I love her enough to let her go.
“Hey.”
I look up. I’ve been so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t even notice the person approaching until she plops down on the sand next to me.
“Jess. Hey. What are you doing over here? So early, too.”
Jessie looks down over her sports bra and shorts and then back at me. “Same thing you are, looks like. I have a shoot this afternoon, so this was the only time I could work out.”
Fitness was one of the few things Jessie and I always had in common––it was actually one of the things we would do together every now and then. Since she’s an aspiring model, she has to look good. Exercise is part of her job.
“How’ve you been?” she asks. “Did you find out about your job yet?”
I examine her, a little taken aback by her casual attitude. She wasn’t exactly nice the last time we talked, when I turned over my key to her apartment at the end of April.
“Um, no. I’m still at K.C.’s place until I hear. It’s been a while. I’m guessing I didn’t get in.”
She frowns. “Really? I thought it all went so well.”
I hunch my shoulders. The sun is getting hot. “Yeah, well. You never know, I guess.”
“I guess.” She traces a finger around the sand. “Well, if you want to stop by our––I mean, my––place, I still have some of your mail there.”
I frown. “Really? You want me to come by? When I left, you threw a lamp at me and told me to burn in hell before I came back.”
Jessie cringes. “Yeah, so maybe that wasn’t my best moment.”
She gives me a shy smile, the one that’s been getting her a bunch of jobs lately. Last week I saw her face on the side of a billboard.
“I just…I liked you, you know?”
The smile is still there, but it’s sad now. I watch her for a second, then realize that she’s telling the truth. Jessie could be pretty damn manipulative, but this isn’t one of those times. And it’s got to be hard for her to admit this. Like most people, she’s not great at saying how she feels.
I sling an arm around her shoulder and give her a quick hug. “It’s okay. I get it.”
She nods. “I thought you would. That girl…”
“Yeah,” I say. But I don’t continue the conversation.
We sit there for a moment together, then Jessie stands up and dusts off her legs. “Come on,” she says. “I drove here today because I wanted to run north. I’ll give you a ride back to the apartment, and then I can drop you downtown on my way to work. I have a shoot in Culver City.”
I watch her for a second, looking for an ulterior motive. But there doesn’t seem to be any.
“Okay,” I say and follow her off the beach.
~
Back at the apartment, I noticed immediately that my old bedroom door is closed and there are boxes everywhere.
“New roommate?” I ask, looking around.
Jessie follows my gaze. “Oh, um, no. I’m moving out. I can’t afford the place by myself, and I don’t want another roommate. The lease is up this month. Time to move.” She pauses biting her lower lip for a second. “I think I could use some time by myself, you know?”
I nod. “Yeah, I know.”
“Anyway, the mail is in my room.”
I follow her into her bedroom, also lined with boxes, and wait awkwardly while she fishes a paper bag of mail out of her closet.
“Here,” she says, handing it to me and then proceeding to watch me. “Come on. I know there’s an FDNY letter in there for you.”
My head snaps up. “You couldn’t have fuckin’ led with that one?”
She giggles. “I had to play with you a little, you know.”
I roll my eyes, but immediately dig into the bag. It doesn’t take long––soon I find the thin envelope with the thick FDNY letters printed on the front. I turn it back and forth in my hand. Jessie walks up and clasps my face between her hands.
“Hey,” she says. “Good luck.”
Then she kisses me. Her lips are soft, and her hands feel good when they slip down my neck and over my bare chest. It’s nice enough that the tension in my stomach lets up a little. The noises I’ve been hearing from K.C.’s bedroom sing through my mind––I wouldn’t mind getting laid right now. It actually might help.
But something’s not right. It’s never been right. And I’m not going to do this to her again.
I pull away. “Jess…”
She steps back with a sigh, but for once, she’s not angry. I’m reminded that for all of her cynicism, Jessie’s not a bad girl. She’s lost, trying to figure out how to be more than the place she came from. Trying to play catch-up with everyone else, just like me.
She looks me over, her big brown eyes suddenly sympathetic.
“You really love her, huh?”
I pull at the backwards brim of my hat, then twist it around to the front. “Yeah. I do.”
The admission cuts deep, an arrow into my heart. There’s a reason, I realize, why Cupid carries an arrow. Love is a weapon. It spears.
“I think you shouldn’t give up on her.”
I frown, surprised. “What?”
Jessie sits down on her bed, folds her long legs up underneath her chin, but doesn’t look at me, just keeps her eyes focused on her flowered bedspread. “I was mad about it for a while––okay, I was more than mad. I was really, really jealous. But that’s just because I…” She shrugs. “Look, I’ve never felt that way about anyone, the way you feel about her. I think if I did…I probably wouldn’t give it up without a fight.”
“Yeah, well.” I sink into the chair across from her and turn the letter over and over in my hands.
“People like us,” Jessie says, “we’re always so scared. You ever notice that? Scared to try. Scared to do more. Scared to succeed, maybe.”
“That’s because we know what it’s like to fail,” I joke. “We were born into failure, not victory, like them.”
“You really believe that?”
