like he was weighing the pros and cons of my presence. It didn’t look like there were many pros.
Making up his mind, he shut the door and headed to the minibar, never answering my question. He poured a drink, and I tried to pretend he wasn’t here, that his presence hadn’t filled the room, making my mind now useless. Nonetheless, I found myself watching him, every smooth move as he filled a glass tumbler with whiskey.
My skin lit like a live wire, the fabric of my dress felt heavy, and the breeze from the open window brushed my shoulders. As he walked past, I pretended to be engrossed in the little black sentences before me, but in reality, I didn’t take in one word of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. History, facts, they made me feel better in a time of doubt, because someday I would be nothing but a memory, just like them.
He sat in a gray armchair by the window and pulled out his phone. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He’d unbuttoned his jacket, showing his black vest that hugged his flat stomach. His tie hung askew from pulling on it, and the visual suddenly made me wonder: What does he look like in the morning, all disheveled? I swallowed.
He might be able to pull off his suit like a gentleman, but once again the red, busted knuckles of the hand holding his phone told me his appearance was just a façade.
Light scruff covered his jaw, and his hair was as dark as his suit, the top thick and messy. He was intimidating, with a heavy presence and a glare that burned, but when he wore a soft, sober expression like now . . . he didn’t even have to look at me to make me burn.
He glanced over and caught my gaze. “You’ve got to work on that staring.”
My pulse fluttered in my throat, and warmth rushed to my face.
His eyes fell to my cheeks.
And then he did something I never expected. Maybe it was from disbelief, or maybe he thought I was ridiculous. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. He laughed. Softly, darkly. The kind of laugh that has no good intentions. The kind of laugh the walls don’t forget.
Warmth curled low in my stomach, and I couldn’t help it, I stared even more. He had white teeth and sharp incisors, just like the villain he was. When he glanced at me sideways, with dark mirth in his gaze, a flame pulsed between my legs.
“Jesus,” he said under his breath, running a hand through his hair.
I leaned my head against the chair, my teeth tugging on my bottom lip. He glanced at me one more time as his laugh faded, his amusement disappearing into a tense atmosphere that sparked. A warm breath of air breezed through the window and I shivered.
I didn’t know how long we sat in the same room, in silence, not far apart. Time wasn’t a factor. The moment was recorded each time he shifted, looked up from his phone, took a drink, glanced my way when I’d flip a page or brush my hair off my shoulders.
I thought I was doing well, that I was turning pages at an equivalent of what someone would if they were reading them. But I was thrown off when his gaze pulled up from his phone and rested on my face. It settled there for a moment, before running down my bared neck and shoulders. My breathing stilled when it trailed over the curves of my breasts and down my stomach. And I flushed when it went lower to my thighs, tracing my legs until it reached my pink-painted toenails peeking out of my dress.
He was doing the staring now, but I didn’t have the courage to call him out on it. I’d been stared at enough times I’d gotten good at ignoring it, but not once had it ever made me feel like this. Over-heated, itchy, breathless.
Whitney Houston�
�s I Will Always Love You seeped under the door, and I could hear Benito belting out the words. He was the first to start the karaoke, and ironically, it was always to iconic love songs. My cousin wouldn’t sleep with the same girl twice unless she had double-Ds. His words, not mine.
When he mangled his next line, a soft laugh escaped me. I let myself glance at Nicolas, expecting some amusement, but my laughter faded when I found him already looking at me. The darkness in his eyes shaded his sober expression.
The music and voices outside the door became indiscernible noise as blood drummed in my ears. He got up, set his unfinished glass of whiskey on a side table, and headed to leave. He stopped by my side. The ability to breathe ceased to exist when his thumb ran down my cheek, as light as satin and as rough as his voice. He gripped my chin and turned my face toward his.
We looked at each other for seconds that felt like minutes.
“Don’t follow men into dark corners.” A spark flickered to life in his eyes. It softened when his thumb skimmed the edge of my bottom lip. “Next time, you might not get out alive.”
With the warning hanging in the air, his hand slipped from my face and he left the room without another word.
I rested my head against the armchair and breathed normally for the first time since he’d walked through the door. I didn’t know what that was, why it felt like I had a continual live wire under my skin in his presence, but I didn’t want to analyze it. I knew it wasn’t a good thing. Anything that stops your breath can’t be good for you.
My gaze fell to his drink on the table.
I was out of my mind.
I was burning.
I closed the book and got up from my chair. Walking around the side table, I twirled the tumbler on the lacquered wood between loose fingers.
The remaining liquid sat on the bottom, golden and forgotten.
I never did like whiskey.
But I brought it to my lips . . . and I drank it anyway.
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
—Emily Dickinson
THE WHISKEY WAS A MEMORY of warmth in my stomach as I sat on my haunches before my sister’s TV stand. “Fright Night, Evil Dead, or Night of the Living Dead?” I placed the movies on my lap and waited for a response.
Adriana’s muffled words sounded from the bed. “Sixteen Candles.”
My eyes widened. “Sixteen Candles?”
“Mmhmm.”
This was bad. Very bad.
“You’re absolutely sure?”
A sigh. “Yes, Elena.”
“Okay. . . let me go get it.”
I eyed my sister like she’d grown two more heads as I headed out of the room. However, she only looked drunk and tired, covered by a Star Wars blanket.
I returned from my room a moment later, popped the DVD in, and climbed into bed next to her. Stealing half the blanket, I pulled it over the dress I didn’t have the energy to change. Soft light flashed from the TV in the dark room as we watched the movie in silence.
“Elena?” Her voice was quiet.
“Yeah?”
“What do you think of Nico?”
I hesitated.
“I’m not sure,” I finally responded.
