CHAPTER TWENTY
Nico
I pull hard on the underside of the bleachers. One more. Two more. Last one. You can do it.
“Ahhhh!” I growl as I pull up the last time, holding my body for an extra second before dropping to the ground. I’m so covered in sweat from the end of my workout, I’m not sure I could have held on anymore if I tried.
Still, I jog in place for a second, shaking out the pain coursing up and down my arms. It’s a good pain––a burn that tells me I’m making progress.
On the other side of the bleachers, a group of high school girls giggle at me from the middle of the field as I jog back to the track for my cool-down. I probably should have kept my shirt on, but it’s too damn hot for that. Way hotter than normal even for LA in February––and if you want to know the truth, I’m getting tired of the damn sunshine. Right now New York is covered in slush, and they’re supposed to have a snowstorm next week. I’d almost be happy to be there if just for the change of pace.
I finish the last loop of the mile, ignoring the way the girls are eyeing me. Kids. I sprint the last hundred meters on the track, huffing out short, sharp breaths in time with my feet. I want this. I want this job more than just about anything. I had one of the top scores of the test––and now I want one of the top physical assessments too. I know that it doesn’t really matter as long as I pass––it’s the background checks that are really important to getting one of the coveted FDNY spots. But I can’t afford to have an application that’s anything less than stellar. They already know about my pas, and the two big blemishes against met: two years in detention for aggravated assault. I was only fifteen, but still prosecuted as an offender instead of a delinquent, putting a permanent mark on my record.
But they could have just tossed my application right then and there, and then didn’t. So I have to try. If FedEx can see past my mistakes, maybe the FDNY will too, and I’m determined to make the rest of my application shine.
I know you can do it.
Layla’s voice sings through my brain as I jog back to my apartment, keeping a quicker pace than normal. I wish I could tell her what she does for me, how her faith keeps me going. I’ve left her alone since Christmas, when I heard that male voice on the other end of the line. I’m not going to lie. That knowledge cuts me too. I hate knowing that she’s moving on, even though she has every right. I hate thinking about the fact that another dude is touching her, loving her. Doing things to her that only I should do.
So I don’t. Instead, I think about the good stuff. When we do share a few text messages back and forth, she asks about my EMT test, and like an idiot, I tell her it’s going well. I tell her I have an interview––which is true––and let her praise and faith and optimism wash all over me.
I’m so proud of you. You’re going to be great. You’re so freaking smart. Words I’d never heard in my life––words I never thought I needed to hear––until I met her.
The problem with thinking about her as much as I do is that it usually leads to thinking about other stuff too. The glow in her eyes when she sees me naked. The texture of her lips when I suck on them. The swell of her ass when I take a nice handful...
I grunt, forcing myself to run a little faster. Fuck. I’m going to need a really cold shower now. It’s been more than two months since I saw her last, but it. Never. Ends. Normally I wouldn’t let myself get so caught up in those fantasies, but I need her words right now. My test is next week.
I have just enough time to get home, shower, and pack up my stuff before my shift tonight. I have an early flight to New York in the morning, with the weekend to spend with my family before my interview on Monday. And yeah. Okay. I’m hoping to see her too. I just want to make sure she’s okay.
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, mano. K.C. isn’t even here, but I can hear him, loud and clear. Whatever, man, I think back at him. You’ve never been in love. You don’t know how it is.
First, though, I have to tell her I’m coming.
I get back to the apartment, where most of my stuff has been packed into boxes. Jessie’s supposed to find a new roommate by the time I get back, which will give me the last few weeks of February to move my things into storage and K.C.’s place in WeHo.
Jessie is sitting at the table, looking sullenly through her email.
“Hey,” I say as I toss my keys into the bowl. “How’s the search?”
Her answer is the same as it’s always been: a scowl. She wasn’t happy when, after she got back from the holidays, I broke the news: I was moving out. And when I say not happy, I mean she hurled a vase at my head, then tried to get me into bed, then a salad bowl joined the vase. So yeah, I think getting out is the right decision, aside from just being the right thing to do. And you know what? It feels good to do the right thing.
I promised I’d stay until she found a roommate, but slowly, I’ve been bringing my stuff over to K.C.’s and have been spending more and more nights over there. It doesn’t make sense for me to find another apartment if I’m not sure what I’m doing here, and my boy is nice enough to let me sleep on his couch. Sometimes I think I should just get on the plane now. Go back to my old apartment and wait out the results of my next test in New York. Try to convince Layla to dump that fuckwad she’s with and come back to me, where she belongs.
But what if I fail? Even worse, what if I get all the way to the end only to have my past pull the rug out from under me? Then I’d be right back where I started. Same old life. Same old shit.
