A Little Too Much (20 page)

Chapter Twenty

I
RANG THE
buzzer from downstairs, but Brett didn’t answer. He probably went to his parents’ in Connecticut for Christmas. I turn the key in the apartment door and push it open slowly, just to be sure he’s not still naked and passed out on the couch or something. When I find the living room is empty, I push the door wider and step through, Jess and Alessandro behind me.

“We’re gonna have to move that thing again,” I say with a gesture at the coffee table, looking back at Alessandro.

He smiles as if that’s in some way amusing.

“Let’s just get your stuff and get out of here,” Jess says, crossing toward the bedroom. “The energy in here sucks.”

But as she disappears through the door, I hear her, “Shit!” then the rustling of sheets and a “Get out!” that’s definitely not Jess’s.

Jess comes back out and looks at me. “Do you have a suitcase or something? I’ll get your clothes.”

Damn. “Brett’s in there?”

“Um . . . yeah,” she says with a glance back at the door. “You really don’t want to go in there.”

“Did that nimrod puke on himself again?” I say moving past her into the bedroom . . . and find Brett and Bambi twisted into the sheets.

Bambi?
Seriously?

There’s a split second where I want to be mad, but out of nowhere, a giggle bursts up my throat. The next second, I’m bent at the waist cackling like a lunatic. Alessandro steps into the room, probably to see what’s so funny, and steps out again when he sees a buck-naked Bambi, sitting up in bed.

We’ve got priests and prostitutes and a gay girl from Biloxi. Yep, just your average Christmas morning.

Brett sits up and gives her a gentle shove, his blurry, bloodshot eyes never leaving me. He looks like something the cat threw up. He must have been all kinds of drunk last night to look this bad in the morning. “Go get cleaned up or something,” he tells her.

Bambi looks over her shoulder at him, then glares a dagger at me before standing and disappearing up the hall to the bathroom.

Brett stands, grabbing his warm-up pants from the floor and swaying dangerously as he tugs them on. “What are you doing here?”

I fight for control, cutting off the last of the giggles. “My Christmas gifts are here. If you’d have let me get my stuff last night, I wouldn’t have interrupted your orgy.”

He shoots me a bloodshot glare. “You left me blue. What did you expect me to do?”

“That.” I say, with a wave at the bed. “Exactly that.”

I step into the closet and grab my suitcase, tossing my clothes in. When I come out with my suitcase and bag of Christmas gifts, Brett is sitting on the bed with his head in his hand. I nudge his shoulder with the cologne box, and when he lifts his head, I hand it to him. “Merry Christmas.”

He stares up at me with bleary eyes. “You’re really doing this? Leaving?”

I look at him for a second and wonder why I ever thought what we had was working. “Yep. I’m really doing this.”

He lowers his head back into his hand as I tow my suitcase to the dresser and unload my drawers into it. I go to the bathroom, where Bambi’s still in the shower, and walk in without knocking. There’s a plastic Macy’s bag under the counter that I load all my bathroom stuff into. I sweep my makeup and hair products into the bag, but decide to leave my shampoo and conditioner, because there’s no way I’m going in the shower right now to get them. I snag my bathrobe off the hook next to Brett’s and grab every last towel, because they’re all mine. The shower turns off just as I click the door closed and head back to the bedroom.

I hand Jess the Macy’s bag and cram the towels and robe into my suitcase, then tip it up onto its wheels. “Can you handle this and that?” I ask her, motioning to the bag of gifts.

She reaches for the handle and sets the Macy’s bag on top of the suitcase, then grabs my gifts in her free hand. “Got it.”

We step into the hall, Alessandro following behind, and find Bambi standing there dripping, wrapped in Brett’s bathrobe and glaring a dagger at me. She scurries into the bedroom after we pass.

“You ready, mister furniture-moving expert?” I ask Alessandro when we hit the living room.

“I’m yours to command,” he says with a smile and a small bow.

“Come on.” I turn to Jess. “Can you go ahead of us and hold the door?”

She moves quickly toward the door, towing my suitcase behind her, and puts my stuff in the hall, then holds the door and stands back.

