A Little Too Much

Chapter Six

LUIGI’S IS ALWAYS packed and there’s only, like, eight tables, but we luck into a party that had two of them stuck together just leaving, so we and the couple waiting ahead of us score seats near the window.

“So what are we talking about today?” I ask once we’re settled and the waiter has taken our drink order.

“You.”

I huff out a laugh. “Then it’s going to be a short conversation.”

He rubs his forehead, then leans on his elbows and looks at me with weary eyes. “I have been haunted for eight years, Hilary. There’s not a day that’s passed that I haven’t wondered about you.”

I feel my armor going back up and the claws coming out as I glare across the table at him. He has no idea what it means to be haunted. “I told you. I’m fine.”

“I have to know . . .” The skin around his eyes tightens but he doesn’t break my gaze. “Did Lorenzo rape you?”

I actually laugh out loud. “That’s what this is about? You think you owe me something to make up for your brother?”

He just looks at me, because I didn’t answer the question.

“No, Alessandro. He didn’t rape me.”

Over Alessandro’s shoulder, I see the woman sitting behind him turn and look at me.

“I know I can’t fix it if he did, but there are resources—”

“He didn’t rape me,” I say again, lower but more slowly so he’ll hear it. Lorenzo was never the problem. I didn’t care about him enough for him to have the power to really hurt me. I pick up the menu and flip it open, refusing to look the person who did in the eye. “Are we getting pizza or what?”

Alessandro blows out a sigh and the storm on his face subsides slowly. “What do you like?” he asks, and it feels ten degrees cooler when his laser-beam gaze lowers from me to his menu.

“Veggies, mostly. And pepperoni.”

The waiter comes back with our iced teas and sets them in front of us, and my eyes are drawn to Alessandro’s arms as he reaches across and takes my menu. As I follow the veins in his forearm, coursing over long, lean muscles to the rolled-up sleeve of his button-down, I catch myself envisioning that perfection all the way up, covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he punched the bag at the gym.

“Are you ready to order?” the waiter asks, snapping me from my fantasy.

Alessandro hands him our menus. “We’ll have a large veggie combo with pepperoni.”

The waiter scribbles on his pad, then takes the menus. “Salads?”

“Antipasto for two, I think,” he says with a questioning glance at me.

“Fine,” I say, squeezing lemon into my tea.

As I watch the waiter take our order to the computer and key it in, I feel Alessandro’s eyes on me again, but I’m not ready to look at him yet.

“I need to know what happened to you after we left,” he says, suddenly intense.

No you don’t. I narrow my eyes at him. “Why?”

There’s a long minute where he doesn’t answer.

“Listen, Alessandro, I know you have this whole major guilt thing happening,” I say, waving a hand in a circle at him, “but that’s not really my problem, you know? I’m seriously okay. Everybody has shit they need to deal with. I’ve dealt with mine. My life is really good. As a matter of fact, it’s great. So at this point, the only thing you could do to make my life better would be to score me a part on Broadway.”

His eyebrows go up. “Broadway . . . ?”

I twirl my straw in my tea. “I’m hoping to score a part in a musical. I have an amazing voice.”

A smile twitches his lips and a little of the tension that’s always there runs out of his shoulders. “I remember.”

I just stare at him as it all comes flooding back.

It was only a week after Lorenzo and Alessandro had shown up at the group home. We were all in the basement “rec room” where there was a radio and a TV with a broken Xbox. I was curled up on a sticky overstuffed chair and Lorenzo and Eric were sprawled on the sagging couch getting stoned. Two girls, Hannah and Trish, who were like sixteen I think, had smeared on heavy makeup with tons of eye shadow and liner and were doing a fashion show. They’d cranked the radio and were shimmying around to Beyonce’s “Naughty Girl,” stripping off clothes they’d bought at the Salvation Army store until they were all the way down to tiny bikinis. Lorenzo and Eric were watching and catcalling. I remember Alessandro sitting on the floor in the corner. He was doodling something on a pad of paper, but he was also watching.

