Mob Daddies: A Contemporary Romance Box Sex

by Alexa Hart

  “Lucy, you have to go. I will call you later. This isn’t the time or the place,” I tried to speak gently, realizing I had brought this mess on Nat and Dario myself by being such a fucking coward to begin with.

  “Fine. You better,” she warned, but smiling now. Before I could even stop her, she had jumped on me, legs wrapped around me like a fucking koala bear, and kissed me with crazy passion.

  I pulled my face back, carefully lowering her to the ground. She smiled up at me with her best and sweetest face. There was certainly no saying that Lucia wasn’t gorgeous. But god she was trouble –and not the good kind.

  “Bye, Maximo. You better call,” she chimed out coyly, getting into her car and nearly spilling her breasts straight out of her sweater as she did so.

  “I will,” I confirmed, nodding.

  Just fucking go.

  I watched her drive away, mildly fearful that she would change her mind and come back for more chaos. Turning around to walk back up to the house, I saw Natalia staring out the porch windows directly at me, still looking blank and pained.

  She had just watched everything.

  Chapter 9

  Natalia

  It was better, I thought, to see them together like that. Maybe Max didn’t love Lucia, but there was a very obvious heat between them. And why wouldn’t there be? He was gorgeous. She was beautiful. They were both neighborhood kids. And while Lucy might not have ever been a “business kid”, she was familiar enough with it to be comfortable with Max’s lifestyle. It wouldn’t be shocking to her.

  Who knows? Maybe she’s running the coke business these days for her daddy...

  I hadn’t waited for Max to come back inside after Lucy drove away. I didn’t have anything to say to him, currently. I understood how things were much more clearly now – how they actually were. Sure, I was home. But I wouldn’t be for much longer.

  Max and Lucia were reality. I was just a memory, passing through old territory, soon to not exist again.

  A shower had seemed the best bet to avoid absolutely everyone and everything. I turned the water so hot it was almost painful – but not quite. My muscles ached and my mind was a mess.

  My heart had entered some mode of quiet shock.

  The way she kissed him... And he didn’t stop her...

  I thought of my father’s speech the day before about love – about not wasting it. But maybe that didn’t apply to situations like this. It was possible for two people to be in love and not actually be good for each other.

  Wasn’t it?

  It was possible for too much time to pass.

  The thought of Max still being in the house when I finally decided to exit the shower was terrifying to me. He seemed alien now – and I didn’t have the energy to process that fully. I stood in the stream until the water began to borderline ice-cold temps, and accepted the fact that I couldn’t actually hide in the shower forever.

  But I could hide in my room. I toweled off, found the coziest pair of sweats that I had packed, and laid on my childhood bed under my childhood blanket. Staring at the pale pink walls (that I had refused to ever re-paint because my mother had chosen the color for me when I was very little, and it made me feel close to her), I could almost imagine what it felt like to be small and innocent and carefree again.

  Almost.

  Dario was gone when I finally crept down the stairs later that evening. Business to attend to, I assumed. He often didn’t come home until the early hours of the morning, and I was beginning to wonder how he functioned at all on so little sleep. He certainly couldn’t do it forever.

  I tip-toed down the hallway and peeked into Pop’s room. He was sleeping peacefully, and I knew he wouldn’t be fully conscious again until the morning. There was guilt then, creeping up my spine and making me sigh tiredly. I should have spent more time with him today, instead of holing up in my room like a pathetic fugitive.

  How many more evenings with him could there possibly be?

  Shaking my head, I decided it was the perfect time for some wine and solitude. Anything to lull my brain into a fog and make me forget today’s events was currently welcome.

  Apparently, that was asking entirely too much. Someone was knocking at the door just as I took my first sip at the kitchen counter. I slapped a hand to my forehead, disbelieving the sound even as I listened to its incredibly clear echo through the house.

  Whoever it is – it can’t be worse than Lucy.

