“What do you think I’m doing?” she says snottily when I turn around. “I’m doing the same fucking thing we’ve been doing for months. You never say no to me. Then Baby Spice shows up on the beach all of a sudden, and now you’re a Boy Scout. What gives?”
I’m about to open my mouth to tell her she better keep Layla’s name out of hers when I catch a look at my bed behind her. In my shock at finding Jessie paging through my sketchbook, which is fuckin’ private, I hadn’t noticed the ten or so envelopes scattered all over my bedspread.
“What the fuck is this?” I ask as I stride around Jessie and start picking everything up. “You went through my mail?” I look up, shaking the letters. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I should say the same thing,” Jessie returns, coming back to the corner of the bed. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Nico?”
I glare at her. This is insane. I don’t want to have a fight with my roommate/fuckbuddy about her boundary issues. I just want to get some fuckin’ sleep.
Jessie wiggles her nose like a rabbit. “I was just bringing it in to put on your desk,” she says. “I promise. But then I saw your sketchbook open on the bed. I didn’t know you could draw like that.”
I just grip the stack of mail harder. I haven’t actually drawn much in the last few months, but when I have, it’s only been one thing. Or one person, actually.
“There are a lot of pictures of...her,” Jessie ventures again. She pops her lower lip out in a pout I’ve seen in some of her photos. It’s a look she wants to make her “signature,” whatever the fuck that means. All I know is that she spends a lot of fuckin’ time practicing it in the bathroom.
I frown. “Yeah. There are.”
“I didn’t see any of me.”
I just sift through the mail. Bill, bill, another bill. Nothing interesting. I want her to get the fuck out of my room. I want to sleep. Jerk off. Dream the dreams that are going to drive me crazy, since I know I’ll be thinking about that fucking almost-kiss all night long.
“I also saw this.”
Jessie flips a letter to me, one she must have been sitting on, or maybe one she’s been holding the whole time. When I see the scrawl over the front, I smirk.
“Who’s it from?” Jessie asks as she watches me open it.
“My little brother.”
I tear open the envelope. I’m still curious about why the fuck Gabe would send me something.
The reason becomes clear as I take out a wrinkled piece of paper. It’s rough, torn out of a newspaper. No note or anything—Gabe’s not the type. But the message is clear.
“The FDNY?” Jessie scoffs next to me. “Are you kidding?”
I give her a look. “What’s so funny?”
“Haven’t you applied to take the exam about five times?”
I frown. “Twice. They weren’t hiring then.”
I look back at the clipping, which states clearly that the FDNY is holding another exam in less than two months. An open application. Anyone who’s qualified can take it.
“Holy shit,” I mumble, flipping the page over and then back again. I know from previous attempts that this only happens maybe once every five years.
“This is ridiculous,” Jessie says as she snatches the page away.
“Hey!” I bark. “What the fuck!”
But Jessie’s already crumpled up the page and tossed it in the waste bin under the desk. She turns around with a hand on her hip. She looks every inch the party girl—a little worn down from the night, but still glamorous, tan, everything most women in California try to be. You’d never know she grew up in a trailer in Nowhere, Oregon.
“That is a waste of your time,” she says as she walks back to where I stand. “You’re here now. Not in New York. Why do you keep looking back to a place that clearly doesn’t want you? A girl who doesn’t want you. A job that doesn’t want you. Last year, you couldn’t wait to leave New York.”
I open my mouth to argue with her, but the thing is, she’s right. New York only ever treated me like shit. I was born into a situation where people looked at me like I was nothing because of my family, my neighborhood, my skin color, the way I talked. Every time I tried to do better for myself, it just pushed me back down again. The FDNY was always a pipe dream.
“People like you and me,” Jessie begins as she reaches a slow hand to stroke my shoulder. She traces the lines of the tattoo that snake out from underneath my right sleeve. “We have to leave the places we come from. You can’t be something in a place where you’ve only ever been nothing.”
