Candy Hearts, Vol. 2

Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

NICO

Once we get cleaned up, I convince Greg to just order food for lunch (I pay), and we get pizza—from a good restaurant where we can get margherita. We’re still snuggling on the couch, watching football, when Cathie comes home. She shakes out her black umbrella by the front door, launching a spray of water droplets that don’t reach us.

“Is it raining that hard?” Greg asks, turning toward the front windows. I hadn’t noticed either; I’m all wrapped up in Greg, inside and out. I think I went into this looking for a friend or a fling, but I somehow got a lot more. Not that I’m complaining. I put my hand on his knee, and he gives me a fantastic smile.

“Cats and dogs,” Cathie says, and I have no idea what that has to do with the weather. She grabs herself a piece of pizza, then grins at us. “Look at you two. Who would’ve thought that you’d end up here, given how it all started?” Under my hand, Greg’s leg tenses, and my mind snaps to attention out of my comfortable Sunday post-sex fog.

“What that means?” I ask. Greg sits up, turning toward me with his hands up, but before he can speak, Cathie goes on.

“You know,” she says, taking a bite, “the wrong apartment thing.”

I can feel my heart begin to frost over, and I shake my head slowly, wishing that I didn’t understand what she was saying for once, wishing I could gloss over it as another bit of English that slipped away from me like so many do. “What thing?” I turn to Greg. “What thing?”

“Listen,” he says, then pauses, like he’s trying to figure out what to say. I fold my arms and stare at him, recounting the contents of that letter in my mind, the one I pored over so many times, trying to understand it. I’ve been wanting to introduce myself for weeks now.

“Who it was for?”

“I don’t even know his name,” Greg says weakly. All the color’s gone out of his bright face, like he’s been unplugged. “Please, Nico. When she delivered you my letter and you seemed so interested in meeting me, I just thought I’d see how it went before I told you. Just thought I’d see if we had a … connection.”

I am so upset I can’t move. Can’t speak. When he said he’d seen me in the hall, it was someone else. That’s why he didn’t recognize me at the café. He wrote that sweet, shy letter for someone else —he was too shy even to deliver it, which makes it both charming and completely heartbreaking at the same time. I finally find some words.

“But you never tell,” I say, my voice low. “You not say.”

“No,” he admits, dropping his gaze to his lap. “I didn’t. I didn’t think it mattered—we just get along so well, and … ” His face reddens. “Honestly, I just forgot.”

“Which is: didn’t matter or forgot? Not the same,” I say, getting to my feet. My shoes are still in his room, so I storm across the apartment.

“Nico, wait. Just stop. Please.” His voice is tinged with increasing desperation with each word. “I don’t even know that guy, but I know you.” He’s followed me into the bedroom, and now he’s blocking my path to exit as I tie my shoes. And there’s nothing shy about him—chest heaving, stance wide, gaze stern, like he doesn’t believe I’d knock him over to leave, but he’s not taking any chances.

“I know you,” Greg says, his voice strong. “No, we don’t always communicate well, but I know your heart. I can feel it when you look at me, and I can see it in your eyes when you talk about your family and your work. I hear it in the way you talk and joke and tease. You like this. You want it just as much as I do.”

“Then why hide?” I shout. “Why not tell?”

“Because I didn’t want you to think it was a mistake!” He’s shouting too.

“It was mistake!”

“No, this is fucking fate,” he shoots back, pointing at me. “This is destiny; we just—we just needed a little help to get there.” I’m too ramped up to think and I don’t know all those words, so I can’t reply, but then he puts his hands on his chest, over his heart.

“Give me another chance. Amore, please. I’ve never lied to you about anything.”

The hardest part is that I believe that, but right now, my mind is spinning in Italian—accusations and hurt and anger, and it’s actually a blessing that I can’t let any of it out. I push past him, intent on nothing but the front door, but he follows me again.

“Nico!”

I’ve got the door already open when I stop, my heart still revving like an engine at the start line, needing to go, go, go , but my feet unwilling to just walk out on him when he’s so upset.

“I think on it. Give to me time.”

His voice is small, but relieved. “Okay.”

I manage to close the door without slamming it, but I don’t start breathing again until I get inside my apartment. I lock the door and put my back to it, sliding down until I hit the floor. I can’t hear everything that’s happening up there, but I hear their quiet voices—Cathie apologizing, Greg saying no, it was his fault. I sit there for a long time, thinking about that letter. Thinking about our first date, when the connection was so strong, it overwhelmed me. I think about showing him the Ferraris, the spark of us that other couple saw, the way we were in his bed. But the idea that it wasn’t me he wanted hurts my pride, as evidenced by the tear I wipe away.

I hear the TV shut off upstairs and the front door slam. I tense, waiting for him to come down, waiting for a knock or another letter shoved under my door. But nothing comes. I get up quickly and cross to the front windows, looking down, and there he is, working his way up the sidewalk. He’s wiping his face too, jacketless despite the deluge drenching him … my sunshine, out in the rain. My dictionary is still on the table, next to the radio where I was looking up song lyrics. I flip it open.

Fate: The will or principle or determining cause by which things in general are believed to come to be as they are or events to happen as they do.

That isn’t very helpful, but I realize as I’m searching for the other word that I already know it: destino. And could he mean fato for the other? I huff out a laugh as I toss the book back onto the scratched table. Ridiculous. We’ve known each other only a few weeks.

I mean, it couldn’t be, right?