I glance back at Nico, who is now snoring audibly, and gingerly stand up from the bed. A stack of folded t-shirts sits on the armchair, so I grab one, slip it on, and tiptoe out of the room and into the kitchen, hoping to God his sister is an early riser.
Once I’m safe in the living room, I dial Quinn’s number. It goes to her voicemail, and I leave a hushed message letting her know where I am and that I’m safe.
“Don’t worry!” I whisper before hanging up.
When I creep back into the bedroom, Nico is lying on his back, blinking up at the ceiling. He glances at me and smiles gently. There it is, I think as my knees tremble. That smile. My fucking kryptonite.
“Hey,” Nico says, sitting up. The blankets fall down, revealing the expanse of his defined chest and a few tiers of mouth-watering abs that point to exactly nothing underneath the thin fabric. “I thought maybe you’d left.”
I shake my head. “No. But I should get going.”
I sit on the edge of the bed and tug off his t-shirt so I’ll be able to pull on my dress, which I struggle to turn the right-side back out after I find it on the floor. Behind me, the sheets rustle. Nico’s legs slide to either side of me as he wraps his arms around my naked torso, pulling me close. The feel of his smooth, warm skin against my back is enough to make me pause and arch my neck, welcoming the feel of his body around me. How, how am I going to walk away from this again?
“I meant what I said,” he murmurs against my shoulder.
I freeze in his arms, and then crane my head around to look back at him. “Yeah?”
Honestly, I’m not sure what he means. We both said a lot of things last night. And did a lot of things.
He meets my gaze, unblinking and without a trace of guile. “Yeah. I need you, Layla.”
Slowly the fear and anxiety over losing him seeps out of my body, replaced with relief and elation. I should have known I couldn’t fight this. I couldn’t really ever say no to him. And apparently, by some miracle…he can’t say no to me either.
I twist around to straddle him.
“Yeah?” I ask again, stamping a kiss on his mouth. “Yeah?”
I give another, and then another, and giggle as he flips me onto my back and pummels my neck and shoulders with kisses every time I ask “Yeah?”
Finally, Nico stops, hovering over my face so we are nose to nose.
“You sure you want to be with a big fuckin’ loser like me, Layla?” he asks softly.
The doubt on his handsome face just about breaks my heart. I want to tell him he’s not a loser, that he’s determined and honest and honorable and dedicated. I want to tell him he’s one of the best people I’ve ever met. I want to tell him that all he has to do is touch me and my entire being, mind, body, spirit, all come alight. But instead I just lift my head to kiss him lightly.
“Yeah,” I say as I fall back on the pillow. “I do.”
“Then I’ll stay,” he says. He touches his forehead to mine. “I’ll stay for you.”
Before I can take a second to comprehend what he just said, Nico gives me another drowsy kiss, this one long and thorough. Then he rolls onto his back and pulls me securely into the crook of his shoulder with my head resting on his chest. Together we sigh, long and content. This is where I belong.
“What is this?” I ask as I play over the tattooed symbols over his heart. “Is it a clock or something?”
Nico doesn’t move his head, but his other hand falls over mine, stilling it on his chest.
“It’s a compass.”
“A compass?” I blink. It’s...confusing. “Are you secretly a sailor? Do you take to the Hudson at night, like a weird nautical superhero?”
Nico snorts. “Yeah, no. But I bet you’d like to see me in tights, wouldn’t you, NYU?”
I punch him lightly in the side. “Seriously. What is it?”
He sighs. “Um...well...you know I was incarcerated for a while...”
“You were in juvenile detention,” I correct him. “That’s not the same thing.”
He unravels his arms and lies on his side so we’re facing each other. His eyes are dark and solemn.
“Baby, jail’s jail. They just call it something different when you’re under eighteen.” He weaves his fingers with mine and continues his story.