Alessandro and I each grab an end of the table. “On its side,” he says, and we tip it sideways. He starts backing toward the door. “I’ll go first.”

We manage to wrangle the table into the elevator, and when we get to the bottom, Jess holds the door open while Alessandro and I wrestle the table out.

“Watch the top end of the table,” Alessandro says as I move backward out the door.

“I’ve got—” But that’s as far as I get before a corner of the table catches on the top of the elevator door, causing me to lose my balance and my grip. I hear Jess gasp as I drop my end and I topple over backward onto my butt, which brings the top edge low enough to clear the door. The jerk of the table yanks it out of Alessandro’s grip and it starts to fall toward me where I sit on my ass, stunned. But then, with reflexes like a cat, he grabs for the table leg and stops it, mid-timber.

I look up at it, dangling over my head, and back at Alessandro as he strains to bring it back upright, and what I know for sure at that second is that Brett would have let that table flatten me if it were him in that elevator.

Jess grabs the other side of the table and helps Alessandro right it as I scramble to my feet.

“Thanks guys,” I tell them as we slide it the rest of the way out of the elevator. “This thing is so freaking heavy I’d have been roadkill.”

“Damn!” Jess says as the elevator doors close, and I realize all my stuff is still in there.

Alessandro’s hand darts out for the call button but it’s too late. The car is rising. It stops on the fourth floor and we wait for it to come back. And when the door opens, Bambi has my suitcase open and my clothes are strewn all over the elevator. She has my red lace thong looped over her index finger. “By the time I’m done with him, he’ll forget you ever existed,” she says, curling her lip in disgust as she flicks it at me. She struts past us toward the door.

“Good,” I say as she slips through.

Jess steps up next to me and grasps my hand as Bambi vanishes through the door. “Karma, Hilary. The universe is going to come back and bite that bitch in the butt.”

“I think maybe it already did.” I turn back to find the coffee table leaning against the wall and Alessandro inside the elevator, collecting my things and packing them carefully back into my suitcase. He picks up a black lace bra and hesitates for a second before tucking it in under a sweater and I feel myself blush, of all things. I don’t blush. Ever.

“I’ve got it,” I say, kneeling next to him and grabbing for the last few pairs of underwear I see, cramming them into the corner of the suitcase.

I toss a sweater on top as he scoops up the last towel and folds it in, then helps me zip it up.

“Thanks,” I tell him as I grab the handle and tow it out of the elevator.

“My pleasure.” He purrs the last word, and when I look at him, there’s an amused spark in his eye.

Jess grabs my bags of stuff and takes the suitcase handle from me. “Let’s get out of here. There’s a bad vibe in this building. It’s giving me the creeps.”

The subway scene is basically a repeat performance of the one that got the table to my apartment in the first place, except this time we have Jess to run interference. She shoves the crowd back from the door, making room for Alessandro and me to load the coffee table into the subway car. We finally make her apartment and wrestle the coffee table in, and my heart sinks when I see there’s already a glass coffee table in a delicate white frame.

Jess sees my frown and says, “Oh, no! It’s not what you think,” like she got caught cheating on me with another coffee table. “This is Lucinda’s. She’s taking it when she moves.”

My spirits lift a little. “So, you’re okay with my coffee table?”

“Definitely. I hate that thing,” she says with a scowl at the pretty glass table. “Where I grew up, a coffee table was where you put your feet, but Lucinda flips out when she catches me with my feet on hers.”

And that makes me think about furniture in general. I’m going to need at least a bed.

“Where would you like this in the meantime?” Alessandro says, and I realize I’ve left him standing there holding my coffee table.

Jess looks around. “Maybe we can lean it on that wall?” she says, pointing to the wall next to the couch.

Alessandro slides it across the floor to the corner and leans it, legs out, against the wall behind an armchair. “Are you going to be okay from here?”

That’s a really good question, but as I look around at the apartment, I realize the answer is yes. Maybe Jess is right. Maybe this was meant to be, because I feel a sudden wave of relief. I didn’t realize how tense living with Brett had become until now, when I don’t have to do it anymore. That frustrated, wrong feeling is totally gone. “Yeah. I’m good.”

