by Sam Mariano
“It was my first time!” I defend.
“Whatever. I don’t even care what you say, you’re coming. We’re going to get stupid and sing in front of our peers, and take awesome selfies. It’s already done. You have no say.”
“I’m probably going to have to babysit,” I point out.
“Tell your mom to get a sitter for once in her damn life; they’re not your kids, Jesus Christ.”
We can’t afford a sitter, but I don’t say that. Foolishly, it occurs to me that I could probably bring Vince to that. “Is it going to be a big group, or just a small get-together?”
“Medium-ish,” she says. “I don’t really want everyone to stay over, and I’m not inviting anyone with super uptight parents. Don’t need that drama.”
Hesitantly, I ask, “Would you care if I invited somebody?”
She stops, turning to me with interested eyes. “Jace?”
“No,” I say, a little too adamantly. “Are you inviting Jace?”
“Probably. I thought you’d be pleased?”
“Uh uh,” I say, shaking my head. “Jace is old news. No more Jace.”
She sounds surprised. “Really? Huh. That didn’t last very long. Why don’t you tell me this stuff? That’s literally what I’m here for.”
“It’s super new and casual at the moment. I don’t want to make a big thing of it. But… it might be fun if he could come.”
“Who?”
I try not to grimace as I say, “Vince Morelli?”
The smile drops right off my best friend’s face. “Vince Morelli?”
I nod, almost apologetically.
“You want me to invite the mob kid to my house? For real?” She reaches out her hand and feels my forehead. “Weird, you’re not burning up with fucking delusional fever.”
“I know he’s not part of our usual crowd, but…”
“The fucking governor’s son is going to be there, Mia, and you want me to invite Goodfellas?”
It’s not like Lena’s bluntness is news, but she’s starting to piss me off. “You don’t have to be mean.”
Staring at me, she asks, “Are you sleeping with him?”
“Not—” I halt, flushing, realizing I almost said ‘not yet’ instead of ‘no’. “Just forget it.”
“Ew, you are!” she says, gaping.
I make a face. “I’m not. But ew? Come on.”
“His family does heinous shit, Mia. The package might look pretty on the outside, but Jesus Christ. My dad says they do, like, human trafficking. That’s third world bullshit, right there. There’s no way in hell I could invite him, Mia. Even if my dad wouldn’t lose literally all of his shit if he found out, I wouldn’t do that.”
“It’s not like he would know,” I mutter, but at this point, I’m out of steam on this argument. Even if she gave in and agreed to invite him, I would be too afraid she’d make Vince feel unwelcome now.
“No,” she says, raising her eyebrows and shaking her head.
“Well, I’m not on board for a party anyway,” I tell her with a quick shrug. “If you want to hang out, I can hang out, but I can’t get away for a whole night with drinking and… the governor’s son’s kind of a twatwaffle anyway, so…”
“You won’t come to my party because I don’t want to invite Vince Morelli,” she says, staring at me in disbelief.
“It’s not because of that,” I say, trying to brush it off.
“Bullshit. Hoes before bros, bitch. What are you doing?”
“I’m always the one that makes sacrifices,” I snap. I don’t mean to say it, even if it’s true. “I’m always the one who comes to the group hangout even though you invited the chick who made out with Jensen when we were dating, or totally overlooks the fact that—knowing how much I liked him, you made out with Jace at the Fourth of July cookout, or—actually, can people just stop making out with every guy I’m interested in? Hey, maybe you can go make out with Vince now, or did I finally pick someone too beneath you?”
Lena’s jaw hangs open, disbelieving that her passive bestie is the one being a bitch for once.
“You need to take some fucking Midol,” she informs me, before ditching me to head to her first class alone.
---
Unsurprisingly, after that stupid fight with Lena, my day drags ass. I do finally perk up when I get to my class with Vince, even if he gets there just before the bell again.
At least when class is over, he doesn’t rush out again. I walk out with him.
“You look tired,” he observes.
