True North

by Nicole French

  “Holy shit!” he crows. “I just took your cousin to town, baby. Straight up owned his ass in horseshoes, my first time out!” He pulls a wad of crumpled Brazilian currency out of his pocket and shows off his spoils. “Fifty-five reais, yo! Steak dinner on me!”

  I can’t help it. I giggle, looking down at the bills and back up at him. “You know that’s about fifteen dollars, right?”

  Nico’s face falls slightly, but he gives me a horsey grin anyway before he tackles me with another hug and a bunch of kisses around the neck. Whether it’s the thrill of competition or just having fun, he’s definitely riled up. Within a few seconds, so am I.

  “Beers on the beach, then,” he says as his tongue flickers against my neck. “Damn, you smell good. Are you wearing something new?”

  “I think it’s the flowers back here. Bibi loves jasmine.”

  “No, it’s you.” He continues to trail his nose down my neck. “Do you know how long it’s been?” he asks in between kisses that grow longer every time. I open to them, taking him deeper. Each one works to banish my doubts.

  “Um, about three days?” I wonder as I wrap my arms around his neck, amazed, as I always am, at just how easily he’s able to distract me from my worries.

  “Baby, are you losing your memory?” Nico leans back and frames my face with his hands. “I had to do three straight shifts back to back to get this time off, remember?”

  I grin. Oh, I remember. Three straight shifts meant nine days of barely seeing him. It meant me hoofing it up to the station twice just to sneak kisses in the bunkroom. Both times we’d been interrupted by a call, and then we were on a plane to Brazil. It’s been a very long time, at least by our standards.

  I pop on my toes so I can kiss him, long and hard, enjoying the faint tastes of beer and barbecue that mingle with his unique flavor.

  “Mr. Soltero,” I say. “Who do you think you’re talking to? It’s been exactly twelve days.” Kiss. “Four hours.” Kiss. “Twenty-four minutes.” Kiss. “And thirteen seconds since you were last inside me.”

  Nico raises an eyebrow. “Where’s your stopwatch?”

  I giggle. “Okay, maybe I made up the last three. But it has been over twelve days.”

  His teeth graze my jawline before he fixes his mouth on the skin just under my ear and sucks, hard, until it pops from his mouth. “Exactly,” he murmurs as he traces his tongue around to the other side. “Too. Fuckin’. Long.”

  He takes my hand and places it on the tented front of his pants. He’s hard and long, and I take hold of him and squeeze, enjoying the way he moans in my mouth as I do it.

  “Tell me you need it,” he says, his voice lowering half an octave as I squeeze again. “Shit.”

  “Need what?” I squeeze again. This time he groans slightly.

  “You need what?” he repeats. “Don’t play with me here, baby. Just fuckin’ say it, Layla. I need to hear you say it.”

  I should say what I came out here to mull over. I should tell him the news I only just found out a few minutes ago myself. But like always, I’m not thinking clearly when he’s pressed between my legs, when his full mouth is working that strange voodoo on my lips, my jaw, my earlobe, my neck.

  “Your cock,” I mutter as he drops kisses down my chest, testing the collar of my dress to find the sensitive hollow between my breasts. “Fuck, Nico, I need your cock.”

  I don’t know if it’s pregnancy hormones or what, but I’m all over the map. One minute I’m about ready to cry out of anxiety and fear, and the next, I can only think of tearing off this man’s pants. It doesn’t matter that my family is literally on the other side of the house. It doesn’t matter that I can still hear their voices clearly filtering through the late afternoon breeze. I need this man. Inside me. Freaking yesterday.

  “Your wish is my command, baby,” Nico growls before capturing my lips in yet another soul-searing kiss as his hands drop down to take two harsh handfuls of his favorite part of my body.

  “Nico.” I try to push him away, but it’s hard, too hard. Especially when I’m also half-clawing at his shirt, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him closer. He just groans and kisses me like he’s a starving man, practically eating me alive right there in the yard.

  “What in the hell is going on here?”

  Nico and I fly apart to either side of the patio, but neither of us can hide our flushed faces, swollen lips, the way Nico’s shirt is half-untucked and unbuttoned a bit too low, or the way my dress strap is falling off my shoulder.

