Chapter 8
"All My Life," Foo Fighters
Cruz
“So … you and Victoria, huh?” Kate asked, pouring sage green paint into a tray and handing me a roller.
“You know I don’t kiss and tell,” I said. Kate rarely asked about my sex life, but since she’d played Wingman, guess she wanted me to spill the tea. Which is ironic, because Victoria was the first woman I’d ever brought to my apartment, yet the tea had stayed firmly in its cup.
Victoria passed out the moment her head touched the pillow, while I’d tossed and turned on the couch, knowing she was only feet away …
and completely out of reach. Since she’d barged into my self-defense class two months ago, I’d been thinking about the hot redhead, wondering if I’d ever learn her name.
Victoria: Regal, strict, formal, triumphant.
Of course her name was Victoria.
Then I’d heard her singing, without knowing it was her voice.
Then she kissed like she was on fire and my mouth could quench her thirst.
Then she threatened to fight her way out of that elevator.
I couldn’t believe that these were all the same woman. Confident yet guarded, fiery but cold, all wrapped up in a curvy body meant for a pinup calendar, with perfect tits and an ass that most of my clients would kill for.
Of course, it couldn’t be easy. Not only did she have no interest in casual sex, she was hung up on Mallory Clarke’s asshole brother.
And she was my tenant. I stayed strictly professional with tenants, since one stray complaint could get me fired … and she seemed like the type to ask for the manager.
So why the hell had I invited her to my place? As soon as I offered, I knew it was a terrible idea to let a tenant sleep in my bed.
But in her apartment, there was a moment when her facade cracked. Her eyes flicked to the ceiling and she just looked so damn lonely. It was there and gone in a second, but I’d caught just enough to invite her downstairs.
So I laid in the dark, trying not to let my mind run wild with memories of her gasp when I slid my leg between hers, her ass writhing under my hands, her greedy mouth when she pressed her tongue between my lips.
The sting of rejection should have made me want her less … but was I motivated to impress her by wounded pride?
Maybe I should have woken her when I left for boot camp, but she looked so peaceful in my bed.
Her copper hair was loosely braided, her arms wrapped around my comforter.
Her thick makeup had smudged on my pillow, revealing a cute trail of freckles across her nose and cheeks.
My fingers itched to trace her creamy skin, but given her defensiveness, startling her awake might result in her hand around my throat—and not in a sexy way.
Returning from class, I pictured walking in to her still asleep, the sun slanting through the tiny basement window reflecting the sunrise on her hair.
She’d slowly rouse, eyelids heavy. Her lips would part, then her legs would part under the blankets.
She'd crook her finger in an invitation. I’d crawl across the covers to meet her lips, kissing my way down, taking a long pit stop at her luscious tits.
I’d pull off those sweatpants and settle between her thighs until she forgot that asshole’s name and replaced all of her thoughts of him with me.
For one night, anyway.
Yet I wasn't surprised when I returned to an empty apartment, the bed corners pulled tighter than the stick up her ass. I laid down on the bed, sniffing her lingering scent on my pillow like a chump, the sole sign that her visit hadn’t been a figment of my imagination.
So when Kate called to request help painting the spare room of her lake house, I’d jumped at the opportunity to escape. Even though she was technically older than me, Kate felt like my third little sister, especially since we’d both grown up in Queens, 200 miles downstate.
I’d met her two years ago swigging a Brooklyn Summer Ale in a bar, loudly booing the Yankees during a subway series game.
I claimed the stool beside her, ready to buy her a drink and take her home, until she blinded me with the giant rock on her hand.
Like a third base coach, she waved me magnanimously into the Friend Zone.
Our friendship gelled over our love of The Twelve, a fantasy drama based on the 12 Olympian gods and goddesses.
I’d binged the whole DVD series on the boat—not much else to do for fun when you’re 800ft underwater for 100-day patrols—then re-watched it with her during the baseball off-season.
She’d turned it on today as background noise for painting …
though her digging for gossip took precedence.