“The children are doing a Christmas show at the youth center tonight. It’s open to the public if you ladies would like to come.”

Funnily, I sort of want to say yes, but . . . “I promised my sister we’d be there for dinner.” He nods and turns for the door, but then I remember I have his gift. “Wait!” I go to the bag and pull it out. It’s a little bit smashed and I almost change my mind. “Here,” I finally say, thrusting it at him. “Merry Christmas.”

He takes the wrapped tube from my hand and laughs at the cockroach bow, then squints a question at me.

“Just open it.”

He pulls off the cockroach and slides it in his pocket, then slowly slips off the wrapping paper . . . and smiles. “Salomé.”

I shrug. “I hope you like it.”

His smile widens and his eyes spark. “There’s something about a woman who has her shit together.”

I cringe a little, remembering that’s what I said about her at the museum.

His eyes lift from the rolled print to me. “She reminds me of you.”

I cringe deeper.

He backs toward the door. “Don’t forget. We have a date at the youth center tomorrow morning.”

I roll my eyes. “Ten. I’ll be there.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thanks for the help.”

“My pleasure,” he says with a smile that makes my cheeks warm again, then he disappears through the door.

“You’ve got it bad,” Jess says, and I realize I’m just standing here staring after him.

“What are you talking about?”

“You want him, Hilary. You’re blushing. I’ve never seen you blush before.”

I hate what I’m feeling is so obvious on my face. I’ve spent my entire life learning to hide my emotions. How does being around Alessandro turn me back to that girl so easily? Just one more reason I shouldn’t be around him. “I just hauled a five-thousand-pound table halfway across Manhattan, Jess.”

She shrugs and gives me a knowing smile.

“Which means I could use a shower before we go. Can I use yours?”

“It’s yours now,” she says with a goofy smile. Then she goes all Mississippi and jumps up and down, making me laugh. “This is going to be so awesome!”

J
ESS IS ON
the floor with Henri, building one of his four new Lego sets, Jeff is bundled up with Max on the back deck looking through the telescope Mallory and he bought the boys, and Mallory and I are on the couch. I’ve filled her in on Brett’s and my breakup, and when she heard how Jess took me in off the street, she offered her leftovers to take home—Mallory’s seal of approval.

“So this guy . . . the one who helped you move . . . ?”

“What about him?” I ask, but I know where she’s going. Ever since I mentioned he was back and saw her reaction, I’ve avoided talking about him with her.

“Alessandro,” Jess says from the floor. “I think your sister’s crushing on him.”

Mallory’s eyes narrow as they find mine again, then she stands abruptly, grabbing my hand and pulling me up. “Excuse us for a minute, Jessica.”

She drags me up the hall to her bedroom and closes the door. “Please, Hilary, tell me this isn’t him,” she says under her breath.

“It’s him.”

“What the hell are you doing?” she asks through a tight jaw.

“He’s helping me, Mallory. He’s a friend. That’s all.” I feel myself cringe as I try to justify the unjustifiable. I know Mallory’s right. I’ve known from the beginning. It’s the reason I told him we can’t hang out. It’s too dangerous.

But I can’t stay away from him.

“Why is he back?” She drops onto the edge of her bed, wringing her hands. “Why did he come back after all this time?”

“His father died in the 9/11 attacks. I guess he just needed some closure.”

“That’s all he wants? Closure?”

“Nothing’s going to change, Mallory. I promise.”

She hangs her head. “I’ve worried about this for so long . . . what would happen if . . .” She trails off and blows out a breath, then looks back up at me. “You’re okay, though? He’s not—”

I shake my head. “His brother was the problem, and he’s gone . . . dead.”

“Oh.” She stands and straightens her skirt. “I still don’t like it, Hilary. I wish you wouldn’t see him.”

“It will be fine. I swear.” God, I hope I’m not lying. “He doesn’t know anything that happened after he left.”

She looks relieved. “Just be careful. Promise.”

“I promise.”

Chapter Twenty-One

I
WA
KE UP
in the morning on Jess’s couch, and despite the lumps, I feel more rested than I have in a long time. But I’ve barely opened my eyes when Dev is blasting out of my phone. My alarm.