“I was sent to Tryon when I was fifteen, like I told you. It’s about two hours from here, outside of Albany, middle of fuckin’ nowhere. You hear gunshots during the day instead of at night, because of all the deer hunters. It’s a big property with bunkhouses, a main hall, classrooms, all of it surrounded by a nice razor-wire fence.”
Nico watches as he rubs his thumb over my knuckles, but I know right now he doesn’t see the way our hands fit. He’s lost in another place.
“They dictated everything to us. Uniforms. How many books we could have in our rooms. Where to keep our fuckin’ underwear.” He scowls. “We couldn’t go anywhere without being watched by the guards. Up at seven, brush our teeth, wash our face, take a piss. All with some dude watching.
“Everyone was angry. Everyone there was fucked up, drugged up. A lot of fights. A lot of lockdowns. There was a kid in my bunkhouse who once swallowed screws that he tore out of the furniture with his fingernails. That’s how bad he wanted out of there.”
I don’t say anything now, just listen in shock. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. Nico just plows on.
“I was there for a year and a half,” he says softly. “I didn’t see my mom or my brother or sisters––they couldn’t––well, they couldn’t come. K.C. came a couple of times, but that was it.”
Still I stay quiet. There’s something I’m missing here, but I don’t want to pry. Not when he’s already opening up. But what would keep a mother from visiting her child for more than a year?
“Anyway,” Nico says, “before I left, I had this teacher, Ms. Alvarez. She knew what I’d done––everyone knew, because everyone did it. I wasn’t the first one to knock over a bodega too many times. I wasn’t the first one whose family couldn’t get food stamps because their moms were undocumented.”
He looks straight at me for a second, checking for my reaction at that revelation about his mother. “Gabe was just six, you know. Six-year-olds eat a lot.”
“I bet they do,” I say softly.
Suddenly, things start to make sense. Why he and his family would be crowded into a one-bedroom apartment. Why he had to get a job at nineteen to support his siblings. Why his mother wouldn’t be able to visit her son at a detention center, a place that would almost certainly require identification.
“Wait,” I say as things start to piece together. “When you were released, who did the state give custody? You were a minor, right?”
Nico swallows and nods. “Remember how I told you that K.C.’s mom and mine are tight?”
I nod.
He shrugs. “They grew up together. Tia was our legal guardian until I turned eighteen and could take over.” Under my cheek, I can feel his body tighten. “Fucked up, huh?”
I frown. Something wasn’t adding up. “I thought you said your mom was from Puerto Rico. That would make her a U.S. citizen, wouldn’t it?”
Nico sighs and runs a hand over his head. “She is. But she was born in Cuba. Her parents fled when Castro came into power and ended up in Puerto Rico. I––honestly, Layla, I don’t know the whole story. I don’t even know how she got here, only that she followed Alba, K.C.’s mom. My mother’s had a hard life, running from place to place, trying to find some place that’s better. She doesn’t really like to talk about the details.”
It doesn’t take much for me to piece the rest together. A woman who’s lived her life on the run, taking shelter where she was able. How much she must have been taken advantage of because of her status. Four kids from three different fathers. A part of me wonders what the story is there. How many of those men promised to help her with citizenship only to leave her when it got hard.
“She could get am
nesty,” I pipe up. “There’s got to be some kind of asylum she can claim because of the Castro regime. You and your siblings could sponsor her. There’s no way they’d make her leave her entire family.” I sit up, suddenly full of energy.
But Nico just chews on his lip. “I––Layla, you think I haven’t looked into that before?” He shakes his head. “Lawyers cost money, baby. Money we don’t have. And Ma...she’s too scared. You don’t know, baby. What do you think happens every time one of the buildings in our neighborhood gets torn down so fat cats can build a new high-rise? ICE, baby. Immigrations fuckers are everywhere, and a lot of times, they look just like me.”
He pulls me back down on his chest before I can say something else. I open my mouth, full of arguments, but then realize I don’t know nearly enough about this issue to make any of them. This isn’t a fear my family has ever had. My father has been a naturalized citizen since I was a little kid. He’s only ever been in this country legally.
