Running my fingers up and down, just ghosting over her skin, I kiss the top of her head as if she is mine. Just for now, for now she is mine. I can smell her shampoo and the soft magnolia of her body lotion, it lures me into inhaling deep breaths of her.
My heart feels heavy. I know what it’s like to be a forgotten child. The mob swallows our families and we are just living on the sidelines, occasionally seen, but never heard.
She just lost her father. I know that pain, how it tears you to shreds inside. She’s like me; technically an orphan. We might be adults, but having no one left is the most difficult loneliness to face. It comes in waves, the grief, then the realization that you’re all that you have, and after that the lonely moments happen, where you want to pick up the phone and call someone who’s not there anymore.
My alarm goes off at 06:30. I’m opening at eight, so I need to get up, go home, and shower. As I try to move without waking her she yawns and stretches, her sleepy eyes fluttering open.
When she reaches up her arms her tank top pulls to the side, and I get a glimpse of her nipple. Even just woken up she’s so fucking beautiful.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” I say, trying to avert my eyes a little.
“It’s fine. I have to meet Rain at the funeral home this morning, so I need to be up anyway.” She pulls the comforter up, covering herself while she adjusts her top.
I get up off the bed, standing in my boxers that I know are doing nothing to hide my morning wood. I have a good stretch and ask, “Can I make you coffee? Since I woke you up …”
“Please.” She nods enthusiastically, a half-hearted smile on her tired face. The dark circles around her eyes show how exhausted she really is.
On my way to her kitchen I shoot Chelsey a text.
I need you to open please. I’m going to be late today, there’s something I need to do.
*Middle finger emoji* Fine, but you better buy me lunch. And I am not closing tonight.
Thank you. I’ll buy lunch. What do you want?
And then comes the typical female reply.
I don’t know. Anything.
At least I have some extra time. I know I don’t have any clients until 10:00. Waiting for the coffee to brew I dig around in her pantry cupboard, to see if there’s anything I can disguise as breakfast for us. There are some original Pop Tarts and I can’t help but smile at how juvenile she actually is.
There really are slim pickings in the pantry so I put the Pop Tarts in the toaster and turn it down from incinerate to the lowest setting. I find two clean coffee cups and some plates in the cupboard above the coffee machine.
Her kitchen is neat and organized, but completely devoid of any real food. I’m pouring the coffee when she saunters into the kitchen with her short-shorts and tank top doing a piss poor job of keeping her covered as she lithely stretches.
“Breakfast?” I ask, removing the sweet pastry tarts from the toaster. They burn my fingers and I toss them down on the plates.
“Thank you,” she says as I pass her a steaming cup of coffee.
She’s short next to me without her high heels on.
Instinctively I lean down and kiss her forehead, wrapping my arms around her. We just stand for awhile, absorbing one another and the smell of the day’s first cup of coffee. Brushing the stray hairs off her face I look at her, and for the first time since we started playing this stupid game I see she is just as afraid as I am.
Her phone vibrates where she put it down on the counter behind her. The moment it does, her whole body tenses. I lean so I can see the name on the screen.
It’s like someone took a drawing pin and pricked the precious balloon that surrounded us for a few moments. I step away, taking my plate, and go into the living room.
That name clawed at my insides and a feral jealousy gnaws to get out. I will say something I regret, I know. Calvin. Tall, pasty, and all over her. Just the picture in my head turns me off.
Everything I felt two minutes ago is drowned under a sea of internet porn and images I cannot unsee, no matter how hard I try to. Her raised voice carries but I choose not to listen, I’m just trying to simmer down.
When the sound of shattering glass, and a ear-piercing scream are followed by a deathly silence, my curiosity is piqued along with my concern. I can’t ignore it and return to the kitchen.
I want to yell at her for even taking his call. I came here for her and then she answers his calls with me present. There is coffee and broken porcelain strewn all across the back wall of the kitchen and Viviana is on the floor, her head in her hands.
