Chapter 3
MEGAN
“So,” Carlotta says, bouncing down onto the couch next to me. “Spill. How was the date?”
She beams at me over the top of a very generous glass of rose wine, and as I look back at her, my stomach sinks. I knew I would have to answer this question eventually, of course, but now that I’m faced with it, I don’t want to let her down and admit that it was a complete and utter write-off.
Carlotta didn’t have to deal with my SOS text—that was her father, as weird as it was.
So when she invited herself to my place this evening, I tried to come up with a few different ways to explain the fact that I wound up in a car with her dad after my date instead of going home with the man she’d set me up with.
Eventually I settled on just not mentioning it to her at all.
Better to keep my mouth shut and pretend it never happened rather than let Carlotta get all up in her head about it.
It was nothing more than a mistake, anyway, because they have the same last name saved on my phone.
I’m not even sure how I managed to get his number in my phone at all, but it happened, and that’s the end of it.
Even if I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the way he grasped my chin outside the restaurant that night.
“Uh, not…great,” I admit, and her face drops at once, brows digging together.
“Oh, no, really? I thought he was nice…”
My mind flashes back to the way Marco pinned me against the wall, hands all over my body like he thought I owed him something.
“We just didn’t click,” I offer her, hoping that I can keep her from feeling too guilty about it. It’s not her fault he turned out to be a jerk, after all. She was just doing her best to find someone for me to break my dry spell with.
The dry spell that has lasted the better part of two and a half decades now, that is.
“That’s such a shame.” She sighs. “Well, maybe the next one, right? Can’t let it get you down.”
“Yeah, maybe the next one,” I agree, reaching across to my coffee table to grab the glass I left there and take a long sip.
I’m just not sure what to say. A part of me wants to tell her that I would be better off just keeping my head down and skipping out on dating for the rest of my life, given the way things have been going.
But Carlotta seems to be on a one-woman mission to make sure I find the romance I deserve, to get me swept off my feet after what happened with James, and I don’t have it in me to stop her.
“You can’t let what happened with James get to you, you know,” she tells me, nudging me slightly with her foot.
“There’s lots of good guys out there, guys who will treat you right.
Guys who will make you feel comfortable when it comes to…
” She waggles her eyebrows at me playfully, and I can’t help but laugh.
See, this is the part of her mission that I know she won’t let go of, the part where she wants to set me up with a guy so I can finally divest myself of my virginity once and for all.
I had been saving it for marriage when I met James, so the two of us never actually slept together, but after we broke up I decided that idea was impossibly and stupidly old-fashioned and I wanted to find someone to hook up with and leave that part of me behind.
I know there’s nothing wrong with being a virgin, and nothing wrong with having all the sex in the world either, but I just don’t want to go into my next relationship feeling as though I’m running behind schedule.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” I giggle. “I just…I just haven’t found the right guy for it yet, you know?”
“Despite my best efforts.” Carlotta sighs, as though this is some grand affront at her expense. “You should have just done what I did, got tipsy at a high school party and hooked up with the nearest cute guy you could get your hands on.”
“Oh, yeah, very romantic,” I laugh.
“Come on, you’re a modern woman,” she reminds me. “You don’t need all that romance, you just need someone you’re into. You know? Someone who makes you feel like you just can’t wait to take all your clothes off and do it.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who makes me feel like that,” I muse, shaking my head. “Not even James. I mean, not that he was exactly the best-looking guy in the world, but…”
“Oh, I don’t even think it’s about looks, not altogether,” Carlotta muses, cocking her head to the side ponderously. “I think it’s more about the way they make you feel.”
My mind flickers briefly to the moment with her father in the car, the way he looked at me before I slipped into my apartment building.
Which is ridiculous, and I know that, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to mention it to her, because I’m sure she would flip her shit if she had the barest clue that I saw her father when she didn’t know anything about it.
It’s not something she has to worry about. As far as she’s concerned, I made it home from that date all by myself, and didn’t have to text anyone to get me out of there at the last moment.
“You think?” I ask her.
“Yeah, I mean, when you’re with someone who does it for you,” she continues, gazing off into space wistfully, “it doesn’t matter who they are, where they came from, what kind of relationship you have, you just know when it’s right and it just…
happens.” She waves her hand vaguely, like she’s casting some kind of spell.
“God, I need that again in my life!” She laughs, shaking her head as though brushing it all off.
“Can you tell it’s been way too long since I actually had a decent lay? ”
“You’re doing better than me,” I remind her, and she clucks her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
“You’re going to find someone, I know you are,” she assures me. “It might not seem easy now, but I promise, it’s going to make sense when you meet the right guy.”
“Yeah, maybe…”
“No maybe about it,” she replies. “You just need to put yourself out there a bit more. Don’t let what happened with James get to you.”
I pull a face. “Kind of difficult, I mean, after everything.”
Her face softens at once, and she reaches out to give my arm a squeeze. “I get it,” she murmurs. “I—I remember how bad it was. I didn’t mean to make it sound like I didn’t…”
“It’s okay, I know that.”
And I mean it. Of all the shit that I went through, all the ways that James tried to cut me off from my friends, Carlotta was always there for me. She’s never once wavered, in all the time that I’ve known her.
I didn’t exactly make it easy either, letting myself get all caught up in the lies James spun about how he needed so much of my time and attention, letting myself trust that he knew what was best for me.
It was my first relationship, and I had no other point of reference, after all.
I really let myself believe that when you fell in love you were meant to divest yourself of pretty much everything else in your entire life and focus all your attention on them and them alone.