The black one . . . Trish, I think . . . or maybe it was Hannah, told me to go put on my bikini, but I didn’t have one so I just shook my head.

“Dumb bitch,” she said, turning to the boys and grinding her hips in a circle.

“No guts no glory,” the other one said as she slid onto Eric’s lap.

I had guts, I just didn’t have a bikini, so I stood up and started belting out “Naughty Girl” with Beyonce like my life depended on it.

Looking back, it was pretty bad, but later that day, when were eating dinner, Alessandro slipped into the seat next to me, which he’d never done before. “You have a good voice,” he’d murmured, without looking at me.

They were the first words he ever said to me.

I look down at the table, pulling a napkin from the dispenser for something to do, pissed that he can make me feel this stupid with just two words. “Yeah, well . . . I’m better now.”

“You were exceptional then, so I can only imagine.”

I don’t know if he’s messing with me or not, but all of a sudden, I wish I hadn’t come here. I’ve spent the last week and a half pretending like his showing up out of nowhere didn’t shake me to my core—like it didn’t mater. I wish I could just forget that he ever came back. But I can’t.

Our waiter is back with the antipasto and two plates, which he puts at the edge of our table. “Your pie will be up in a few.” He tips his head at my glass. “More tea?”

“Yeah, sure,” I tell him, then watch as he goes to the counter for a pitcher. He’s back a moment later with a smile, filling my glass.

“I’m glad you know what you want and that you’re chasing your dream,” Alessandro says as the waiter retreats again, pulling my attention back to him.

I run a finger down a rivulet of sweat on my glass. “Problem is, it’s running way the hell faster than I am at the moment.”

The waiter scoots up to our table a few minutes later with a wire rack and a pizza tin, which he sets in the middle of the table. “Anything else I can get you?”

Alessandro lifts a questioning brow at me.

“No, thanks,” I answer, and the waiter shuffles off to clear the next table.

“But you’re getting auditions,” Alessandro says, spinning the tin so the spatula handle is facing me. “With all the aspiring actresses in the city, I’d think that wouldn’t be an easy feat.”

I shrug. “Only because of American Idol. I made it to Hollywood Week.”

He lifts an eyebrow at me. “I know.”

I squint at him. “You didn’t . . . ?”

He shrugs. “I didn’t see it real time, but I told you, I Googled you. The first search results for you are YouTube clips from American Idol.”

Why does it embarrass me that he’s seen that? I scoop a slice of pizza onto my plate. “So . . . how long are you staying in New York?” I ask, to steer the conversation away from me.

He helps himself to a slice. “I don’t intend to stay long.”

I take a bite of pizza and try to ignore the cold rush through my gut. I don’t want him to stay. When he leaves New York again, it will be a good thing. “So you just spend all your time stalking me?”

His eyes flash to mine. “No. I stalk other people too.”

“More ghosts?”

He flinches and lowers his gaze to his plate. “I spend as much time as I can at the Y with the kids.”

“You’re helping inner-city kids?”

He nods.

“Like you and Lorenzo.”

His intense gaze locks on mine. “I hope that I can help keep them from becoming like me and Lorenzo, yes.”

We eat in silence, but I can’t stop flashing him glances. There are things about him that haven’t changed at all, and there are other things that are so different. There are so many things I want to ask: Did he miss me after he left? Did he want to come back? He says he’s been haunted, but are the memories all bad?

Please don’t leave me.

I squeeze my eyes shut against the unbidden image.

“Are you okay, Hilary?”

Alessandro’s voice saying those words taps into that well of despair I’ve hidden away for so long. His just being here after all this time brings it closer to the surface.

“I’m fine,” I snip.

He tilts his head and looks at me for a long, uncomfortable second. “Of course.” It’s clear from his tone that he knows I’m lying, but he doesn’t press me on it. He pushes his plate away and nods at the last three slices of pizza. “Have you had enough?”

