A Little Too Much

Chapter Twenty

I RANG THE buzzer from downstairs, but Brett didn’t answer. He probably went to his parents’ in Connecticut for Christmas. I turn the key in the apartment door and push it open slowly, just to be sure he’s not still naked and passed out on the couch or something. When I find the living room is empty, I push the door wider and step through, Jess and Alessandro behind me.

“We’re gonna have to move that thing again,” I say with a gesture at the coffee table, looking back at Alessandro.

He smiles as if that’s in some way amusing.

“Let’s just get your stuff and get out of here,” Jess says, crossing toward the bedroom. “The energy in here sucks.”

But as she disappears through the door, I hear her, “Shit!” then the rustling of sheets and a “Get out!” that’s definitely not Jess’s.

Jess comes back out and looks at me. “Do you have a suitcase or something? I’ll get your clothes.”

Damn. “Brett’s in there?”

“Um . . . yeah,” she says with a glance back at the door. “You really don’t want to go in there.”

“Did that nimrod puke on himself again?” I say moving past her into the bedroom . . . and find Brett and Bambi twisted into the sheets.

Bambi? Seriously?

There’s a split second where I want to be mad, but out of nowhere, a giggle bursts up my throat. The next second, I’m bent at the waist cackling like a lunatic. Alessandro steps into the room, probably to see what’s so funny, and steps out again when he sees a buck-naked Bambi, sitting up in bed.

We’ve got priests and prostitutes and a gay girl from Biloxi. Yep, just your average Christmas morning.

Brett sits up and gives her a gentle shove, his blurry, bloodshot eyes never leaving me. He looks like something the cat threw up. He must have been all kinds of drunk last night to look this bad in the morning. “Go get cleaned up or something,” he tells her.

Bambi looks over her shoulder at him, then glares a dagger at me before standing and disappearing up the hall to the bathroom.

Brett stands, grabbing his warm-up pants from the floor and swaying dangerously as he tugs them on. “What are you doing here?”

I fight for control, cutting off the last of the giggles. “My Christmas gifts are here. If you’d have let me get my stuff last night, I wouldn’t have interrupted your orgy.”

He shoots me a bloodshot glare. “You left me blue. What did you expect me to do?”

“That.” I say, with a wave at the bed. “Exactly that.”

I step into the closet and grab my suitcase, tossing my clothes in. When I come out with my suitcase and bag of Christmas gifts, Brett is sitting on the bed with his head in his hand. I nudge his shoulder with the cologne box, and when he lifts his head, I hand it to him. “Merry Christmas.”

He stares up at me with bleary eyes. “You’re really doing this? Leaving?”

I look at him for a second and wonder why I ever thought what we had was working. “Yep. I’m really doing this.”

He lowers his head back into his hand as I tow my suitcase to the dresser and unload my drawers into it. I go to the bathroom, where Bambi’s still in the shower, and walk in without knocking. There’s a plastic Macy’s bag under the counter that I load all my bathroom stuff into. I sweep my makeup and hair products into the bag, but decide to leave my shampoo and conditioner, because there’s no way I’m going in the shower right now to get them. I snag my bathrobe off the hook next to Brett’s and grab every last towel, because they’re all mine. The shower turns off just as I click the door closed and head back to the bedroom.

I hand Jess the Macy’s bag and cram the towels and robe into my suitcase, then tip it up onto its wheels. “Can you handle this and that?” I ask her, motioning to the bag of gifts.

She reaches for the handle and sets the Macy’s bag on top of the suitcase, then grabs my gifts in her free hand. “Got it.”

We step into the hall, Alessandro following behind, and find Bambi standing there dripping, wrapped in Brett’s bathrobe and glaring a dagger at me. She scurries into the bedroom after we pass.

“You ready, mister furniture-moving expert?” I ask Alessandro when we hit the living room.

“I’m yours to command,” he says with a smile and a small bow.

“Come on.” I turn to Jess. “Can you go ahead of us and hold the door?”

She moves quickly toward the door, towing my suitcase behind her, and puts my stuff in the hall, then holds the door and stands back.

