The wall between us is even thicker than I imagined.
FIFTY-THREE
I consider telling my mom I have a date then decide no, why go there. Homework with Clive is my default lie, so I use it again even though I’m on shaky ground.
“Be back by eleven.”
“Ma, if it gets late and we’re working, I’ll call you.”
“Gia…”
“Don’t worry.” I’m out the door before she can answer.
The phone rings when I’m in the cab. “Are you really…?”
“Yes, Ro. I’m four blocks from the restaurant.”
“Am I supposed to say have a great time?”
“You could, if you’re my friend.”
“I am your friend, Gia, that’s why…” She sighs. “I mean a cop—and not just any cop.”
“For once in your life can you just forget that?”
“Can you?”
“I gotta go,” I say, pressing End.
I meet Michael in an Asian restaurant on the Upper West Side. He’s already at the table when I get there. Prepared. In position. I spot him before he sees me. He’s lost in thought. This can’t be easy for him, a date with the don’s daughter. I only hope I’m not being trailed by a photographer from one of the tabs.
He turns suddenly and spots me. He stands, stepping away from the table. I slow down, catching my breath. Seeing him has the usual effect on me, as if some powerful aphrodisiac has filled my insides, heating my blood. I can’t believe how beautiful he is. The deep-set green eyes. The dark hair just long enough to brush against the collar of the black pullover sweater that outlines his shoulders. Jeans that cling to his narrow hips. I kiss him on the cheek.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
“Alive?”
He gives me his guarded smile as his eyes do the nanosecond cleavage sweep that takes in my white silk blouse, unbuttoned enough to show the top of the nude lace demi bra underneath. He takes my hand.
“Come, sit down.”
I sit next to him on the banquette. I’m nervous. I can’t help it. All I could think of for the past few days was how this night would go.
“Hungry?”
“I didn’t eat all day.”
“Why not?”
You, Michael. I just shrug.
He knows, but he doesn’t know what to say so he changes the subject.
“The food is good here.” He lifts his chin, motioning toward the menu in front of me. There must be a hundred appetizers, main dishes, and sides. I stare down at the menu. I might as well be looking at the Oxford English Dictionary of food options. Words, words, and more words, and I don’t know what I want, all I know is I want to be next to Michael and nothing else matters.
“What do you like?” he says.
Why does everything he says sound like something else?
“Whatever. You decide.”
We have corn and crab soup to start and then noodles with peanut sauce and beef with orange sauce and a whole fish with ginger.
I don’t think of fish as Michael food, but what do I know about how he eats or lives or does anything, other than chasing speeders.
“You’ve been here before?”
“Yeah,” he says with a smile.
To poison things, I wonder whether this is his go-to spot for dates and I fixate on how many other girls he’s taken here. Shut up, Gia.
“What?” Michael says.
“What, what?” Caught.
“You looked worried,” he says. “Something in your face changed.”
“Are you a face reader?”
“Comes with the job. Tell me, what is it?”
“I was wondering if you bring all your dates here.” My heart is kicking now. Why the hell did I ask him that? I don’t want to hear what’s he’s going to say.
Raised eyebrow. “All my dates?”
“Mmm.”
“No.”
“Do you…have a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Not ever?”
“Not now.”
I feel myself relax. “What happened?”
“It was a while ago,” he shrugs, dismissing it gently. Not that I expected him to spill.
“What about you?” he says playfully. “A main man?”
“No.”
“Never?”
Does making out with Dante count? What about Marco Valente when I was in the eighth grade? Almost every weekend, we made out in the back of his dad’s car. I let him touch me, but with my clothes on.
“No one…special…except Herbie.”
He frowns. “Herbie?”
“Yeah, he’s the sweetest.”
His jaw tightens. “So why aren’t you out with…Herbie?”
“He’s older, he likes to go to bed early.”
“What?” He looks at me curiously as I reach into my bag and hold up the picture of Herbie.
“You had me goin’,” he says as the food arrives.
I guess I’m hungrier than I thought because I manage to finish everything. Michael watches me, amused.
“Do you always clean the plate?”
“I eat like a horse.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re thin.”
“Too thin?”
He shakes his head. “Not too thin,” he says, his eyes holding mine. “Perfect.”
Did he really say that? I look up at him and swallow, embarrassed. I know I’m blushing.
Perfect.
It’s not a word that anyone has ever used to describe me. Attractive, hot maybe, pretty, but never perfect. It’s not a word I would ever use to describe myself either because I always feel that everyone else has the edge on me and that I never measure up, no matter how hard I try. The stereotype is part of it, but deep down I believe that I’m not as good or good-looking as everyone else.
I want to say it out loud. Perfect. Michael Cross thinks I’m perfect. He reaches into my lap and squeezes my hand, sending bursts of electric current shooting through me.