I think about Layla. The way, even with everything going on around her, she’s never been afraid to try. With jobs. With school. With us. I thought it was her age, her naiveté that made her so ready to give everything up, to move out here with me. To give it her all. But now that Jessie’s talking, I realize that maybe it was also my fear that held us back.
All my life they’ve called me a fighter. I’ve used my fists more than once, in ways I haven’t always been proud of, but mostly I was just trying to find something better for my family and me than the lot we were dealt. I didn’t grow up with anywhere near the resources someone like Layla has had access to. School always felt like a struggle, because who was going to help me with my homework? No one was watching where I went or what I did because my mother was too busy working and trying to take care of her three younger kids.
But I wasn’t born into failure either. I know it’s not as simple as that. We had Alba and her family looking out for us. I got into some trouble that will follow me for the rest of my life, but I’ve still worked my ass off to avoid selling dope or stealing shit for a living. So I know what it’s like to try. Maybe it’s time to accept that I can also succeed, just like anyone else.
I turn the letter over, fearful, but also excited about what might be inside.
“Open it,” Jessie says. “Come on. They’re offering you the job, I know it.”
I slide my thumb underneath the edge of the paper. Suddenly, I feel like I’m about to throw up. I’ve never wanted anything this badly before. Never tried so hard to get it. Hours of time, forcing my brain through those books, forcing my body through the workouts. If I don’t get it…fuck. The idea is paralyzing.
“Nico,” Jessie says, but I can barely hear her.
“Okay,” I say.
Before I hesitate again, I rip my finger through the paper, then pull out the letter inside.
Dear Mr. Soltero…
“Well?” Jessie asks. “Well? What did they say, you asshole?
Don’t keep me in suspense!”
I read it once. Then I read it again. And again. Then, finally, I look up. For the first time in my life, my shoulders feel light. The future seems wide open.
~
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Layla
I finish typing the last few sentences of Giancarlo’s economics paper, then email it to him and shut my computer. It’s not a great paper, written in the last twenty-four hours. I had to skip one of my classes today to finish it, but it’s the best I could do with such short notice.
I blink, trying to kick out Quinn’s disapproving looks, Shama and Jamie’s pitiful faces last Friday. I’ve barely seen any of them since I walked out, sneaking in during hours I knew they wouldn’t be there to grab some stuff to bring up here. But the commute back to campus from here isn’t easy every day of the week. And staying with Giancarlo all the time isn’t easy either. Sometimes he’s sweet, other times unbearably terse. I never know which version of him I’m going to get.
“Please,” he begged as he curled up on the bed last night and pressed his face into my shoulder. “Amor, I need your help.”
It wasn’t until he told me he would lose his student visa if he failed his class that I finally gave in. What was I supposed to say to that? Tell him he had to leave the country because I wasn’t willing to type a five-page paper?
I yawn, repressing the urge to collapse across the desk. I need some coffee, but Giancarlo’s out, and my bank account is down to its last few pennies. I need to call my mother and figure out this summer. Try to convince her to let me stay here, although every mention of that makes Giancarlo get that crazy look in his eye. He wants me to come with him to Buenos Aires. That’s a discussion for when we’re both getting a decent night’s sleep, I guess.
I look out the window, where the sun peeks between the buildings, gleaming through the fire escape. From here, the iron bars look a lot like a jail. I try not to think about how this place is starting to feel like one too.
When he said “you and me,” I didn’t realize it would mean demanding to know where I was every second of every day. I didn’t realize it would mean sporadically checking my cell phone messages to make sure I wasn’t cheating on him or talking to anyone else. But every time I start arguing with what he says or does, he reminds me of one fact, one truth that digs so deeply. Only me, he says over and over again. I’m the only one here for you.
It hurts. It all hurts. And even though sometimes he hurts too, Giancarlo is the only one who’s here. The only one who stays.
With a sigh, I flip open my history textbook, finally ready to finish my last paper. I haven’t done very well in this class, so I need to do well on this to pull my grade out of the B-minus range. There’s a lot to do.
The front door opens and shuts with a slam, and a few minutes later Giancarlo walks in, chattering on the phone.
“Hello,” he says curtly after he hangs up, but he stops and waits until I look up from the desk.
I try to give a bright smile. “Bueno. Estoy tratando de escribir mi papel.”
Giancarlo frowns at my clunky Spanish while he takes off his glasses and polishes them. Even though he knows I’m taking accelerated Spanish classes, he doesn’t like to speak it with me. My poor accent, which sounds more Brazilian than any kind of Hispanic, is frustrating, apparently. “Like talking to a toddler,” he said just last week. “Waste of my time.”
He flops down on the unmade bed, an old mattress balanced on a squeaky metal frame, and it’s then I notice that his eyes look a little glassy. Sometimes they look that way when he gets back from his job, doing whatever it is the club has him doing at all hours of the night and day. He’s a promoter, or so he told me once. Apparently that means he does everything, including buying televisions and selling his girlfriend’s watch to do it, though I’d never say anything about it now.
He flips on the television to a rerun of some crime show, which is all he ever likes to watch. It’s the kind my dad likes, but which bores me to death.
