Chapter Seven
I manage to end the not-date with my virginity intact, and even though I know logically that’s not much of an accomplishment, it feels like one.
I didn’t let him kiss me.
He wanted to, I could see it, but I was too afraid. Too much about him acts as a siren’s call to me already, and I couldn’t risk it.
As I hurry inside the house by myself, shutting the door behind me and leaning heavily against it, it doesn’t feel like a win. I wanted a kiss. It was a weird not-date, nothing like I’ve been on before, but there’s something so raw about Vince, so unexpectedly forthcoming.
I want him. Physically I can accept that—I’m human, and he’s a damn good-looking guy—but I’m terrified of wanting him on any other level.
It’s a bad situation, and I need to get out of it.
But also… I don’t know if I want to.
I spend yet another night losing sleep over Vince Morelli. It occurs to me around three in the morning that we should probably exchange phone numbers. The way things are going now, the only way I get to hear from him is in school or if he decides to show up.
Monday morning rolls around and I feel weirdly excited to go to school. I’m tired, having slept like crap all weekend, but I’m eager to see Vince.
“Guess who’s going to Costa Rica, baby.”
I shove my after lunch books into my locker and look over at Lena as she beams at me. “Me? Say it’s me and I’ll be your best friend forever.”
“No.”
I roll my eyes, closing my locker door. “Well, good for you,” I say flatly.
“No, not me! My mom and dad—they’re going away for the weekend, and we are having a party.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m not helping you with that.”
“You have to. Why are we even best friends if you’re not going to help me throw a party? I mean, literally all you have to do is pick up some bags of chips or some shit. I’ll get the alcohol.”
“I don’t have any spare money to buy chips.”
“I’ll give you the money,” she says, rolling her eyes. “We haven’t gotten drunk together since Macedonia’s graduation party over the summer—and that barely counts, since your weak ass got drunk on two beers.”
“It was my first time!” I defend.
“Whatever. I don’t even care what you say, you’re coming. We’re going to get stupid and sing in front of our peers, and take awesome selfies. It’s already done. You have no say.”
“I’m probably going to have to babysit,” I point out.
“Tell your mom to get a sitter for once in her damn life; they’re not your kids, Jesus Christ.”
We can’t afford a sitter, but I don’t say that. Foolishly, it occurs to me that I could probably bring Vince to that. “Is it going to be a big group, or just a small get-together?”
“Medium-ish,” she says. “I don’t really want everyone to stay over, and I’m not inviting anyone with super uptight parents. Don’t need that drama.”
Hesitantly, I ask, “Would you care if I invited somebody?”
She stops, turning to me with interested eyes. “Jace?”
“No,” I say, a little too adamantly. “Are you inviting Jace?”
“Probably. I thought you’d be pleased?”
“Uh uh,” I say, shaking my head. “Jace is old news. No more Jace.”
She sounds surprised. “Really? Huh. That didn’t last very long. Why don’t you tell me this stuff? That’s literally what I’m here for.”
“It’s super new and casual at the moment. I don’t want to make a big thing of it. But… it might be fun if he could come.”
“Who?”
I try not to grimace as I say, “Vince Morelli?”
The smile drops right off my best friend’s face. “Vince Morelli?”
I nod, almost apologetically.
“You want me to invite the mob kid to my house? For real?” She reaches out her hand and feels my forehead. “Weird, you’re not burning up with fucking delusional fever.”
“I know he’s not part of our usual crowd, but…”
“The fucking governor’s son is going to be there, Mia, and you want me to invite Goodfellas?”
It’s not like Lena’s bluntness is news, but she’s starting to piss me off. “You don’t have to be mean.”
Staring at me, she asks, “Are you sleeping with him?”
“Not—” I halt, flushing, realizing I almost said ‘not yet’ instead of ‘no’. “Just forget it.”
“Ew, you are!” she says, gaping.
I make a face. “I’m not. But ew? Come on.”
“His family does heinous shit, Mia. The package might look pretty on the outside, but Jesus Christ. My dad says they do, like, human trafficking. That’s third world bullshit, right there. There’s no way in hell I could invite him, Mia. Even if my dad wouldn’t lose literally all of his shit if he found out, I wouldn’t do that.”