It’s the one thing Jessie and I do have in common—the fact that both of us came from so little. Raised in a trailer by a deadbeat father, she knows exactly what it means to need to get away from a past that pigeonholes you. She’s been running from hers her whole life.
She draws a line down the center of my chest, scraping her fingernail up my abs, pulling the shirt with it, then back down. Her hand tugs suggestively on my belt buckle.
“I bet I could bring you back to the here and now,” she says, stepping a little closer while her hands pull slowly at the leather.
She gives me a little nudge, then another, until I hit my mattress and sit down on it. Without waiting for me, Jessie finishes unbuckling my pants and sinks down to the floor. And I’m not going to lie. She’s a beautiful girl, and the look of her there, on her knees for someone like me...it turns me the fuck on.
Looks like I didn’t lose my dick after all.
“You want this?” Jessie asks as she unzips my pants and pulls down my briefs. It’s pretty fuckin’ clear I do.
I close my eyes as she takes me in her mouth. Like magic, a pair of sad blue eyes flash in my mind. She’s always there, lurking behind my thoughts. But then I think of that dude’s hands, grainy, but obvious, all over Layla’s ass. His tongue slipping out like a snake while he touches her body.
I growl. Jessie, not realizing why, releases me and smiles.
“I guess that’s a yes,” she says haughtily.
I glare at her and wrap her ponytail around my fist so she has to look at me.
“It’s just sex,” I state clearly. “That’s all. And when you’re done, it’s back to your own room.”
Jessie gulps, but her brown eyes gleam. She nods.
“It’s just sex,” she repeats. “Fine.”
She bends back to her work, taking me further while I rock my hips forward. Maybe it makes me an asshole, but I need this. I need the control. I need the release. I need to feel like I’m not being played from three thousand miles away.
But every time I close my eyes, the hair wound around my hand is black, not blonde. And the eyes that look up at me from that vulnerable position are a bright, all-seeing blue. Eyes that know the truth that echoes through my soul.
I slam my hand on the wall above Jessie’s head with a force that makes her jerk. You’re mine, those eyes say. And the fuck if it’s not true.
I don’t sleep. Usually I sleep like the dead, especially after a long night at the club and definitely after sex. Jessie was true to her word. She shuttled back to her room, leaving me to lie in mine, staring at the popcorn ceiling while I wait for sleep to come.
It doesn’t. And I know why.
With a sigh, I roll off the bed and pad to my desk, where I sit down and reach underneath for the wastebasket. I pull out the crumpled piece of paper, open it, and smooth it out on the desktop. There’s a corny-looking dude on the front, smiling while he carries an ax. But in serious block letters, the announcement is clear: there’s an open test date for the exam.
I pick up my phone and open my messages from Layla. Before the anger in my chest takes over, I delete the shitty picture of her in the club. She obviously didn’t take it—maybe she didn’t send it either. And I don’t want to think of her like this, angry and out of control.
Without thinking about the fact that it’s almost 8:00 a.m. New York time, my thumbs slide over the buttons, punching out a message. It’s a
ll I’ve thought about all night. Sometimes it feels like all I can ever think about.
Me: I miss u.
I say it because I mean it. Because even though I’m angry, I know she has the right to kiss whoever the fuck she wants. Because I’m the one who left, I’m the one who shacked up with another woman. Because a part of me knows I have nothing more to lose by saying it, and if there’s any way I can keep some piece of her in my life, I’ll do whatever it takes. She’s always looked at me like she believes I can be anything. And the thing is, when she looks at me like that, I start to believe it too.
When I’m done, I punch in the number on the flyer. I won’t be telling anyone else about this—not for a while yet. But I have to try. I’ll regret it if I don’t.
Chapter Eight
Layla
The tiny, inconsequential ding of my phone is a small sound, but it might as well be a knife by the way it’s stabbing through my brain.
I am not exaggerating, I swear. My eyes open like creaky windows. Everything is foggy and out of focus. How much did I have to drink last night?
