CHAPTER THIRTY
Layla
The next morning, I wake up feeling like I’ve been run over by a train. Everything is stiff. Worn out. But a quick glance at the mirror across the room reveals I don’t look as bad as I feel––the red marks are starting to bruise now, but it’s nothing a little concealer and a scarf won’t hide. It’s the emotions of the last twenty-four hours that have gotten to me.
I press a hand to my head as the events of yesterday return. Sitting in our living room for two hours with the police officers that came to take my statement after Quinn insisted that we call them. But there was really little they could do other than that––there wasn’t enough evidence of assault for them to press charges, nor could they do anything to help me get my things from Giancarlo’s apartment.
“Tomorrow,” they said. “If you have bruising or something like that.”
I never thought I’d be one of those girls. The ones who have to answer questions like the cops asked me. The one who has to defend my own attack.
“What were you wearing?” the police officer wanted to know. “Did you do anything to provoke him?”
And I honestly couldn’t answer no––that was the worst part. Because I did scratch him, didn’t I? I did yell. I did push him away. Didn’t I assault him too? Sort of?
Shama and Quinn sat there with me, angry and defiant while I recounted the events, but I couldn’t tell with whom. Giancarlo? Or me, for bringing it all down on myself?
After the very long interview with the cops, I trudged upstairs, and it was only when I was nearly asleep in my bed that I heard Nico’s voice again, frantic and worried.
One more thing to feel guilty about.
I’m coming back, he said.
Don’t go anywhere.
I love you.
They were all the words I’d been dying to hear for months, almost a year now. Words that should have made everything feel better. And while they did soothe the pain some, a new feeling sprang in my heart, one I hadn’t felt before with him: fear.
Because I saw the looks on all my roommates’ faces when I arrived at the apartment last night, blotchy and red-eyed, my hair a mess and my clothes stretched out of shape. I saw their faces after they listened to me tell my story three times: once to them, once to the R.A. down the hall, and once more to the policemen. They looked tired. Fatigued. I could see the effects my choices had on the people in my life. Their bitter disappointment in me.
I’m not sure I can deal with that look on Nico’s face when he arrives.
“I still think you need to call your mom,” Quinn says as she finishes primping her hair in the mirror over her desk.
I curl back into my bed. The girl has been up and chipper for over an hour.
Quinn turns around. “Did you hear me? Lay, you could probably just take incompletes with the rest of your classes and finish your final projects this summer. Take your last final tomorrow and go. Write your paper from home. Get yourself together.”
She means Pasadena, of course, but Quinn doesn’t really understand how much I don’t want to go back there. If my roommates have been judgmental this semester, I don’t even want to think about what my mother and grandparents will say. Probably truck me off to some kind of therapist or rehab center, although for what, I don’t know. But it will come with a lot of long looks, breathy sighs, and several phone calls to my father. Brazil will be put off for years. My grandparents will resume their lives at the country club while my mom keeps running down to Cabo or the spa or wherever she goes in her spare time. And I’ll be left in that big, empty house, in that big, empty room. Alone.
I shake my head stubbornly. “I need to finish here. And then...”
I can’t finish the sentence. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Nico’s on a plane right now, due to arrive sometime past 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. I don’t know what his plans are. I don’t even know what we are.
All I know is that I don’t want him to look at me the way Quinn is right now. I don’t want him to come back here and find me in pieces. I called him, raving like a crazy woman on the street. Made him jump on a plane to rescue me. The least I can do is put things back together, at least a little. Have some kind of plan for what to do next.
I shake my head again. “I can’t even take today off. I’ve missed too many classes this term already. I should go for the final review.”
I get out of bed and trudge toward the closet, ready to pick through the remainder of my clothes that aren’t up at Giancarlo’s.
Quinn watches me dubiously. “Um...okay. Do you want me to wait for you?”
I give a small smile through the closet mirror. “No. You go ahead. I’ll see you later tonight.”
She stands up. “Okay. Well, I’m going to go grab some breakfast on campus, then. See you tonight.”
~
Ten minutes later, I’m feeling a little better, dressed in gym clothes. I decide this is what I need best––a workout, which I haven’t gotten in weeks, since Giancarlo never wanted me to leave his place. It will clear my mind before classes. Everything feels better with an endorphin boost.
I run around Union Square, over to Palladium, the NYU dorm with the gym in the basement, and spend the next hour running out my troubles on the treadmill, trying to decide a plan of action. Going to class is about as far as I get, but it’s a better plan than nothing.
I’m rounding the corner, almost back to my dorm, when I spot a familiar tall figure lounging by the entrance of the building. Immediately, my heart starts beating wildly with an eerie sense of déjà vu.
Giancarlo recognizes me, and starts toward me at a run. I bolt the other direction, dodging people as I fight to cross Fourteenth Street onto the flat concrete expanse of Union Square.
“Layla!” Giancarlo calls behind me, loud enough that I know he’s close.
My legs, worn out after running for so long at the gym, won’t move fast enough. I run toward the nearest subway entrance, but just as I arrive, an influx of people pours from the station. I jerk around the entrance, but I’m not fast enough. A big hand snags my elbow, pulling me into a sturdy male wall.
“Hello, amor.” Giancarlo’s lips are warm and sinister against my throat as he locks one arm around my chest, the other pressing something sharp––I’m guessing a knife––discreetly against my stomach.
