18. — a better day.
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Staten Island, New York
Nico, Rose Ridge Community
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Nico laughed at the question Frankie posed him from the passenger seat of his vintage Mustang.
He could have upgraded the car to have modern comforts like an auxiliary plug-in and a state-of-the-art stereo system, but something about the lack of distraction made him love the car as it was.
Frankie loved it as much as him, sinking into the large bucket seats, something the Mercedes didn’t have, and she swore her father would kill her if she got on the back of his bike.
“You’d make such a cute backpack, though,” he muttered around a crunch of pretzel chips.
She gave him the weirdest look. “That had literally nothing to do with my question.”
“ADHD. My thoughts got in the way, and the question is ridiculous. The answer is none.”
“What’d I ask, then?”
“You think I don’t listen to you,” he accused, only half teasing.
Frankie grinned playfully. “Prove it.”
“You asked—how much trouble do you think I’m gonna be in?
” Nico said, enunciating every word clearly while he cleaned his teeth of chips with his tongue.
Rolling the bag up and stuffing it in the rear of the car and grabbing a brown paper bag he left there earlier; he then adjusted himself back in the front seat.
Winking his girl’s way, he teased, “That’s what you asked, right? ”
“Well, what’s a backpack?”
He pointed at her, now leaning against the driver’s window as he did, laughing. “Ah, so you were listening, too.”
Frankie guffawed. “Mean. I totally listen to you. I don’t even have your running internal dialogue to follow along with the random intrusive thoughts that come out of your mouth. I should get bonus points for that.”
“Good thing you’ve got bonus points because you lose credit when you don’t fucking listen.”
Her gaze narrowed. “I do listen.”
“Repeatedly, in fact, you have not.”
“That’s not true, Nico. I do listen when you talk. Name one time.”
That brown bag in his lap, which she hadn’t even really noticed, proved she didn’t listen. He hoped she did this time. He moved right along to explain to her, that way it was very clear between them, why her declaration wasn’t at all true.
“The night I told you not to move from bed because I had an unwanted guest. When I told you to be quiet yesterday because you don’t know Carmine Marino like I do.
If I’m speaking up more than once to tell you don’t do something, babe, don’t do it.
Both times, it was like you didn’t hear what I said.
You just did what you wanted when I promise you, I should’ve been calling the shots in those moments.
Also, a backpack, in bike-speak, is the girl on the back of the bike.
I mean, put whoever you want back there, but it’s girls-only on mine. ”
Her nose scrunched up cute. “How many girls—”
“Don’t ask that, it’s unnecessary.”
She quieted.
Nico just smiled at the sight of her across the way, jealous and hot.
He couldn’t help but be glad the two sat just three streets over from her father’s home inside the walls of their gated community.
If they were parked anywhere else, he probably wouldn’t be able to control the impulse to show her why she didn’t need to be jealous at all.
“And it’s not the most important part of this conversation,” he added.
Frankie started abusing her lip in that way he hated. She looked so good biting her lip when he fucked her against hotel sheets just before they packed their shit to leave on an afternoon flight into LaGuardia. Less so when it meant she was anxious and she had been trying not to pick at her nails.
“Quit it,” he said as he dug into the brown paper bag for the first thing he needed.
Frankie stopped chewing on her lip as he pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes and a new lighter.
His other ones got crushed in the first hotel room, so he had gone without.
“And now you look sad,” he told Frankie, shaking his head. “Stop that, too.”
“You think Carmine is going to tell my dad about the drugs?”
“Probably,” Nico returned, shrugging as he opened the pack.
Nico smirked around the cigarette he then quickly lit.
Rolling down the window enough to let the smoke out, he straightened back into the driver’s seat.
He inhaled a hard drag, and Frankie watched him from the other side of the car like she needed to mull over the next thing to come out of her mouth.
He didn’t mind. Their conversations were always so much better when they took their time with it.
The smoke burned in his lungs; gray tendrils pulled out of the crack in the window in waves as he waited her out.
“Tell me the deal behind Carmine,” she said.
He loved when she listened especially for the things he didn’t say.
“The first time I ever got stoned, I was eleven,” Nico informed.
Frankie’s eyes widened comically. “What?”
“No lie. And the first time I went to Neon, I was almost fourteen.”
