Don and Greg hover in the doorway, whispering to each other, matching expressions of horror and pity on their faces. “You’re going to go to the hospital, right? Get that looked at?”
“Absolutely,” I lie. From their expressions, they know it. “I’ll message you. Let you know I’m okay. I think I might leave town for a while. Visit family.”
“That’s a good idea.” Don takes my hand and squeezes, pinning me with his kind, crinkly eyes. “I think you’re in over your head here, kiddo.”
“Story of my life.” I give him a peck on the cheek, and then I wink and strut out, swinging Carlo’s messenger bag over my shoulder. I throw Don and Greg a jaunty wave over my shoulder as I head down the stairs. Got to make it look good.
Ten floors in heels is a pain in the ass, but I’m not getting stuck in an elevator with my newest psycho ex if he decides to come back. Especially since I’m liberating his precious messenger bag.
I keep a carefree smile plastered on my face all the way down ten flights, even though there’s no one to see me. If I’m smiling, I’m good.
I didn’t just almost die.
This is only another crazy misadventure, one more story to tell at the bar. The time I played with a mobster’s dick by accident and nearly ended up feeding the fishes. I can spin this. It’s spinning right now, whirling in my brain, a tornado tearing loose all kinds of carefully propped up lies.
I’m happy.
I’m normal.
I’m okay.
On the fifth-floor landing, I puke, my raw throat aching and burning. I’m still shaking, but I have to keep moving, so I’m lurching. As I sprint down the sidewalk toward the subway, people stare, and it’s such a familiar feeling.
Look at that hot mess. Party girl. Wasted. Rough night, eh, baby?
To get to my walk-up from Carlo’s condo, it’s a half-hour subway ride, and I have to change trains downtown. Then it’s a four-block walk. That’s how long it takes for the adrenaline to wear off and the real shakes to come on in earnest, so hard my teeth chatter.
I barely get past the threshold of my efficiency before I bolt the deadlock and collapse against the wall. I tuck my knees to my chest and wind my arms tight around my legs. I try to hold myself together, exert enough pressure to stop the shakes, but my grip isn’t nearly tight enough. I have thin arms. I always have. I’ve got a thick ass and thighs, and spindly arms and tiny feet. Like someone stuck toothpicks in a pear.
I’m not designed for fighting. How come I keep ending up like this?
I sniff back the snot, and look around my tenth—twelfth?—apartment in the last decade. From down here on the floor, I can’t ignore the mess. Dirty black dress pants in a heap, underwear still stuck in the legs. A stack of mail that got knocked off the kitchen island and kicked halfway under a throw rug.
Is that my fancy water bottle under the sofa? I thought I lost it at work. Last week, I gave up on finding it and bought a new one. Well, that’s fifty-four bucks down the drain.
It looks like someone came by and tossed the place, but it’s always like this. I’ll straighten up, and then an hour later—anarchy.
The floodgates burst, and tears stream down my face, trickling down my neck. I sob, and it echoes.
Oh lord. I could have died. Carlo could have killed me, dumped me in the river, and who would notice except maybe Carolyn from work? She’d be pissed that I didn’t show up for my shift to relieve her. And then they’d probably call Mom in Florida, but she’s been done with me for years, so it’d be up to my little brother Lou to clean this place out. Sweet Lou. It’d break his heart.
I almost died.
My stomach lurches, and I gag and wretch, but nothing comes out. And that hurts, too.
I want Forty.
And that’s stupid—the most stupid thing my broken brain can conjure up.
Whenever I get scared or lost, I want the asshole who left me a hundred years ago. And the wanting isn’t a small feeling, not like sentimentality or nostalgia or wishful thinking. It’s an overwhelming longing, so strong I can actually smell the Lava soap the Nowicki boys always used.
Forty was this redneck in my English class freshman year of high school. He was older, built like an action hero, closemouthed, and scary as hell. Even though he was only a sophomore, he ran with the Steel Bones MC. Somehow, I wrapped him around my little finger. He worshipped the ground I walked on. We were inseparable for three years, and then he decided he needed to go make a man of himself in the Army.
Until the day he left for Fort Jackson, I didn’t think he’d really go. Like I said, I have a superhuman ability to pretend that terrible things aren’t happening.
I begged him to stay. My home situation wasn’t good. I couldn’t talk about it, but I tried so hard to convince him not to go. I fucked him like a mad woman, so often, in so many dirty ways, I gave myself a urinary tract infection. But he left anyway. I reacted badly, acted out, and he dumped me over the phone from basic training. I had it coming.
Our friends, the entire Steel Bones Motorcycle Club, turned their backs on me. Harper Ruth and Annie Holt, the MC princesses, jumped me in the Finnegan’s Ice Cream Parlor parking lot. Beat my ass and told me I was dead. I dropped out, went to New York. When that went south, I bopped from Miami to Boulder, and then here to Pyle. One G.E.D., ten years, and a hundred poor choices later, here I am.
A weeping, bloody ball on a dirty linoleum floor, wondering what exactly is making it so sticky.
Did I spill some pop? Sigh.
Forty Nowicki was a rite of passage, the kind of heartbreak everyone goes through with their first love, but somehow my soupy grey matter doesn’t get that it’s long over and probably wasn’t as intense and earth-shattering as I thought it was at the time.
But I still dream about him. Not all the time. Only when I’m stressed or I fall asleep drunk.
And at some point in every relationship, usually when I’m trudging along a highway in the pouring rain or stuck in a bathroom with a maniac beating down the door, I have the same epiphany.
Aaron, the guy who baited me and his ex into fighting? And then videotaped it and posted it on a porn site? He had a softail bike like Forty.
Paulie, the guy who picked me up for a date in a stolen Lexus, landing me in City Jail until it got sorted out? He was gruff, a man of few words. Like Forty.
And Nick, the guy who kicked me out of his truck on the side of the highway after two years together? He had Forty’s exact build. Height, weight, haircut. Everything. And I didn’t see it.
Not ‘til it was over.
And oh shit. Big reveal. Thinking about it now? Carlo has that “lethal violence simmering just under the surface” that Forty had. Ugh. I couldn’t have picked a guy who likes professional wrestling and monster trucks? Forty was into those, too.
I stretch my legs and wipe my nose with the back of my hand. Carlo’s messenger bag is plopped next to me on the floor. It was stupid to take it. Hopefully, he was attached to the papers that I dumped on his counter and not the bag itself. It’s real leather, I think, but it’s not custom or anything. Too late now. I’m not taking it back.
I sigh, shoulders slumping. So, what do I do now?
I obviously can’t go back to the job at L’Alba. Rent is due in two weeks. Without a paycheck, I’m gonna be at least three hundred short. The landlord isn’t cutting me any more slack.