“Anyway,” Nico pivots away from his mother. “Ms. Alvarez came to see me before I left for Tryon. She was my English teacher, but she always used to catch me doodling on the scrap paper she gave the class––for notes, since a lot of us couldn’t afford notebooks and school supplies. So, she brought me a sketchbook to take with me. She said people get lost in places like Tryon, and I would need to keep track of myself in there to find my true north. Especially so that when I came back to my ma, I’d still be her Nico.” He chuckles slightly and squeezes my fingers. “Corny, huh?”
I don’t laugh at all.
“No,” I say as I study the compass on his chest more closely. Up close, I can see that the edges are done with a design that looks something like a barbed wire. “I don’t think that’s corny at all.”
Nico shrugs, the action causing the tattoos over his chest and shoulder to ripple.
“Well, corny or not, she was right,” he says. “I went in there one way and came out another. But when the other kids were fighting or goading the guards, getting doped up by aides or locked up in solitary, I just drew. I wasn’t good at it or anything, but it kept me focused. I drew my family and my friends. Things that reminded me of home and where I came from. I drew the places I wanted to go in my life, the things I wanted to see or do. And I drew this and had it put over my heart when I finally got out.”
“True north,” I murmur, sliding my fingers over the big compass as wide as my hand that’s inked over his chest. “Did you find it?”
Nico gives me a small, sweet smile as he pushes some hair out of my face.
“Not yet, Layla,” he says in a voice so low I can barely hear its vibration. “But I have faith.”
We stare at each other, caught for a minute in a trance. Then Nico sighs and pulls me close again.
“Come on, baby, let’s go back to sleep. It’s too damn early to be up on our day off.”
“What if I’m not tired?” I ask playfully, jabbing him in the side with my fingers.
That gets me flopped on my back again, with Nico peering at me from above. Gone is the sad, melancholy man, and back is that mischievous child that has already stolen my heart. Nico’s still a thief, just of a different sort.
“Oh, I could probably find ways to tire you out again, NYU,” he says with a sly grin, and proceeds to show me just how.
~
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Nico
“So where is your sister?” Layla asks sometime around one in the afternoon.
It’s been hours of sleeping, fucking, sleeping, fucking. No, that’s wrong. I feel like a pussy saying “making love,” but this hasn’t been just sex. If I’m being honest, it’s never just sex with Layla. I’m going to have to get used to that.
So, we’re only a little bit closer to making it out of the bedroom for the day than we were at seven this morning. I ran into the kitchen a couple of times to grab us whatever food I had left in the house. Leftover rice and beans probably isn’t the most nutritious thing I could have given Layla, but it tastes damn good after the workout we’ve had. Now, though, we’ve both had our fills of salty leftovers, so we’ve decided to grab some sandwiches at the diner on the corner before I have to put Layla on a train back to Chinatown. She needs to study, and I am not going to get in the way of my baby’s future. No fuckin’ way.
I shrug on a black hoodie over a t-shirt and jeans while Layla pulls on her dress from last night. Fucking hell. Her coat only goes to her hips, and with those boots on, she’s going to earn a whistle from every motherfucker on the block. Suddenly, the idea of making her ride the train alone sounds absolutely terrible.
I whistle at her anyway, and she blushes, then scowls.
“Shut up,” she jokes, and throws a pillow at me.
I parry it away and pull her flush against me. All of a sudden, I’m starving all over again, and not for food.
“That dress should be burned,” I say as I nibble on her ear. “You have no idea how your ass looks in that thing. It makes me want to do very, very dirty things to you, Ms. Barros.”
“You have a thing for asses, don’t you?” she asks as I nuzzle deeper into her neck.
In response, my hands drift down to grab that exact part of her body, and she squeaks loudly.
“Maybe a little,” I say with a chuckle. “But yours takes the motherfuckin’ cake, baby.”