I pick it up and look at it. Eight thirty.
Ugh
. I should have told Alessandro that ten o’clock wasn’t going to happen. I turn off the alarm and close my eyes, but before I can fall back asleep, Creed is blasting out of my phone.

“Shut up!” I tell them as I reach for it, clicking off the ringer. “What?” I croak when I connect.

“You’ve turned off your alarm, haven’t you?” There’s a teasing lilt to his silk accent, and I want to choke him.

“Why would you think that?”

“Because I know you.”

When I realize the truth in his words, it scares me. I’ve hidden who I am for so long, afraid of the questions from Mallory and Jeff, afraid of the feeding frenzy if anyone else saw the fear and insecurity. But Alessandro knew me before, when I was just me. He knew me before everything happened and I put up the walls.

He’s beautiful. Still. There’s no denying I’m attracted to him, but I can’t let him close again. I should never have gone to his place on Christmas Eve.

“You have to tell me what’s worth getting out of . . . couch so early for, or I’m not coming.”

“I’d think you’d know by now that I’m not going to divulge that information. It’s Thursday, it’s my turn, and you have to uphold our pact.”

“Our pact?”

“Unless you want to be done with our Thursday excursions.”

I rub my eyes and grimace, furious with myself that I can’t say no. “I’ll be there,” I say, sweeping the blanket off and sitting on the couch.

“Excellent. Wear something comfortable.”

I open my mouth to ask why, but I know he’s not going to tell me. “Fine.”

A
T TEN SHAR
P
I’m standing in the doorway of the Catholic youth center. It’s basically a gym. There’s a half court just inside the door, complete with a parquet wooden floor and a regulation backboard and hoop. But right now, in the middle of it are seven six-year-old girls in black leotards and pink tights standing at a portable dance bar. On the other side of the half court is a row of free weight benches where a group of teenage boys are working out, and beyond that is a small boxing ring.

Standing between the weights and the boxing ring, Alessandro is talking to a pretty blond woman who’s probably a hair older than him. He’s in a snug black tank and loose athletic shorts and for a second I can’t take my eyes off the contours of his biceps and the vein running down his forearm. God, he’s got sexy arms. But then the blonde reaches out and brushes her fingers down one of those biceps, yanking me out of my daze.

She’s in black yoga pants, which happens to be what I’m wearing. But where, under my jacket, I’m in a frumpish tank top, she’s in a sports bra. Her ass is round, her stomach is flat, her boobs are perky, and she’s pretty.

Really pretty.

Something in my gut twists as I step through the door and start moving toward them. I skirt around the half court and one of the boys at the weight benches whistles through his teeth as I pass. That catches Alessandro’s attention and he looks away from Ms. Perky Boobs.

“Ah, and here she is,” he says as I approach. He grasps my elbow and pulls me closer. “Marie, this is my friend Hilary.” He tips his head and smiles at me, but there’s something mischievous in it. “Hilary, this is your new dance instructor, Marie.”

My eyes shoot to her and back. “What?”

“You said you needed dance lessons. Marie is an accomplished dancer. She trained with the Joffrey Ballet School.”

“It’s nice to meet you Hilary,” she says, holding out her hand.

I shake it because anything else would be rude, even for me, then glance at the girls at the half court. “That’s your class?”

“Yep. We’re just about to start,” she answers, then turns to Alessandro and smiles. “I’ll see you tonight for dinner?” She sweeps her fingers down the vein in his arm as she asks and the stab of jealousy I feel as he smiles back surprises me.

“I’m looking forward to it.”

They’re dating. I knew it. There’s no mistaking the body language. Alessandro is beautiful. There’s no way I’m the only person who’s noticed this. Of course women are going to flock to him. Of course they’re going to want him. But what I feel at the realization is a literal
stab
. It feels like someone took something sharp to my stomach. It’s totally different than what I felt with Brett. With Brett, it was more like I just didn’t want anyone touching my stuff. This is more visceral. The thought of Alessandro with someone else is painful.

She presses up onto her toes and gives him a peck on the cheek. “See you at eight.” Then she turns to me. “Come on, Hilary.” She spins and twitches toward the dance girls.

