18. Dante
DANTE
I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep, but I lie down anyway. The sunlight streaming through the windows makes my head pound.
I feel hungover from lack of sleep and the adrenaline crash, and even though my stomach’s empty it feels like I’m going to puke.
I close my eyes, just for a minute, and when I wake, it’s dark out. Fuck. My phone buzzes on the nightstand and I glance at it.
Elio. I pick it up. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
“I rested plenty. Doc gave me the good drugs.” Elio laughs.
“Glad somebody’s having a good time.” I don’t realize I’ve said it out loud until Elio responds.
“Don’t tell me you’re that shaken up over little old me.”
I sigh. “It’s not that.” I mumble the words, and I shouldn’t have said anything. Fuck. I’m unraveling. It’s taken forty-five years, but I’m finally cracking.
“It’s not? Now I’m offended.”
“Oh fuck off, Elio.”
“What’s going on?” His voice changes. Softens. I feel like the world’s biggest asshole, and now I have to lie to him.
Again.
“I… met someone.”
“What do you mean, you met someone? Seriously? Finally? After all these years?”
“Stop acting like I’m a nineteenth-century spinster.”
“You kind of are.”
“I hate you.”
“You love me,” Elio teases. “So tell me about her.”
I hesitate, but then it all tumbles out of my mouth. “She’s beautiful,” I breathe. “Smart. Funny. Bratty.”
Elio chuckles. “I do love a brat.”
“So do I,” I admit. “But it’s… complicated.”
“What, she’s married or something?”
I snort. “No. Nothing like that. She’s just… she’s young, Elio.”
“How young?”
I hesitate again. “Twenty-five.”
Elio scoffs. “That’s not that young.”
“She’s twenty years younger than me, Elio.”
“I can do math.”
“I really do hate you.”
Elio’s laugh rings out over the line, and I crack a smile despite the way I feel. He really is my best friend, and it feels good to tell him… some of it.
“So that’s it? She’s too young?”
“She’s way too young.”
“I don’t see how this is a huge problem.”
“What would you do if Samantha dated someone twenty years older than her?”
He pauses. My heart leaps into my throat.
“I’d probably kill him.”
“Exactly what I thought,” I mumble, closing my eyes again. I still feel exhausted even though I’ve slept the day away.
“But I’m an asshole,” Elio insists. “You can make this work.”
“I dunno.”
“You have to, Dante. I’ve never heard you talk about a woman like this. You’ve never even had a real girlfriend.”
“There was Debbie Comber in high school.”
“She was everybody’s girlfriend.”
“Fuck you,” I say, letting out a surprised laugh.
“Fuck you, too,” Elio says warmly, and I feel lighter even though everything’s falling apart around me.
“That’s your advice?”
“Oh, you’re asking for advice?” Elio sounds genuinely shocked.
“I mean, yeah. I guess.”
“Follow your heart. Not your head.”
“Oh, don’t be an asshole.”
“No, I’m serious. If I’d listened to my head back when I met Grace, I wouldn’t have Samantha.”
I freeze at the mention of Samantha’s name.
“And Dante, I wouldn’t trade my life with Grace for all the world. Not even after she got sick. I’d do it all over again, right to the end.”
“You would?”
“In a heartbeat.” His voice has gone thick, and he lets out a long breath. “I met someone, too.”
I smile. “I know. The leggy blonde, right?”
“She’s more than a leggy blonde.”
“I figured, since you keep seeing her.”
“She’s whip-smart and she keeps me on my toes. Never gives an inch.”
“Grace didn’t, either,” I say, smiling while I think of her. Those amber-brown eyes of hers, so much like Samantha’s.
“I have a type.” He draws in a shaky breath. “But I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“I dunno. Of falling in love again. Of losing someone again. Of Sam hating me for it.”
“Samantha’s never going to hate you.”
“She’s hated me before. You don’t know what she was like as a teenager.”
I snort out a laugh. “I can only imagine. What’s your girl’s name?”
“She’s not my girl. Not yet. But her name is Olivia.”
“Pretty name.”
“You saw her. She’s gorgeous.”
She is. Not my type—blonde where Samantha is dark, leggy and thin where Samantha’s short and curvy.
Fuck. I can’t even think about other women without comparing them to her.
