CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Layla
It doesn’t take me long to pack up my books and a few things into an overnight bag once we return to the dorm. Shama and Jamie are out, but I find Quinn sitting on her bed reading when I walk into our room with Nico at my heels, his hands eagerly on my hips. She glances at him curiously, then back at me, and smiles like a cat that just ate the canary.
“Well, hello, there,” she croons, standing up and fluffing her curly ponytail. “You must be FedEx man. I’m Quinn. Roommate. Best friend. You know the drill.”
I can tell Nico wants to laugh by the way his eyes twinkle, but he doesn’t, just extends a big hand out to shake Quinn’s.
“Nico,” he says. “Nice to meet you. How you doin’, Quinn?”
“Not as good as you, I’m guessing,” she says as she sits in her desk chair. “Where are you two kids coming from?”
I tell her about our afternoon at the Cloisters, which has her looking at Nico with obvious approval. Museums are classy places to take someone on a date, and Quinn’s a total snob. She won’t date a guy who wears sneakers to a bar, and she’ll never accept a movie offer (or something equally standard) until her third date. She says she likes to make sure they’re willing to work for it. There is a reason she doesn’t get a lot of dates. I secretly think these kinds of mind games are the reason she’s still a virgin at almost twenty—she can’t find anyone willing to jump through these damn hoops for her.
“So where to now?” she asks, drumming her fingernails on her desktop.
Nico sits down on my mattress while I rifle through my drawers, searching as unobtrusively as possible for underwear that’s appropriately sexy but won’t be uncomfortable the next morning. Hmmm, maybe I should just bring two sets.
“New Jersey,” I say, bracing myself for what I know will be her obvious scowl.
Quinn is from Boston, and the only thing Bostonians look down on more than New Yorkers (specifically Yankees fans) is New Jersey. It’s a constant source of genial conflict in our apartment, considering both Jamie and Shama grew up there. To Quinn, New Jersey is the land of shitty Springsteen cover bands and big-haired bridge-and-tunnel girls. Jamie and Shama just start shouting about Boston and Marky Mark whenever the topic comes up, but Quinn’s opinion never changes. New Jersey isn’t the kind of place you go if you can avoid it.
“Why? What’s over there?” Her face is thankfully blank when I turn around, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Nico doesn’t need to know just how entitled my roommates can be. At least not yet, anyway.
“My friend has an apartment in Hoboken,” he says, repeating the same thing he told me on the train. “I’m housesitting for him for a while. It’s a good place to relax and…uh…study.”
He shoots a devious grin in my direction, and I flush, knowing that Quinn certainly saw that look too. To her credit, she nods approvingly, although the quick flash in her eyes tells me there’s no way she thinks I’m going to do any studying there. Whatever. From out of Nico’s range of sight, I stick my tongue out at her, and she blinks before training her gaze back on Nico.
“I’m going to use the bathroom before we go, sweetie.” With a peck on my cheek, he leaves me alone with Quinn’s imperious attitude.
“Will you stop it?” I hiss, shoving a few other pieces of clothes in my bag before starting on my books. “I love you, but I have a dad of my own if I want someone to give my dates the third-degree.”
“Third-degree, please. It was a couple of questions. I’m just doing my best friend job, babe,” she retorts. She comes next to me so we can speak in low tones Nico won’t be able to hear through the thin walls.
“You never did this before. Not even with Teddy, and you fucking hated him,” I say in a loud whisper.
Teddy was my disaster of a boyfriend from freshman year to whom I lost my virginity. He cheated on me a few weeks later, leaving me furious and heartbroken, though surprisingly not as torn up as I might have expected, all things considered. Just goes to show that I wasn’t really as in love as I’d thought.
“That’s because you were obviously not in love with Teddy,” Quinn echoes my thoughts. “But you are definitely falling for this one, Lay. He’s hot––I’ll give you that. I just want you to be careful.”
“I’m being careful,” I insist, zipping up my bag and grabbing a few cosmetics from the small caboodle on my desk. “Yes, I like him. And I think he likes me too. But we’re just starting this, for Christ’s sake.”