  I told myself this, hurrying to the door – not wanting the knocking to wake Pop while simultaneously knowing nothing woke Pop anymore – and also realizing that I looked even more of a mess now after my shower than I had earlier today. It just didn’t matter anymore. Aside from Dario, I wasn’t ever going to see any of these godforsaken people ever again. Did it really matter if the entire neighborhood’s last impression of me was impressive or not?

  In a million years I wouldn’t have predicted that Lucy would have the nerve to come back to my home within hours of having left it so horribly the first time. She stood on the steps, looking slightly less like an expensive hooker now that the stilettos had been replaced with more practical black boots and her cheetah coat had been exchanged for a regular-looking puffer vest.

  Her eyes, which were a striking deep green, peered into mine – hostile, resentful, but much calmer than when she had left. I stared back at her, feeling so many emotions that they clogged together inside of me and absolutely nothing came out.

  “Can I come in, Natalia?” She asked after a few awkward seconds of silence.

  “Pop’s sleeping,” I said quietly, not moving or looking away.

  “Yeah. Well I’m here to talk to you, okay? Like, a normal conversation alright? I’m not looking for a fight or anything...” There was something sheepish about her now, and I realized she might actually be genuinely embarrassed for her behavior earlier.

  Is that even possible?

  “Sure, Lucy. Come on in. I was just about to have some wine. Would you like some?” My voice sounded robotic. Lucia seemed frozen for a second, unsure if I were being serious or just getting ready to murder her in cold blood.

  “Okaaaaay...” she said, following me hesitantly through the porch into the house, and further into the kitchen.

  I pushed a barstool towards her from under the counter, grabbed another wine glass, and filled it generously full. Then I sat across from her on another barstool, sipping my wine and waiting.

  “Natalia...” Lucy began awkwardly, searching my face for signs of life.

  I considered staying silent. Saying nothing. What would Lucia do if I were to just stare at her, refusing to respond to a word she said? Would she think I’d gone crazy – losing my mind amidst my grief?

  Am I going crazy?

  “Lucy,” I returned – eventually.

  Seeing that I wasn’t quite ready for the lunatic bin yet she seemed to regain her confidence – and her attitude.

  “You can’t just come here and do this. It’s fucked up. It’s beyond fucked up,” she spat at me, momentarily looking exactly as evil and spiteful as she always had been.

  I studied her, taking in the venom that she was seething with. In my practice, I often took a moment after a patient spoke to read their body language, their posture, their stance, their eye contact. It often told me more than the words that had been released.

  Lucy seemed defensive. She reminded me of a rabid animal preparing for a standoff – ready to protect its home, its children, its caught prey. She had said she wasn’t here for a fight. But she seemed to expect one. She was threatened.

  By me.

  “You’ll have to enlighten me as to what “beyond fucked up” thing it is that I am doing, Lucy,” I replied, calmly, and sipping more wine. “Sipping” was starting to be an inaccurate term to use.

  She huffed then, seeming like the quintessential spoiled, rich daddy’s girl. “You come here. You’re here for what – three days? And already Max is – Max is – ” and then she burst out cr
ying, mascara immediately streaking her cheeks. “He’s ignoring me and he’s angry at me for today and it's all because of you! You weren’t ever supposed to come back! I know you still love him! I know you do! And he still, STILL can’t let you go! It’s not fucking fair, Natalia! He’s all I have! He’s all I have! And I love him! He’s never going to love me like he loves you and I fucking know that, but he wants me and that’s enough for me! That’s fucking enough! I can deal with that! But you’re here now and you’re fucking everything up!” She was sobbing then, and intermittently downing her wine.

  I felt like I had entered the actual Twilight Zone. Deciding she might have the right idea, I chugged what was left in my own glass and refilled both of them. Lucy kept drinking and crying and I felt numb from head to toe.

