A Little Too Much (3 page)

I just stand here listening for a really long time, the music wrapping around me like a warm blanket, sending shivers down my spine.

He’s so good it scares me a little. I mean, why are there some guys sitting in pits on Broadway, or onstage at Lincoln Center with the Philharmonic, and this guy, who’s so damn good that just listening to him makes me want to cry, is sitting here with a beat-up sax on the cold cement floor of the subway?

What if I’m not good enough? What if I’ll never be good enough?

I root through my bag for a five and toss it in the open case with the filthy, torn red velvet lining, then slide down the yellow tiled wall to sit next to him. He doesn’t look up. He just keeps playing. I wrap my jacket tightly around myself and close my eyes. Like my butterflies, the music is free. I picture all the notes fluttering in the air like wings, then floating away on the breeze.

But that only makes me sadder.

Finally, after five or six songs, I drag myself off the ground, sift through the bottom of my bag, and come out with my last three crumpled dollars. I toss them in the case, then head up the stairs into the cold drizzle.

I stop at the bar for my paycheck on the way home. When I open the door, a wave of warm, humid air, full of the smell of stale beer and moldy things, hits me in the face. I applied for this job two and a half years ago, while I was basking in my fifteen minutes of
American Idol
fame. That and my rockin’ bod are the only reasons I got the job. I’d never bartended in my life, but Jerry looked me over and decided I had “potential.” He handed me a fistful of tiny white T-shirts with the bar logo—a curly
Filthy McDermott’s
across the chest—and asked if I had any ass shorts. Said if he gives the guys something to look at they stay longer and drink more. He also told me not to wear a bra, at which point I told him to go fuck himself. As much grabbing as goes on in this place, you better believe I’m keeping the girls strapped in.

Jerry keeps the place dimly lit, just in case the occasional cockroach makes its appearance. Between that, the dark wood paneling, the mahogany behemoth of a bar in the back of the room, and the perpetual scent of sweat and rotting things, the place has a distinct caveman appeal.

There are a few regulars swaying on their barstools at the end of the bar, and a group of loud college kids playing quarters in a booth near the back. Not bad for a Thursday night. The stereo is on Jerry’s favorite eighties rock station, but the TV over the bar is also blaring some ESPN sports recap show, so between that and the yelling kids, it all just blends into a lot of white noise.

“Hilary! Baby!” Jerry bellows when the bells over the door jingle. It makes me feel like that Norm guy on that old
Cheers
show. “How’s it hanging?” Despite the fact that he clearly knows I’m a girl, he always asks that.

“Low, Jerry. It’s hanging really fucking low.” As I move deeper into the room I catch the distinct smell of burnt cheese and know Jerry must have forgotten a batch of nachos under the broiler again.

“Sorry to hear that, sweet pea. You here to drink your sorrows away?” He’s always trying to get me to put my paycheck back into the till.

I lean up against the bar. “Nah. It’s the fifteenth. Just stopped in for my check.”

Half his face pinches, like he’s only half sorry for what he’s about to say. “I ain’t quite got it ready for you. Hang around and have a drink and I’ll get it.”

“On the house?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

He blows a laugh out his mouth, spraying down the bar with enough spit that he has to wipe it with the dirty rag in his hand. And that’s all the answer I get.

Jerry has never touched me, but given the opportunity, I have no doubt he would. Overall, he’s a pretty decent guy, but I think he must be kind of fuzzy on sexual harassment law. Pretty much any night he’s here after shift, he throws out the loose suggestion that we could “catch a drink” or “try out some new rum recipes.” I think he’s still harboring the illusion that getting me drunk is the key to getting into my pants–a strategy that generally works fairly well for him when he’s not using it on me.

He’s got to be forty-something, but even so, he’s not hard on the eyes—a dark buzz cut, strong, square face, and incredible blue eyes. He’s ex-military and still takes decent care of himself. Despite the staggering volume of beer he consumes (all on the house, of course), he doesn’t have a beer gut yet. He catches his share of the clientele and he’s got a few regulars who come here to flirt with him. What he doesn’t seem to have figured out yet is, I’m not going to be one of them.

I walk around the bar and pour myself a glass of water, then plunk down on a bar stool. “I’ll wait.”

He gives me a cocky, sideways grin and disappears into the office in back. “Hold down the fort.”