  My father glares at us, then marches through the vines, kicking them away viciously. “What were you doing to her?” he demands of Nico.

  Nico, to his credit, stands his ground as my dad approaches. He doesn’t run or skulk away like a naughty teenager. He holds his chest out firm and crosses his arms over it, like he’s ready for anything my dad has to say.

  “Dad, calm down,” I try weakly. “Nothing was going to happen.” Other than the fact that something definitely already has, of course.

  “Nothing was going to happen?” Dad growls. “His hands are all over you, and nothing was going to happen?”

  “He’s my boyfriend!” I cut back without thinking. “What do you think we do? Hold hands and stare at each other all day?”

  Nico snorts, but immediately shuts up when my father practically castrates him with a hard, black glare. Still, Nico says nothing––just continues to meet that stare head-on.

  “What are you doing with him?” Dad asks me. “This is not my daughter. My daughter does not sneak away with boys at a family party. This is not what our family does!”

  I can’t help an eye roll. “Seriously? Go check the pantry, Dad. Pretty sure Luciano and his girlfriend are having a really good time in there.”

  “Well, my daughter does not!” Dad roars. “Especially not with this…this…”

  “This what?” Nico’s voice is low, but I can hear the shaking. “This what, Dr. Barros?”

  My heart rises in my throat. It didn’t take long, but it’s been clear this confrontation was going to happen all along. I had just hoped to push it until the end.

  Dad looks Nico up and down, dragging his gaze over his pants, his stained shirt, the tattoos peeking out from under his sleeves.

  “Keep your hands off my daughter.”

  Nico steps forward, his chest puffing out slightly. “With all due respect, sir… No.”

  Dad stomps his foot hard enough that I swear the ground shakes a little. “This is my family’s house. My family’s property. And if you cannot respect me, if you cannot respect them, you can leave. I will pay for your ticket back to New York myself.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Dad opens his mouth again, his face twisted deeply with his anger. And then his pager pierces the air. A few seconds later, he starts, as if he has just realized what’s happening. Slowly, gradually, the flush falls from his face, and he pulls his pager off his belt to check the number. With a long exhale and a death glare at Nico, he whips his cell phone off his belt and flips it open to dial the number that’s appeared.

  “Alô,” he says when a voice answers almost immediately.

  Nico and I stand silently while Dad speaks in rapid Portuguese to the other person, too fast for me to follow. There’s too much specialized language for me to understand––I’m guessing it’s medical jargon. They continue a brief exchange, which clearly doesn’t please my father, because by the time he hangs up the phone, his face is back to being bright red.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, suddenly aware that he’s pulling his car keys out of his pocket. “We’re not going, are we? We just got here a few hours ago.”

  I look back at Nico, who shrugs. Fifteen minutes ago, he had the biggest smile on his face that I’ve seen in weeks. He’s actually having a good time, and the last thing I want him to do is have to jump into a car with a man who looks like he would rather just take him to the airport and damn the cost of a ticket back to the States.


  Dad wrinkles his nose and blows out another long exhale. “I have to go,” he says curtly. “To São Paulo for a surgery. I will be back tomorrow.” He frowns at us. “You will stay here in Guarapari with Bibi and Manuel and your cousins until the party. I will be back for that.”

  Nico raises his brows slightly at me, and immediately I know he’s thinking the same thing. With my dad gone, we’d have the apartment to ourselves, with only the housemaid. We’d have space to do…a lot of things.

  To tell him, an internal voice says. Okay, sure, that’s totally what I was thinking about, looking at the way Nico’s broad shoulders and chest muscles ripple through his button-down shirt. Absolutely.

  I turn back to my dad. “That’s okay. We can just stay in Vila Velha with Benedita. You can ask her to chaperone if you really need that.”

  “You will stay in Guarapari,” Dad practically spits out. “Clearly someone needs to keep an eye on you, and Benedita is not up to the challenge. Manuel will take me back to the airport today. He will pick up your bags on his way back.”

  “Dad, come on,” I try again. “Please don’t make a big deal about this.”

