10. Chapter Ten Grace
Chapter Ten: Grace
Seven pills left.
They roll into my palm on a Tuesday morning, small and white, collecting in the crease of my hand while I sit on the edge of my bed with the bottle tilted.
I've never counted before. Never had to.
Linda has always sent more before I ran out.
A package in the mail, pharmacy label printed, my name on the bottle, refills handled by people I've never met at a pharmacy I've never visited. The pills just appear. Or I go to Linda’s and we have tea and she gives them to me when I leave.
Remembering back to our last conversation, she wants a visit.
One goes in my mouth. Dry swallow. The other six go back in the bottle. Six days.
Four rings when I hit her name on my phone. It goes right to voicemail. "Hi, you've reached Paul and Linda. Leave a message."
"Hey, Linda. It's Grace. Running low on my prescription. Can you let me know when I can swing by and grab the new bottle, thanks."
She'll call back today or tomorrow. The pills are the one thing she's never been late on.
The walk to the bodega takes three minutes. Rosa scolds me for looking like a ‘skin walker’ and then jabs at my ribs and tells me she can set me up with her nephew, I just have to give the word. Apparently my biological clock is ticking.
Rolling my eyes, I drink the coffee, leave the two dollars, and walk to work.
The last few nights have been rough. Not insomnia, but a restlessness pulling me toward the surface every few hours.
Two more flashes this week. One in the shower: the rough cold texture under my hands again, longer this time, three or four seconds, with the sound of water dripping somewhere and the smell of something chemical.
The other came while I was rolling silverware at closing.
Just a color. Red, but a very specific red, dark and thick.
Then gone, and I was holding a knife wrapped in a napkin and staring at the wall with no idea how long I'd been standing there.
Javi doesn't know about either one. He'd say therapist. He'd be right. I'm still not going to do it.
He comes in at five forty-two.
The door opens and the cold pushes through and then he's filling the entrance, blocking out the street behind him. Table four is open. He sits. The chair protests under his weight, that familiar creak that makes Javi glance up from the bar.
Coffee, poured without asking.
"Hey. Pork shoulder?"
"Yes."
"You're early today."
His attention lands on my face. The same focus he always gives me, except tonight something is different. It’s an urgency that’s never been there before. His eyes are dark as they study me.
"I wanted to be here," he says.
Four words. The most personal thing he's ever said to me. Not I was hungry. Not I was in the neighborhood. He wanted to be here. Telling me that directly, plainly, with his hands flat on the table and his gray eyes on mine.
"Okay," I say, because what else do you say to that?
The order goes in. The dinner rush builds.
Plates, tickets, Marco's voice from the kitchen calling Devon's name with escalating fury.
The restaurant fills and empties and fills again.
Through all of it, Carmelo sits at table four eating his pork shoulder, drinking his coffee.
Every time I pass his table I feel the pull, and tonight I stop fighting it.
I don’t want to fight it anymore.
Eight fifteen. Clearing the two-top next to him. Plates stacked in both hands, I turn, and he's right there. Chair pushed back, legs extended, the space between my body and his less than two feet.
“You’re good at that.”
A blush spreads up my chest and across my cheeks. “…At being a waitress?”
“At juggling many things.”
Oh God, I just want to melt into the floor.
“Maybe someday you can tell me what you do.”
He smirks and I have to turn and rush to the kitchen before I say anything else stupid.
Nine forty-five. Carmelo is still at table four. The restaurant is half-empty around him. He hasn't left.
Ten thirty hits and the last table pays. I start closing. Carmelo stands, picks up his jacket, and my stomach drops. Guess he’s leaving now. Then he walks to the bar, sits on a stool, folds his hands on the bar top, and waits.
He's waiting for me.
Twenty minutes. Fastest close I've ever done. The mopping is sloppy. The silverware bins are crooked. I don't care. Javi left at ten, weeknight, leaving me to lock up. He wanted to walk me home, but smiled when he saw Carmelo there. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. He said before flouncing away.
The door locks behind me and Carmelo is standing on the sidewalk waiting for me to start walking.
Three blocks. No pretending this time when our hands brush and my pinky locks into his. I walk near him because I want to walk near him.
At my door, the key comes out of my pocket and I turn to him. He's two inches from me, his stomach brushing against me. The top of my head reaches his chest, so seeing his face means tilting all the way back, and the streetlamp puts light on the left side of his jaw and leaves the right side dark.
He lifts his hand. Slow. I watch it the whole way. The tattooed knuckles. The wide palm. Fingers that held plates and a knife handle and my pinky only minutes ago. His palm lands on the side of my jaw.
His hand covers my jaw and half my neck. His thumb settles below my ear, right on the freckle. His fingers curve around the back of my head.
My body goes quiet. The tapping stops. My finger, which has been moving against something every waking minute of every day for as long as I can remember, goes still. My hands hang at my sides, motionless.
My face turns a fraction into his palm. My eyes close.
"Graziella." I don’t know what it means, but it doesn’t trigger anything inside me. It just sounds like coming home.
"Carmelo."
His thumb moves. A slow drag across the skin below my ear, tracing the line of my jaw, and the touch is so specific and so intentional that my breath stutters and my lips part and I feel the cold air on my tongue.