“It’s not like he would know,” I mutter, but at this point, I’m out of steam on this argument. Even if she gave in and agreed to invite him, I would be too afraid she’d make Vince feel unwelcome now.
“No,” she says, raising her eyebrows and shaking her head.
“Well, I’m not on board for a party anyway,” I tell her with a quick shrug. “If you want to hang out, I can hang out, but I can’t get away for a whole night with drinking and… the governor’s son’s kind of a twatwaffle anyway, so…”
“You won’t come to my party because I don’t want to invite Vince Morelli,” she says, staring at me in disbelief.
“It’s not because of that,” I say, trying to brush it off.
“Bullshit. Hoes before bros, bitch. What are you doing?”
“I’m always the one that makes sacrifices,” I snap. I don’t mean to say it, even if it’s true. “I’m always the one who comes to the group hangout even though you invited the chick who made out with Jensen when we were dating, or totally overlooks the fact that—knowing how much I liked him, you made out with Jace at the Fourth of July cookout, or—actually, can people just stop making out with every guy I’m interested in? Hey, maybe you can go make out with Vince now, or did I finally pick someone too beneath you?”
Lena’s jaw hangs open, disbelieving that her passive bestie is the one being a bitch for once.
“You need to take some fucking Midol,” she informs me, before ditching me to head to her first class alone.
---
Unsurprisingly, after that stupid fight with Lena, my day drags ass. I do finally perk up when I get to my class with Vince, even if he gets there just before the bell again.
At least when class is over, he doesn’t rush out again. I walk out with him.
“You look tired,” he observes.
“Thanks,” I return, dryly. He’s not wrong though.
Flicking a glance in my direction, he asks, “Wanna get out of here?”
I blink in surprise. “What do you mean?”
Cocking his head to the side, he says, “Let’s bail.”
“You want to ditch?”
“We can get some pizza before you have to pick up the kids.”
That’s an offer too tempting to refuse, and since I did alienate my lunch companion this morning, I spent lunch studying instead of eating.
“Will we get in trouble?” I ask.
In response, Vince rolls his eyes.
Twenty minutes later, sitting across from Vince as we split an enormous sausage pizza, I feel confident we made the right decision.
Picking a piece of sausage off and preparing to toss it in my mouth, I say, “Man, I never get toppings.”
Eyes wide, he says, “Why?”
Chewing and swallowing the piece of sausage, I say, “Kids. They just like cheese. Or pepperoni, so they can pick it off and still only eat the cheese.”
“Makes sense,” he says, breaking off a second piece of pizza. A gooey gob of cheese stretches until it finally breaks, and he piles it on top before taking a bite.
“This place is good,” I say, taking a drink from the red tinted plastic cup.
“You’ve never been here?”
I shake my head no. “We thought about trying it a couple times, but never did.”
Truth is, they just never have any good enough specials. There’s another pizza place nearby where you can get the same size pizza for less than half the price.
“How long have you lived here?” he asks, glancing at me across the table.
“Three years. I mean, we still lived in Chicago before that, but we were in the metro area. Before that, we lived in Boston—my mom’s actually from there. And then we lived way the hell outside of Chicago for a little while. My mom moved us in with her boyfriend and his sister and her three kids. It was terrible. Luckily the stress of living in a hell house broke that relationship down in a matter of months, but then my mom met this guy, Frank, and they started seeing each other. Frank lived in this neighborhood, and he wanted my mom to move closer—or so she said, because they were going to live together. Now, I don’t want to shock you to death here, but it’s outside of what we can afford—literally double what we were paying for our last place, but it was totally fine, because she and Frank were going to be together and Frank made a comfortable living.”
“But that never happened,” he surmised, nodding.
“It didn’t, because Frank? Married. So, we were stuck in a year and a half lease, living in a rental house we couldn’t afford, and now here we are.”
“Why did you guys stay after the year and a half?”
I throw my hands up in a dramatic shrug. “She said she didn’t want to uproot us again. I didn’t complain, because I like living in a house instead of an apartment, but the stress of living so far above our means is… not awesome. We have to pay so much for rent and utilities that, as you saw at the grocery store, we don’t have money to live.”