The first, second, and third round of shots, I remember. The weird, peacock-style dancing in the middle of the club. Another three drinks. Getting way nastier than I ever intended with Intense Dude on the dance floor. Leaving the club with—
My heart gives a couple of chest-shaking thumps as the rest of the night comes back to me. A cab ride that felt more like war than foreplay. Some fairly intense petting that led to...
I squeeze my thighs together. Yeah, they’re naked all right, and the ache between them brings the rest of the night back to me. My eyes are open wide as I absorb the geography of a bedroom that is definitely not mine: the faded gray carpet, the bay window with flaking paint and bars over it. The clothes that are slung over the open doors of a closet. The stack of books on a very messy desk, and the pair of wayfarer glasses perched on top of them.
Giancarlo. That was his name. He finally told me through a thick South American accent, but only after we’d made out for an hour and I refused to leave with him without having a name to give my girlfriends. Giancarlo from Argentina, from a suburb of Buenos Aires, the name of which I couldn’t possibly remember right now. A twenty-three-year-old exchange student at CUNY, here to study business or something like that. A bunch of other stuff that reappears in my memory like the teacher’s voice in Charlie Brown. Wa-wa-wa. Thanks, alcohol.
Slowly, I peek to my left, where I’m greeted by the long, sleeping form of the man himself, draped casually in his peach-colored sheets. Up close, he’s even bigger than I remember—well over six feet. He’s on his stomach, his hands clutching a pillow to his chest. In his sleep, his frown is only slightly lessened, but the rounded edges of his face soften a bit. Dark, curly brown hair that flops a little on top. Uneven stubble. Shadows under his eyes that look like mine, like my family’s in Brazil. His full lips and chin pout slightly. He’s still handsome, but almost boyish, despite his size.
That prickly feeling is back. I can’t tell if I like it or not. It’s unfamiliar, exciting. Everything about this moment, this guy, is different. I don’t go home with men I don’t know. I don’t get blackout drunk in bars. I don’t wake up with parts of my memory too blurry to see clearly.
I turn onto my side. There’s a small envelope icon on my phone—a string of text messages I don’t remember getting or sending, the last of which arrived at about eight o’clock this morning—all of them back and forth with that stupid 323 number I both hate and love. I miss the New York number, the one I still remember by heart. Well, I miss a lot more than that. Careful not to wake the sleeping giant next to me, I scroll through them.
The messages turn from playful to irate to sad, culminating with a photo that apparently I sent sometime around midnight. It’s a terrible picture of me and Giancarlo, wrapped up with each other on the dance floor. Giancarlo looks like he’s about to eat me alive. I look like I’m just trying to hold on for dear life.
And this went to Nico.
Fuck. It had to have been Quinn. There’s no one else who would have snapped this and then sent it to him with that kind of message. I scroll back through his responses, all of them coming in within the past couple of hours. He must have seen these when he got home from the club. To her. To Jessie.
Nico: wtf layla
Nico: i dont get it. why send that at all?
Nico: Fuck. FUCK.
Nico: i hope u were safe
Nico: u know what? its fine. i want u to be happy.
Nico: I miss u.
They’re just words. Three little words that feel like hammers on this fragile wall I’ve contrived around my heart. You miss me? You miss me?! I want to shout, hurl my phone across the room. Let it drown in the Hudson, right into the water just like he did with his. But at the same time, I feel like crying. He says he wants me to be happy, and as angry as I still am, I want him to be happy too. I’m also mad at myself for leaving the way I did. Maybe he shouldn’t have kissed me like that, but in the end, it’s not like we were going to get back together or anything. He can do whatever he wants, and so can I.
So why does the thought of that still make me feel so freaking terrible?
Tears spring, and I work to blink them away, grasping at the sheets in this unfamiliar room until my vision clears. Beside me, Giancarlo snorts, and it snaps me out of my anger. I remember that I’m not in my room at all, but in a stranger’s. Someone who might not take it so kindly if I startle him out of his sleep.