Alessandro and I each grab an end of the table. “On its side,” he says, and we tip it sideways. He starts backing toward the door. “I’ll go first.”

We manage to wrangle the table into the elevator, and when we get to the bottom, Jess holds the door open while Alessandro and I wrestle the table out.

“Watch the top end of the table,” Alessandro says as I move backward out the door.

“I’ve got—” But that’s as far as I get before a corner of the table catches on the top of the elevator door, causing me to lose my balance and my grip. I hear Jess gasp as I drop my end and I topple over backward onto my butt, which brings the top edge low enough to clear the door. The jerk of the table yanks it out of Alessandro’s grip and it starts to fall toward me where I sit on my ass, stunned. But then, with reflexes like a cat, he grabs for the table leg and stops it, mid-timber.

I look up at it, dangling over my head, and back at Alessandro as he strains to bring it back upright, and what I know for sure at that second is that Brett would have let that table flatten me if it were him in that elevator.

Jess grabs the other side of the table and helps Alessandro right it as I scramble to my feet.

“Thanks guys,” I tell them as we slide it the rest of the way out of the elevator. “This thing is so freaking heavy I’d have been roadkill.”

“Damn!” Jess says as the elevator doors close, and I realize all my stuff is still in there.

Alessandro’s hand darts out for the call button but it’s too late. The car is rising. It stops on the fourth floor and we wait for it to come back. And when the door opens, Bambi has my suitcase open and my clothes are strewn all over the elevator. She has my red lace thong looped over her index finger. “By the time I’m done with him, he’ll forget you ever existed,” she says, curling her lip in disgust as she flicks it at me. She struts past us toward the door.

“Good,” I say as she slips through.

Jess steps up next to me and grasps my hand as Bambi vanishes through the door. “Karma, Hilary. The universe is going to come back and bite that bitch in the butt.”

“I think maybe it already did.” I turn back to find the coffee table leaning against the wall and Alessandro inside the elevator, collecting my things and packing them carefully back into my suitcase. He picks up a black lace bra and hesitates for a second before tucking it in under a sweater and I feel myself blush, of all things. I don’t blush. Ever.

“I’ve got it,” I say, kneeling next to him and grabbing for the last few pairs of underwear I see, cramming them into the corner of the suitcase.

I toss a sweater on top as he scoops up the last towel and folds it in, then helps me zip it up.

“Thanks,” I tell him as I grab the handle and tow it out of the elevator.

“My pleasure.” He purrs the last word, and when I look at him, there’s an amused spark in his eye.

Jess grabs my bags of stuff and takes the suitcase handle from me. “Let’s get out of here. There’s a bad vibe in this building. It’s giving me the creeps.”

The subway scene is basically a repeat performance of the one that got the table to my apartment in the first place, except this time we have Jess to run interference. She shoves the crowd back from the door, making room for Alessandro and me to load the coffee table into the subway car. We finally make her apartment and wrestle the coffee table in, and my heart sinks when I see there’s already a glass coffee table in a delicate white frame.

Jess sees my frown and says, “Oh, no! It’s not what you think,” like she got caught cheating on me with another coffee table. “This is Lucinda’s. She’s taking it when she moves.”

My spirits lift a little. “So, you’re okay with my coffee table?”

“Definitely. I hate that thing,” she says with a scowl at the pretty glass table. “Where I grew up, a coffee table was where you put your feet, but Lucinda flips out when she catches me with my feet on hers.”

And that makes me think about furniture in general. I’m going to need at least a bed.

“Where would you like this in the meantime?” Alessandro says, and I realize I’ve left him standing there holding my coffee table.

Jess looks around. “Maybe we can lean it on that wall?” she says, pointing to the wall next to the couch.

Alessandro slides it across the floor to the corner and leans it, legs out, against the wall behind an armchair. “Are you going to be okay from here?”

That’s a really good question, but as I look around at the apartment, I realize the answer is yes. Maybe Jess is right. Maybe this was meant to be, because I feel a sudden wave of relief. I didn’t realize how tense living with Brett had become until now, when I don’t have to do it anymore. That frustrated, wrong feeling is totally gone. “Yeah. I’m good.”

