CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Layla
Sharp rays of light shine directly in my eyes through cheap blinds over the single window in the bedroom. It takes me a second to remember where I am. To take in the unfamiliar sights, unfamiliar smells. But I have no problem remembering this very familiar touch.
Nico himself is wrapped completely around me, one big arm draped across my waist and one muscled leg thrown over both of mine. He holds me tightly as he sleeps, head burrowed into the crook between my shoulder and neck. I’m his own personal teddy bear. A quick glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand tells me it’s just after six-thirty in the morning.
I’m in his apartment. Not his friend’s fancy digs, but where he actually lives. Sleep and hangover fade away, and curiosity immediately takes over. Without moving, I look around the room, absorbing the place that Nico calls home.
It’s a small, simple room painted white. It smells like dust and, well, sex, obviously from last night. A beat-up wood wardrobe stands next to the door, with a small green armchair in the corner next to it. The futon bed we’re lying on is shoved in the opposite corner. It occurs to me that Nico has spent most of his life on futons or couches. I wonder if he’s ever owned a real mattress.
The single window looks out to the side of a neighboring building with a peekaboo view of the Hudson, and under it is a small desk on which are scattered a few bills, a smaller pamphlet for the California State Driver’s Test, and a large black sketchbook that has seen better days. The white walls of the room are bare except for a couple of tribal masks hanging above the bed and a framed picture on the window sill of what looks like Nico and his family members.
There are a few pieces of laundry strewn around the floor—a pair of shoes kicked off under the desk, a t-shirt or pair of shorts crumpled in the corner—but for the most part, Nico seems to keep his things in order, primarily by not having much to order in the first place. It’s an austere existence, and I find myself wondering if he’s been living in this place long. I’m also somewhat comforted by the fact that there appear to be absolutely no remnants of female visitors in the room—not a spare hairband lying on the desk, no random bobby pins that have fallen to the corners. It’s the room of a man who spends his time alone, at least when he’s here.
It’s then that the memories of the night before come flooding back, enhanced by a distinct soreness between my legs and on my ass. He’s insatiable, and he brings it out in me too. There’s a faint throb as I recall just how Nico’s mouth felt down there, how hard he claimed me as his own.
So much for getting over him. So much for a clean break. Now I’m right back to where I was with him a week ago, and my heart sinks down to the lobby at the realization. No. I’m not going to let this happen again. I’m not going to pretend to myself that everything is going to be all right when I know that he’ll just break my heart all over again.
Very, very slowly, I unwind his arm and leg. He snorts and rolls to the other side of his bed, freeing me to look for my underwear, which was tossed somewhere at some point during the night. I find them slung over the small lamp sitting on the nightstand beside the bed.
My fingers brush the edge of the sketchbook, and I’m tempted to look inside. But I don’t want to snoop, and I’m sure whatever he’s drawn in there is intensely personal. Not to mention, it would only make me that much more invested when I’m trying to detach all over again.
There are five text messages from my roommates and four missed calls from Quinn alone. Apparently, I set my cell phone on silent when I was sick and forgot to take it off. I scroll through the text messages to see what terror I’ve caused.
Quinn (1:31 AM): We r going home. U ok?
Jamie (1:53 AM): Home now. U all right? Pls call quinn shes worried.
Quinn (2:44 AM): Layla where r u?? alan said blake left w o u!!
Quinn (3:05 AM): trying 2 call pls pick up girl!!
Shama: (3:30 AM): Srsly u need 2 call Quinn she is going insane. What happened last night?
Quinn (3:45 AM): OMG LAYLA IF I DON’T HEAR FROM U BY 2MORROW MORNING IM GOING 2 CALL THE COPS!
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 amnesty,” 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.
~