“You’re taking off at a sprint, babe. Your first date was yesterday, and you’re already going home with him for a weekend.” Quinn cocks her head knowingly before she shrugs and goes to flop back down on her neatly made bedspread. “For what it’s worth, he seems nice, even if he does have a temper,” she informs me, ever so nonchalant as she picks up her marketing book and flips through it. “But you don’t really know him yet, and you’re heading off to New Jersey with the guy after, like, five minutes. I worry because I love.”
I soften at her words. I get that she cares. I’m lucky to have three friends like that who watch my back and who are willing to protect me against the shitheads roaming New York. But Nico’s not one of them.
“Thanks, Quinny,” I say as I zip up my bag. “You are the best. I’ll text you later, okay? Just to let you know I’m safe.”
She sighs, then leans over so she can reach into the desk drawer next to her bed.
“Here,” she says. She turns back and flings an unopened box of condoms at me.
I catch them in my chest and look up, grinning. “Really, Quinn? Didn’t know you even had any in stock. I’m impressed.”
“Shut up, you whore,” she orders me, sinking back down in her pillow with a red face. “Like I said, be safe.”
~
The PATH train to Hoboken doesn’t arrive as often as the subway, so Nico and I have about a fifteen-minute wait. Once we’re on, the trip under the Hudson is fast. Our stop is the second one across the water, and after we arrive, Nico immediately walks me down the street in search of food. Both of our stomachs are grumbling, so we find a cheap Chinese place and order some boxes to go before getting a cab to his friend’s apartment.
“So, who’s the friend that owns this place?” I ask once we’re on our way to an address on the outer edge of Hoboken that directly faces Manhattan across the river. My stomach growls—the lo mein smells amazing.
“My boy, K.C.,” Nico says fondly. “My best friend. We’ve known each other since we were kids in the Kitchen. His mom knew my mom, and we lived in the same building, so I was always over at their house.” He leans over conspiratorially to whisper: “Don’t tell my mom, but K.C.’s mom is a better cook.”
I laugh as the cab pulls up outside a building on a darkened road. It doesn’t look dangerous per se—just deserted. The street, which needs to be repaved, is lined with tall, somewhat dilapidated brownstones, remnants of a time when the area had a bit more money. I know enough about Hoboken to know that it’s already in the midst of a revitalization, considering its proximity to New York and the availability of space to young professionals. But I wouldn’t want to walk alone at night here.
Nico pays the cabbie and we step out, the frozen snow crunching loudly under our feet and the tires as the car pulls away. Nico leads me up the steps of the building and pulls out a key to unlock the door. He guides me into the foyer of the building and up a few flights of stairs that lead to the third floor.
“He owns the top floor,” Nico informs me as he unlocks the door. It swings open, and we step inside one of the nicest places I’ve seen since moving to New York.
The space alone tells me why people even bother moving to Hoboken—the living room we step into is easily bigger than the entire apartment I share with three other girls. It’s huge, with high ceilings and massive windows at one end that open out to the street and offer a faint view of the Midtown skyscrapers that twinkle across the darkened river. The place has obviously been fixed up, with gleaming hardwood floors, walls that have all been painted a soft sage green, a large sectional sofa that faces a flat-screen TV mounted on one wall. A baby grand piano sits in the other corner of the room. I twirl around for a moment in it, my arms stretched out on all sides as Nico watches with amusement.
“Ahhh,” I sigh, coming to a stop. “I haven’t been able to do that inside since coming to the city. This place is gorgeous! What does your friend do?”
Nico smirks. “He’s a DJ. He mixes at a bunch of clubs, but he also does the programming for one of the radio stations in LA He’s mad talented.”
I gaze around, taking in the posh surroundings. “He must be.”
“Wait ‘til you see the rest.”
I’m quickly taken on a tour of the rest of the floor, which includes a dining room and big kitchen to the left of the living room, a hallway lined with a bathroom and framed black and white photos (several of which include Nico), and two huge bedrooms, one of which holds a set of turn tables and several instruments. The walls are padded with leather. This isn’t the shared apartment of a college kid, like me, or a poor twenty-something, like Nico. This is a grown-up’s apartment, through and through.
