by Ella James
Dad would never have known where I was had it not been for Bec’s seizure. He called Dani’s mom, who asked her driver, Fil, where we were, and viola!
“You want yours now,” Luca asks, “or at lunch?”
He pushes the school door open, and I step inside in front of him. “You pick. Is it lunch-able?”
He laughs. “Do you want it to be?”
“I think my surprise is you.” I kiss his throat, glancing behind me right after to see if anyone saw—and there’s Ree, making faces from across the common area.
“Oh my gosh.”
“What is it?”
I point, and Luca waves. Ree blows him a kiss.
“Let’s do lunch. So I’ll have something to look forward to.”
Someone calls his name from across the way—one of the guys on the team, whom I don’t know well—and his eyes widen.
“Track?” I ask.
He steps close to me and kisses my hair. “Yeah, I’ll meet ya at the track.” A few strides from me, he turns around. “Don’t wear lipstick,” he mouths, miming putting some on.
I hold onto that image all morning—and the lit-up look in his gorgeous eyes.
He likes me. He likes me. Luca Galante likes me. I really like him, too.
He gives me my favorite book at lunchtime as we picnic in the field.
“Wuthering Heights.” It’s the perfect copy, leather-bound and lovingly worn. I laugh. “Who did you ask?”
“Hm?”
“Who told you, Ree or Dani?”
“Oh, I didn’t ask.”
“This is my favorite. Like, of all time. Why’d you get it?”
“I don’t know.” He smiles. “I just saw it and I thought of you.”
“You’ve read it?”
“Last year. I had Carr for lit.”
“Did you like it?”
“No.” His lips curve slightly, the only clue he’s teasing. “I hated it. That’s why I bought it. I hoped you could hate it with me. I mean, Catherine,” he shakes his head. “Such a megabitch.”
I shove him, and he wraps me in a bear hug, lying back in the grass with me halfway on top of him.
“I liked it,” he laughs, nuzzling my chin with his cheek. “La mia rosa, she’s a skeptic.”
“Why are you so perfect?” I give him a shoulder punch, and then we’re kissing. I don’t remember until Dani laughs at me in fifth period that I forgot to scrub my lipstick.
Elise
Two Weeks Later
“Time is very slow for those who wait,” I murmur.
“Very fast for those who are scared.”
“Very long for those who lament.”
“Very short for those who celebrate.”
“But for those who love,” I murmur, “time is eternal.”
We’re lying in the grass out in the center of the track, reciting Shakespeare to a soft blue sky because my lit teacher, Dr. Cowles, is out for surgery, so right now we both have Mrs. Lynch for lit, and Literary Lynch is obsessed with Shakespeare. Rightly so, I have to admit. If there’s any writer worth becoming obsessed with, it’s Shakespeare.
“Was that right?” I ask Luca.
He opens a tattered, school-issue copy of Great Shakespeare, holding it over himself with one hand since his other arm is serving as my pillow. I look at his face, shadowed by the book. He’s got the longest lashes and the most delicious cheekbones…and those pretty boy lips.
I watch them curve and part. “Yep. We got it.”
“Oh yeah.” I wiggle my butt against the grass, laughing at what a dork I am. He gives me this funny look he gives me sometimes, like he’s not sure what planet I’m from. Then he kisses my cheek.
“Do you know the one you have to recite for your essay yet?” I ask.
His lips press into a small, mysterious smile. “Do you?”
“Of course.”
“Say it for me.”
“Ugh.”
“Do it,” he says.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.” I’m pouting.
“Yes
“I sound so stupid doing stuff like this.”
“No you don’t,” he says.
“It’s going to be awful.”
“It’s gonna be fine. Say it. You never told me what you picked.”
“It’s from Macbeth. Act five, scene five.”
He raises his dark brows. “That sounds fun.”
“Oh yes.”
He rolls onto his side, sliding his arm out from behind my neck and using it to prop his cheek up as he looks down at me. When I rub my eyes, he quirks a brow up, prompting.
“I might get it wrong,” I hedge.
“You know what will happen if you do.”
I sigh. “I’m only saying the end part. The whole thing is really too long.” I clear my throat, and his face does the angel thing, where his eyes shine warm fuzzies at me and his smile says everything in life is golden. It gives me a little kick of bravery.
“Out, out brief candle! Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
His eyes shut as he lies back beside me, resting his cheek against the top of my head. Then he leans away again and peers at me.
I shrug, feeling my cheeks burn. “It seemed less trite than some of the other things.”
He shakes his head, smiling slightly. “Shakespeare—trite.”
“People have made it trite. Over the years.”
It’s been twenty days since I got grounded. It’s a Thursday, and which means that after school tomorrow, I won’t see him for two whole days.
“Sad things are more true anyway,” I try.
“Yeah, but does that make them better?”
“Are you saying all the bullshit happy quotes are better?”
He shrugs. “Gotta take the happy stuff where you can get it.”