I squeeze her again before letting go, shaking my head. I’m a little scared to walk outside with her, you wanna know the truth. She has no idea as she ties up her hair into a knot on top of her head and checks herself in the mirror next to my door. She could stop traffic––in this neighborhood, a girl like Layla is every guy’s wet dream.
“Seriously, though,” she says. “Did we wake anyone up last night? Or today, for that matter?”
I shake my head again before putting on my Yankees cap backward. “No, sweetie, there’s no one here but us. My sister’s back with her boyfriend, so her room is empty right now.”
“How often does she come?”
I pick up my clothes off the floor and toss them into the basket next to the armchair. Sitting down on the bed, I start putting on my black Adidas sneakers. “Maggie and Jimmy––that’s Allie’s dad––are kind of...well, they have a hard time with self-control, let’s just put it that way. They try to make it work for Allie’s sake, but sometimes she needs a break. So I keep the room empty for them.”
I don’t tell her that it’s because I’m pretty sure one day Jimmy is going to get locked up himself again. I don’t have proof of it, but I’ve seen my sister applying thick makeup to her cheek or eyebrows one too many times. I’ve talked to her enough times to be told to fuck off, but we grew up with too many of our mom’s shitty boyfriends not to know the signs of an abusive relationship. One day I hope she and Allie will just come to stay. I wouldn’t mind. Jimmy wants to question that, he can talk to me. Or my fist.
Layla watches me like she’s trying to figure something out, then just goes back to putting on her coat.
“How old is your niece?” she asks.
I look up. “Allie’s three.”
“What’s Allie short for?”
“Alejandra, actually,” I clarify with the correct Spanish pronunciation. “But that’s way too serious a name for a baby, you know? So we call her Allie.”
Layla smiles. “That’s cute. I hope I can meet her one day.”
I smile back, and then I shake my head. Whoa. The idea of Layla holding a little black-haired baby sounds way too good to me. You are twenty-six, Nico. She is nineteen. You are both way too young to be thinking about kids.
“How can you afford this apartment by yourself?” Layla interrupts me. “It’s huge.”
I look around, trying to see what she sees. My place isn’t that nice, but it is pretty big as far as New York apartments go, which is why I’ve never moved. I forget that until I go into the rat traps that pass as studios these days. Even though I’m not in one of the ritzier areas of the island, this is still Manhattan, which is
crazy expensive. So when K.C.’s cousin left the city and offered his lease to me, I jumped. Getting a rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan is like winning the lottery.
I finish tying my shoes, stand up, and grab my leather jacket off the back of my desk chair. Then I grin. “Rent control, baby.” I grab Layla’s hand. “Come on, let’s get you something to eat.”
~
Layla
We walk a few blocks over to Broadway, and it’s then I realize just how far uptown we are. The street sign on the corner reads “W 138th Street: Dominican City.” Looking around, I see immediately that this is a completely different world than the streets of lower Manhattan. The buildings, most of them brick apartments and brownstones like the rest of the island, are clearly not as well maintained as in the more affluent and predominantly white neighborhoods below 95th Street. Sprawling stains and graffiti mark up several buildings and their ragged awnings; laundry hangs out to dry from more than one window, even in this cold.
A few blocks from City College, this section of Broadway bustles with a completely different energy, particularly since ninety percent of the voices I hear speak Spanish. About half of the signs on the local businesses, which at first glance include a couple of bodegas, tchotchke shops, a laundromat, and a bunch of restaurants, are written in Spanish as well, and most of the people passing us on the street look like they are either completely or part Hispanic.
Being half-Brazilian myself, I feel like I should belong here. My thick hair and curvy body fit in perfectly with the other girls I see, but I feel whiter than ever as we pass a group of Latinas chatting loudly in a mix of Spanish and English. They are loud and jovial, expansive with slicked bangs, long acrylic nails, gold monogram necklaces, and dark liner ringing their mouths. One catches my eyes for a split second before she yells “Coño!” and launches into a tirade in Spanish that I can’t understand. So very different from the contained mannerisms of my father’s wealthy family in Brazil and my mom’s in Washington.
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