“Go,” Alessandro says with a brush of his hand toward the court. “But I’ll see you in an hour,” he adds as I trudge toward Snow Bitch and her seven dwarves, shrugging off my jacket on the way. I hang it on a hook on the wall next to a Hello Kitty jacket that must belong to one of my fellow students, and make my way to the group. As much as I feel like a freaking moron, and I pretty much want to kill Alessandro, which it sounds like I might get a chance to do in an hour, I really need dance lessons. So I line up on the right side of the bar at the end, behind all the dwarves.

Snow Bitch queues up the music on her iPod and the speakers spit out a tinkling piano piece. “All right, girls. First position,” she says standing in front of the group with her heels tight together and her legs turned out at the hip so her toes are spread apart.

All the little dwarves snap to attention, grasping the bar with one hand and rounding the other in front of them, mimicking her leg position.

I copy their position as best I can.

“And plié, two, three, four,” she says, bending her knees so they follow the direction her toes are pointing. All the little dwarves bend their knees, then straighten them. “Plié, two, three, four,” she says again and they all repeat the knee bend. I follow along. After a few more reps, just when I’m catching on, she says, “And relevé . . .” The dwarves press up onto their toes. “And second position.”

She moves toward the bar as the dwarves spread their legs so they’re in the same position, but with some space between their heels. “And plié, two, three, four,” she starts again as they all bend their knees in this position.

I’m still working on getting my feet right when she comes to me at the bar. She lays a hand on my stomach and the other on my back. “Tight abs,” she says pressing her hand gently into my stomach. “Straight back.”

The dwarves are going through the same knee bend routine as we did in the first position, so I follow along to the music.

“Good,” she says. “Now arms softer.”

I shake the tension out of my shoulders and soften my arms. She grasps one gently and curves my elbow and wrist a little more. “There. Like that.”

Then she smiles as she moves around the bar to correct the dwarf on the other side.

So maybe she’s not that bad after all.

“And relevé . . . and third,” she says after a few more knee bends, and all the dwarves shift their feet again, placing the heel of one near the toe of the other, legs still turned out. Again, I try to copy them as they go through their knee bends but this one is harder. I feel off balance.

Marie is back, a hand on my butt and the other on my stomach again. “Turn your legs out and as you plié, keep your knees over your toes,” she says. “Your center of gravity needs to be over your base of support.”

“What?”

“Keep your butt over your heels,” she says with a smile.

I do and it’s easier.

As we move, as stupid as I feel, a troll among pixies, I start to become aware of my body in a way I’ve never been before. And as everything clicks back together, I realize that at some point—maybe as far back as Lorenzo—I intentionally disconnected from my body. For years, it’s been easier to pretend like what happens to it doesn’t matter. It’s nothing more than a vehicle. If it gets dented, so what? Just slap a fresh coat of paint on and keep going. But now, as I feel myself fully in my body for the first time in years, the sensations are almost overwhelming. My skin prickles, the nerve endings uber-sensitized by just the movement of the air around me. I glance over at Alessandro, in the boxing ring with a buff black kid, and I can hear and see things I shouldn’t be able to from here.

“Move your feet, Alex,” Alessandro says. And even from thirty feet away, I see the sweat trickling down his neck, the vein pulsing in his temple, the ripple of his biceps under a glossy sheen of sweat. I can almost taste his breath. I hear the grunt as the boy swings and I see the muscles shift under Alessandro’s skin as he moves to block the punch. His hand comes up like lightning and the boy stumbles back as Alessandro’s glove connects with the underside of his chin.

I gasp and grab for the dance bar as the memory flash knocks me off balance.
Alessandro’s fist connecting with a boy’s face. Blood
. The black boy morphs into Eric, his shocked face bloody as Alessandro’s fist slams into it over and over.

I was fluttering somewhere above my body, way up near the ceiling of the rec room, watching it all happen. I saw my body, sprawled on the couch, my T-shirt pushed up over my bra. I saw Alessandro beating Eric bloody on the floor next to me. And then I heard the laugh. Lorenzo.

He pushed off the door frame, where he’d been watching the fight. “Oh, little bro,” he taunted, moving toward my body like a prowling tiger. “You gotta learn to share, like I did.” He brushed his fingers down my face, my neck, my chest. I saw it from where I was floating, but I didn’t feel it.