“Thanks,” I return, dryly. He’s not wrong though.
Flicking a glance in my direction, he asks, “Wanna get out of here?”
I blink in surprise. “What do you mean?”
Cocking his head to the side, he says, “Let’s bail.”
“You want to ditch?”
“We can get some pizza before you have to pick up the kids.”
That’s an offer too tempting to refuse, and since I did alienate my lunch companion this morning, I spent lunch studying instead of eating.
“Will we get in trouble?” I ask.
In response, Vince rolls his eyes.
Twenty minutes later, sitting across from Vince as we split an enormous sausage pizza, I feel confident we made the right decision.
Picking a piece of sausage off and preparing to toss it in my mouth, I say, “Man, I never get toppings.”
Eyes wide, he says, “Why?”
Chewing and swallowing the piece of sausage, I say, “Kids. They just like cheese. Or pepperoni, so they can pick it off and still only eat the cheese.”
“Makes sense,” he says, breaking off a second piece of pizza. A gooey gob of cheese stretches until it finally breaks, and he piles it on top before taking a bite.
“This place is good,” I say, taking a drink from the red tinted plastic cup.
“You’ve never been here?”
I shake my head no. “We thought about trying it a couple times, but never did.”
Truth is, they just never have any good enough specials. There’s another pizza place nearby where you can get the same size pizza for less than half the price.
“How long have you lived here?” he asks, glancing at me across the table.
“Three years. I mean, we still lived in Chicago before that, but we were in the metro area. Before that, we lived in Boston—my mom’s actually from there. And then we lived way the hell outside of Chicago for a little while. My mom moved us in with her boyfriend and his sister and her three kids. It was terrible. Luckily the stress of living in a hell house broke that relationship down in a matter of months, but then my mom met this guy, Frank, and they started seeing each other. Frank lived in this neighborhood, and he wanted my mom to move closer—or so she said, because they were going to live together. Now, I don’t want to shock you to death here, but it’s outside of what we can afford—literally double what we were paying for our last place, but it was totally fine, because she and Frank were going to be together and Frank made a comfortable living.”
“But that never happened,” he surmised, nodding.
“It didn’t, because Frank? Married. So, we were stuck in a year and a half lease, living in a rental house we couldn’t afford, and now here we are.”
“Why did you guys stay after the year and a half?”
I throw my hands up in a dramatic shrug. “She said she didn’t want to uproot us again. I didn’t complain, because I like living in a house instead of an apartment, but the stress of living so far above our means is… not awesome. We have to pay so much for rent and utilities that, as you saw at the grocery store, we don’t have money to live.”
“That sucks,” he says, sympathetically.
“It does. And our lease is going to be up here soon, but I don’t think she’s going to renew again. Her boyfriend now lives in the city, and I don’t know how she thinks to cram all of us in his two-bedroom apartment, but it seems like that’s her new plan.”
“He have kids?”<
br />
“No. He’s young.” I shake my head, fatigued just thinking about my mother’s relationships.
“Bet you’ll be glad to go to college, get away from it all,” he says.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to afford it. Lena’s going to Boston College; she wanted me to go there with her, but there’s no way. I’m going to take a year off, get a job, get everything sorted. Then we’ll see.”
“They have scholarships,” he pointed out.
I shrug, not really wanting to talk about it. “What about you? Are you going off to college, or staying local?”
“No college,” he says, looking at the pizza instead of me.
Frowning, I ask, “Why?” It’s not like his family can’t afford it.
His lips tug up in a tiny, humorless smile. “Don’t need it in my line of work.”
Ah, well… sure. I swallow, watching him as he continues to avoid my gaze. “Is it… um… I mean, obviously I only know what I’ve seen in the movies and TV shows, but you couldn’t just opt out, if you wanted?”
Shaking his head slightly, he says, “No. Mateo would have to let me out, and he never would.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s an asshole.”