“The children are doing a Christmas show at the youth center tonight. It’s open to the public if you ladies would like to come.”

Funnily, I sort of want to say yes, but . . . “I promised my sister we’d be there for dinner.” He nods and turns for the door, but then I remember I have his gift. “Wait!” I go to the bag and pull it out. It’s a little bit smashed and I almost change my mind. “Here,” I finally say, thrusting it at him. “Merry Christmas.”

He takes the wrapped tube from my hand and laughs at the cockroach bow, then squints a question at me.

“Just open it.”

He pulls off the cockroach and slides it in his pocket, then slowly slips off the wrapping paper . . . and smiles. “Salomé.”

I shrug. “I hope you like it.”

His smile widens and his eyes spark. “There’s something about a woman who has her shit together.”

I cringe a little, remembering that’s what I said about her at the museum.

His eyes lift from the rolled print to me. “She reminds me of you.”

I cringe deeper.

He backs toward the door. “Don’t forget. We have a date at the youth center tomorrow morning.”

I roll my eyes. “Ten. I’ll be there.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thanks for the help.”

“My pleasure,” he says with a smile that makes my cheeks warm again, then he disappears through the door.

“You’ve got it bad,” Jess says, and I realize I’m just standing here staring after him.

“What are you talking about?”

“You want him, Hilary. You’re blushing. I’ve never seen you blush before.”

I hate what I’m feeling is so obvious on my face. I’ve spent my entire life learning to hide my emotions. How does being around Alessandro turn me back to that girl so easily? Just one more reason I shouldn’t be around him. “I just hauled a five-thousand-pound table halfway across Manhattan, Jess.”

She shrugs and gives me a knowing smile.

“Which means I could use a shower before we go. Can I use yours?”

“It’s yours now,” she says with a goofy smile. Then she goes all Mississippi and jumps up and down, making me laugh. “This is going to be so awesome!”

JESS IS ON the floor with Henri, building one of his four new Lego sets, Jeff is bundled up with Max on the back deck looking through the telescope Mallory and he bought the boys, and Mallory and I are on the couch. I’ve filled her in on Brett’s and my breakup, and when she heard how Jess took me in off the street, she offered her leftovers to take home—Mallory’s seal of approval.

“So this guy . . . the one who helped you move . . . ?”

“What about him?” I ask, but I know where she’s going. Ever since I mentioned he was back and saw her reaction, I’ve avoided talking about him with her.

“Alessandro,” Jess says from the floor. “I think your sister’s crushing on him.”

Mallory’s eyes narrow as they find mine again, then she stands abruptly, grabbing my hand and pulling me up. “Excuse us for a minute, Jessica.”

She drags me up the hall to her bedroom and closes the door. “Please, Hilary, tell me this isn’t him,” she says under her breath.

“It’s him.”

“What the hell are you doing?” she asks through a tight jaw.

“He’s helping me, Mallory. He’s a friend. That’s all.” I feel myself cringe as I try to justify the unjustifiable. I know Mallory’s right. I’ve known from the beginning. It’s the reason I told him we can’t hang out. It’s too dangerous.

But I can’t stay away from him.

“Why is he back?” She drops onto the edge of her bed, wringing her hands. “Why did he come back after all this time?”

“His father died in the 9/11 attacks. I guess he just needed some closure.”

“That’s all he wants? Closure?”

“Nothing’s going to change, Mallory. I promise.”

She hangs her head. “I’ve worried about this for so long . . . what would happen if . . .” She trails off and blows out a breath, then looks back up at me. “You’re okay, though? He’s not—”

I shake my head. “His brother was the problem, and he’s gone . . . dead.”

“Oh.” She stands and straightens her skirt. “I still don’t like it, Hilary. I wish you wouldn’t see him.”

“It will be fine. I swear.” God, I hope I’m not lying. “He doesn’t know anything that happened after he left.”

She looks relieved. “Just be careful. Promise.”

“I promise.”