“Hilary!” one of the guys down the bar shouts with a wide grin, like we’re old friends. He’s probably sixty, with graying hair and a bad comb-over. Every Tuesday and Friday night since I’ve worked here he’s come in—something about his wife having book club or Bunco or something on those nights—but I can never remember if his name is Bob or Bill. “Can I get another?” he asks, lifting his empty mug.

I’m off the clock, so I have no intention of holding down anything. I jerk my head at the tap. “Help yourself.”

He grins wider and slides his fat ass off the stool. “This going on my tab?” he mutters as he waddles past me.

“Not if you haul your sorry ass,” I say with a deliberate glance at the office door.

He hurries around the bar and pours his beer, then pats my butt and winks on the way back to his seat. “I knew I liked you.”

He grins at me again a few minutes later when Jerry comes back, waving a check in my face. “I counted your last shift as full even though you clocked out fifteen minutes early.”

I snag the check out of his hand and stuff it in my bag. “Thanks, Jerry. I owe you.”

He wiggles his eyebrows and grins. “And don’t forget it.”

I roll my eyes and slip off the bar stool. “See you tomorrow.”

“You’re closing, don’t forget.”

“I’m closing,” I reassure him. “See you at five.”

I stop at the ATM and deposit my check, then head home. The drizzle has picked up and by the time I get there, I’m pretty soaked, but I don’t really mind. I like walking in the rain. It’s one of the few things that I find really calming. Puddles are starting to form on the sidewalk and I walk right through them, splashing up as much water as I can without full-out stomping like a four-year-old. I’m actually smiling when I get to the door of our apartment and look up.

And then I’m not smiling anymore.

There’s a guy standing in my doorway. A tall guy in black cargo pants, army boots, and a dark blue hoodie. A gorgeous guy. And he’s staring at me with wide eyes.

“Hilary?” he asks, and he’s got a light accent that I can’t identify with just that one word. Something European, maybe?

“It depends,” I say backing off a step. He looks familiar, but he also looks a little dangerous. He’s tense, his hands twitching at his sides, and there’s something dark in his intense gaze.

I feel like I should know him, but I can’t place him. He’s got shortish wavy black hair that’s combed back from his forehead, and dark eyes set in one of the most beautiful man-faces I’ve ever seen. His skin is olive, no darker than mine, but a totally different shade. He’s got to be an actor or something. Maybe I know him from an audition? “Who’s asking?”

“It’s me, Hilary. Alessandro.”

His face blurs and the streetlights above my head spin. I feel myself wobble on my feet before I brace my hand on the building and get my bearings again. “Alessandro?” I’ve only known one person with that name.

His face scrunches a little. “Alessandro Moretti . . . from the group home?”

The next thing I know I’m on my ass in a puddle, my legs having turned to Jell-O, and Alessandro has my arm. It’s like the last eight years vanish. We’re in the rec room and an invisible fist is crushing my heart.

We’re leaving
.

It takes me a second to find my breath and I look up at his pinched face. “What are you doing here?”

He helps me off the sidewalk but stops short of brushing off my ass. “I . . .” He shakes his head. “I just found your address. I only meant to see how you were.”

My stomach plummets to my toes and I think for a second that I should have stayed down. Does he know? How could he have found out?

I lean back against the wall for support. “Where’s Lorenzo?” All of a sudden I’m desperate to know if he’s coming for me too.

His lips press into a hard line and his charcoal eyes darken. He closes them and hauls a deep breath before opening them again. “Lorenzo has been dead for two years.”

Chapter Three

L
ORENZO IS DEAD.
I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I’ve spent so long trying to forget the Moretti brothers ever existed. I never thought I’d see them again. But Alessandro is here. He steadies me with a hand on my arm and I’m not sure if I want him to be a figment of my imagination or not.

I was only fourteen the last time I saw Alessandro and his older brother. It was only three months that we were together at the group home, but those three months have haunted me ever since. There are things I don’t remember . . . things I’ve blocked out. But there are other things that are etched in my memory as if it were stone. Things that, no matter how hard I try, I’ll never forget.

Lorenzo was my first, and I’m pretty sure I was Alessandro’s. Now, looking back, I see it for what it was. Lorenzo was bored and I was something to do. But at the time, my life was an emotional void. Everyone who was supposed to love me had abandoned me. I’d stuffed the pain down where I couldn’t feel it, but without that pain, there was nothing. I was totally numb. I was so desperate to feel something . . .
anything . . .
that, without even realizing I was doing it, I offered myself up to him on a silver platter.