“I’m happy for you, Elio. Samantha will be, too.”
“I don’t know about that,” he says glumly.
“You should tell her.”
“Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for?”
Elio laughs breathlessly. “I don’t know. Waiting to feel less guilty, I guess.”
“About Samantha?”
He’s quiet for a beat. “About Grace.”
“Elio, she’s been gone—”
“I know. I know it’s been years. But some days it still feels like yesterday, Dante.”
“Grace would have wanted you to move on. To be happy.”
“I know that.” His voice shakes. I pause and wait for him to continue. When he doesn’t, I grip the phone tighter in my hand.
“Does Olivia make you happy?”
He’s quiet for another moment. “Yes.”
“Then listen to your heart. Not your head.”
“Oh you bastard. Don’t turn my words around on me,” he says, laughing shakily as if he’s crying.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
Elio takes another breath and when he speaks again, his voice is stronger. “How’s Sam? Is she worried sick? I haven’t called her yet.”
“She’s… alright,” is all I can manage without completely falling apart. I can’t stop thinking of those wide brown eyes, her trembling lip, the tears streaming down her face. It makes my stomach roll.
“I’ll give her a call. And Dante?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“I dunno, saving my fucking life? And for the advice. It helps more than you know.”
Guilt twists at the back of my head. “Don’t mention it.”
“Don’t fuck around and forget to come get me in the morning, I’m making Doc take this fucking IV out at daylight.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Ricardo still there?”
“No, but I’ll call him back.”
“That kid,” Elio hums. “His mom’s sick, you know.”
Ricardo’s younger than us, in his thirties. “Bad sick?”
“Cancer.”
I go silent. I know cancer is a sore subject around Elio, given how Grace died.
“Anyway, I need to call my daughter. I’ll see you bright and early. Call your girl and tell her you love her.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Your loss.”
It absolutely is. He’s right. There’s a pit in my stomach. He hangs up and I sit up on the bed, sighing heavily before getting up. My stomach is growling. I’m still tired enough I could probably still go back to sleep, but I should eat something.
I make my way out into the hall, pausing at the top of the stairs. I glance down to make sure Samantha isn’t on the couch, my heart pounding. She isn’t. I’m almost disappointed.
I almost turn around and head toward her door.
I descend the stairs. There’s remnants of Samantha on the dining room table. Saltine crackers. Ginger ale. I swallow hard. She’s probably cried so much she made herself sick. And it’s all my fault.
I was needlessly cruel, and I wish I could apologize. But all that would do is give her hope. Hope that can lead nowhere.
I head to the kitchen where I find a bowl of pasta salad. I demolish it while leaning against the kitchen counter, then wash the bowl in the sink and put it up. It doesn’t exactly make me feel better, but it makes me feel less nauseous, and that’s a plus.
I pull out my phone and call Ricardo.
“Dante?” He sounds half-asleep.
“Shit. Sorry to call so late.”
I actually have no idea what time it is. I hadn’t looked at my phone or my watch other than to talk to Elio and call Ricardo.
“It’s alright. What’s up?”
“Need you here at oh-six-hundred.”
He groans. “Six?”
“I know. Elio is dying to come home from Doc’s. I won’t be gone long, just need you to watch out for Samantha for a couple hours while I drive into town and back.”
He grunts. “Alright.”
I hesitate. I don’t know Ricardo well. Never have. I met him a couple times before I left for Italy, but he’d just been a kid then. It’s not really my place, but I say it anyway.
“Heard about your mother. I’m sorry.”
He goes quiet. “...thank you.”
I hang up the phone and climb back up the stairs, feeling like my feet are made of lead. I wonder if the cleaners have come by to take Grice’s body out of the panic room. I tell myself I should go check. But I’m too fucking tired.
Besides, it’ll get done.
Gregor Volkov, our cleaner, works for us and the Bratva, and he stays busy.
He knows Elio’s gate code, so he can get in and out. He usually comes in the middle of the night, so it’s probably done.
I walk past my room and to Samantha’s door even though I tell myself not to.
Light spills out from under it.
She’s not asleep. I could knock on the door. Say I’m sorry. Tell her that I’m a fucking idiot.
That I love her. And all that would be true.
But it wouldn’t fucking change anything.
My hand twitches at my side, but I turn around. Head back to my room.
It’s for the best.