I nod, glancing down at my pizza. “Who’s Mateo again? He’s the boss? Or…?”
“Yeah, more or less. His dad’s still the head of the family from a patriarchal sense, but Mateo’s the de facto head.”
“Is it like The Sopranos?” I ask, immediately feeling dumb when he smirks at me.
“No.” He laughs a little, dropping his pizza on the plate. “Actually, my family’s not exactly what you’re thinking. We’re not part of the original Sicilian mafia. Al Capone, all that stuff you’ve seen—that’s not really us.”
“Oh. It’s not? But I thought…”
“No. My family started it here—not in Italy, I’ve never been there, I probably never will. We aren’t them, it’s just… we’re an Italian crime family that goes back four generations—what are people gonna call us, you know?”
“So you’re not…?” I’m frowning, confused. “What’s the difference?”
“We just do things our own way. We’re like self-made bad guys, I guess. Think of the actual mob like old money, and my family like new money. Outsiders might just have one name for us, but to us, there’s a distinction. Like, in the actual mafia, it’s not as blood-obsessed as my family. We have people—soldiers, associates—who aren’t related to us, but the core people? All family. With only one exception, all blood related. Our family has broods of children—my father’s one of seven. It’s patriarchal—Mateo’s dad was the boss before him, his dad was the boss before him, his dad was the boss before him. Mateo doesn’t have a son yet, but when he does…”
“Next boss,” I conclude.
He nods once. “Unless something happened to interrupt the line, of course. If someone ever successfully assassinates Mateo, things might change.”
“Jeeze,” I say, eyes wide. “No love lost?”
“Hm?”
I smile slightly. “It’s just weird to hear someone speak so casually of a family member potentially being assassinated.”
“They’re all bastards,” he says, lowly. “Every man in my family. Mateo’s line’s the worst though. His dad’s a sick fuck, and Mateo didn’t turn out much better.”
“What about your dad?” I ask, playing with my straw.
“Sick fuck. If the last name is Morelli and they possess a penis, just assume they’re sick fucks.”
I crack a smile. “You’re not a sick fuck.”
“We’ll see,” he says, as if it doesn’t really matter. Picking up his pizza, he says, “Anyway, we shouldn’t really be talking about this.”
“I like getting to know things about your life,” I tell him.
Nodding slightly, he says, “I understand that, but I don’t want to involve you in that stuff. I want to keep you separate.”
“I won’t say anything to anyone,” I tell him, plucking another piece of sausage off my pizza. “It must be exhausting, worrying about keeping your whole life secret and segmented like that. You don’t have to do that with me.”
I look up and catch him watching me, a fond gleam in his eye that instantly unleashes a swarm of butterflies in my stomach. I offer a shy smile in response, then I ruin it by popping another sausage into my mouth.
Chapter Eight
“Your boyfriend was talking to some other chick before school—they looked cozy.”
I look up as Lena’s tray smacks the cafeteria table, noting she looks both smug and bitchy. “Excuse me?”
“Just thought I’d tell you,” she states.
“What girl?” I ask, frowning slightly.
“A really pretty one. Think Minka Kelly. I don’t have any classes with her, so I don’t know.” Affecting a fake look of surprise, she says, “I guess I won’t have to make out with him after all!”
I roll my eyes, wishing she’d just let it go. We’re talking again, but she’s still making the odd snide comment. I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, and I’m not apologizing this time just to keep the peace.
I ignore her comment, glancing around the cafeteria. “Is she here? Point her out to me.”
She rolls her eyes, picking up one half of her turkey wrap. “I don’t know, I didn’t look.”
I wrinkle up my nose, picking at the crust of my peanut butter and jelly. “Great. Well, thanks for that.”
Sighing heavily, she says, “Jesus. I’ll find out.”
“He’s not even my boyfriend,” I mutter. Our lack of label hasn’t come up again the few times we’ve hung out lately, but I don’t imagine he’s changed his mind.
“You obviously want him to be,” she says, unimpressed. “You have such shit taste in men, Mia.”
