Chapter Nineteen
Chapter
Nineteen
Nina’s bedroom was remarkably quiet—the party barely a hum through the door.
Danny recognized the framed Playbills and photo-collage mirror from the night when he’d gotten ready for Christian’s big show.
The whole room glowed with an incandescent warmth from the pleated bedside lamp, and when he looked out the window, he could see the faint swish of headlights passing below them up Central Park West.
It wasn’t until they were sitting on the edge of the bed, which was piled high with pillows of varying shapes and sizes, that Danny realized he had no clue what he was doing.
It was easy enough to walk with her across the living room, to be clocked by half of the drama department, to be crowned “a player,” but now that they were alone, Danny didn’t know what part was supposed to come next.
Luckily, Nina took the lead at first: her mouth crashing into his, her tongue wiping every corner of his mouth like it was his father’s patrol car getting waxed at the Bay Street Wash & Lube.
It didn’t take long for Danny to figure out the rhythm—a roll of a shoulder, or a soft moan, or a rush of air leaving her nose with a sigh telling him that he was doing something she liked.
And soon they were lying on their sides, her leg hooked over his, Danny running his fingers through her hair and kissing her hard, kissing her deep.
And when Nina reached for the bottom of his shirt and tugged it over his head, Danny didn’t hesitate.
He followed the pattern, his fingers reaching down and unbuttoning her blouse.
The Victorio men were confirmed lady-killers, he’d always been told.
Like his grandfather, who once stood on the docks in Bari with a young woman, his Nonni, groveling at his boots, clutching the tear-stained fabric of his trousers, pleading with him to take her across the Atlantic to America.
Like his cousin Luca, who would show up every holiday with a different Gina or Bella or Angelina, each one prettier than the last and each one always joining his aunts in the kitchen, offering to help chop onions.
Like his father, Tony, who was so handsome and had shoulders so broad that he’d once swept a first-year nursing student off her pumps and persuaded her to quit school and apply for a full-time job rubbing his feet.
It was the Victorio men who guided Danny’s hands that night—Tony and Luca and Nonno—reaching out and pushing up the wire lace bra, exposing Nina’s goose-bumped skin to the soft amber light.
It was their fingers that explored the peaks of her stiff nipples, their mouths that tasted the sweet curve where her neck joined her shoulder.
They cheered as she moaned and they slapped his back, so proud of the young Victorio boy, the skinny kid who up until now had never stood a lemon ice’s chance in hell with a beautiful girl.
“That feels so good, Danny,” Nina sighed, reaching down and feeling for the zipper of his pants.
But it wasn’t the Victorio men who pushed her hand away.
It was Danny, suddenly back in his body, realizing that something was about to break.
And when she reached for his crotch again, he grabbed her wrist and pinned it down next to her face, kissing her harder this time, like he could erase her thoughts.
But when she whispered, “It’s okay, I want to,” and reached down with her other hand, slipping it beneath his jeans, beneath his Jockeys, feeling around for something firm, but instead finding what felt like practically nothing, the Victorio men entered the room again. This time, it was to laugh.
“Everything okay?” Nina whispered.
“Yeah,” Danny breathed, pressing his mouth to hers, hoping to shut her up with his tongue.
“Does that feel good?” she asked, breaking from his lips, her hand stroking him.
“Yeah, it feels fine,” Danny said sharply, his face getting hot.
“Jesus,” Nina mumbled under her breath, pulling her hand out from his underwear and tucking it under her thigh.
“Oh God,” was what she said next.
Danny felt like he was leaving his body as Nina pressed her hand against his chest, pushing him off of her and rotating away from him until they were seated next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, their eyes looking anywhere but at each other.
“This always happens to me.”
“What?” Danny said cautiously.
“You aren’t…gay?” Nina asked timidly as she pulled her bra back down over her chest. “Are you?”
“What?” Danny said, his voice sounding higher and more panicked than he’d hoped it would.
“It’s fine if you are,” Nina said gently. “It would almost make sense, I guess.”
“I’m not fucking gay,” Danny said, his voice breaking, the hot liquid shooting through his body once again.
“Honestly, it’s okay, Danny. You know I’m cool,” she said softly, buttoning her blouse.
“I’M NOT FUCKING GAY!!”
Danny saw it in her face before he knew what was happening—the flinch, the look of terror, the flash of recognition of all the things she’d been told could happen to a nice girl like her.
Danny saw it in her hands, the way they shot up in front of her, defensive, guarding herself from one of those monsters that she’d always heard about at sleepovers.
He saw it in her eyes, the way they widened, the way they trembled, the way they gaped at the sight of his hand—his cousin’s and father’s and grandfather’s fingers, raised and curled into the signature Victorio fist.
“Fuck,” Danny whimpered, looking over at his hand, aimed like a weapon, startled by the sight of his own appendage. He flexed and shook it, trying to rid the curse from his body.
“Fuck,” he said, springing from the bed and reaching down for his shirt.
“Fuck,” he said, crashing through the bedroom door and charging out of the apartment and down the stairs and out the front door of her building.
And he ran, his soles barely touching the scarred pavement, past the darkened stoops and doormen out taking their nighttime cigarette breaks.
He ran down the weathered stairs at Seventy-Ninth, hurdling over the turnstile and onto the train that was just closing its doors.
He ran through the subway cars, past the homeless man stretched out long across the seats and the kids scratching their initials into the advertisement for a traveling circus.
He ran, throwing open the heavy steel doors, like a crazy person or a crackhead or someone who’d accidentally boarded the hot car, his palms smacking against the greased-up glass at the front of the train.
And swear to God, that night Danny pushed so hard that the train flew past every stop, sparks shooting from its squealing wheels, past Times Square and Chelsea, past the Limelight and Christopher Street, ’til it came to a shrieking halt at South Ferry.
Danny didn’t stop running when he left the train platform or when he got to the terminal or when he boarded the big orange boat.
It wasn’t until his hands caught the railing at the bow of the ship that he realized there was nowhere else to run.
Before him, the pathetic, barely-a-skyline skyline of Staten Island.
Behind him, the towering, jagged buildings of New York, lights shimmering, close enough to see, but too far to touch.
Danny stood anchored to the railing, his fingers clutching the cold metal as if it were the only solid thing left in the world.
But he didn’t move when the ferry docked at Staten Island, or when it pulled away again, back into the dark, indifferent waters of the harbor.
He was paralyzed, caught between the life he was fleeing and the one ahead of him—whichever one was which.
He stood there all night, the bobbing waves pushing him back and forth between two empty ports.
Back and forth, back and forth, never making landfall.