We leave the restaurant and walk uptown along Broadway. The street is alive with people, students from Columbia University, parents pushing baby strollers, people my age holding hands with their dates. We look through the windows of restaurants and thrift shops.
“How are you doing…without your dad?”
I stop, not only because it’s a question I’ve been afraid to ask myself, but because it tells me that he’s thinking of me as a girl who lost her dad, not a girl whose crime boss dad is locked away because he deserves to be, which is what a cop would be thinking.
“The house is so empty now. He was always such a presence. Such a power.” I shake my head. “Now there’s no one to turn to for the…”
I’m speechless, suddenly thinking about my dad and what he meant to all of us. He was always the final word, the strongest opinion. It gave us such security to have him decide things because he was always so sure, so right. I don’t even have to finish the sentence.
Michael nods, he understands.
I’m going to tell him what I know about his dad, I decide right then, because it’s like the elephant in the room, and if there’s one thing about me that everyone knows, it’s that I can’t keep things inside for long.
“There’s something I found out.”
He looks at me questioningly. “About?”
“You.”
“What?” he asks quietly with an intensity that scares me.
“Your dad, Michael.”
“What do you know?” he says, showing his impassive law enforcement face again, the one that doesn’t give anything away.
“That he was a cop…”
He looks at me and waits.
“And what happened…the investigation. The bribes.”
“How do you know?”
“I wanted to find out about you so I could see you again. I know someone who can get information, so I asked him.”
Michael
looks off as though he’s lost in his memories. He shakes his head. I want to reach out to him to get him back, but he’s drifted off away from me. Was I stupid to tell him? Did I just ruin everything? Maybe he hates me now for snooping.
“I…I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” he says, his face expressionless.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you…I don’t know. But I understand now…about how you feel. You might not believe me, but I’d hate it too. And I’m sorry.”
“It was his fault. It has nothing to do with you.”
“How can you say that? It was my family.”
He stops and turns to me. “He fucked up his own life,” he says. “He was corrupt. And stupid. I can’t blame you for that. It has nothing to do with you.”
“You don’t speak to him anymore?”
“No.”
We walk without talking. I watch a muscle pulsing in his jaw. He looks haunted and hurt and I’m suddenly filled with this overwhelming sorrow.
“I didn’t think you could separate me from…” I shrug.
“I didn’t think I could either,” he says, his voice softening. “But I want to try.”
We stop in the middle of the street and Michael takes me into his arms.
FIFTY-FOUR
His building is an old walk-up with so much paint chipped away on the hallway walls that it reminds me of a moonscape. As we climb the steep stairs, I smell fried chicken. Somewhere on a lower floor there’s a baby crying and the sound of people arguing. When we get to his apartment on the fifth floor, I’m breathing hard. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I didn’t run.
“It’s a hike,” he says, looking back at me, amused.
“I’m in decent shape. I run five miles a day.”
“You surprise me,” he says. “We can run together.”
“And I box.”
He smirks. “I don’t. I’ll remember that.”
It’s a one bedroom apartment with bare white walls. In the living room there’s a beige tweed couch and a matching club chair with an ottoman, the kind of furniture that comes from Craigslist. There’s a small, neat kitchen with tarnished copper-bottom pots hanging on a pegboard above the small stove. I haven’t seen the bedroom yet because it’s off to the side down a small hallway. If he owns any posters or art, they’re hidden away. What I do see is a wall of CDs, which is not what I expected, only how did I know what to expect?
Michael opens the refrigerator. He reaches inside and holds up a beer.
“Do I need to show you ID?”
“No, but if you say yes I’m going to bust you.”
“What?”
“I’m kidding.”
He opens a beer and hands it to me and opens another one for himself. He leads me to the couch.
I sit in the corner and take a swig of the beer. “I never thought I’d be here.”
“I never thought you’d be here either,” he says.
“You remember the first time you saw me, in the car?”
He nods.
“What were you thinking?”
He smirks. “When I saw who you were? I thought I was fucked.”
I raise an eyebrow. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.”
“Well?”
He stares at me intently and I feel as though I’m going to ignite.
“I thought,” he says, his voice deep and husky, as he slides closer and starts to kiss the side of my face, “that you were the hottest girl I had ever seen.”
Before I can answer his lips are over mine and his tongue is inside my mouth and he tastes all beery and good and I’m kissing him back and he pulls me onto his lap and it feels like we’re about to swallow each other up, and everything I ever thought about the instantaneous attraction between me and Michael Cross comes to this combustion point, and he’s breathing hard and so am I and his fingers are slowly unbuttoning my shirt and helping me out of it.
“Look at you,” he says, eyeing me appreciatively as he slides one finger under the strap of my bra and slowly slips it down so he can kiss my bare shoulder. I try hard to catch my ragged breath as the tension inside me builds and I reach up and slide my fingers through his hair and then grab it tightly, all the time trying to ignore that nagging voice in my head: Say something, do something now, because this is it, and I know what’s coming and everything is moving too fast.