Lorenzo seemed so alive to me—so far from the numbness I felt. Watching him was like watching a comet streaking across the black emptiness of the night sky: so big and bright, but belonging to an entirely different universe. He was always in trouble with our counselor, but he wouldn’t back down. She’d yell and he’d get right in her face. Then one day he hit her. I saw it. I watched his fist swing out and connect with her jaw. I saw the blood and spit splatter from her mouth in an arc that left a stain on the carpet. I saw the look on her face . . . in her eyes. All of a sudden, she was totally alive.

I wanted to be alive too.

I would say things to piss him off, at first so he’d notice I existed, but then later to see if I could get a rise out of him. I think I wanted him to hit me too.

Instead, he did something else to me.

With Lorenzo, it wasn’t sweet or tender. There was no small talk. No foreplay. And when it was over, he was done with me.

I was alone again, so I went to Alessandro.

He was so different from his brother. He wanted to talk—about my parents and his family . . . the world and our place in it. But that’s not what I needed from him. I didn’t give a shit about the meaning of life; I just needed to feel alive. So I told him about Lorenzo—what we’d done—then I unzipped his jeans. He told me no at first, but I was persistent.

When he finally gave in, it wasn’t what I expected.

All I knew was Lorenzo. He was so sure of himself, taking what he needed and not really giving a shit about me or anyone else. He wasn’t gentle and it hurt, but physical pain was something I could grasp on to.

Alessandro, on the other hand, was scared and soft and fumbling. He was painfully gentle, and when it was over, he held me and asked if I was okay.

I didn’t understand the question.

It wasn’t until later, when he made me feel things I’d never felt before, that I realized sex to Alessandro was more than just physical. He opened me up and saw my black, broken soul, and it didn’t scare him away. He made me believe everything was going to be okay. He helped me understand love.

Then a month later, he left. Just like everyone else.

But now, here he is.

“It’s really late,” I say, trying to sort out what to do. There are things I need to know, but . . . I need to figure some things out first. I’m not ready to do this now. “Are you in the city for a while? Can we maybe meet tomorrow?”

He nods. “I’m sorry, Hilary. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

Well, you do. “Argo Tea at Columbus Circle? Eleven? They’ve got coffee too, in case . . .”

“Argo Tea,” he says with a nod, saving me from myself.

I back a few steps toward my door. “Okay . . . so . . . I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He levels me in his dark gaze and backs off a step. Something in those probing eyes sends a shiver through me and I look away, afraid he’ll see too much. I twist my key and slip through the door without looking back, then pummel the elevator call button with the side of my fist, willing it to get here before my legs give out again. When it finally shows up, I step in and punch four, then lean against the wall in the back corner and slide down it to the floor. I hug my knees to my chest and rest my aching forehead on them. When the doors clank open on my floor, I don’t move. They glide shut again after a minute and I still don’t move.

Lorenzo is dead and Alessandro is here. So much has happened to me since those three months we were together at the group home. Once they were gone, all I had left was pain and anger. I survived by learning to be strong. I stuffed the pain down where no one could see it and pretended like nothing mattered. But seeing Alessandro again brings it all to surface again. It stirs the dark places in my mind where I’ve hidden it away. I’m not going to hurt like that ever again. The pain made me weak.

But my anger fuels me.

So I do it again. As the elevator starts to move, I pull myself off the floor, stuffing my pain away into those dark crevices of my mind. The door opens on one and a couple that I’ve seen around but don’t know gets on arm in arm, giggling over some inside joke. They eye me suspiciously and stop laughing.

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.

W
HEN
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.

“About a month,” he answers, and my gaze is drawn back to his eyes.

“You’ve been here a month,” I say, trying to absorb that. “Doing what? Do you have a job?”

“Not at the moment. For now, I’m volunteering at the West Side YMCA.”

“Where were you? Before?”

He takes a long sip of his coffee, and below the rolled-up cuff of his sleeve, I watch muscles of his forearm ripple as he sets his cup down and swirls it. “A few places, but mostly Corsica and Rome.”

“Rome.” He was in Rome while my life fell apart. “So . . . why did you come back?”

“To put some old ghosts to rest.” As he says this, his gaze darkens . . . becomes more intense, seeming to bore through me.

But I won’t back down. I hold his gaze. “Am I a ghost?”

“You are.”

“And you’re going to put me to rest,” I say, unable to curb the cynical edge to my voice.

“I needed to find you,” he says, finally lowering his gaze. “The way things were left . . . I’ve never felt right about it.”

“The way things were left . . .” I repeat. The way things were left sucked. He has no idea how much.