“That sucks,” he says, sympathetically.
“It does. And our lease is going to be up here soon, but I don’t think she’s going to renew again. Her boyfriend now lives in the city, and I don’t know how she thinks to cram all of us in his two-bedroom apartment, but it seems like that’s her new plan.”
“He have kids?”
“No. He’s young.” I shake my head, fatigued just thinking about my mother’s relationships.
“Bet you’ll be glad to go to college, get away from it all,” he says.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to afford it. Lena’s going to Boston College; she wanted me to go there with her, but there’s no way. I’m going to take a year off, get a job, get everything sorted. Then we’ll see.”
“They have scholarships,” he pointed out.
I shrug, not really wanting to talk about it. “What about you? Are you going off to college, or staying local?”
“No college,” he says, looking at the pizza instead of me.
Frowning, I ask, “Why?” It’s not like his family can’t afford it.
His lips tug up in a tiny, humorless smile. “Don’t need it in my line of work.”
Ah, well… sure. I swallow, watching him as he continues to avoid my gaze. “Is it… um… I mean, obviously I only know what I’ve seen in the movies and TV shows, but you couldn’t just opt out, if you wanted?”
Shaking his head slightly, he says, “No. Mateo would have to let me out, and he never would.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s an asshole.”
I nod, glancing down at my pizza. “Who’s Mateo again? He’s the boss? Or…?”
“Yeah, more or less. His dad’s still the head of the family from a patriarchal sense, but Mateo’s the de facto head.”
“Is it like The Sopranos?” I ask, immediately feeling dumb when he smirks at me.
“No.” He laughs a little, dropping his pizza on the plate. “Actually, my family’s not exactly what you’re thinking. We’re not part of the original Sicilian mafia. Al Capone, all that stuff you’ve seen—that’s not really us.”
“Oh. It’s not? But I thought…”
“No. My family started it here—not in Italy, I’ve never been there, I probably never will. We aren’t them, it’s just… we’re an Italian crime family that goes back four generations—what are people gonna call us, you know?”
“So you’re not…?” I’m frowning, confused. “What’s the difference?”
“We just do things our own way. We’re like self-made bad guys, I guess. Think of the actual mob like old money, and my family like new money. Outsiders might just have one name for us, but to us, there’s a distinction. Like, in the actual mafia, it’s not as blood-obsessed as my family. We have people—soldiers, associates—who aren’t related to us, but the core people? All family. With only one exception, all blood related. Our family has broods of children—my father’s one of seven. It’s patriarchal—Mateo’s dad was the boss before him, his dad was the boss before him, his dad was the boss before him. Mateo doesn’t have a son yet, but when he does…”
“Next boss,” I conclude.
He nods once. “Unless something happened to interrupt the line, of course. If someone ever successfully assassinates Mateo, things might change.”
“Jeeze,” I say, eyes wide. “No love lost?”
“Hm?”
I smile slightly. “It’s just weird to hear someone speak so casually of a family member potentially being assassinated.”
“They’re all bastards,” he says, lowly. “Every man in my family. Mateo’s line’s the worst though. His dad’s a sick fuck, and Mateo didn’t turn out much better.”
“What about your dad?” I ask, playing with my straw.
“Sick fuck. If the last name is Morelli and they possess a penis, just assume they’re sick fucks.”
I crack a smile. “You’re not a sick fuck.”
“We’ll see,” he says, as if it doesn’t really matter. Picking up his pizza, he says, “Anyway, we shouldn’t really be talking about this.”
“I like getting to know things about your life,” I tell him.
Nodding slightly, he says, “I understand that, but I don’t want to involve you in that stuff. I want to keep you separate.”
“I won’t say anything to anyone,” I tell him, plucking another piece of sausage off my pizza. “It must be exhausting, worrying about keeping your whole life secret and segmented like that. You don’t have to do that with me.”
I look up and catch him watching me, a fond gleam in his eye that instantly unleashes a swarm of butterflies in my stomach. I offer a shy smile in response, then I ruin it by popping another sausage into my mouth.