“So, thirteen. At a rave.”
He rolled his eyes. “My friends were my brother’s friends until I got a couple years into high school.
He’s got four years on me, Frankie, and most of his friends were older than him.
Like Anthony. Think about it. I spent every summer in Chicago, and I only had to see my father on Sundays for church because he had lots to keep him entertained there. ”
“So, when you say almost fourteen...”
“It doesn’t sound as bad, does it?”
“It’s still bad.”
Nico grumbled under his breath. “Then, it’s going to sound really fucked up when I tell you how I lost my virginity in a bathroom stall at my first rave, to a girl with body glitter all over herself, and I didn’t even learn her name.”
Frankie shot him a look to die for, and her cheeks pinked. “Oh, yeah?”
“And right after, my brother gave me a pill he said would keep me feeling like I was rolling on molly for days.”
She blinked. “Oh.”
“Just happened we were staying at Carmine’s little brother’s place, and Carmine came over that night to check on things. He knew we were out of control. I was sick as a fucking dog on that oxy and could barely keep my head up. Carmine took care of me, asshole that I was to him the whole time.”
“And he told your dad?”
“Because I mouthed off, repeatedly. Kinda like you did yesterday. I thought I ran the show because I wanted to do that shit, I said yes, and yet...”
“He was the only adult in the room,” she filled in.
Nico nodded. “That’s what he told me, right before we went to my dad.”
“What happened to your brother for giving you the oxy?”
“Nothing. I took it; I could’ve said no.”
“But—”
“I learned not to trust my brother with my drugs after that. I learned my lesson.”
“What about you? When your dad found out, I mean.”
Nico’s teeth grinded once, then twice. He pulled another two drags off the cigarette, hard and long, practically finishing it, and tossed it into a coffee cup with a bit of coffee left at the bottom.
“Beat the shit out of me so badly that I had to go in for internal bleeding. Lost a kidney that day. I only have one. They did it laparoscopically, I barely got a scar.”
The way she glanced down at his side, not even knowing which kidney it had been, said she never noticed. That’s what a good surgeon could do for somebody.
“Anyway, that’s what it’s like with my father; it’s how he’s always been.
If he’s not controlling my money, then he’s using me as a punching bag to get his point across, or he’s calling me fucking useless every chance he gets.
I’ve had people tell me that it wasn’t always like that, I was just too young to remember.
It doesn’t matter because what I do remember fucks with me enough. ”
“And you have to go have dinner with him tonight,” Frankie said.
“Yep.”
That’s why his hands still trembled although it could have been the remaining molly and whatever garbage it had been cut with still in his system.
“Anyway,” Nico muttered, picking up the brown bag and shaking it between them. “I had a better point than all of that about Carmine, and it’s also about that listening thing.”
Her right eyebrow lifted in suspicion. “What do you mean?”
Nico lit another smoke, making Frankie ugh under her breath, while he dug the first item they needed to talk about out. Well, two items. Nasal and oral Narcan medication.
“Carmine educated me about safe partying the next summer because guess who came back and went hard again. Only, I had heartbreak and teenage angst, and a brother I hated all over again to back all the reasons why I was gonna get high and fuck every single night.”
“That was the year your girlfriend—”
“Fucked my brother, yeah,” he interrupted. “Let’s read a little between the lines. It doesn’t have to be complicated here.”
“Sorry.”
“And he made sure that I understood if I wanted to party, and I had partners doing it with me, I should make sure they knew how to party safely, too. Here’s the thing.
I understand what’s out there because I’ve been involved in drugs, and selling them, and the market of it, not to mention, the whole scene, since before I had hair on my nuts. ”
“Nico!”
“It’s true,” he said, unbothered. “My brother would feed me liquor at parties when I was a single digit age just for the laughs. I used to steal Giorgio’s weed and ecstasy for him before I could roll my own joint.”
“Jesus.”
“Back to this, though,” he said of the Narcan, shaking it.
“You can’t trust what you’re putting into your body is what it is.
I only know less than a few safe places to score drugs, and I don’t even do it that often now.
It showed, because I didn’t know the scene in Chicago anymore.
More concerning is all the kids who probably OD’d last night like I did, but they didn’t have a dad who gave a fuck about where his daughter was. ”
“I don’t need to know how to use Narcan.”