  I didn’t know how to feel compassion for such a vile human being as Lucia Costa. But she was a human being, and I also didn’t know how to continue feeling the depth of spite I had always held for her while she was bawling her eyes out two feet away from me in my family’s kitchen.

  “Lucy...” I said after a short while had passed, “My father is dying. I had to come home. He’s my father. I’m not here because I want to be.” And all of that was the truth.

  “But you love him, don’t you? You love Max,” she wailed, and now I was glad that Pop’s medication was so heavy. Imagine him waking up to this train wreck of a conversation. “I know you do, Natalia. I know you do. And you’re going to leave anyway – and he’s gonna be all fucked up and he’s not gonna want anything to do with me anymore. You can’t just come here and do that to him!”

  “You mean to you, right?” I shot back, feeling a slight edge of intoxication enhancing my tone. “It’s not about Max. It’s about you losing Max. And I hate to say it, Lucy, but it doesn’t quite sound like you “have” him to begin with.”

  She let out a fresh sob and I almost felt guilty for the heartless comment. I could tell she wanted to be angry, but was unable to hold the façade over top of her own apparently very real heartbreak.

  “I’m not here for Max. And I can’t control how Max feels. But it seems to me that you know how he doesn’t feel, and I don’t know why you would want that for yourself,” I spoke more gently, beginning to feel like I was talking to a patient.

  She was managing to stop the tears now, but breathing raggedly, like a toddler after a tantrum. Her face was still pretty, even with the make-up completely ruined, and I wondered how she could have ended up dating probably the only guy in the neighborhood who refused to call her his girlfriend when she could obviously have anyone she wanted.

  “You don’t know what it was like. Watching you three all of the time and having nothing even close to it – nothing – and knowing I couldn’t be a part of it. Not ever. I wasn’t the right type of neighborhood kid. I wasn’t good enough to be your friend – or Max or Dario’s. You guys had your own little world that no one else was ever invited into. I had a drug dealer father who drank too much, a coke-addicted mom who beat the shit out of us, and two older sisters who hated me just for being born. They still hate me. My sisters.” Lucy was staring at the wall now, her second glass of wine almost gone, her tear streaked face drying into a work of modern art.

  I was confused. I remembered things in such a different light. Yes, the three of us had always had each other – but that was all we had. Other kids were either jealous of something they didn’t understand and therefore complete assholes to us – such as the girl sitting in front of me now – or they were scared of our families and stayed (politely) at a very obvious distance.

  “You always had friends, Lucy. You were always surrounded by kids. And boys. All of the boys. You weren’t ever alone,” I said dazedly, trying to think of one single time I had ever seen Lucia without a companion – or more accurately a following – when we were growing up.

  She laughed – a loud, insane sound that bounced off the kitchen walls with unsettling freedom. “Yeah. I did. It all meant shit to me.” She held out her glass now, and I refilled it, topping off my own as well. “Max could have cared less that I was alive. But he finally noticed – finally noticed – last year. I was drunk at the karaoke bar – so drunk that I gave my best performance of that fucking Titanic song... I laughed through the whole thing – it was awful. But I don’t know. He saw something that night in me, Natalia. Finally. Like maybe he realized I was just a regular person too, you know? Not the stuck-up rich bitch that lived up the hill from everybody else in her fucking cocaine tower...” Lucy smiled sadly, remembering what must have been a very pivotal moment in her life. “I thought... when things started, I thought... I was going to finally be a part of something real... I was going to have a family... And after a while I realized that wasn’t exactly how it was going to play out. Elena hates me. Hates me. And Max doesn’t love me – I know that. He’s never going to – not the way I want him to. But after some time it was like, I could accept that too, ya know? At least I was still sort of part of something that fucking mattered...”

  “You mean like the mafia?” I blurted out and suddenly we were both laughing very, very hard. The wine mixing with the heightened emotions and adding to the absurdity of anyone ever desperately wanting to be a part of “the business” was overwhelmingly funny. And not funny at all.