I can’t do that. Because as much as I don’t want to admit it, Jessie’s right. I can’t go back to a city that doesn’t want me. I need to make something of myself first. At least in LA I’m head of security instead of just a minor employee. There’s room for growth in that. Or maybe I can actually take that EMT exam. Maybe I’ll even go back to school.
Jessie huffs at her computer. “Not anyone worth having here. People are psychos; you know that.”
I get a glass of water, gulp it down, and immediately refill it. “Jess, you have to give some of them a chance. At least meet a few.”
“Why?” she asks sullenly.
I sigh. “We really gonna do this again? You and I should not be living together, Jessie.”
She rolls her eyes, but she knows it’s the truth. It’s not good, this situation. A year ago, we had some fun together, but that was before things got...complicated...in my life. It was before I gave my heart to someone else. Jessie deserves more than that. She doesn’t deserve to be used like a Band-Aid when I’m missing someone else.
I walk over to where she sits and look over her shoulder at a response to her Craigslist ad. I shrug, standing back up. “She looks nice.”
“She,” Jessie spits out. “I don’t want to live with a girl. They’re too catty.” She shuts her laptop and spins around to me, slipping her hands up my bare skin naturally. “Come on. Stay. This is getting ridiculous, don’t you think?”
I step out of her grasp. It would be easy, like it’s been so many other times, to let her do what she wants to do––use me for some kind of self-esteem boost, let me use her to distract myself. And fuck, I am feeling pretty fuckin’ hard up these days. But she always feels like shit when we’re done, and so do I. If we were good together, good for each other, it wouldn’t be like that. And I’d be thinking of her when I close my eyes, not someone else.
“I gotta pack, Jess,” I say as I walk backward to my room. “Keep looking. You’ll find someone.”
~
That feeling doesn’t go away, even after I jump into a freezing cold shower. I’m still a bit hard; it’s all anticipation.
“Fuck this,” I mutter and turn the water on warm again while I wash up. I might as well take care of this while I’m in here. I work in an industry with a lot of scantily dressed women. I can’t be checking IDs with half a boner.
Layla. I’ll call eventually, but right now, I imagine what she would do if I showed up and surprised her. Outside her dorm, maybe, where I used to wait against the lamppost. Wait, no. She doesn’t live there now.
Her office, then, where we first met. Doesn’t matter that she doesn’t work there anymore either; this fantasy is working for me. Yeah...I thought about bending her over that desk lots of times.
Now I’m fully hard, and without a second thought, I start rubbing one out, focusing more on one particular idea that I’ve imagined so many times that I’ve even sketched it once or twice.
She’s sending a fax or filing papers or whatever shit she did behind that donut-shaped desk. If I remember right, it’s about three and a half feet high, tall enough that when she stood, it came well above her waist. I see her there, standing in one of those tight skirts she preferred, the high-heeled shoes that made her legs look crazy long.
How many times did I imagine coming up behind her and caging her to the desk with both hands while I nosed her hair off her neck and kissed her bare skin? How many times did I imagine slipping a hand between her legs and slowly, slowly, tugging her skirt over her hips? Sliding a finger inside her with my thumb on her clit, just the way I know she likes until she’s practically dripping down my arm.
And then, just when I’d know she was ready, I’d unzip my pants and pull out my dick. I’d be a fuckin’ rock, so fucking hard for her, and she’d arch as I’d gently push inside, little by little. No condom, no nothing. Just me. Just her.
“Quiet, baby,” I’d have to tell her. “They’ll hear you.”
But she can’t be quiet. My girl never could. And because I’d just have to fucking have her, right then and there, I’d keep thrusting, take hold of her ass with one hand, flick her clit with the other, and keep going until she’d be writhing all over that desktop like a snake, begging me to give it to her, harder, faster, deeper.
“Baby...” she’d moan, all breathy and light like she does when she’s just about to lose it. “Nico...please.”
I press one hand into the shower tile as the other takes over, stroking furiously as I let my imagination go. Turning her around. Riding her all over that fucking desk. Sometimes I imagine that some of the stuck-up lawyers at that place walk in, the ones who always flirted with her in front of me, treated me like a piece of furniture. Like I wasn’t there. I imagine they’d see me giving it to her, see her face contorted with desire, see her grasping at the edges as I ram into her again and again.
“Hey!” they’d shout. “You can’t do that! Get off her!”
“Get the fuck out,” I’d snarl just as she’d fall apart, twisting and moaning as she’d come hard all over me. “She’s mine.”
“Fuuuuuuuucccccckkkk,” I moan, clapping my hand against the shower tile again and again as I come. It seems like it lasts forever as I let it pour over me and through, massaging out the last of it until everything is spent.