My anger is squeezed from me as her soft cries turn it into sympathy. I sink down to the floor beside her.
“I’m in so much trouble, Romeo. You should stay far away from me.”
I wipe her tears and look into her terrified eyes. “What’s going on, Viv? You can tell me, you know you can tell me. I’m good at keeping secrets.”
She looks down, averting her eyes. She’s embarrassed. Sharing things with me makes her uncomfortable because she knows that I know what that call was about.
“What did he want?”
“Me, to go film tonight, or…” She turns her head away from me and I swallow the violent reaction I want so desperately to scream into her face. “Money. He wants me, or money. If I don’t either show up, or pay him, then he’s going to send the videos to Rain. I was so fucking stupid.”
I’m biting a hole in my tongue. There is no fucking way on earth that I will let her go to him tonight — or ever again.
She continues, saying, “I signed a release. They can keep posting those videos forever. They own them.”
The bitter taste of bile coming up my throat is swallowed down again. I just sit here, staring at her with a possessive monster inside me, raging to escape. “You have money. Pay him.”
“I don’t have money, Romeo. I have a credit card that my dad paid, a card that Rain can see every charge on. I don’t have a job. I have nothing. Not even this apartment is mine. I am fucked. So fucking fucked.” She shakes her head. “I can buy Jimmy Choo shoes and no one will bat an eyelid, but if I tried to cash out two hundred thousand dollars you can bet your life my brother would want to know what I was buying.”
Fuck me. I don’t have that sort of money either, as much as I would do anything to help her. My mind races, and with every blink of my eyes images of him with her flash before my face.
“You are not going to film anything with him, ever again.” I can’t keep it in. I grab her face and force her to look at me. “We discussed this. I know we did. I’m just not sure you understood how serious I was.” Tears stream down her cheeks. “I can’t get you out of my head, Viviana. I can’t turn you off, and I will pick you up when you’re in pieces and I will hold you together even when you’re being a child. But, I won’t share you. So you can sit here for a while and think about it. Either I help you and we find a way to fix this stupid mess, or I walk out the door and this time I won’t come back. Not ever.”
I let her go. Heavy breaths still don’t fill my lungs with air on my way to her room. I pull on my clothes from last night. In her bathroom I gargle with some warm water and toothpaste — it will have to do for now — and run my hands through my bed-hair.
The walk of shame stings less when you don’t look like you were up screwing all night. The only thing that got fucked is my heart, and the emotions I should never have allowed myself to have.
Looking at myself in the mirror I can’t help but wonder who the hell is staring back at me. I don’t recognize myself anymore. I wore a mask for so long.
I don’t go to her; this isn’t my decision to make. I don’t even know what I am doing here, but I can’t ignore the pull I feel to her. When I leave the small bathroom to find my shoes, she is waiting on the edge of her bed. Red eyes, but square shoulders; she’s sitting straight up and looking right at me, not avoiding me.
“I don’t want to film with him. I don’t think I ever did. It was
just something to do, something that was mine, and I liked the thrill I got from it. Now though, I don’t get that thrill. I feel sick and afraid. That tickle in my belly is gone. I only feel it when I think about you.” Her lips make a thin line and she wrings her hands in her lap. She thinks about me, that makes me smile. “I just don’t know how to fix this.” I stand in the doorway waiting for more, because somehow it’s not enough for me. This isn’t going to be easy. “You think I’m a stupid kid, don’t you?”
“A little bit, but weren’t we all stupid kids at some point in our lives?” I answer.
I was a stupid kid. I rebelled against my own family to follow my hair dream and I need to stop pretending to be someone I wasn’t for years. I step inside her bedroom and move closer to her. “So, you think about me?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you.” She smiles and looks at me, a soft spark in her eyes. “If I say it out loud you really will think I’m a child.”
I can’t look away. She’s vulnerable, soft, and almost completely broken wide open. “Say it.” She shakes her head. “Say it, Viv.”
“I think I have fallen hopelessly in love with you.”