I look up irritably. “Do you have to do that? I have a final exam tomorrow and a paper due.”
Giancarlo frowns. “I had to work all day today. I need some time to relax. This is my apartment.”
I blink between him and the screen, trying to figure out if he’s for real. “Um, okay. Well, I guess I can go downtown to work at the library. They’re open all night.”
I stand up and start gathering my things together, but in a minute, I’m surrounded by Giancarlo’s arms, pulled tight against his tall form.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into my ear. “Forgive me. Stay. This is your home too.”
Home? I’m not sure how I feel about that.
He keeps me trapped against his body, and I can feel something starting to grow against the small of my back. He’s most attracted when I’m trapped.
“Giancarlo,” I say, gently unwrapping his arms from around me. “I need to study. Please?”
He pumps his growing erection lightly against my hip, then releases me with a reluctant groan. “Fine,” he says, like a child, and then flops back on the bed, but turns off the TV. “You are so lucky to have me, you know that? How many men would be this patient with their woman?”
Wise enough not to answer that question, I turn back to the desk and try to keep writing, even though it’s that much harder to focus with a restless, long-limbed Argentinian flopping around on the bed behind me.
Eventually, I’m able to focus more, and I write and study for a few more hours, taking notes and doing the best I can to learn the history of Spanish migration patterns that I should have learned a month ago. As I scratch out some notes about the recent timeline of travel patterns from Cuba through Venezuela, something catches my eye.
“Holy shit,” I breathe.
“What?” Giancarlo asks irritably from the bed, where he’s lying. “What are you gasping about?”
I read over the words, unsure if I understand them correctly.
In 1999, the Clinton Administration passed a series of laws opening up travel to Cuba for educational purposes. While in 2003, the Bush Administration restricted these measures, family visitations were actually expanded beyond humanitarian relief. Currently, any close relative of a Cuban national can visit the country. Critics of this law have said it was too lax because visitors are not required to bring any documentation of their family’s presence in Cuba to visit.
2003. I flip the page back and forth, looking for more information, but there’s nothing. Barely a mention of the new laws, but immediately, I jump to the computer and start searching for more information, although I soon realize I don’t have the expertise to parse the legal jargon online. I need to talk to a lawyer.
Correction: Nico’s family needs to talk to a lawyer.
But one thing is clear. Not required to bring any documentation. Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but it looks like under the auspices of tightening regulations, the travel laws to Cuba for family have actually been relaxed in some ways. All Nico or one of his siblings has to do is say they are visiting a relative there, and they could potentially get a license to go. Get Carmen’s birth certificate. Set her on the path toward citizenship.
I skim the article again while my heart picks up a few beats. The whole story isn’t here––it doesn’t say what to do, or whom to talk to about getting the license needed to travel. But this small paragraph is everything. This could change Carmen’s life. It could change her whole family’s life.
I stand up suddenly, clapping the book under one arm.
Giancarlo looks up from the TV and glares at me. “What are you doing?”
I glance around for my jacket, barely noticing him in my flurry of thoughts. “I need to go out for a bit.”
“What? Where?”
My skin prickles. Finally I locate my jacket under a pile of Giancarlo’s laundry and shove my arms through it. I look like crap in leggings and an old t-shirt, my hair tossed up into a bun after I pulled an all-nighter la
st night writing papers for two. Carmen and her kids are going to think I look crazy. But it doesn’t matter. They need to know this right freaking now.
“Um, some friends down the street. I just found some information that will help them.” For some reason, I don’t want to tell Giancarlo what’s going on. I mean, he might understand. After all, he’s here on a visa too. But the way he’s looking at me tells me he’s in one of those moods where he won’t even want to let me out of the room, much less on a five-block walk.
Suddenly I’m in a hurry. Like if I wait around this apartment, I’ll be talked out of it. Convinced this is nothing, that I have nothing to tell them, nothing to offer anyone else but him, in this strange, dingy little cocoon he’s constructed here.
“Do you remember Gabe?” I say, hoping the memory will soothe him a little. “My friend from down the street? His mother, she, um, well, anyway, I just read something in here that could help them. It has to do with her status, you know? I just really want to show them.”
Giancarlo pushes up from the bed and walks over in his socked feet. His normally glossy hair looks dull, flattened on one side from lying down for so long, and his five-o’clock shadow is patchy. He still hasn’t lost that glazed look in his eyes.
“I can tell him tomorrow in our class. You don’t need to leave.”
He reaches a hand out for the book and waits. I stare at it. Suddenly I feel like the book symbolizes something I’ll never get back if I give it up.
“Um, no thanks,” I say. I hug the book to my chest and step toward the bedroom door. “I don’t want it to get lost in translation.” I open it before he can reply, slipping on my sneakers as I hop out. “It’s fine. They only live a few blocks away. I’ll be back in an hour, maybe less.”
“Layla!”
I skip to the front door and let it slam over my name, and without thinking, I’m scurrying down the stairs to the lobby, like a mouse escaping a bloodthirsty cat.
Lost Ones Page 27
