EPILOGUE
August 2004
Nico
I check my watch for what’s probably the fifteenth time in the last hour. But fuckin’ finally it shows me the time I want to see.
I pop up from my fiftieth burpee and jog around the other cadets to where Lieutenant Meyers stands, staring at us with his hands on his hips.
“It’s three, Lieutenant,” I tell him, showing my watch. “I gotta go.”
Meyers, the barrel-shaped man who’s been in charge of my group of cadets for the past three months, pushes his aviators up his nose. He reminds me a lot of Frank, the gruff older guy who trained me when I got out of juvie. He knew how to help me in the right direction, but also never put up with my shit. When he died a few years back, it hit hard.
Meyers frowns at me. “What are you leaving for? You gotta pick someone up at the fuckin’ airport?”
I exhale through my nose. We’ve been through this about five times, twice today. I should have known he was going to give me shit in front of the other cadets.
“Not someone, Lieutenant,” I tell him. “My girl.”
Immediately, a chorus of “ooohs” and whistles and catcalls rises from the ground, where all the cadets are finishing their pushups.
“Fuckin’ girl,” Meyers mutters to himself, but it’s all for show. I cleared this with him on day one. Every day, I show up usually a solid thirty minutes before our training begins, and I usually stay late too. I’m the best fuckin’ cadet in the class, and he knows it. But I was always leaving early today.
“Hey, Lieutenant, I’m feelin’ pretty hard up too!” Reilly, one of the guys I get along with pretty well, shouts out. “Can I go see my girl too? She’s waiting for me at a bar in Long Island City.”
“Mine too!” shouts Carson, one of the younger guys who looks like he could still be in high school.
“Mine too!” Shouts echo through the group until suddenly there are forty-five guys shouting about the different bars in the city where their nonexistent girlfriends are waiting for them.
“Twenty more!” shouts Meyers, and with a hush, everyone quiets down and starts grunting with their efforts. “An hour early tomorrow, Soltero,” he says to me, nodding his consent. “Now get the fuck outta here.”
~
I mill around the baggage claim, shuffling awkwardly with my hands shoved into my pockets while I scan the crowds for Layla. Occasionally a few people glance at me curiously. It’s something I’m going to have to get used to: being looked at with admiration instead of suspicion. People see this uniform––the blue cargo pants and blue shirt with FDNY printed on the front––and they start asking questions. They like firefighters, especially in New York. Little kids look at me, want to be just like me. Their mothers encourage them to talk to me instead of guiding them away. It’s a good feeling. For the first time in my life, I feel accepted in the city of my birth. Like I’m wanted. Like I really belong.
I check my watch again. I know she’s here––I got a text from her about fifteen minutes ago saying her plane had landed. I’d already been pacing around JFK for about an hour at that point, but she doesn’t need to know that. She doesn’t need to know that I’m basically a puppy jumping in its cage––that’s how excited I am to see my girl.
We talked every day this summer, usually multiple times. It was hard sometimes to connect. Five days a week, I’m at Randall’s Island from morning to night, getting back to the apartment in time to collapse on the pull-out until the next morning. On the weekends, I spend most of my time studying for the tests the next week and working the door at AJ’s and the Roxy. One day, I won’t have to check IDs anymore for extra cash. But cadets and rookies make shit money, and I still have bills to pay.
Layla’s been busy too. In between seeing a therapist and trying to reconnect with her mom, she’s also taken a couple more language classes at the local community college and worked a summer job at the YWCA. She watches the kids while their moms, women who are coming out of worse relationships than hers, talk to the lawyers and social workers to help them get out of their situations. I thought at first that it would be too hard for her to be around that kind of environment, that it might trigger some of her own traumas. But I think it’s actually been cathartic. Helping others in similar situations seems to be its own kind of therapy.
But still, no matter what, we’ve always made time to talk. Sometimes it’s early in the morning––2:00 a.m. her time when I call her as the sun rises here. Or maybe it’s close to midnight in New York, when she gets home from her classes. On the weekends, we talk for hours, eager to get lost in each other’s voices. And if we’re lucky enough to catch each other when we’re both alone, things get a little dirty. I never thought I’d be good at phone sex, but apparently I have a knack for it. Layla’s always saying how much she likes my voice, and if I toss in a little Spanish here and there, my girl pretty much goes nuts.