When she glared at my lack of answer about what happened with Victoria, I went with, “You were right. First ballot Hall of Fame.”
“And the crowd goes wild,” she clicked her tongue like the crack of a bat. “You gonna see her again?”
“You know my policy,” I said, grateful to use my ‘one-night’ rule as an excuse, when the truth was I would throw myself off her terrace for another chance to kiss her.
“She’s the kind of woman you waive that dumb shit for.”
“Nah, you said it yourself, she’s hung up on her ex,” I said. “And turns out I have to see her again, because … surprise! She lives in my building.”
“No fucking way!” Kate said with a devilish grin. “The new high-maintenance tenant?”
“I’m sure she’ll keep me busy with complaints,” I said, though that wasn’t how I wanted her to keep my hands full. “You might need your fiancé to help you with this stuff instead of calling me.”
“Paul loves a spreadsheet, but he’s useless with manual labor. Plus he hates The Twelve,” she gestured to the screen. “He says it’s too unrealistic.”
“Isn’t that the whole point?”
“Exactly,” she said, bumping my hip. “It’s a fantasy to escape from everyday life, but he can’t suspend his disbelief.”
I caught a flicker of longing when she glanced at the television. Apollo was on the screen, played by my favorite actor, Dominic Martin.
Two years ago, I’d been at her place watching the episode where Apollo cursed Cassandra to speak truth that nobody would believe.
Dominic had seemed larger than life on screen, his majestic golden hair waving in the wind, a pristine toga tied at his shoulder showing off his formidable six-pack.
I’d followed the workout plan from his feature in Bodybuilding magazine, but I wasn’t sure an amateur could get that definition.
“Unbelievable,” I said. “No way can he look as good in person.”
“Better,” Kate muttered.
"You know him?" When I snapped my head over, her scrunched-up nose implied she knew she’d fucked up. “He grew up here, right?”
She took a sip of her wine. “Yeah, but he graduated before I moved here.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
Her eyes shifted out the front window, scanning for Paul’s car, but the street was all clear. “In New York, when he was doing Shakespeare in the Park. Before all this.” She gestured to Dominic on the screen, and my jaw dropped. We'd watched this show for hours, why hadn't she mentioned it before?
“So are the rumors true?” I asked. He was known for on-set professionalism and off-set orgies. Supposedly his Hollywood mansion even … “Does he really have a sex dungeon?”
“I don’t know, I knew him before he bought that place,” she shrugged, flush rising up her neck. Hold up, did those rosy cheeks mean …
“Did you ever …” I wiggled my eyebrows, and the flush deepened. “Holy shit, you slept with Dominic Martin?”
“Like, a million years ago,” she said with a dismissive hand wave.
I threw up my hands victoriously, making an obnoxiously loud airhorn noise. “You fucked Apollo!”
She rolled her eyes at my over-the-top reaction. “Before he was a god.”
“Jesus,” I said, running my hand over my mouth. I held my hands about a foot apart. “What about this rumor?”
She chuckled, shifting one of my hands a few inches closer … still impressive.
“Best summer of my life,” she said softly, just as the headlights from Paul’s BMW shone through the window.
“But I was just a notch in his bedpost. That rumor's true: Big dick, bigger ego. Thought the whole world revolved around him. When I didn’t …” She shrugged and lifted the remote, flicking off The Twelve to watch the Mets lose as Paul came through the garage door.
“Thank you for helping, by the way,” she said, interrupting my thoughts while she cut in with the trim brush. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, if you ever moved back to Queens or something.”
“Do you know something I don’t? Did the New York housing market suddenly become affordable?”
She snorted. “I wish.”
“You wish you could move back?”
“Sometimes. Though if you tell Mallory, I’ll deny it to my last breath,” she confessed, and I made a ‘lips sealed’ gesture. “You don’t?”
I missed my mom and sisters …. but their lives had changed so much in the seven years since I joined the Navy.
After my stepdad died, they’d downsized to a two-bedroom.
My high school friends had all moved on, too.