“I talked to him a bit tonight.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t so bad. He’s a little rude, but I don’t hate him.”
I focused on the movie because I didn’t know what to say. I was glad for my sister, that she found something to talk about with him . . . However, my chest tightened in a strange way.
“Elena?” she said softly, grabbing something off the nightstand.
“Yeah?”
She handed her cell phone to me without looking. “Please send it. I can’t.”
I took the phone and read the text already typed out to Samantha—well, that was the codename for Ryan. A simple “Goodbye” was all it said.
My throat constricted, but I pushed the little button that could change lives and break hearts with nothing but an electronic word. I did it for Ryan’s sake, and wished I could go back and do the same for another’s.
“Done,” I whispered.
We lay side by side and watched a girl fall in love.
One of us already had, and the other knew she never would.
I sat at the kitchen table, legs crisscrossed on the chair, watching a raindrop make its way down the windowpane.
“No, no, no!” Mamma tossed the wooden spoon on the island, having just tasted the red sauce Adriana had prepared. Mamma’s sweatsuit was purple today, and her hair was half-up like it always was. “Now you’ve gone and killed him.”
Adriana sighed, her expression tightening with frustration. “How have I killed him again already?”
“That sauce is so bitter he would keel over.”
Amusement filled me. The last pot of sauce, Adriana had taken too long and poor Nicolas died of starvation.
Mamma shook her head. “Incredibile. I don’t know how you went on this long not knowing how to cook una semplice salsa di spagetti. I should pull you from those classes you take and make you spend the time in the kitchen.”
Adriana leaned against the counter. A white apron covered her Hamlet t-shirt that was longer than her shorts, and a yellow bandana kept her hair back from her face. “Elena isn’t a good cook either.”
I frowned.
“Elena is not getting married in two weeks!”
The soft patter of rain hitting the windows filled the room, a quiet discomfort replacing any words. The need to ease the tension rushed over me. It was what I was good for, after all.
“I doubt she will kill the man, Mamma. If he can survive being shot a number of times like I’m sure he has, then he should outlive Adriana’s cooking.”
“Three times,” Adriana piped up.
My brows knitted. “What?”
“He’s been shot three times.”
“Mamma mia,” Mamma scolded. “Do not talk of such things.”
A certain interest ran over me, and, ignoring Mamma, I asked, “How do you know that?”
My sister’s sparkling gaze came my way. “I asked him last night.”
“You what? Adriana!”
I sat forward in my chair. “And he told you?”
“Well . . . not exactly. I asked him, and he only looked down on me like I was annoying him. But then Gianna, who was overhearing the conversation, told me three times.”
“Do you have a brain in your head? Why would you ask him something like that?”
Neither of us looked in Mamma’s direction. A smile pulled on our lips. We were now playing a popular game to see who could shock Mamma enough she’d storm from the room, berating us in Italian. It usually began with ignoring her a few times.
“Is Gianna his sister?” I asked, though I was 99 percent sure he was an only child. She could have been a cousin, but somehow, I knew she wasn’t.
Adriana laughed. “No. Stepmother.”
My jaw dropped. “She’s younger than him!”
“A year,” Adriana confirmed.
“My God. Can you imagine sleeping with a man more than twice your age?”
“Elena!”
Adriana’s gaze widened. “You think she had sex with his papà?”
“Stop with this talk.”
I pursed my lips. “Well, they were married. They at least had missionary—”
“Basta!” Mamma headed for the door, tossed her apron on the counter, and spewed Italian about her heathen daughters the whole way.
Our laughter filled the kitchen.
“I can’t believe she’s his stepmother,” I said, before adding, “Or, was.”
“I know.” Adriana stuck her finger in the sauce and tasted it, grimacing. “But I don’t think they have a mother-son relationship.”
“No,” I said, “more like the other way around.”
Adriana shook her head. “No, not like that either.”
“What do you mean?”
“I would bet my entire costume collection they’ve slept together.”
My eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yep,” she said, wiping the island down.
My sister was usually quiet, blending into the background at parties and events, but that only made her skilled at reading people—when she took the time or cared about doing it, anyway. She was probably right. How very . . . blasphemous. Though, I wouldn’t have expected much else from the boss.
I hopped off my chair, headed to the pot on the stove, and tasted a little from the wooden spoon. Bitterness exploded in my mouth. “Wow, that’s, um . . .”
Adriana laughed while struggling to reach a cup on the top shelf. She hopped and growled when she still couldn’t get it. She turned around, giving up, her gaze narrowed.
“Benito and Dominic are downstairs,” I told her. “They’re probably hungry.”
“Why would I care—?” She paused. Understanding filled her eyes and then she pushed off the counter. “I’ll go tell them lunch is ready.”
Red and orange streetlights blurred beyond the drips of rain running down the glass. The sky was dark, pretending to be night when it was only six o’clock on a summer’s day.
Benito’s phone flashed and buzzed in the console, again. Ironically enough, Benito reminded me of Manny Ribera from Scarface, in looks and personality. I could count on him flirting with at least one woman everywhere we went, like clockwork.
“Read it, Elena.”
“No,” I protested. “The last time I did that I saw something I didn’t want to see.”
“Then don’t bitch at me for checking it.”
Ugh. I reached forward and read it. “From ‘Blonde Angela.’” I didn’t blink twice to see that he had to mark his female contacts by more than their names, probably because there were simply too many. He wouldn’t want to mix them up. “I don’t want to see you anymore,” I read blandly and set the phone back in the console before a “goodbye” picture could be received.
His brows furrowed with one hand on the wheel. He wore black pants and a white dress shirt, no tie. It was a casual day for him. There was a high possibility he took longer than me to get ready in the mornings.
The Sweetest Oblivion Page 7