Suddenly the only thing I can think about is getting out of this place. I want to get back to my other strange bed, the one that belongs only to me, at least for the next nine months. I want to bury myself under my familiar purple comforter, wrap the curtains around my bed, and stay asleep until Monday.
Very, very carefully, I slip out of bed, wincing at the creak of floorboards under my feet. After I manage to track down my clothes, Giancarlo emits a loud snore. I can’t help wondering how I ever thought this guy even approximated Nico. Because that’s what I was doing, right? This guy’s hair is black, but it’s longer, the curls almost too shiny at his temples. His jaw is more rounded, his cheekbones less pronounced. His skin is more golden than brown, and his shoulders lack the lean, corded muscle Nico’s have. He’s handsome, sure, but a terrible substitute for the man who, as of yet, has no replacement.
This was supposed to help me forget. But now I only feel that much worse.
Clasping my heels in one hand, I tiptoe toward his bedroom door, but just when I’m about to make my escape, the hinge creaks loudly. I freeze. Giancarlo rolls over and sits up a little, blinking in the sunlight because he puts on his glasses. His gaze focuses on me with growing recognition.
With his glasses, he looks a little older. His eyes harden with that same look I remember, even through my drunken memory. It’s sharp. Possessive. Hungry.
“Hello,” he says sleepily in that same, thickly accented voice. “You are leaving.”
I nod, keeping the doorknob in my hand. It wasn’t really a question, but I’m answering it anyway. “I need to get going.”
Giancarlo pushes off the covers and gets up, giving me a full view of, well, everything. He’s even bigger than I thought, probably close to six-four, maybe even taller. His shoulders slope, and although he’s not cut the same way that Nico is, the guy is clearly no slouch. He stretches, and his cock, half-erect, points at me. I look away.
“I will walk you to the subway,” he says even as I turn away.
“Um, no, that’s okay.”
I already have one foot out of his room, but now I feel like I should close the door or something, give him some modesty that he doesn’t already have. He’s still brutally naked, scratching his head without a care that his penis is just hanging out there, waving in the wind. I shouldn’t feel that weird about it, considering we had sex last night, but I do. I don’t know this person. I don’t want to see all of this. Somehow, his nakedness feels weirdly dominant.
“I really have to get back. I’m supposed to meet my friends for breakfast.” Lie. All lies. Good God, I just want to get out of this room, dive into a vat of coffee, and crawl into my own bed.
Giancarlo looks up from his dresser, where he pulls out a pair of briefs. He tugs them on, finally covering up that...thing. Even half-erect, he’s pretty damn big. Shit, how did that fit in me? No wonder I’m sore.
“Are you sure?” he’s asking. “I will only take a second.”
“No, I’m fine,” I say. “Um...thanks. For...”
He smiles. His teeth are a little crooked, but only slightly. He has a nice smile. I feel kind of bad for blowing him off.
“Before you leave, I can give you my number?” he asks.
Damn it. I knew that question was coming. “Do you have a card?”
It’s a tactic I actually picked up from Quinn. She does it in situations where she wants guys to feel important while also giving herself an out. This guy won’t. He’s a student, like me. There is absolutely no reason for him to have a business card, which will, in turn, make him feel ashamed. And hopefully he won’t call me again.
Giancarlo scratches his head and shoves a big hand into his curly hair. I think it’s working. I owe Quinn a drink. Or, I think as a bout of nausea rises and falls, maybe just a coffee.
But when Giancarlo smiles, it changes him completely. He goes from being stern and slightly scary to magnanimous and almost sweet. “It’s okay,” he says. “No card.”
He reaches a hand out and waits patiently. He shrugs, and the movement is so charming, I can’t help but smile back and hand him my phone. I watch as he punches his number into it and calls himself. His phone buzzes on the bedside table, and he smiles as he hangs up mine and gives it back to me.
“There,” he says. “Easy.”
“Uh, okay,” I say. “I guess...I’ll see you around?”
Bad Idea- The Complete Collection Page 43