Carlotta, in her usual way, barged into my life and made sure that I couldn’t just cut her off quite that easily.
In fact, when everything with James went to crap, she was the only one there for me, the only one who actually listened when I poured out apologies and pleaded for forgiveness.
I guess, given what her father is involved with, she’s used to forgiving or overlooking the mistakes people make.
Thank God for that, because if it wasn’t for her, I’d be alone right now.
“He was an asshole,” she adds, tossing her hair over one shoulder, speaking with such certainty I can’t help but laugh. When she says it, it’s as though she’s announcing the news, with such confidence like she has never been wrong about anything in her life.
“He was.”
“And you can’t let him convince you that there are no good guys out there,” she continues. “Well, maybe some bad ones too, right? They can be fun as well…”
I bite my lip. Bad boys?
I’ve thought about it.
Growing up like I did, in the embrace of my parents’ traditional townhouse in the suburbs, it was hard to imagine a life outside the realms of what they wanted for me.
If they’d had their way, I would have been set up with a nice boy years ago.
The son of one of their friends or something like that, married off and popping out kids in a home no more than a block or two away from theirs.
I know it galls them enough that I chose to come to the city to make a life for myself on my own terms, but if I was to come home with some guy who they don’t approve of…
damn, it would just be the nail in the coffin.
“I think I’m too square for that,” I reply, and Carlotta laughs.
“Well, if you’re going to call if being square, you just might be,” she teases. “I don’t think I’ve heard anyone call it that in twenty years.”
“Hey, come on, you know I only made it to the city a couple years ago,” I protest. “I’m still learning all the hip young lingo—”
“If you don’t stop talking like a boomer, I’m going to need another bottle of wine to get through tonight,” she jokes, and we both laugh. Tucking my feet under myself, I take another sip, and she rises to her feet to head to the bathroom. “Back in a second…”
I wave her off, and as I sit there alone for a moment, I find myself thinking about her father once more. What was it she said? That it isn’t always about the way someone looks when it comes to being attracted to them, that it has more to do with the way they make you feel…
Not that her father is anything close to ugly.
Far from it, even with his scarred features and piercing gaze.
The look on Marco’s face when he saw Silvio stalking toward us, that told me everything I needed to know.
Not to mention the way Silvio threatened Marco with his gun, pulling aside his jacket to show him something that was clearly intended as a threat.
That might have gone a little past bad boy, but there’s something about it I can’t deny, something about it that draws me in and insists on more…
“What are you thinking about?”
I blink, snapping back to reality as I find Carlotta standing before me, hands on her hips.
God, if she had any clue what was really going through my mind right now, she would probably clock me with that wine bottle.
“Nothing,” I assure her, as I top off our glasses again. “So, you know any other guys you think I should try a first date with?”
The conversation picks up where it left off, and we carry on late into the evening, until the wine is gone and the city outside is dark and sparkling with streetlights. Carlotta groans when she realizes how late she’s allowed it to get, and hugs me at the door once she’s called a cab.
“I’ll speak to you soon, okay?” she tells me. “Find some nice guy to set you up with.”
“Or a horrible one,” I tease her.
She laughs and heads off down the stairs, leaving me leaning there in the doorway to my apartment.
There’s a large window that sits over the stairwell, looking out onto the city below, which looks like a blanket of buildings studded with yellow lights against the blue here and there.
A city as big as this one, and I can’t seem to find a single man who makes me feel the way that she described.
Or maybe I have, and I just don’t want to admit it.
I head back inside, clearing away our glasses as I do my best to put that thought out of my mind. Silvio—that’s what he asked me to call him, now that we’re both adults. The man who my parents kept me away from when I was a little girl, who came sweeping to my rescue when I needed him most.
He could have just ignored the message, rightly parsed that it was sent for Carlotta instead of him, even sent down one of his men to handle it for him, but he didn’t.
No, he came to me himself, pulled me out of there and made sure I was safe once he’d scared off the asshole who wanted more than I was willing to give.
And then he drove me home, and I saw the way he looked at me out of the corner of his eye when he should have been focused on the road.
He might have thought he was being subtle about it, but I could see it, the little glimpses he shot in my direction, like he was trying to make sense of the way I look now.
It’s been years since we last laid eyes on each other, and I know I’m not the person I was before.
He might be my best friend’s father, but that doesn’t mean he can’t notice that I’ve grown into a full-fledged woman.
I glance at my phone, which is sitting at the edge of the couch. I have his number. My heart flutters in my chest at the thought, imagining firing a message off in his direction. Just to thank him for what he did, of course, nothing more to it than that.
I’m a little tipsy from the wine, and in the confines of my apartment, I feel like nothing could get to me. Like whatever choice I make will be the right one, no matter how crazy it might seem to anyone looking in from the outside.
I flop down on the couch and pull up his number, hovering my thumbs over the buttons as I try to think about how exactly to phrase this.
I doubt he expects to hear from me again.
Hell, maybe he’s hoping that I’ll never reach out to him again, because he’s distinctly aware of what might happen if I do.
Because he knows that there was something between us that night in the car, and no matter how much we try to ignore it, that’s not just the kind of thing you can brush aside like it means nothing.
I just wanted to thank you again for the other night, I finally type out, fingers flying over the keys before I can talk myself out of it. I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t there to help me.
I consider deleting the message and forgetting this whole thing. But then, mustering up all my courage, I press send.
There. It’s done now, no taking it back. Just a simple message of appreciation to someone who helped me when I needed it most, that’s all.
Even if all I can think about is what Carlotta said about attraction…and what it might mean that my body seems so drawn to one of the only men in the city I shouldn’t look twice at.
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