“You don’t even know him,” I point out.
“Nor do I want to,” she replies, popping the top off her green tea. “Blaine’s into you; you should go out with Blaine.”
Wrinkling my nose up, I say, “Blaine’s too polo team.”
“He’s not on the polo team. We don’t have a polo team. I mean, water polo, but…”
“He’s on the rowing team. He’s too…all-American, polo shirt wearing, Harvard-going…”
Nodding in fake agreement, she says, “Yeah, guys with actual futures are the worst. You’re right. Good call. Don’t know what I was thinking.”
“He’s just not my type.”
She rolls her eyes, clearly unimpressed with whatever my type is. “You should get a prison pen pal, then you can meet someone more your type.”
“Why don’t we talk about something else,” I suggest, growing bored of her criticism.
“Look, I just don’t want to see you get hurt—figuratively or literally. If they go all Taken on your ass, you don’t have Liam Neeson to bail you out.”
“Hey, Liam Neeson could be my dad, we don’t know,” I joke.
Shaking her head at me like I’m the novelty of her life, she says, “How did I ever find you?”
---
The one night I’m not having trouble sleeping, I’m jostled awake by the weight of a body curling up beside me.
I don’t immediately wake up—at least, not without a fight. It’s dark, I’m bleary, and a glance at my alarm clock shows me it’s just after 3am.
I sigh, rolling over. Allan must’ve had a bad dream, and Mom must not be home.
Only it isn’t Allan. It’s Vince. In my bed, at 3am.
My eyes go wide, still burning from sleep, but… well, I don’t understand what the hell is going on.
“Vince?” I murmur.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
I blink, rolling over and double checking the clock. Yep, 3am. I turn back to Vince, frowning in confusion. “Um… what are you doing here?”
“Just wanted to see you,” he says quietly.
I want to say he could’ve called, but he still hasn’t given me h
is phone number. I asked. He said no. Still, I’m not sure how he arrived at “I know, I’ll break into her house again and crawl into her bed while she sleeps.”
“You’re such a creeper,” I say lightly, reaching out and brushing my hand along his cheek.
He cracks a smile, but my mood dips when I realize he looks sad.
Curling closer to him, I ask, “What’s wrong?”
He doesn’t answer, just scoots closer, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me against him. We don’t speak for a long time, he just holds me, and I do my best to hold him back. My mind works harder than it needs to, guessing what might be wrong. The night of the fire slips to the front of my mind, and I wonder if he could have done something like that again. I don’t want to know if he did, but I’ll listen if he needs to tell me.
A wave of fierce protectiveness rolls over me and I hug him tighter.
After I squeeze him, it seems to bring him to life. His grip loosens enough for him to lean back and look down at me, but instead of speaking, he leans in and kisses me. Unprepared, I gasp against his mouth, and he wastes no time, deepening the kiss. Arousal stirs within me again, and I’m hyper aware we’re in my bed. I can’t afford to turn into a lust-monster at 3am in my own bed. This time it’s his hand that slides up my shirt, and because I’m in bed and wasn’t expecting company, I’m braless. His hand comes up to palm my breast, startling me, then his lips leave mine and begin a trail down the sensitive skin of my neck instead.
“Oh,” I murmur, failing in my attempt to stifle a moan as gooseflesh rises up all over my body. “Vince.” I brace a hand on his shoulder, the other on his side, and somehow he’s already on top of me. I don’t try to move him off, but I open my mouth to tell him we need to keep a lid on things—I don’t get to, though, as his mouth is on mine again, sweeping the thoughts clear out of my head. The weight of him against my pelvis has me throbbing between my legs, and we’ve barely even kissed.
“We need to—” I try again to tell him we need to hit the brakes, but he’s kissing me again, and then my hands are in his hair, his hands under my shirt, thumbs brushing nipples, and the common sense is gone. Sensation takes over, each caress of his hand feeding my need.