Every conversation ends the same. “I love you,” I tell her. “Always.” “Always,” she repeats. “I love you back.”
But I’m tired of “I love you back.” I’m tired of jerking off with a phone pressed to my ear, of wishing I could jump through the receiver and show her all those things I’ve been growling into her ear.
It’s been more than three months since she got on that plane. And I’m here, standing in the same place, just like I promised, ready as fuck to say all those things, dirty and sweet, to her face.
A new group of people spills down the escalators, I search their faces, looking for those blue eyes I still see every time I close mine. Will she look different? The same? She sent me a couple of pictures of her on the beach, but I still see her bruises in the back of my mind.
Then she appears at the top of the escalator. She’s glowing with the effects of a summer spent in the California sun. Her skin is darker than I’ve ever seen, but the top of her normally black hair is bleached a little bit lighter. Her hair is down, waving around her shoulders and face, and the tiny shorts she’s wearing show off long legs. She turns to the side to pull something out of her bag, and I get a peek of her ass in profile.
Shit, her ass. I was a gentleman the last time, but that body part alone has starred in weekly dreams I have. The really fuckin’ dirty kind. The kind that either make me reach for the phone and pray she’s alone or else force me into an ice-cold shower where I have to imagine K.C.’s abuela to calm myself down. And even then...yeah. Let’s just say another part of me is very ready to get reacquainted with my girl again.
Finally, she catches sight of me, and her face bursts into the biggest, brightest smile I have ever fuckin’ seen.
“Hi!” she shouts over the crowd, causing several people in front of her to turn around with cranky expressions.
Fuckin’ New Yorkers. Sometimes people here forget to smile. Well, fuck ’em. I’ve got a grin on my face a mile wide, and I don’t give a shit.
When she’s finally able to get off the escalator, she starts jogging awkwardly through the crowd, her bag and purse banging on her sides. By this time, I’m hopping like a fuckin’ rabbit on the other side of the barrier, ready to catch her the second she passes security. My girl is practically a linebacker as she elbows through people waiting for their bags. But I can see on her face the same thing that’s probably written all over mine.
Longing. Desire. Excitement. Absolute fuckin’ joy.
And then, finally, fuckin’ finally, she’s in my arms again, having dropped her messenger bag and launched herself at me with the force of an NFL football player.
“Hey!” I shout as I swing her around and around.
Layla’s legs come around my waist with a strength I didn’t know she had, forcing me to drop my hands and get two handfuls of my favorite body part in order to hold her up. Jesus fuckin’ Christ. I’m already hard and she’s the only thing hiding that fact from the dozens of other people milling around the baggage claim.
But before I can say anything––a smart-ass comment that’s about to roll off my tongue, she’s kissing me. And it’s not a tentative kiss either. Gone is the fear she had when she left. This isn’t a gentle kiss––it’s hungry, forceful, full-throated. Her thin arms are vises around my neck. My girl is fuckin’ devouring me, and I’m consuming her right back. Three months––no, scratch that, over a fuckin’ year of pent-up longing is released in this kiss. I’ll kiss her forever if that’s what she wants. God knows I’ll never get tired of it.
Around us, there’s even a smattering of applause––our joy is infectious. And that’s the thing about New Yorkers––they might be grouchy as fuck sometimes, but when it comes down to it, they’re also real. And when they see joy that’s honest, authentic, as deep as what Layla and I feel for each other, no one in my city would be anything but happy for us.
Fuck me, we really can’t stop kissing each other. We need to find a room, an empty closet, fuck, even a bathroom somewhere. But I know I can wait. Right now, in this moment, I might be happier than I’ve ever been in my life, and if the look on Layla’s face is any indication, she feels the same way.
“All right,” I tell her as I take her hand. “Where’s your bag? We need to get out of here. I need to get you home.”
Layla lays her head on my shoulder. Even just that simple touch sends tremors of happiness through my chest.
“What do you mean?” she asks with another bright smile. “I am home. I’m with you.”
~
To Be Continued...