For a moment after, I rest my forehead against the tile, letting the water rinse off the rest of my body, which is filled with the peace that only comes from that sort of release. I know in a few minutes, it’s going to be even worse. With my head filled with images of her, I’ll want to topple into bed and hold her for the rest of the night.
But she’s not here. And that bed is empty. And I’ve got to get to work before––hopefully––I can see her again for real.
~
A few hours later, I’m standing outside, my bag in hand. K.C. is going to drive me to the airport after his gig and my shift are up.
I finger my cell phone. Maybe I shouldn’t call. Maybe I shouldn’t even tell her that I’m coming. She’s trying to move on, and I should let her. But...I can’t. I just have to know she’s okay. I haven’t seen her in almost three months. Dinner can’t hurt.
The phone rings three, four times. Of course. It’s almost eleven o’clock on a Friday night in New York. She’s at a bar with her friends, maybe out with her...man. She’s not going to be able to talk to me.
But then she picks up.
“Hello?”
I listen hard for any sounds behind her. A deep voice. The clink of glasses or blare of music. But it’s silent.
“Hey, baby,” I say as I relax into my seat. “It’s...yeah, it’s me.”
There’s a sigh, low and content. Fuck, I forgot how good that sound makes me feel. It’s the sound she used to make whenever we hugged, whenever she relaxed into my arms. She made it when she was happy. I lived for that sound. I would do anything to hear it again.
“I know who it is, silly,” she says. “How are you? It’s been a while.”
I exhale. “I’m good, baby, I’m good. How about you? Still with Evita?”
She giggles. It makes my chest hurt, but in a good way.
“That’s not very nice,” she says. “But yeah, we’re still together.”
“Getting serious, huh?” Please say no. Say you’re barely dating. Say you dress like a nun whenever you’re around him and that he’s never touched anything except to hold your hand. Say he hasn’t even done that.
“I guess,” she says. “A little. We’ve been dating almost a couple of months, now.”
“So he’s probably got big plans for you on Saturday, huh?”
“Saturday...” she says, and I wait while she figures it out. “Oh, you mean Valentine’s Day.”
I frown. She doesn’t sound like someone whose boyfriend is getting ready to woo her, or whatever the fuck you’d call it. It’s a statement, not a question.
“Everything okay with you?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing. I-he-um, he has to work on Valentine’s Day. He works at a club like you do. He’s a promoter.”
Immediately, I tense. Promoters are assholes. Two-bit fuckin’ salesmen who sell sex and drinks to get as many hot girls as they can into the club. Their job is to flirt, and I’ve literally never met one I liked. I don’t know this guy, and I wasn’t ever going to like him, but now I know for a fact he’s not good enough for Layla.
“He didn’t take the night off to spend it with you?” I ask.
“He’s just a poor student,” she says hurriedly, which makes me think I’m not the first person who’s said this too her. “Give him some slack. I thought you of all people would respect someone with a good work ethic.”
I pause. Layla’s not usually defensive like this. Maybe I’m going about this the wrong way.
“That’s cool, that’s cool, baby. Sounds like your man has a good head on his shoulders.”
It just about kills me to say it. If you have a woman like Layla, you don’t work on the one fuckin’ night of the year you’re supposed to show her you love her. You buy her every fuckin’ rose in Manhattan. You take her out for a night on the town. You never stop kissing her because her mouth tastes better than water. It feels better than air.
Fuck. Three thousand miles away, and I’m still a fuckin’ pussy.
“So, listen,” I push on. “I’m coming to town to check up on my family, see friends, all that. Since your man has to work, maybe we could grab dinner. A drink or whatever. Just as friends, I promise.”
There’s a silence. I have to smile. I can easily imagine an arched black brow over a suspicious blue eye.
“Seriously?” she says. “You think you and I can have dinner ‘just as friends’?”
I chuckle with her. Obviously Layla and I will never be “just friends,” but I don’t fuckin’ care. That horse’s ass left the most beautiful fuckin’ girl in New York by herself on Valentine’s Day. This is his fault, plain and simple.
“Just as friends,” I lie without a single regret. And then, taking a chance: “What Evita doesn’t know won’t hurt him, you know.”
But she doesn’t laugh. Not like she would have a few months ago, when she knew I was just joking. Instead there’s another sigh, this one long and sort of sad.
“Hey.” Suddenly I’m not in the mood to joke. I just want to finish my shift and catch my flight. I want to look into her face and find out what the fuck this asshole is doing to make her sound like that. “You okay?” I ask again.
“Saturday it is,” she says finally, and her tone is a little lighter as she scoffs. “Just as friends, you got that, Soltero?”
I grin, big and bright, feeling like a fighter who just got a K.O. “You got it, baby. Just as friends.”
~