“Is this room…soundproofed?” I ask, reaching out to touch the leather. It’s soft against my fingers, and my voice is a bit muted in here.
Nico nods. “Yeah. K.C. records on his own sometimes. Pretty sweet, isn’t it? It’s my room when I stay here, too.” He gestures toward a small futon in the corner of the studio. It’s folded up as a couch right now. “I’d probably just sleep in the bedroom this week,” he says as if reading my mind. “Would you—do you want to see it?”
Something in his voice makes me feel shy as he takes my hand and leads me down the hallway to the master bedroom. He takes my bag, drops it to the floor beside the door, and pulls me inside.
My first thought upon walking into this room is that it so absolutely screams sex that I’m almost literally thrown off balance. It’s not sleazy—not like a porn set or anything like that—but unlike the demure polish of the rest of the apartment, this is clearly the room of a bachelor who is looking to get laid, and as frequently as possible. The entire room is bright white, right down to the walls, the painted wood floors, the soft cotton curtains fluttering over the large window, and the modern-style canopy bed dressed with white linens and a twisting drape of translucent muslin hung lazily around the frame.
On the opposite wall, facing the window, there is a huge painting—the only color in the room—done in a Jackson Pollock-esque style using rainbow splatters of paint. It appears to be a close up of a woman’s erect nipple and a man’s mouth, teeth bared, about to close down on it. My own breasts tingle at the sight, instantly bringing to mind the attention Nico paid to them just last night. I glance back at him, and he is watching my reaction with a knowing smirk on his face, gently rubbing his fingers over my knuckles.
“Jesus,” I breathe. “You really can’t be in this room and not think about sex, can you?”
Nico tips his head back and laughs.
“No doubt, baby, no doubt,” he agrees. “I call it K.C.’s fuck pad. It really is, isn’t it?”
“He, um, must get around. How do you sleep in here alone?”
The bed is perfectly made, like it’s waiting for someone to throw back the covers. As I think about how many women have been lured to this exact spot I’m standing in, made to feel the exact things I’m feeling…a shudder of revulsion slides down my spine. The room is so obvious—too obvious, really. It is a fuck pad, but I can’t understand how any woman could enter the place and not know she was one of a long succession of other conquests that preceded her.
My arms wrap around my middle as I shrink into myself. I don’t want him to think I’m intimidated by this place, but I can’t help it. He says he housesits the place when K.C. is gone, which seems to be a lot. But Nico’s young, gorgeous, and has the charm of an R&B song. How many other girls has he brought back here?
Suddenly, I feel a little dirty. And not in the way I want to feel around Nico.
“I…Nico, don’t take this the wrong way, but…” I trail off, struggling to vocalize my thoughts. “Has anyone slept in the fu––this room recently…with you?”
He blinks at me for a moment, and then bursts into a peal of laughter that bounces around the airy high ceilings and light furnishings. “Oh God, Layla,” he gasps. “You are awesome.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question,” I point out, squeezing my stomach. Does that mean he has? The thought makes my stomach twist into knots, even though I know I have no right to be jealous.
“Ah,” he gasps through a few more chuckles. “Sorry. That was just funny. No, baby, the answer is no. I haven’t brought anyone but you back to the fuck pad. That would be K.C.’s M.O., not mine.”
Privately I wonder why not. Nico’s got the looks and the charisma to take home just about any girl he wants. Hell, half my office would come running if he crooked his fingers. They already do the second the elevator doors open.
But Nico’s expression is kind as he strokes my shoulder lightly. Hope springs warm in my belly—maybe he really is the good guy I want so badly for him to be. One thing is for sure. I don’t want to be another conquest of this room, no matter who’s the conqueror.
“Do you think we could sleep on the futon?” I ask. “Or maybe the couch?”
Nico sobers, considering the room again before reaching down to grab my bag.
“Abso-fuckin’-lutely,” he declares, and we march back down the hallway to the recording studio and its conveniently soundproofed walls.
~