“What happy stuff can you get?”
He gives me a small smile, his eyes looking tired. “You.”
I snuggle closer to him. “I’m a pessimist, I think.”
“Are you?” He runs a hand down my arm, leaning in like he might kiss me.
“Yes.” I shut my eyes. “Are you an optimist?”
“Nah. I’m a realist.”
“What did you pick to say in front of everyone?”
He smiles. “Sonnet 116.”
“I remember that one from the slide she showed in class. Do you know it?”
He gives me a mysterious look, but he can’t help smirking.
“I bet you know it by heart already. Ree is in your homeroom. She says you got in trouble at the start of school for not doing your homework in there, and the teacher made you show it. Turned out, you had nothing to do in homeroom because you do all your homework at home.”
“Imagine that.”
I laugh.
“Actually, I do it on the train.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a good time to do homework.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
“What question?”
“If you’ve got it memorized.”
He clears his throat and lowers the book, which was shading his face from the sun. He shuts his eyes against the light and begins.
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. It is the star to every wandering bark, whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass come: love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”
I lean in and kiss his cheek. Because I can’t not. He laughs, and then sits up and looks down at
me.
I smile. “That was a rebuttal to my lines.”
“I would like for it to be seen that way.”
He takes my hand and pulls me to my feet, and we walk around the track to the spot where we can see the river best. I’m playing with a little ball of Saran Wrap—from the lemon cake he brought me today. He takes it from me, stuffs it in his pocket, smiles like Cheshire Cat.
“I’ll bring more cake tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” I say, feeling suddenly shy. He squeezes my hand as we walk toward the school door.
“I don’t think it is,” he says.
“You don’t think what is what?”
“That life is meaningless, like your quote implied.”
I let my breath out slowly, looking at the grassy path before our shoes press over it.
“I know you kind of do,” he says. “It’s okay. Sometimes I do too, but I think we’re both wrong.”
“Why?”
His face turns thoughtful. “I don’t know. It’s just this feeling I get. Like things’ll turn out okay.” He gives me one of his decadent smiles. “Mostly happens when I’m with you, but I trust it.”
“I’m going to Columbia,” I blurt.
Surprise flickers through his features. “Oh yeah?”
“Here in New York.”
“You’re kidding.”
I elbow him.
But I can’t help the way my heart pounds as I look up at him. “Will you be…around here?” I manage. “In Brooklyn or somewhere nearby?”
“I think so.” He gives me a small, strained smile. “Don’t know where else I would be.”
“I want to see each other,” I breathe. Blood whooshes in my head as I wait for him to process and answer. His lips twitch into something, but I wouldn’t call it a smile.
“We can see each other whenever you want.”
We’re at the door. He goes to push it open but I grab his arm and pull him up against the brick wall with me.
I look up at his face, trying to find words to explain. “No, Luca. I want to see you next year. I want to see you. As much as we can. Unless you don’t.”
His eyes shut. A breath moves through him. Then he leans down, kissing me so deep and hard it hurts. We kiss until my heart races, and then he hugs me to him like he’s hoping we’ll merge into one.
“I love you,” he says, quiet and low.
“I love you more than lemon cake,” I whisper.
That’s the first time we say it.
Chapter Twelve
Luca
For the rest of the school day, I carry her with me like something tangible. Elise O’Hara. Mine.
I know it’s dangerous. I can’t make the kinds of promises that other people could. And I have secrets. Not intentional ones, but lies of omission—like about the kinds of things I’m doing to keep Tony Diamond and the people above him from shaking down my dad. We can’t go back to that. Not if we’re going to be able to afford Mom’s maintenance chemo pills.
Dad’s been in debt to the Arnoldis for about ten years, since the store flooded and Roberto, one of his customers, loaned him some money. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I can guess it involves a bottle—either plastic or glass. Dad fell behind on his repayment plan, so Roberto would stop by sometimes and try to make him pay up. One day when I was fifteen, I was feeling pissed off. I stepped in front of him when he came toward the door and told him not to come by anymore.
I said something like, “Quit kicking someone who’s already down.”
At the time I didn’t really know who Roberto Arnoldi was. When I told Leo and Alesso, they figured I’d probably wind up sleeping with the fishes, but the opposite happened. Roberto just stopped coming. A year or so later, Tony started stopping by. I told him to fuck off, too, and that’s how I got into this shit with him.
Elise can never, ever know. Of everybody in my life, she’s the one who really believes I’m a good person. And when I’m with her, I feel good. Like I could be good—good enough to justify continuing. And I have to justify it, because I can’t stop. Even though I know I’ve got nothing to offer her.
When she told me about Columbia today, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I got a scholarship offer there, too. I don’t think I’ll ever make it there. Someone’s got to watch out for my mom and Soren—and keep Tony off our backs.