My heart thunders against my ribs. I had a feeling, I think we both just knew it, but when she says it my instinct is to pull away. She’s sad, she’s confused, and she couldn’t possibly love the guy who cuts hair. I don’t answer, I just look at her.
“Now I feel like an idiot.” She starts to cry again and I mentally kick myself.
“Don’t cry, Viv, I just don’t have words for what I feel — yet.” I bite the inside of my cheek. “But, I think I have a way to get the money. So even if I can’t say what you want to hear, I am going to risk my life to save you from this fucking mess. Maybe actions are bigger than words.”
She smiles through her tears.
Sixteen
Cinnamon Brown
VIVIANA:
I spit the words out without thinking. I can’t even lie and tell myself I didn’t mean them, because as I sit on my kitchen floor the thought of him walking out the door is the most frightening thing I can imagine. Facing everything around me pales in comparison to that thought.
It’s like the right word for what I have been feeling just smacked me on the back of my head and forced the words out of my mouth. Stupidly, I expected him to say it back.
I need to stop being so stupid. I need to start thinking things through. It’s high time that I started acting like an actual adult.
“Where are you going to get that kind of money, Romi?” I have a feeling he’s about to do something really stupid.
“It doesn’t matter.” He clams up and won’t talk about it. He looks at his watch. “What time are you meeting Rain?”
“Ten. It’s already eight thirty, shit.” I bounce up to get showered and dressed. “I better shower.”
He steps out of the way so I can pass him, but as I do he grabs my arm and pulls me into him so I hit his chest with a thud. His heart thumps as loud as mine against me when he bends down and kisses me. It makes me feel drunk when he gives me lots of small kisses first.
My hands grip the back of his head when his tongue dives into my mouth, making me want so much more. His hands roam all over me, squeezing, hugging, exploring soft and hard.
Rubbing my body against his I can feel how hard his dick is. I bite his lip and sigh. Memories of the last time he came to visit are still right on the tip of my tongue. He’s so big compared to me, even on my tiptoes I have to stretch. I wish he would pick me up and throw me down on the bed.
Instead he pulls away and smiles at me. “Go shower, Viv.” He gives me one last lingering kiss, one that says he doesn’t want to let me go. “I’ll wait for you. We can leave together.”
I slip into the bathroom, close the door but don’t lock it, and secretly hope he will follow me. My lips feel bruised from his kisses. His mouth is addictive; kissing him is all I want to do now. I don’t want to face the day.
When I get out Romeo is sitting on my bed texting someone, the back and forth of the notifications is annoying. I want his attention. I drop my towel and intentionally take ages to get dressed, but he doesn’t budge.
“Stop trying to tease me, Viv,” he says with a wink. “It’s not going to work.” He shakes his head and gives me a smile that makes my lady bits tingle. “Hurry up and I’ll do your hair for you.”
He goes back to texting and I pull on my best skinny jeans and a cute top, with matching heels. Sitting down at my dresser I pull out my makeup, so that I don’t spend another day looking like a bus hit me.
Romeo looks up and catches me watching him in the mirror.
How does he look so good with so little effort?
It’s funny how I see him differently now. Before when I thought, like everyone else, that he was into guys, I didn’t even notice him.
He puts his phone down, gets up and comes to stand behind me. Leaning over he reaches for my hair brushes, dryer and clips. He clips them along the bottom of his t-shirt and starts to comb through the bird’s nest on my head. He looks at me in the mirror while his hands work their magic on my hair.
There’s something strangely erotic about this. The way the veins in his arms pop and the muscles bulge, while he uses the round brush to blow-dry my hair; the gentle touch of his hand lifting my chin and the smoldering gaze looking back at me in the mirror.
It’s not like going to the salon. It’s tender and intimate but charged with lust. My mind is scrambled and my thighs squeeze together to suppress the burning need between them.
When he is done making me look like a million dollars he kisses the top of my head, and just like that the unexplainable moment evanesces.
“There you go,” he says, admiring his work and the view he has down my shirt.
