11. — daddy issues and daddy’s issues. #2
Nico stilled against her. It took a minute for him to respond, and every passing second made Frankie increasingly nervous for what he might say.
“I don’t want to do that right now when I’ve got like twenty minutes with you left or less.
I don’t want to talk about that shit when we’re like this, when we’re just us. ”
This time, she didn’t move.
“Us, huh?”
He appeared from beneath the shirt once more, head cocked and a soft smile playing at the edges of his full lips. “What’s that for? That little huh.”
“You just said us, like it’s a thing. I didn’t realize—”
“I guess we jumped right over that part, didn’t we?” he interjected.
She lifted one shoulder, trying to be indifferent. “I mean, we have been doing this since prom.”
Whatever this even was. She tried not to overthink it because she liked it. Without even trying, he became her best friend, and like he was always supposed to be there. Like he always should have been.
“And?”
“And what?” she asked.
Nico sucked air through his teeth, still eagle-eyeing her all the while. “Do you just want me to say it, or something?”
Frankie was starting to feel like a parrot. “Say what?”
“That we’re a thing.”
Her nose scrunched up. “A thing?”
“Together.”
That sounded better.
“Like boyfriend and girlfriend, together, or...” she trailed off.
Nico made a face this time, but he fell forward, too.
Catching himself with his hands flat on either side of her against the mattress.
He left the shirt she wore pulled high enough to expose her breasts, but his attention stayed locked on her even as her skin pebbled and her nipples peaked.
He came closer until he hovered right above her.
She didn’t need the weight of his body on top of her this time to feel that same sensation of the two pulling away from the rest of the world to go somewhere else.
“I don’t know if I like that—boyfriend.”
“You don’t want me to be your girlfriend?”
He shook his head, gaze dropping to her mouth. “It’s not right for this, is it? It doesn’t feel right.”
“Well, what does?”
Nico kissed her again, taking away her breath, words, and whatever questions remained. Especially when he stopped to kiss a path down her neck and then between her breasts. His lips inched away from her skin so he could ask, “Who does this with you?”
She swallowed thickly. “You.”
He came back up to her fast, dropping an open kiss to her mouth. “And that?”
“You,” she repeated.
“What else would you let me do?”
Frankie’s breath caught hard in her chest, but the truth slipped out before she could stop it. “Whatever you wanted.”
“Who else gets to do that to you? Who else has?”
“No one.”
Not even him, yet.
But he could. He could.
Nico tipped his chin up slightly, the glow from the windows and lights outside casting shadows across his already devastating features. “As long as I’m the only one doing those things with you, I guess that makes you mine.”
···
Frankie didn’t realize some churches required parking passes after certain times in the day, which left her scrambling to find a spot on a nearby street before two in the afternoon.
The Church of the Holy Redeemer in Brooklyn was one such establishment.
She still couldn’t figure out why her father sent her a message asking if she would meet him that afternoon there, but she also couldn’t refuse him.
Salvatore could have just shown up to the penthouse. He didn’t have to make the effort to request they meet, if she was able. That was an important part of his message that she couldn’t quite shake off.
It took an extra fifteen minutes for her to find a place to park, and then another five minutes to walk to the church. By the time she came upon her father waiting on the brick-and-mortar steps, it was already ten minutes past the time she promised to be there.
“Sorry, parking was—”
“Yeah, it’s shit,” Salvatore interjected, chuckling. “It always was.”
She looked up at the tall peak of the church where the gray bricks continued to climb straight up to a massive silver cross pointing toward the cloudless sky. “It feels like we haven’t been to church in a while.”
“It’s been a minute,” her father agreed. “This one, though...well, it’s been a few years for me. Likely never for you.”
“You’ve come here before?”
“My parents married in this church. And I was baptized here, too.”
“Huh.”
Salvatore rubbed his hands together and avoided her curious gaze. “Thanks for coming. I know it was an odd request, but—”
“I miss you, Daddy.”
“I miss you too, Sunshine.”
He pulled her in for a hug the second she got close enough for him to grab. For once, he said nothing about how short her pleated, pink skirt was, even if she had pulled on a pair of white lace tights underneath for modesty’s sake.
“How’s Carina?” she dared to ask.
Salvatore laughed a broken sound. “Angry. Still angry and hateful, but what else should I expect? I said—did—a horrible thing.”