I tell myself I’m okay with temporary. She’ll move out of her parents’ place and start college, and she’ll find someone better for her. And until then…
I’m on the train, holding the new book I checked out from the library—A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin—when the full weight of all this shit hits me. I really am in love with her. And she said she loves me.
It feels so fucking good…but I feel off the rest of the ride back to Brooklyn.
I grab a bag of donut holes on my walk from the station, and find the shoe store quiet when I arrive. For a second, I stop just inside the door. It looks the same, feels the same, smells the same—leather and dust. I find my father behind the counter; he can’t stand up, so I organize shelves and dust for two hours till he can, and then we walk to the house in silence.
My little brother Soren has cooked dinner—spaghetti with my Tati’s special sauce. My mom’s quiet at the table, maybe upset.
Dad pours himself a glass of sambuca and beckons me into his room. He’s had his own room for years now, right beside mine. Mom sleeps in the master—if you can call it that—and my brother in what really is a closet under the stairs.
When we step into Dad’s room, he leans against his dresser and just looks at me. Up and down, and up and down, and then his face crumples like he might cry. “Luca,” he says, heavy, “there’s something that I’ve gotta tell you…”
He looks mournful, maybe even sorry. His brown eyes are watery. His bushy brows are drawn down. It takes work to keep a cringe off my face. But it doesn’t matter. A second later, he totters toward his bed and face-plants on the mattress.
A minute later, I hear him snoring. “Good talk.”
I wait another minute, but he doesn’t stir. Do I want him to?
I think, as I look down at him, about the conversation I overheard at the wedding reception. Someone warning him—in Italian—about whatever he’s been doing. Probably something to do with his fix.
Part of me still wants to ask him about it, to confront him about his presence at the reception to begin with, but I don’t see the point. It’s an easy guess: for some reason or another, Roberto Arnoldi expected him there, so he went. Even though Roberto has treated my dad like shit.
Before that, he was a longtime customer. I think he was Dad’s friend.
In the kitchen, Mom is slicing homemade cheesecake onto painted clay plates. I make her sit down, then drizzle Hershey’s syrup over the three slices. Mom and Soren and I eat together on the couch, scraping every smidgen off the plates with our forks, watching American Idol.
“Too bad neither one of you is good at singing,” she says.
“Hey, I’m good,” Soren says—at the same time I agree, “Too bad.”
“Well you’re both good, but not devoted,” my mom clarifies.
“There are other things to do,” I tell her.
“I’ll stick to piano,” Soren says.
He goes to his room to read comics after the show, but I stay out on the couch with Mom. She likes falling asleep in the blue light of the TV and then walking to her bedroom half asleep—something I like to give her shit for. She wraps an afghan around her shoulders and looks like a zombie walking down the hall.
Tonight, she nods off, but she doesn’t get up for a long time. I look at her for a few minutes as she sleeps, taking in her short, brown-gray hair, the grooves in her face, the lines around her lips from smoking cigarettes when I was little. I think of the pictures of her at my age—mostly arm in arm with Dad, her head tipped back as she laughed at something he said. My dad used to be funny…or so I’m told. I’ve told Elise some sentim
ental shit about how he used to be a good guy before his problems started, but the truth is I don’t remember any of that.
Mom’s really out. I wait a while longer, and when she doesn’t get up to zombie stagger to her room, I go to mine, leaving the door cracked so I can listen out for trouble. I lie on my back and look up at the light fixture, a brass thing from the ’80s that’s hanging crooked, like it’s thinking about falling.
Then I close my eyes and think of her.
Elise
“Are you sure about this?” he asks.
I squeeze his hand. “I’m so sure. They’re at a thing in Westport, and they’re staying the night.” I don’t mention that they have a weekend flat there. Luca’s always such a good sport, but sometimes I think he feels self-conscious about the difference in our family’s incomes. Things like that couldn’t be less relevant to me, so it’s better to avoid the topic.
He looks up at the elevator’s mirrored ceiling, and I use my hip to bump his. Then I bump him more and more, laughing as I pin him in the corner, where I wrap myself around him like an octopus.
And then he’s laughing with me. That’s my favorite part of any good day—hearing his low, slightly hoarse laugh. He always sounds a little rusty, like it’s been a hundred years since he laughed. But when I look up at his face, his smile is radiant and satisfied, and I know he’s really happy.
“Trust me on this,” I say again, as the elevator jolts to a gentle stop on floor twenty. “Maura is my favorite nurse. She’s been with Bec for almost six years. I told her you were going to come by, and she swore not to tell my parents.” We step off the elevator, and I grip his hand as we walk down the sleek, echoey hall.
“There are cameras—like security—but they’re for the staff quarters and the living areas. We’ll go in the family door and meet Bec in the laundry room. Don’t worry, it has a couch. And then we’ll go up to the rooftop garden and part ways, and on Monday, I’ll be free from being grounded. We can sneak around while I pretend to be with my friends. It will be the best thing ever.”