With his hands resting on my shoulders we just look at one another for a while, it’s awkward and strange, but still my heart beats faster. “Thanks.” I manage a flustered reply before I quickly finish my makeup.
The funeral home smells of sadness and tears, and all I want is to leave. I have my father’s best suit in a bag for the undertaker; his shoes are polished to a shine, dangling from my fingers.
My brother is quiet. Ailee holds his hand. I wish someone was holding my hand. No, not someone. Romeo. I wish he was here holding my hand. A stray teardrop leaks from my eye and rolls down my cheek.
Soft music wafts around the eerie place, where everything seems to be in whispers and the colors are faded and dull. There is nothing here that matches the vibrance that was my father. He had a presence about him that couldn’t be missed. He wasn’t pastel or muted, he was black and white and bold.
The man in his shiny gray suit comes to talk to Rain; they speak as if I’m not here at all. My mind keeps going back to this morning, to Romeo. I can’t focus on the things they are saying. I hear flowers and caskets, but nothing sinks in.
The numbness starts to tingle in my fingertips first, slowly spreading through me. Everything I should be feeling isn’t here, it’s just nothing as I stare at the silly picture hanging on the wall. It’s askew. I can’t look away from it, I want to straighten it.
“Are you happy with that, Viv?” Rain asks me, and I don’t know what he’s talking about.
I just nod and say, “Yes, sure.” I try to stay in the conversation, but that picture is taunting me now.
“Thank you so much.” Rain stands up and shakes the measly looking guy’s hand.
I don’t touch him when he holds it out for me to shake. He smells like the science lab in my high school and god knows what he touched with it. Sidestepping I stand one step behind my brother and his young wife.
Their age gap is visible today. When I look at him he’s aged a decade in a week. They walk out and he rests his hand in the small of her back, side by side, the woman holding up her man even when he doesn’t realize it.
“Viv, could you drive Ailee to the salon please?’ he asks outside the depressing building. “I need to
go to the office.”
The thought of seeing Romeo perks me up and he doesn’t need to ask me twice. “Sure I can.” I nod, trying to hide the giant smile creeping its way onto my face.
“Thanks, Viv,” Ailee says, before kissing my brother on his hairy face.
I wish he’d shave the damn beard off. I really do, but for some reason, she seems to like it. He opens my passenger door for his wife to get in, and watches to make sure we lock them.
“So, um… are you okay?” Ailee asks me as we get into the traffic. It’s lunchtime and the streets are busy.
“I’m okay,” I say, trying to navigate the rush. “Do you want to stop for lunch?” I’m hungry. I didn’t eat the stale Pop Tart that Romi warmed this morning.
“Sure. Want to grab something near the salon? A sandwich?”
“Sounds good.” I turn off the main road in an attempt to avoid the mayhem of stationary cars blocking my path. Honking horns, and the sound of the city make the silence less obvious; but I’m aware of it. “Is Rain okay? I mean really okay, because he pretends really well.”
“He’s scared, Viv, and hurt. He’s so angry that your father didn’t tell him. He’s more than furious. He won’t talk to Nonna either.” She looks worried. “He wasn’t ready yet.”
“None of us were ready, Ailee. He’s our father. We already lost our mother in the same horrible fucking way. Dad thought he was saving us from suffering through that again. I know why he didn’t tell us.”
My father watched us all die a little with our mother, and he was never the same after that either; he was protecting us.
“I understand it, I really do. Your brother needs some time though. A lot falls on his shoulders now, you know…”
I know all too well. I may be young and näive but I’ve been around the office enough to know the family business. Rain will be a walking target until he stamps his mark and makes himself known to our enemies.
When my grandfather passed my father was followed everywhere by armed men. I was maybe four years old, yet I remember their guns and dark sunglasses. They would drive me and Val to school, but never in the same car as Rain. He was always treated differently. “I know, we all do. Have there been any — threats? Yet?” We all know they will come, especially because of what Sal was up to with those Russians.
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