He doesn't ask. He doesn't hesitate. He lowers his head and his mouth finds mine.
The kiss is not gentle. It's not rough either.
It's needy. His lips press against mine with the same focus he gives everything, the full weight of his attention concentrated on the place where his mouth meets mine, and the feeling of it goes through me from my lips to my chest to the base of my spine.
His hand tightens on my jaw, tilting my head back further, opening the angle, and his other hand comes up and grips my hip, the size of his palm spans from my hip bone to the small of my back and he pulls me forward.
My body hits his chest, and the height difference is absurd and I don't care.
I'm on my toes, my hands on his jacket, fisting the fabric, pulling myself up into him, and his mouth opens against mine, his tongue slides past my lips and the taste of him is coffee and heat and burning desire and I want more of it.
He groans. The sound comes from somewhere deep in his chest and I feel it more than hear it, a vibration that travels from his body into mine through every point of contact. His hand on my jaw. His hand on my hip. His chest against mine. His mouth on my mouth.
Fuck, I need more. So much more.
I make a sound back. Not a moan, not quite, it’s caught between a gasp and a noise I don't recognize coming out of my own throat.
His hand tightens on my hip in response, and he pulls me closer, impossibly closer, and I can feel him through his jeans and through my work pants and he's hard and the realization hits me in the stomach and between my legs at the same time.
My back hits the door. He walked me into it. One step, maybe two, and I didn't feel us move because his mouth was on mine and his hands were on my body. The door is behind me now and he's in front of me and the cold is gone because his body is a furnace and he is everywhere.
His mouth leaves mine and drops to my neck, just below my ear, right where his thumb was, right on the freckle, and the sound I make is loud enough that if anyone on this street is awake they just heard it and I don't give a fuck.
"Inside," I’m breathless, and it comes out almost a squeak. "Come inside."
He pulls back, just an inch. His forehead against mine, his breathing hard, his chest heaving against me.
His hand is still on my jaw, and on my hip and we're pressed together against my door, and I can feel his heartbeat through his jacket, it's fast, hammering, the heartbeat of a man whose body is running on something his brain hasn't approved.
"No."
"Come inside, Carmelo."
He looks at me. Gray eyes, close enough that I can see the striations in his irises.
His jaw flexes under my hand, because my hand is on his face now, when did I put my hand on his face, my palm on his jaw, feeling the muscle work under his skin.
His stubble is rough against my fingers.
His face fills my entire field of vision.
He shakes his head.
"Why?"
"Because if I come inside right now, I'm not leaving until morning. If ever."
The sentence hits me in my chest and detonates.
My body clenches. My fingers dig into the fabric of his jacket, pulling, and my hips press forward against his.
His breath catches and his hand on my hip tightens hard enough that I'll have bruises and I want the bruises.
I want the proof that this is happening on my skin tomorrow.
"So don't leave then," I say.
He closes his eyes, his brows furrows. He exhales through his nose, long and controlled, the exhale of a man who is holding himself back with everything he has and the everything is running out.
"Not tonight," he says.
"Why?"
"Because I need you to know who I am first."
His eyes are open again, on mine, and there's something in them I haven't seen before. Not urgency this time. Not desire, although the desire is there, I can feel it against my stomach, hard and impossible to ignore. This is guilt. Or fear. Or a version of honesty that costs him something to hold.
I don't understand it. I don't know what he means by who I am. I know his name. I know his hands. I know his mouth on mine and his body against mine and the sound he makes when he groans into a kiss and the way his heartbeat pounds when he pulls me close.
What else is there?
I let go of his jacket. My hand slides off his jaw. He steps back. One step. The cold rushes between us and my body screams at the loss of his heat.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay."
We stand there. Him on the sidewalk, me against the door.
Both of us not knowing what the fuck this is, or what it means, just that it exists because there’s something between us that defies rational thought.
His hands are at his sides and his fists are clenched, his knuckles are white and I can see the effort it's taking him to stay where he is, to not close the distance, to not push me through the door and onto the bed and take what I'm offering.
"Tomorrow," he says. "I'll be at the restaurant."
"You're always at the restaurant."
"Tomorrow I'll stay again."
My finger starts tapping again, against the doorframe, behind my back.
"Goodnight," he says.
"Yeah, sure."
He turns and walks away. I watch him until he rounds the corner and disappears. Then I go inside, lock the door, and stand in my kitchen with my back against the counter and my hand on my mouth.
My lips are swollen. I can still taste his coffee. My hip is sore where his hand gripped it and my jaw is warm where his palm held it and between my legs I'm aching in a way that is going to make sleeping impossible unless I take care of it.
I don't take off my jacket because it smells like him.
I don't bother to turn on the lights. I walk to my bed and sit down and the pill bottle is on the nightstand and I look at it and I don't think about it.
I don't think about Linda not calling back.
I don't think about the flashes or the fragments or the chemical smell or the dark red.
All that fills the space in my head is his mouth on my neck and the sound he made when he kissed me and the sentence that stopped everything.
Because I need you to know who I am first.
I don't know what that means, but I'm sure as hell going to find out.
My finger taps my bottom lip, right where his teeth grazed me as my fingers slip between my legs.
It doesn’t take long before I finish and that triggers the rush that causes me to fall asleep in my jacket with the taste of him still on my tongue.