  He glares at me. “You cannot possibly think I would allow my unmarried daughter to stay alone at my apartment…with him. Don’t be a fool, Layla!” He pushes a hand through his thick salt-and-peppered hair. “Although, maybe it’s too late for that.”

  I wilt, crossing an arm over my stomach reflexively. If this is what he has to say about a kiss in the garden, a child out of wedlock will probably get me disowned. Although, honestly, I’m starting not to care.

  “Dr. Barros.” Nico’s deep voice cuts across the yard, turning my dad’s deadly glare on him. My cousins, clearly used to my father’s temper, quiet at the sound of the conflict. “I think that’s enough, sir,” Nico says in a tone that is calmer, lower than my dad’s, but somehow just as threatening. He takes my hand, and squeezes. “We got it.”

  “Stay here,” Dad spits, and then turns on his heel and leaves.

  ~

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Nico

  As upset as Layla obviously is when her dad leaves for São Paulo, I’m not a bit sorry he’s gone for a few days, even if the whole point of coming here was to see him in the first place. I can’t pussyfoot around it anymore. The dude’s a straight-up asshole.

  I don’t care that he dealt with some bullshit when he was younger. Looking around what his family has here, what he had back in the States, I can promise you I dealt with a lot more. And I don’t fuckin’ treat people the way he treats his daughter. Period.

  So yeah, it probably wasn’t the best thing in the world for him to see me getting handsy with Layla. And yeah, he might have seen a lot more if he had interrupted about a minute and a half later. I’d probably be facedown in the pool right now, or on my way back to the airport.

  But I also kind of don’t give a shit. It’s fucked up, but I kind of wanted the guy to know—she doesn’t belong to him anymore. Shit, she doesn’t belong to me either, but she’s mine just the same. And if I want to mess around behind some palm trees, I know she will too. So he can fuck off about it.

  Now that he’s gone for a bit, Layla and I are both able to relax a little, even if it is with a bunch of other cousins around. Most of the neighbors clear out before dinner, which ends up being the leftover spread that we just pick at while we spend the rest of the evening lounging around the open-air living room, watching soccer with her cousins. It reminds me a lot of my family, the way they tease, laugh, and shout at each other over the table. The older ones have started families of their own, so there are a few little kids around. Luciano and David, Bibi’s sons, have pretty much accepted me––a hell of a lot more than their uncle has, anyway, and Bibi keeps finding excuses to kiss my cheek. If it weren’t for Dr. Barros and his shitty attitude, I’d probably like this side of Layla’s family. A lot.

  Layla starts to let go more too after her dad leaves. She lounges with Carolina and Marcella, Luciano’s girlfriend, joking around in stunted Portuguese that, from what I can tell, is better than she thinks. I can only catch maybe fifteen percent of what’s said, but I’m proud of my girl. Layla laughs as she takes in her aunt’s stories, giggles when one of her cousins makes a crazy joke. Her happiness shines. She’s practically glowing. It’s a fuckin’ joy to see.

  So I’m not even mad when Bibi sticks me on a stiff trundle in Luciano’s room and Layla on the floor in another with Carolina and Marcella. This house is packed for the rest of the weekend, with three or four people shoved into the four bedrooms while everyone prepares for the banquet coming up. Even though I’m dying to finish what we started behind the house, I actually don’t want to go around disrespecting Bibi and Manuel for the same reason I kind of want to get it on in Dr. Barros’s apartment just to piss him off. It’s just about how they treat Layla and me––with basic goddamn respect. It’s also obvious that every second Layla spends getting to know her family erases some of the sad-puppy look that comes when her dad snaps at her. So, yeah. I’ll take all the blue balls in the world if it keeps making my girl shine.

  As luck would have it, the next day Bibi and her kids are pretty much consumed with prepping for Luciano’s graduation party. Apparently this kind of thing is a really big deal here––they have to leave all day, and although they invite us to come tag along to their clothes fittings and last-minute shopping, it’s clear they would probably get it done faster without us. Manuel stays behind, but is too absorbed with watching soccer to do more than wave when Layla and I tell him we’re going to the nearby beach for the day. Dr. Barros seems to be the only one who gives a damn about us having a chaperone.

