When the elevator stops on four, I step out without looking at them and move across the hall to our door. The apartment is dark, but it’s only eleven, so I know Brett’s not in bed. I flip on the light and move to the kitchen, where I grab a mostly empty two-liter of Diet Coke out of the door of the fridge and chug the rest.
On the way to the bedroom, I stop in the bathroom to pee and brush my teeth. When I look in the mirror over the sink, peering back at me is that scared little girl from so long ago. I crank the hot water and splash my face, breathing in the steam and forcing the fear away, and when I look up again, that girl is gone. It’s just me. Hard, tough, indestructible me. I let the Moretti boys close enough to hurt me all those years ago and I learned my lesson. No one’s ever getting through my armor again.
The bed is empty, so Brett must be out. I strip and slide in under the sheets. All I want to do is curl up in a ball and go to sleep.
But I can’t sleep. My mind won’t turn off, wondering what Alessandro has to say. An hour later, when Brett comes home, drunk, I’m still wide awake. I sit up in bed when he staggers into the bedroom. He flips on the light and peels off his jacket. He’s soaked through from the rain, the shoulders and back of his T-shirt wet and clinging.
“Finally,” I say and his eyes flow down the lines of my body as I sweep the sheets aside. I roll onto my hands and knees and crawl to the edge of the bed. “Come here.”
He grins and stalks toward me, stopping in front of me at the edge of the bed. “Now what?”
I reach up and pop the button of his jeans, easing the zipper down. He’s commando, as usual, and his manhood is already half-mast. I lean forward and tease his growing hard-on with my tongue. A minute later, when he’s stiff, I take him into my mouth.
“Fuck,” he gasps when I suck him. He growls and drags me off the bed onto the floor, throwing me down and climbing on top of me. The next second, he stabs into me hard. He growls with every thrust as he pounds me into the hardwood floor, and it hurts so goddamn good.
It only lasts a few minutes. I don’t come, but I don’t need to. That’s not what this was about. I just needed to know I’m here, in this place. Right now. I needed to feel it.
Brett rolls off me and I ooze back up onto the bed, finally feeling sleepy. And when I close my eyes, there’s nothing. Just the way I want it.
WHEN I WAKE up in the morning, I realize Brett never made it into the bed. He’s sprawled in the dirty clothes on the floor, just where I left him, sound asleep and fully dressed, with his limp dick hanging out of his open fly. I pick my phone up off the nightstand and check the time.
Ten.
I step over Brett and hurry to the shower, racing through my routine, the whole time wondering if I’m actually going to go through with this. I still don’t know what I’m supposed to say to Alessandro. Why is he even here after all this time?
I don’t have time to de-frizz my hair, so it’s more afro-ish than normal when I race up to the Argo Tea at eleven fifteen. I’m not sure if I want him to be there or not.
But he is.
He’s sitting alone at a table in the back corner, a coffee cup cradled in both hands. I watch as he brings it to his mouth and sips. He’s changed, but not so much that I can’t see the sixteen-year-old boy I knew. He still has the same silky, black hair, the waves combed off his forehead now, instead of shaggy in his face. He has the same smoky charcoal eyes, dark with black rings around the irises. But, where his features were more delicate then, they’ve turned stronger and more masculine. His sleek jawline is shaded with dark stubble and there’s a shallow dimple at the tip of his chin. He’s tall, probably six-three, but he was lanky before. He’s filled out. He’s in a sapphire-blue button-down with the tails loose over black jeans, and there’s no question there’s a pretty serious body under the thin cotton.
He’s still beautiful. That’s the only word that does him justice. But there’s an edge to him now that reminds me of Lorenzo.
Even though Lorenzo’s face was more boyish in some ways—rounder with a little baby fat in his cheeks—he was tougher and more rugged-looking than Alessandro. His hair was sort of mud brown, and his eyes were totally black and totally unreadable. His skin wasn’t as dark as Alessandro’s either. He was seventeen and half and didn’t shave very often, so he had blondish scruff on his chin and upper lip that scratched my face when he was on top of me. He was shorter than Alessandro, even though he was a year and a half older, and, at the time, he was broader than Alessandro, though it’s clear Alessandro caught up in that department at some point. But he forever had that look in his eye that let you know he could snap at any second. Alessandro’s got that look now.
I stand in the door, staring at him for another minute, deciding once and for all if I’m really going through with this. I hate that I’m this scared. I don’t do scared anymore. Pissed? Yes. A little nervous? Sometimes. But never scared. But I have to do this. I have to know why he’s here—what he knows. I take a deep breath and square my shoulders, then stride over to where he sits.
He stiffens for just a second when he sees me, but he stands when I reach his table. “I wasn’t sure you’d actually come.”
“Yeah . . . whatever,” I say, dropping my eyes from his intense gaze.
“I would have ordered for you, but I didn’t know what you liked.” He pulls out the chair opposite his. “I’ll get something for you.”
I’m just staring at him. I can’t get over the change.
“I can get it.” I spin and hurry toward the counter, where, thankfully, there’s a line. I don’t look back as I wait. Instead, I work to pull my thoughts together. I don’t know if it’s closure I need or what, but there are things I need to know—questions I need answers to.
Now I just need to clear my head enough to remember what the hell they are.
Alessandro stands again as I walk back to the table several minutes later. He holds the back of my chair as I lower myself into it, then helps me slide it in. He sits again and looks at me for a long, awkward minute, swirling his coffee. “I’m sorry I was so awkward last night. You took me by surprise. I wasn’t planning to ring the buzzer, but I’d just found your address and I . . .” His eyes pinch a little and I realize it’s because I caught him there. He’s embarrassed.
“You were stalking me?”
His whole face pinches now. “I never meant to . . . I wasn’t going to contact you.”
“How did you find me?”
He presses back into his seat and hesitates before answering. “It took some ingenuity . . . and Google.”
I slam my teacup down on the table. “My address is not on Google!”
“It’s actually pretty shocking, the amount of personal information that can be found online.”
“So you were stalking me.”
“In a manner of speaking, I suppose I was, if there’s a non-creepy connotation to that term.”
“How is this non-creepy?” I say, waving a hand at him. “You show up in New York eight years after vanishing off the face of the planet, and I find you poking around my apartment building in the middle of the night, then you admit to cyberstalking me. Nope . . .” I say, folding my arms across my chest and scowling at him. “Nothing creepy there.”
He breathes deeply. “As I said, I didn’t plan on—”
“How long have you been back in New York, anyway?” I ask, cutting him off. I don’t want to hear any more of his lame explanations. I just want to know what the hell he’s doing here—why he found me. If he knows.