  After a while we quieted down, far from sober but coming back to the reality of the separate miseries we faced. The wine was gone and my head was spinning.

  “Don’t take him from me, Natalia... Please? I don’t have anything else. I don’t want anything else.”

  I wondered if Maximo could see her right now – like this – if he might not be able to fall in love with her after all. I also inherently knew there was a rather permanent reason why he couldn’t seem to fall in love with her or anybody else. She knew it too. That was why she came here.

  “Lucy, I promise you, I am not here for Maximo. I didn’t come to take him from you. I didn’t come to stay.” I said these words slowly and carefully, making sure she heard them, and making sure I meant them.

  I was almost positive that I did.

  The evening ended with me calling Lucy a cab. She didn’t live far, but she wasn’t in driving condition, and I wasn’t convinced she could make it walking either. When I awoke in the morning, her car had already been retrieved and the conversation seemed very unreal.

  “She’s always flirting with you right in front of me! You think that‘s not on purpose?” I had screamed in his face.

  Max had taken my face in his hands, smiling and kissing my eighteen-year-old forehead. “I don’t want Lucia. I don’t want ANYONE. I ONLY WANT YOU.”

  Chapter 10

  Maximo

  Maybe it was midnight, maybe it was 4 am. The pounding at my front door woke me from an already subpar sleep, and I was instantly grabbing my gun from the side table drawer. Nic was safe in his bed, white noise machine on, seemingly undisturbed so far.

  This is the shit. This is the shit that I can’t stand. Always on alert. Always on fucking alert.

  I neared the door stealthily, taking deep breaths and preparing for whatever nightmare was waiting on the other side. Then I heard her voice.

  “I know you’re hooome, Maximo. I can see your caaar. It’s right theeere.” It was Lucy, and she did not sound even slightly sober.

  I opened the door quickly to avoid any more knocking that might jar Nic awake. He didn’t need to witness whatever the hell was about to happen. When I actually saw Lucia, I was more convinced than before that the sight of this would scar Nic for life.

  “Why the fuck do you have your guuun? You wanna shoot me, Max?” Lucy shouted at me, holding her hands up in mock terror. I pulled her inside with one arm, and guided her to the couch.

  “I’ll be right back. Lemme put this away for God’s sake,” I said, letting her slump slowly into a heap on the cushions. I had witnessed Lucy drunk many a time. This was a new extreme.

  Gun replaced and Nic checked on, I reluctantly returned to the
pile of human mess that was Lucy. She was staring at the ceiling, head dropped back on the couch arm. Her face was a conglomerate of what looked to be a layer of messed-up make-up on top of a deeper layer of messed-up make-up. The curls that had been so carefully arranged hours ago were hanging in wild, rebellious tangles – long lost from their original, meticulous paths.

  She turned her head towards me, sensing my stare. “Yes. I’m drunk as fuck. I’m a mess. Whatever. Whatever!” Her eyes were blazing with anger... but also something else. Something painful.

  “Lucy,” I said quietly, sitting beside her stretched out body on the couch, “Nic is here. He’s asleep. Can we please keep it down?”

  She looked ashamed then. I almost never had her at the house at the same time as Nic. I wasn’t ready for that relationship to happen yet – I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready. The few times she had been around Nic were short and sweet, and she had always been on her best behavior. I knew she wanted his approval as badly as she wanted my mother’s, and we both knew she stood a much better chance of actually winning it from Nic.

  “What happened? Why are you so drunk?” I asked gently, marveling inwardly at the fact that she could be this disheveled and still be so pretty.

  “What happened? Are you serious?” She emphasized every word as though I were the most dull-witted idiot on the planet. “Natalia happened!”

  And there it was. The answer I had already known even as I asked the question. “Natalia,” I repeated, waiting for her to continue.

  “Natalia came home and you immediately lost your shit. That’s what happened,” Lucy accused, still looking like an angry she-devil but now forming what quite possibly were real tears in her swollen green eyes.