“Let me go,” I say, although not loud enough to stop anyone as he turns me away from the crowd. To anyone else, we are locked in a lover’s embrace. And with the knife at my side, I’m too petrified to move.
“Now, why would I do that, hmm?” Giancarlo nuzzles into my neck familiarly, which was once something I liked, but now makes me ill. “I came here to see you.” When he leans back, his dark eyes are ice-cold. “We have some unfinished business.” He hails a cab, which immediately pulls to the curb next to us. “Get in.”
“No,” I whisper, though the knife stays at my side.
Giancarlo raises a black brow and squeezes my arm hard. “Get in,” he says, “before I make you. And I think that is not what you want.”
Before I can answer, he turns me roughly toward the open door, twisting my ankle hard against the concrete and forcing me to fall onto the vinyl seats. Unable to run, I’m shoved inside the cab, which smells of body odor and stale pizza, the prick of the knife at my waist the entire time.
“Broadway and West 144th,” he barks at the driver, who immediately takes off down the street.
The taxi takes a sharp right on Broadway and stops for a moment in traffic just in front of Carlyle, where another cab has stopped by the curb. I look out of the window just in time to see a familiar pair of broad shoulders emerge from the back seat, with a familiar worn Yankees cap turned backwards so that I can see the black and white emblem.
“Nico!” I shout with a voice that’s hoarse from yesterday. I bang on the glass window, but the mix of cars and horns and glass muffles my sounds, which is immediately silenced when Giancarlo yanks me back toward his body.
“Stop,” I whimper. “Please, just let me go.”
But the car speeds on with the traffic, and Nico’s strong frame gets smaller and smaller.
“Nico,” I murmur, even while I’m pressed against another man. But it’s no use. He can’t hear me. He doesn’t even know I’m gone.
~
Nico
I’ve been pacing outside Layla’s dorm on Union Square for twenty minutes when her roommate, Quinn, finally calls me back.
“Jesus!” she says. “I was in class, you know. My professor had to ask me to leave because my fucking bag wouldn’t stop buzzing.”
“Where’s Layla?” I demand. “I’ve been standing outside your building for the last half hour. She’s not picking up the landline.”
“How should I know where she is?” Quinn asks. “The psycho wanted to go to class today. It wouldn’t be the first time she just took off without telling anyone.”
“Did she? Go to class?”
There’s a pause. “Hold on. Her lit class actually meets across the hall from mine.”
I haven’t hopped around this much since I was eighteen, training as a boxer because I had too much angry energy and nowhere decent to put it. I could use a heavy bag right now, actually, except a part of me would be perfectly happy delivering this rage to the man who deserves it. Eight-foot-tall, tango-dancing fuckboy who doesn’t know how to keep his fuckin’ hands to himself.
Just the thought makes me see red again.
“She’s not there.” Quinn’s voice sounds far away through the receiver, but I can still hear the fear there. “Nico, she’s not there.”
“Meet me here,” I say. “Now.”
Twenty minutes later, Quinn, Shama, and Jamie, all of Layla’s roommates and so-called best friends, let me into their suite. I bust through the door, dump my bags in their living room, and then jog around the bedrooms. It’s exactly as I thought: no Layla.
I return to the living room, where all of the girls are just sitting there, lounging on the couch and at their kitchen table, watching me with strange expressions while I bounce around their apartment like a fuckin’ pinball.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demand from Quinn when I finally stop looking around. “Why are you just sitting there? Aren’t you supposed to be her best friend?”
“Isn’t she supposed to be mine?” Quinn retorts as she stands up from the couch, her face red and angry. “You haven’t been around this year. It’s been one fucking thing after another with that girl. She keeps falling apart and expecting us to pick up the pieces. I’m sorry, but I didn’t come here to be her fucking social worker! I have my own shit to take care of!”
I swear in Spanish and yank off my hat. “And you?” I ask the others. “You think it’s okay to just sit here. Where do you think she is, huh?”
I know I’m acting crazy. She could be anywhere. She could be at the gym, a bookstore. Maybe she went out for coffee. But something in my gut tells me otherwise. I know Layla. She knew I was coming. She wouldn’t just disappear like this for hours. Something is very, very wrong.
I scoop my jacket off the sofa. “If she’s been falling apart, maybe it’s because she knew she didn’t have a real support system to help her deal with all this shit. Maybe it’s because in the end, she knew her friends didn’t really have her back.”
I’m just about to go when Shama speaks up. “Where are you going?”
I turn around. “Look, if there’s any chance at all that motherfucker knows you called the police, my best bet is that she’s with him. If they didn’t file charges, he could get her to recant her statement. You follow me?”
As the realization of what I’m talking about dawns on their faces, Shama and then Jamie both stand up and grab their coats off the back of the chairs.
“Are you coming?” Shama asks Quinn.
But Quinn just looks away. “I can’t do this anymore with her,” she says. “I’m sorry. But I’m done.”
They stare at her for a second, like they’re not sure they actually heard her correctly. Shama gives Quinn a dirty look as she crosses the room to join me.
“That’s messed up, Quinn,” she says as she grabs her keys off the table. “Seriously. That’s messed. Up.”
Jamie follows, looking more uncertain. But then they turn to me.
“Let’s go get her,” Shama says. And without another look at their roommate, we leave.
~