She pulled away, folding her arms over her chest, and tapping her ankle-high, heeled boot to the step. “Yeah, maybe so. But so has she.”
“Not like that, Frankie. Her words are barbed wire on a good day, sure, but she’s never cut me that deep. I think the situation was made worse by the information I didn’t know, but that’s not an excuse.”
Speaking of that information...
“So, she’s really pregnant, then?”
“Yeah, she is.”
“Didn’t see that coming,” Frankie admitted.
“Me, either. I can’t believe I’m going to be a father again at fifty-three. I’ll be what, seventy-one by the time they’re your age?”
She snorted, too amused for her own good. “You’re not even doing the math right. You turn fifty-four in a few months. The baby won’t be here by then. And you’ll be seventy-two, Daddy.”
He practically wheezed at the number, waving a hand as if to shoo away the truth while he surveyed the busy street beyond the church. “Insane. I don’t know how the fuck I got myself in this mess.”
“A lack of condoms, apparently.”
His gaze cut right back to her. “Francesca!”
“What? It’s true.”
He just shook his head.
“So, she’s keeping it, then?” Frankie asked of Carina.
He cleared his throat, shrugging. “Honestly, I don’t know. We’d need to be talking for me to have that information, and we’re not. I’m lucky she’s even at the house because she packed a bag. Or three.”
“Except the party’s coming up.”
“Yep,” Salvatore agreed, “and she can’t really leave with that going on, so...”
“I guess you’re running out of time to figure out how to apologize.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
Frankie grinned. “I mean, can’t I enjoy this a little?”
“One of us might as well.”
“You’re not happy about it?”
At that question, her father’s gaze turned back on the street beyond them. Not quickly enough, though. She saw what he tried to hide with distraction and distance.
“Are you happy about it?” she asked pointedly.
“It’s not for me to happy about yet,” he eventually replied, glancing back at her then.
“It’s not my body; it’s not my choice. I know you heard some things that you shouldn’t have heard about Carina, but you don’t know it all, baby.
You don’t know everything. When, or if, I can be happy about it, you’ll be the first to know. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” She shifted in her boots and peered up at the sky overhead once more. “Did you want more kids?”
“No.”
“With Mom?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Frankie waited him out.
“We never talked about it after you came along, and you were a very pleasant surprise in our mid-thirties anyway,” he said quietly.
“We didn’t get that far, I suppose. We were just wrapped up in what we had in that moment.
The future didn’t factor into the equation until there wasn’t a future to have anymore. ”
“Well, Carina talked to me about it—said she never wanted kids. So, if she sticks to that, then what? You’re gonna be fine if she goes and aborts it?”
Salvatore’s jaw clenched, and his next words came out tight and terse. “This is not a conversation that you and I need to have, as it’s not for you and I to make the choice. So, drop it, please.”
“You could at least answer me.”
“I already did. It’s her body; it’s her choice.”
“But it’s your baby, too. You said it.”
“And if it was you, I would say the same thing. You don’t understand everything, Frankie. And the rest is not my story. Just like what you heard that day in the kitchen also wasn’t my story to tell. That shouldn’t have happened.”
“But it did,” she muttered.
“It did,” he echoed sadly. “And apparently, I am one of the lucky people who are so rare, that they get to be medically documented because of a vasectomy failure long after the time that it should be possible to happen. Statistically speaking, I mean.”
She made a face, not bothering to hide the disgust.
Salvatore must have noticed. “We are a little late, so maybe we should get going in, hmm?”
Frankie eyed the church again, still wondering something. “Who attends church at two in the afternoon anyway?”
“Lots of people, depending on the church and location. That’s not why I’m here, or why I asked you to come today.”
“So...why did you?”
Salvatore sighed, taking the steps slowly and letting her stay in stride beside him. “I haven’t been here in a while, but when I do come, I attend the meetings.”
“Meetings?”
“A.A. That one’s not mine, though. I need N.A.”
Her confusion must have been clear.
“Narcotics Anonymous, Frankie. I’ve been an opiate addict, recovering, since you were a kid, and when I had the accident, I accepted pain management while they handled the mess of my hand. It’s been hard ever since.”
She blinked, stopping on the top step while he continued forward. It took him a few more paces before he realized she’d stopped following him altogether. In that moment, she saw her father differently than she ever had before.
Usually, he was her hero.
A victor in every sense of the word.
Her dad.
Right then, he was just a man. And it kind of hurt.
“Pills?” she asked.