“I’m stuffed.”

He waves down he waiter for the check. Once he’s paid, he stands and slides my coat off the back of my chair, holding it open for me.

I grab it out of his hands. “I’m not three. I can put on my own jacket,” I say, shoving my arms through the sleeves.

He tips his head at me and shrugs on his black wool jacket, then escorts me out of the restaurant with a hand on the small of my back. I hate that the feel of his hand there makes me ache inside.

It’s a crisp, clear late October day, right on the edge of winter but not cold enough for snow yet. Dry leaves cling to the trees in the park across the street and the light breeze prods them loose a few at a time. I bundle my jacket around me and watch them flutter to the ground as we walk in silence toward the subway. Alessandro doesn’t break stride when I don’t turn for the stairs, and he never asks what we’re doing as we walk home slowly past the park. It’s a fifteen-minute subway ride . . . or a half hour walk back to my apartment. Picking my way through the street artists, hot-dog vendors, and tourists clogging the sidewalks keeps me from having to look at Alessandro, but for some reason, I’m not quite ready to be rid of him yet.

“I’ve been wanting to go to the Met again,” he finally says as we pass the Museum of Natural History. There’s scaffolding over the massive stone front of the building, but the ugliness of it doesn’t stop the tourists from snapping shots like paparazzi gone rabid.

“The museum?” I glance up and see him looking toward the park. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a straight shot across the park from here—a twenty-minute walk from my apartment—and I’ve never been there.

He nods, turning his gaze back to the sidewalk unfolding in front of us. “Have you been?”

“No.” I’ve lived in the city all my life and I’ve never been most places.

His gaze flicks to me. “Are you free later this week? Or maybe next?”

“Um . . . maybe. I’m usually off Thursdays.”

“Would you be interested in going?”

“To the Met?”

He nods and a smile twitches his lips. “To the Met.”

“Is it expensive?”

He looks up from the sidewalk again. “My treat. And lunch too, if you can handle my company for that long.”

I scrunch my face at him. “How long will it take?”

“The museums are vast. We could spend as much or as little time there as you like.”

My face scrunches more. “Vast . . . I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

He laughs and the sound takes me off guard as the memory of the last time I heard him laugh slams into me. We weren’t too far from here, in the middle of Central Park, near Bethesda Fountain, surrounded by butterflies.

“I promise not to bore you. We’ll hit the highlights,” he says, pulling me back to the here and now.

“How long will the highlights take?” I ask warily.

He looks at me and I’d swear he’s smirking a little. “Leave your afternoon open.”

We turn away from the park up Eighty-second Street toward my apartment.

“This is a nice neighborhood,” Alessandro says. Considering he’s hardly once looked up from the sidewalk, I’m not sure how he’d know.

I shrug even though he’s not looking. “My boyfriend can afford it. His family has money. It’s really his place.”

His pace stalls for a beat. “Boyfriend. You’re with someone.” It’s not a question, and there’s something in his tone that I can’t read.

“Brett. He’s an actor.”

He looks at me, his gaze suddenly intense, as if he’s about to recite the cure for cancer or something. “Does he make you happy?”

Again, he takes me off guard. Am I happy? I’m not unhappy. I kick a pebble in my path and it skitters onto the road, scaring a well-fed pigeon that’s pecking at something in the gutter. “Happy is all relative.”

“You deserve to be happy.” His voice is lower now, as if he said it more to himself than me. He looks up at Trinity Church, across the street, and something mournful passes over his face. He was going to be a priest and he gave it up for the love of a girl who doesn’t love him back. I wonder if that look is for her, or for what he gave up because of her.

We reach my door and I turn to him. “So, did we decide about the Met?”

He nods. “Thursday. Meet me there, at the main entrance? Noon?”

I should say no.

I should.

“Okay.” I unlock the door and slip through to find the elevator waiting. I push four and wave through the glass as the doors close.

And wonder what the hell I’m doing.