  Which is how I end up walking on a mostly deserted stretch of fuckin’ paradise, hand in hand with my girl. Since, like she told me, most of the people in this neighborhood work in the city during the week, everywhere on the beach that the mostly empty neighborhood borders is pretty much deserted. Just dunes and cliffs of yellow-white sand, bright blue water rippling through lagoons, and gullies that lead out to a wider beach and the ocean beyond. And nobody here but me and my girl. Me and Layla.

  “You okay, baby?” I ask her after we choose a spot to hang out for a while at the base of one of the dunes, next to a lagoon so clear I can see all the way to the bottom.

  I don’t know why. But I haven’t been able to shake the feeling like something is up with her. She’s been happy, but also looks…I don’t know. Preoccupied.

  Layla pauses. “I’m fine. Why?”

  I pull a corner of one of the big beach towels tight and give her a look. “Layla. I know you better than anyone else. I know when that beautiful brain is moving like crazy, and you’ve been thinking up a storm all morning. So, que pa’o, mami?”

  Layla’s rose-petal mouth quirks a little at the Spanish––she likes it when I call her mami, of all things. It’s not like the other women I’ve known––the ones who think it’s exotic or some shit like that. Layla’s been around my family and me enough to know it’s the most common word in the world. Some men use it for every girl they know: their mom, their sisters, their friends, their lovers. Layla’s been in New York long enough that some random dude has probably called her mami on the street. But hopefully she knows that from me, it means she’s family. At least, that’s what I hope I’m seeing when her eyes sparkle like that.

  “I just…” She sits down on the towel and leans back, draping one arm over her stomach. “Do you think it’s weird that I like it better when he’s not around?”

  I sit down on the towel next to her, and then, by habit, move through a set of sit-ups while we talk. I did another long run this morning before everyone got up, but my belly is gonna turn to mush with all of this rich food if I’m not careful.

  “Who?” I ask as I touch an elbow to my knee. “Your dad? No, I don’t. I’m not gonna lie, sweetie. I think he’s a dick, especially to you. But I don’t have to like him because I’m not his daughter.”

  L
ayla’s eyes brighten as she watches me push through a bunch of Russian twists. “What? Oh. Yeah.”

  I stop moving and grin up at her. “Should I stop doing this while we’re talking, blue eyes?”

  She blushes and looks away toward the ocean. “No. I can handle it.”

  She doesn’t look like she can handle it if her flushed skin is any indication. Even just being here a few days is giving her a glow, even more than before. But I like the effect too much to stop, so I start doing some boat raises instead.

  “What’s a chan-cle-ra?” Layla asks a few minutes later.

  I do three more reps, then stop. “What’s a what?”

  “A… whatever your sister says when Allie’s being naughty. Sometimes you tell her she better be careful or your mom might come after her with it too.”

  I sit all the way up and scrunch up my face for a moment, then burst out laughing as I finally figure out what the hell she’s talking about. “Oh! You mean a chancleta?”

  “Yeah,” Layla says, nudging me on the shoulder. “What’s that?”

  I grin. “It’s a house slipper. Like your shoes.” I gesture toward her flip-flops. “It’s sort of a joke, something Puerto Ricans say, right? You do something bad, your mom’s gonna smack you with her chancleta, la chancla. You talk in church, you’re gonna get slapped. You say something rude, she’ll fling it across the room at your head. And it always hits, no matter what.”

  “So it’s just a joke?”

  I turn my head from side to side, considering. “No. I mean, it’s mostly a joke. We make it a joke. But we all got smacked with that or plenty of other things when we misbehaved. I’m sure Maggie does it with Allie––she always gets scared if you bring it up, you know?”

  Layla nods. “I get that. My dad…he used to do that with the kitchen spoons. The wooden ones. He did it until I was about ten or so.”

  For a second, it feels like the glory of the day dims a little. I don’t know what Sergio did. I don’t know what Layla did. If you asked me yesterday if I thought people spanking their kids was okay, I would have said sure. I would have said there are going to be times where your four-year-old probably isn’t going to listen to reason.