“You on the pill?” he whispers, “otherwise no worries, I have—”
I pull back. “I…”
“What?” he says. “What is it?”
Is this going to ruin everything? “I…I’m not. On the pill. I haven’t needed to…”
He tilts his head to the side. “What do you—”
I inhale and climb off his lap. “I’ve never…I’m a virgin, Michael.”
His eyes widen, the surprise so clear on his face. Gone is the straight-faced cop whose face gives away nothing about what he’s thinking. I’ve definitely shocked him.
“Whoa,” he says, leaning back and catching his breath, then exhaling sharply. “I didn’t think…you seemed so…”
For a painful few seconds, neither of us says anything. “Are you mad?” I say, barely able to get the words out.
He narrows his eyes. “Why would I be?”
“Because you didn’t expect it, I…I don’t know.”
“Gia…” he says, reaching for me. “I’m surprised, baby, that’s all. It’s fine. We don’t have to—”
“That’s not why I stopped, Michael…I just wanted you to know…first.”
He catches his breath. “I don’t want you to feel pressured…”
I hate this, all the talk, the explaining. It now feels like the temperature has dropped from a hundred and ten to like forty in the shade.
“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I say because now I’m feeling stupid and hurt and getting mad and I don’t know what else to say, and he’s probably totally turned off because he’s convinced I’m some kind of tease, which guys hate. I stare out the window.
“Gia,” he says, reaching for my chin and turning my face back to his. He kisses me lightly on the lips. “You don’t know how much I want to.”
“Then okay…”
He stands up and reaches for my hand, leading me into the bedroom.
Ever since I met Michael, I’ve fantasized about what it would be like to be with him. How it would feel to have him kiss me. How it would feel to have him undress me and see me in front of him, undressed. I’ve fantasized about what he would look like. How he would feel inside me. And how it would feel to finally lose the V-card so I could be like everyone else and move on with my life and think that sex is cool and all right and not a huge deal.
Even Ro’s done it—Ro who never seemed to go crazy over any guy. Once when we had a sleepover she finally told me. I knew even before though because after she met up with Chris Ruggio, a gorgeous friend of Dante’s who sold grass but also did some modeling, she couldn’t stop talking about him. One day she ran into him on the street and he took her out for coffee and she hung out with him for the afternoon, even though she never told me where they went.
She acted quieter after that day. Not herself. Like she had to process it on her own before she could talk about it.
I read stuff online that girls wrote about what it felt like the first time. You’re there but you’re not, some of them said. It felt like they were in another place watching themselves play the part of the virgin. I understand that now, the self-consciousness. The super-awareness.
Michael pulls his sweater over his head and tosses it on the floor. He leaves his jeans on and then gets into the bed next to me, leaning up on one elbow, his head resting in his hand.
I finally see the lean, hard body. He’s the one who’s perfect. He’s ripped and strong and totally hot. I wait for him to undress me, but he doesn’t. He reaches out and touches my face, using just the tip of his finger to trace the outline of my jaw before running his thum
b back and forth lightly across my bottom lip.
“I can’t believe how beautiful you are.” He kisses me softly, playing with my hair, running his fingers through it as if it’s made of delicate strands of silk.
I smile back at him, shy and embarrassed, and wait, but he stops touching me and rests back on the bed, closing his eyes.
“What is it?”
“This is tough,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut.
“What is?”
“To go slow with you, not to jump you,” he says, removing the hand over his eyes and turning toward me, the slightest smile on his face. He pushes a strand of hair away from my face on one side and then the other before he slides his hand behind my head and tightens his hand around my hair. His touch is hypnotic.
I edge closer until our lips meet and we start kissing again. It’s almost painful when you’re trying not to go crazy, but you are. It’s like denying that you have to inhale when your body needs oxygen. We are skin to skin, still partly dressed, only it doesn’t feel that way and I’m in a place I’ve never been before, feeling more toward Michael than I’ve ever felt toward anyone.
But my brain can’t be quiet and I’m wondering if this is different from what he felt with other girls before because I want it to be singular and special for him too, more intense than with anyone else so that he’ll remember it, no matter what.
We kiss until we can’t just kiss anymore and he slides out of his jeans and I’m wearing only my thong and Michael has touched me past the point of combustion and now it’s time. He slides the thong down over my hips and reaches for the foil packet.
This is it, this is it, are you sure? my conscience asks, catapulting me back from that other world. But before I can think, Michael is over me then inside me, moving slowly at first.
“You okay?” he says softly.
I nod because I can’t speak and his mouth is over mine while his body moves insistently in a slow, hypnotic rhythm until I feel something that I’ve never felt before, at least not in that way, and he calls my name with an urgency that sends me over the top, and then he stills and drapes himself over me and we lie there breathing hard, two bodies that have become one.
Mafia Girl Page 21
