CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nico
The next day, I switch buildings with Flaco. I must look like an even bigger idiot than I thought, because he doesn’t even put up a fight about missing out on the modeling agency. It should feel like the jackpot. I get to be the hot delivery guy to a floor full of eight-foot-tall Amazons who’d all like to go slumming in between TV executives and the CEOs they’re escorting in between modeling gigs. But even after I get two numbers slipped to me on the first day alone, I couldn’t care less.
All I see are big blue eyes with a sweep of black lashes. A heart-shaped mouth that’s a puzzle-piece match to mine. Layla.
The rest of the week and the next drag on, and every day I try something, anything, to make me stop thinking the way I do. I go out to Jersey, but all I can see is her there. I come back to Manhattan, but I only wish she were with me. I spend the entire weekend helping my mom weed through her magazine collection. I take extra shifts at AJ’s and even volunteer to work the door Sunday night at another club uptown.
I even volunteer to watch my sister’s kid, Alejandra, at night and in the morning, because I’m not sleeping anyway. It’s a good idea at first––Allie’s a great distraction. But then it gives Maggie a minute to patch things up with her boyfriend, and by the next week, they move back to his apartment. So now I’m alone at my place again, with nothing but my thoughts and my sketchbook. And there’s only one thing I’ve been interested in drawing.
By Friday the next week, I am breaking the fuck down. I take my lunch break in the truck, watching the entrance of the Fox and Lager building like a fucking stalker. It’s been over a week since I last saw her, and like a junkie, I need my fix. I tell myself that it’s because I just want to make sure she’s okay. She didn’t look like she had totally recovered from the flu. I want to make sure she’s taking care of herself.
Flaco, like the friend he is, keeps me company, eating his sandwich like a horse and shaking his head at how pathetic I am.
“I told you,” he says through a mouthful of chicken cutlet. “She looks fine. She was out sick a few more days, but she’s been there all week, and she looks fine, mano.”
I set my sandwich on the dashboard of the truck. The pastrami tastes like cardboard anyway.
“Nico,” Flaco says. “Why don’t you just tell her?”
“Tell her what?” I’m absent, keeping my stare glued to the glass double-doors of the building. If I look away, I might miss her when she arrives.
Flaco smacks me on the shoulder. “What do you think? That you’re fuckin’ in love with her.”
My head snaps at him like it was on a slingshot. “What?”
Flaco rolls his bug-eyes. He’s a tall, skinny dude with big eyes and lips like a frog. Flaco, another word for skinny in Spanish, isn’t his real name (which is actually Juan). But he’s been a skinny fuck since grade school and never grew out of it.
“Don’t play,” he says simply. “I been watchin’ you fall all over yourself for NYU princess. You in love with her, bro. Don’t deny it.”
I frown. “That’s crazy. I barely know her.”
“Psssh, whatever,” he says, tossing his gangly hands up in the air. “That don’t mean shit. My parents got married four days after they met. They seen each other across the club, and blammo! That was it. Next stop, Atlantic City.”
I haven’t met Flaco’s parents, but he’s told the story a lot. We talk a lot of shit about girls, but you don’t grow up listening to mambo kings and bachata ballads without becoming romantics at heart. His parents are actually still together after they met at an early Hector LaVoe show up in the Bronx. Love at first sight, the way Flaco tells it. It’s easy to imagine––salsa is sexy as fuck. I bet a lot of babies got started at those concerts back in the day.
“Still,” I say, even though I’m back to staring at the building. “It’s not the same thing.”
And it isn’t. I met Layla in the middle of my delivery route, not a sexy concert. Flaco’s parents are cut from the same cloth––both Puerto Rican, both new immigrants, both living in the same neighborhood. Layla and me, we’re from totally different worlds.
“Whatever,” Flaco says as he turns back to his sandwich. “You a fool in love, bro. No doubt.”
Layla arrives at one-fifty, ten minutes before her shift starts. I see her walking down the street from the subway entrance. She looks...good. Skinny, but good. Better than I want her to look now that we’re split. I really am a selfish bastard.
She glances nervously toward the FedEx truck, and I’m glad we have tinted windows so she can’t see me watching her like some Fatal Attraction psycho. Fuck, I’m freaking myself out here.
Still, I take her in, follow her every step. She’s so serious, her big eyes scanning around, already with the watchfulness New Yorkers have so they don’t get taken for a ride. Everyone in this city is suspicious, and Layla, even though she doesn’t have that jaded edge to her yet, has already learned to be cautious around strangers.
She doesn’t smile. Even from across the street, I can see that the twinkle in her eyes is dulled. I want to tell myself it’s just because she was sick, even though I know better. A couple of construction workers catcall her––the kind who will catcall anything with a skirt––and she ducks her head as she passes, but doesn’t show the fear I know she must have. I clench my fists, fighting the urge to jump out and shield her from their whistles, maybe even teach some of these assholes some respect. I have sisters. I know how scary these streets can be to women, especially young pretty ones like Layla.
My eyes skim over the determined set of her shoulders, the sway of her hips, the way she glances from side to side as she walks. I’m not watching in a sexual way, although I feel that too. Fuck, how could I not, especially now that I know the way our bodies fit together? But now it’s more like I’m making sure she’s all right, just making sure she’s healthy and happy, like I want her to be. I’m a man obsessed. A man...fuck me. A man in love.
Shit.
Flaco’s licking his chops, looking more like a frog than ever as he watches realization dawn on my face. He gives me a pat on the back, the way you might comfort a kid who just lost his favorite stuffed animal.
“There you go, papi,” he says with a rueful shake of his head. “Now you just gotta tell her.”
I bang my head on the steering wheel. Flaco’s right. This changes everything.
~