Chapter 3 #2
I take a few slow, cautious sips of water and then stand.
It takes a good ten seconds for the world to stop spasming on its axis before I can step toward the sink and see the extent of the damage in the mirror.
Giant scrape on my cheek, as I expected, angry and already scabbing over horribly.
It’ll be impossible to disguise with makeup.
The reality is setting in, seeing myself like this: hollow-eyed, smeared eye makeup, my abraded face and my lower lip bloody and swollen, though I don’t remember getting hit in the mouth.
Something did happen to me. Though I can only recall it through a thick haze that still has all the qualities of a strange feverish dream.
Jordan did this. The thought is unreal.
“I have a meeting on Monday.” I whisper this, touching my lip. Offering this fact up to no one in particular, that I have to be seen like this. I have to concoct excuses for why, when I speak to my clients over video call, that I look like I’ve been the victim of an attack. Because I fucking am.
And then Luca suddenly sucks in his breath in a hiss. “Your tattoo.” He sounds mournful, despairing; he has finally noticed the ugly scar that bifurcates it. “What did you do?”
I say nothing. The tattoo doesn’t matter to me anymore; it stopped mattering to me the moment he left me.
I am still thinking about what I will say when people ask what happened to me.
Something harmless and silly. A mugging is too serious—tripping and falling on the sidewalk at night, maybe. Too much to drink.
Fuck.
I see the edge of Luca’s arm in the mirror as he moves closer to me, catch his expression as our gazes meet in the mirror, and somehow it’s too intimate, looking at each other this way.
I whip around and put my back to the sink.
He’s taken off the stupid ball cap, set it aside somewhere, and the state of his roots is shocking.
He’s clearly trimmed the ends of his longish hair, bleached white-blonde, but his dark roots haven’t been touched up at all in the past three months.
There’s so much growth the effect is almost deliberate, like an ombre, though I know for a fact it’s not.
His roots needed tending to back before he dumped me.
His natural color is darker than I thought it was. Not as dark as mine, but close.
“Noel.” His face is devastated. Like something really awful has happened, and I open my mouth to tell him that if this is just about the tattoo I don’t care and I can get it covered up, removed, whatever.
Nothing to cry over—which I guess is cruel, considering he was the one who slaved over it for almost seven straight hours, but I don’t have it in me to cape to his feelings right now.
But then he says, “You shouldn’t be alone tonight. Not after all of this.”
“I’m fine, I’m over it,” I say automatically, and then a thought occurs to me. “Wait, Jamil—where’s Jamil? Did you see him? Did you talk to him?”
“Who?”
“My friend. I came in with him.”
“I never saw you with anyone but the guy who attacked you. I think Jamil texted you, though? Something about leaving with some guys from the club.”
I don’t get into a snit about him reading my messages because I feel a little unmoored at this knowledge.
My friend abandoned me for dick and left me alone with Jordan.
When he said he wasn’t going to do that.
When he had no interest in doing that (though the point of taking him out tonight was to, in fact, get him to do that).
It’s not his fault, though, I know that. It’s not like he put that shit in my drink.
But if he’d stuck around…
No, nope, not getting stuck in the blame game with my good friend.
It is not his fault and if roles were reversed, I might’ve done the same, fucked off with the first hot guy I saw, were I so inclined.
It’s probably for the best he left, anyway, because I don’t want him to know about this.
I don’t want anyone to know about this. It’s bad enough that Luca does.
Even if he did save my ass, I don’t want to owe him shit.
He’s still gazing at me, those pale gray-green eyes all sad and imploring, his hair falling into his face as he looks down at me—he’s nearly a half-foot taller than I am—and I feel like I’m on the verge of tears because I am upset Jamil left, god damn it all, and I do want someone to stay with me tonight.
I feel like complete shit and I look like complete shit and of course my ex-boyfriend is the one to bear witness to it all, the violation and humiliation.
The one to have to rescue me from it. And I still don’t even know why.
I can’t look at him anymore. I duck my head and I bury my face in my hands and I hear him say oh no, baby and that undoes me completely.
Ugly tears burst from me and I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes until I’m seeing starbursts.
I will myself to stop, because I hate this part about me the most: the fact that the tears always come so easy.
Luca takes me into his arms again and holds me close, tenderly, pressing his face against the top of my head and I think he might be crying too.
So rare for him to cry. I’ve only ever seen it once before.
But we’re both just bawling, me loudly, him silently, and I feel his tears in my hair and I beat ineffectively at his chest once, twice with a closed fist because somehow this is all his fault and I want to lay the blame at his feet before anyone else’s.
Even as I know he’s the reason I’m here, that it wasn’t so much worse. Oh, god. It hurts.
“I’m sorry,” he keeps saying. “I’m sorry, Noel. I’m sorry.”
I can’t even ask him what he’s apologizing for because I’m clinging to him like I’m drowning.
Because I am drowning, and he is a life raft, and this is it, all I have right now, the man who discarded me the minute I became inconvenient.
If he leaves, I will be alone with thoughts that will turn so turbulent they might actually kill me, or the pain will be so bad that I’ll wish they would, leave an emptiness so vast that it might swallow me whole.
I fucking hate him.
I need him.
“I’ll stay with you,” he whispers to me, between my own sobs. “I won’t leave you.”
He will, though. That’s the thing. He will.
I do stop crying eventually and find some measure of my composure, whatever there is I can claim to have of that, and he helps me get back into bed. I tell him in no uncertain terms that he is not sharing my bed, and he assents easily enough.
“I’ll sit with you till you fall asleep,” he says. “And crash on the floor or the couch or something.”
What a valiant motherfucker he is. “There’s a spare blanket in the linen closet,” I say sullenly, wiping my face on my sleeve.
“I’ll find it later.” He sits on the edge of the bed, not too close but not too far, either. Within arm’s reach, if I wanted. “Comfortable? Need anything?”
It’s not even midnight but I’ve never been so tired in my life.
All I want to do is sleep. Forever, if possible.
Not waking up ever again sounds so fucking good right about now and isn’t that sort of the best part about sleeping, that you might just kind of drift off and your heart might stop and that’ll be that.
What a good way to go. I know I won’t be lucky enough for that, though.
“We need to talk,” I say, fighting my drooping lids.
“We can talk tomorrow.”
“How can you just stay here? What about your family? Your kid?”
“Don’t worry about it. The baby isn’t due for another three months, anyway.” He gives me a faint smile. “On my birthday, actually.”
I realize I don’t actually know Luca’s birthday. It’s never come up and I never asked and I feel guilty now on top of everything else, because how on earth could I not know? I open my mouth to ask, and he says, before I can, “October 1st.”
“Oh.” I slump back against the pillows and close my eyes. Almost against my will I say, “What is it? What’s it going to be?”
“A girl,” he says softly.
I bite the inside of my mouth, very hard. “Oh,” I say again, but my voice catches this time.
“Get some rest. You can hear all the gory details in the morning. Whatever you want.”
I don’t want—except that’s not true. Because there’s going to be a little Luca soon, maybe even born on his birthday. I feel like weeping all over again. “Okay.”
I hear my lamp snap off and it is all darkness behind my lids.
Footsteps on the creaky hardwood as he goes in search of the linen closet and then returns because I guess he is going to sleep on my floor like an absolute masochist, right on the worn out rug.
And because I’ve got some semblance of a conscience, I grab one of my pillows and toss it on the floor, and I hear it hit my mark, the oof sound Luca makes.
“You’re welcome,” I mutter, punching my own pillow and rolling over.
He laughs softly. “Goodnight, stunt girl.”
“Don’t call me that.”
I say it so softly, though, I don’t think he hears me.