Alessandro leapt off Eric and was next to my body in a heartbeat, shoving Lorenzo. “Don’t touch her!” he spit, then sat on the edge of the couch, straightening my shirt and sitting me up. My body was Jell-O and the rest of me was still fluttering near the ceiling like a butterfly. He scooped me off the couch and stepped over Eric on his way up the stairs.

“I think she gave me the clap, bro, so watch yourself,” Lorenzo yelled after us.

Alessandro laid me in my bed and everything spun. “Did he hurt you? Are you okay?” he asked, looking me over.

I shoved him away and muttered something that wasn’t even words.

He pulled the sheets up around me and the world went fuzzy, then faded out.

But Eric never touched me after that. At least . . . not until I let him.

Suddenly, I can’t breathe. The half court spins and I need out. I need to find air. I stagger to the door I entered through and hear Marie call my name. I don’t stop until I’m out on the sidewalk. As I stagger back toward the subway, my head spins just like it did then, with whatever Eric gave me. I can’t shake the image . . . the feeling.

“Hilary!” Alessandro’s voice calls behind me, but I don’t stop moving. I can’t. I need to outrun whatever this is. A minute later, there’s a hand on my arm and a second after that, my jacket is draped over my shoulders.

“Hilary,” Alessandro says, but I don’t turn to look at him. He guides me to a bus stop bench and sits me on it. “Are you all right? What happened?”

For a long time, I can’t answer. He sits with me, catching his breath, and I stare into space, trying to push the image of Eric’s bloody face out of my head. Finally, I sag into his shoulder.

“Talk to me, Hilary.”

My chest expands as I finally find some oxygen. “There are things I don’t remember from before, but some of them are coming back.” I glance up at him. “Like the time you beat the shit out of Eric.”

He cringes a little. “Just one more thing I’ve had to pray forgiveness for.”

“What happened? I don’t remember everything.”

He rolls his eyes up and breathes deep. “How much to you remember?”

“Just that I think he must have given me something, because I couldn’t really move.”

He nods slowly. “He roofied you.”

“Did he . . .” I trail off and pinch my face against tears. I’m not going to cry. Not again.

“He didn’t rape you,” he answers, reading my mind, “but only because Lorenzo and I came back from the courthouse before he could take it that far.”

“So you hit him.”

“I came in and found him on top of you on the couch. You were staring at the ceiling and singing in this voice that wasn’t right, like your tongue was too thick for your mouth. I knew what he must have done, so I . . .” He trails off, shaking his head. “I should have stopped. I pulled him off of you and I should have left it at that, but I was . . . I was so angry.” He hangs his head. “I lost control.”

I lower my head into my hands. “Thank you.”

“I couldn’t let him hurt you the way Lorenzo had.”

I look up at him. “You were the only person who gave a shit about me through any of that. If it weren’t for you, God knows where I would have ended up.” I lean into his shoulder and he holds me tighter. The delicious scent of warm musk and sweat wraps around me and that’s when I realize he’s still in his tank and gym shorts. “You must be freezing,” I say, reaching for his arm and finally doing what I’ve been dying to. I trail a fingertip over his flawless olive skin, along the vein from bicep to forearm.

“Don’t worry about me. I have a high metabolism.”

I wrap my hand around his lean forearm and smile at him. “You’re a terrible liar and I know this because you’re shivering.”

He looks down into my eyes for a long minute, the smile fading from his lips. “I have no right to want to touch you, and yet I want that more than anything—to convince all of my senses you’re really here after all this time.”

I reach up and stroke my finger along the strong line of his jaw. “I’m here.”

He cups my cheek and thumbs my chin, and I can’t take my eyes off his, suddenly so deep that I could fall right into them. His hand glides around the nape of my neck, threading into my kinks, and I let him pull me closer. His lips pause an inch from mine, and he gazes into my eyes with a question in his. The air between us crackles and I fight the draw, shuddering at his closeness—at the starved expression on his face. And, staring into those eyes, I lose the battle. I lean forward and brush my lips across his.