“Except instead of only painting your house, I’d get requests coming from Mama, Adriana and Luisa. ”
“I can’t imagine Adriana texting more than she already does …”
Kate grabbed my phone to stage a well-lit shot, rolling up my sleeve to make sure my tattoos were visible, and sent it to my sister who replied instantly.
Adriana
thank u kate, at least somebody knows how 2 feed the gram
Kate laid down her paintbrush to text with my sisters: Adriana, four years younger than me at 22, was a social media maven.
Luisa, 19, would be pissed if we left her out.
Kate, an only child, reveled in my sisters' attention, which took some pressure off me to update them about—oh shit, she wouldn’t dare tell them about—
“Sorry not sorry,” she said, handing back my phone. I scrolled through the havoc she wreaked:
Luisa
I still don’t understand how cruz's thirst trap selfies help your hair & makeup instagram
Adriana
im testing strategies on his account, learning how to game the algo
though he can’t grow an audience if looking like a hobo
Luisa
srsly you know we don’t use that term anymore
Adriana
homeless, unhoused, whatever. that scraggly beard makes him look like a bum
Luisa
True, I can’t defend that scruff
Adriana
get kate to shave ur beard, then send a better 1
Me
Kate here
Women seem to love the beard.
Look who he took home last night ??
[Attached: Victoria’s headshot]
Luisa
[gif of dumbfounded Chris Farley lifting his shades]
Me
She held out longer than anyone I’ve ever seen
I thought he finally met his match and was gonna strike out
Adriana
she wouldnt have resisted if she saw his dimple
“You didn’t,” I said, running my hand down my face.
“I have to live vicariously through you,” Kate wiggled that ring finger again. “You know they worry about you, being so far from home.”
I sighed. I couldn’t be mad when she reminded me that their bordering-on-smothering communication was based in love. The four years I’d spent on the boat had been difficult for my mom, especially when I’d gone incommunicado for three-months patrols. Sometimes she called just to hear my voice.
As the Foo Fighters song wrapped up, the demanding guitar and insistent drums fueled my confession. “You know I can’t move back to Queens.”
“It’s not like they chased you out with pitchforks.”
“Pitchforks would have been preferred,” I said dryly. “Though it’s the only place that’s ever really been home.”
“I moved here after my parents’ divorce and met Mallory and Paul on my first day of school but it sometimes feels like …” She ran her hand lovingly along a wooden door frame. “Paul doesn’t understand my ‘obsession’ with New York.”
“Spoken like someone who’s never lived in New York.” When she didn’t reply, I asked, “How long until the wedding?”
“Eight months.” She kept her gaze focused on her brush’s movement around the window ledge. “He wants me to sell this place. He says renting and maintaining it is too much work.”
“What would you do with the money?” I asked.
“He would want to invest it, probably in a 529 for our unborn kids or some responsible shit."
“I didn’t ask what Paul would do. Let’s say you sell the house for … five million.” She snorted. “Humor me. You suddenly have five million, cash in hand. What would you do?”
“Go to Italy. Visit my mom in Rome, travel through Switzerland and Austria, then spend what’s left on a shoebox in Brooklyn. What would you do with five mil?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed, my stomach churning from the paint fumes.
When I was an idealistic teenager, I dreamed of traveling the world as a rockstar. I'd learned my geography from Pearl Jam concert bootlegs, imagining myself playing to adoring fans on stages in every country …
But then reality hit: I was no Eddie Vedder, just a poor half-Dominican kid.
Aside from moving to Seattle for the Navy—most of that time underwater—I’ve barely left the state.
How am I supposed to know where to go when I haven’t been anywhere?
Even if I wanted to see the world … where would I start?
My work phone notifications blew up. I scanned through angry texts from tenants about the elevators—apparently one was broken and the other one was being hogged by the new tenant who expected her movers to get first priority.
Seeing the frustration on my face, Kate skimmed the texts over my shoulder, took the roller from my hands, and said, “And so it begins.”