All I Believe (29 page)

“And you’re a fucking
hitman
!” That made the cab driver stare at me in the rearview mirror. I smiled at him weakly, then said into the phone, “So, are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Coming home for Christmas.”

“I am. I think it’ll be a hoot, don’t you? I haven’t been home in years, but something tells me this is the one not to miss.”

“Because Andreo will be here?”

“Ugh. He won’t really, will he?”

I said, “I don’t know. I’m just assuming.”

“Well, despite the potential presence of Wreck-it Ralph, I’ll still be there.” Again, not the most off-base insult.

“Alright. I guess I’ll see you in a few weeks, then.”

“I love you, baby brother,” he said cheerfully.

“You really are an asshole,” I told him before ending the call.

“So, all is well then?” Luca asked as I returned the phone to my jacket pocket.

“Yeah. I believe him about the hit being called off. So all I have to worry about now is getting you to rest and finish healing.”

“I’m totally healed. I was shot months ago!” That got us another glance in the rearview mirror from the cab driver.

“It was a couple weeks! I know you must still be in pain, even if you pretend you’re not. Plus, look how tired you got after an hour at that club.”

“That’s because I’m old.”

“You are not.”

“I am,” Luca insisted. “I’m turning thirty next month. It’s all downhill from there.”

“Oh wow, we have to celebrate!”

“Sure. We can go out to dinner and get a nice bottle of wine.”

I smiled at him and said, “Oh no. That’s not how we celebrate in this family.”

“No? What do you do then?”

“You saw that mob and the Flaming Titanic, and that was just on a random weeknight. Now imagine Nana on a mission to make sure you have a happy birthday.”

“Oh my God.”

“Exactly.”

When the cab pulled up in front of Nana’s house, Luca asked, “Are we staying here tonight?”

“Yes. This is home until we get our own place.”

I paid the fare, and he paused when we got out of the taxi and looked up at the grand Queen Anne Victorian. It had been painted in a shimmering rainbow a few months back. “I was too preoccupied to fully appreciate this when we first arrived. It kind of says it all, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

He pulled me into his arms. “I like that you’re a package deal, Nicky. One incredibly sweet, beautiful boyfriend, plus the kind of huge, crazy family I wished I belonged to when I was a kid.”

“Really? You wished for deranged cousins and quite possibly the craziest grandmother ever to roam the Earth?”

“I wished for a big family. All the rest is just a bonus.” I kissed him before taking his hand and leading him into the house.

It was quiet inside for a change, since everyone was still at the club. Tom Selleck the giant puppy was sprawled out on his side in the foyer waiting for Nana’s return, and his big tail thumped the floor when we came in. He pushed himself to his feet and followed us into the kitchen, and I tossed him a dog biscuit before making a midnight snack for Luca and me.

The dog then followed us upstairs and dropped onto his side right in the middle of my bedroom floor, so we had to step over and around him as we changed into t-shirts and sleep pants. When we were finally seated cross-legged on the little twin bed with the plate of fruit, cheese and crackers between us, I said, “These are going to be pretty tight sleeping arrangements. We can move into one of Nana’s guestrooms if you want, they all have bigger beds.”

“No way. I like this room. The tiny bed means we’ll have to sleep right on top of each other, and I’m all for that. Plus, I like the fact that it’s total and complete chaos in here. I’m learning a lot about you.” He looked amused.

I glanced around at the small, cluttered space. I’d always stayed in that room when I visited Nana as a child, so it was dotted with a few random childhood mementos. I’d changed nothing when I moved in after leaving Los Angeles. More recently, I’d gotten in the habit of tacking up Post-it notes to try to help me make sense of my studies. They covered almost every hard surface, a pastel patchwork of notes, dates, and general reminders. Stacks of books and papers crowded the small desk and built-in bookshelves, and Luca said, “I would have bet you were a neat freak, just based on the way you present yourself to the world. Turns out, not so much.”

“I used to be pretty tidy. I think in a lot of ways, my room is the embodiment of ‘this is your brain on law school.’ It actually had been just as chaotic in here.” I tapped the center of my forehead with my index finger.

Luca gave me a sympathetic look as I took in my surroundings. After a few moments, I reached for the sticky notes lining the wall beside my bed and began peeling them off and stacking them into a neat pile in my left hand. “Aren’t you going to need those?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I needed to throw myself into something after my relationship with Erik ended. The one good thing about this law program was that it was all-consuming. I was so busy being stressed out about it that it left me no time to think or feel. That was the real point of law school. It held the sadness and hurt at bay. Now it’s time to move on.”

“Wait, so you’re dropping out? Just like that?”

“Not exactly just like that, but yeah. I’ve thought about this a million times, but I couldn’t let go of it. Not until now. It serves no purpose anymore. I was never really sure if I wanted to be a lawyer, but I know for a fact that law school was a terrible fit for me. I just had no interest in the subject matter.” As I was talking, I kept adding to the little stack of notes in my hand. When I emptied the wall beside my bed, I got up and started working my way around the room.

“So, what now?”

“In the short term, I want to go back to working as an EMT. I liked that job overall. The part I didn’t like was that there was no follow-through. We’d keep the patients alive long enough to get them to the hospital, and then we’d never see them again. Whether they lived or died after we handed them over was out of our hands.”

“I never thought about that,” Luca said. He got up too and started pulling sticky notes from the walls, making his own little stack.

“When you got shot and I watched the EMTs and later the doctors take care of you, it got me thinking. When I chose Biology as my undergraduate major way back when, I’d had this pipe dream of going on to medical school in the back of my mind. The problem was, I didn’t believe in myself. I thought you had to be a genius to get accepted to medical school, so I didn’t even try. You’d really think all those years with Erik would have shown me how dead wrong I was about that.”

Luca grinned at me as we continued to circle around the room, stepping over the huge dog, our stacks growing thicker and thicker as we gathered every note. “Yes, that probably should have been a tip-off.”

“Maybe it was something I had to grow into. I don’t think I would have been ready for medical school when I graduated with my bachelor’s degree at twenty-two. But I’m a much different person now, over four years down the road,” I said. “Somehow, after all I’ve been through, the idea of medical school doesn’t intimidate me anymore. Actually, when I think about it, I just feel excited.”

“Then that’s exactly what you should do.” Luca gathered up the last couple notes and came over to me. As he added his stack to mine, he said, “I want you to know I’m in your corner, one hundred percent. If you decide to do this, I’ll be right there by your side, helping out in any way I can. Kind of like your med school pit crew.”

“Are you sure about this? It’s going to tie us down to one place for a number of years. It’ll impact your life as much as mine.”

He took the thick stack of notes from me and dropped them in the trash can, then drew me into his arms. “All that matters to me is being with you. I don’t really care where we end up while you’re in school, as long as we’re together. Long term, I’d like us to come back to the Bay Area so we can be close to your family. But in the meantime, lead the way.”

I ran my hand around the back of his neck and kissed him before saying, “Thank you.”

“What are you thanking me for?”

“Being so easy-going, and sweet, and kind, and supportive.”

He smiled at me. “You’re welcome.”

We moved the plate aside and curled up in bed together, and I said, “I’ll probably have to begin the application process immediately, I bet the deadlines aren’t far off. We’ll know where we end up sometime in the spring, and then I assume classes will start right around this time next year. I guess the apartment we find should be a month-to-month rental, since chances are we’ll be moving out of the area. Assuming I get accepted somewhere.”

“You will. I need to figure out what I’m doing, too,” Luca said. “I need to make some changes, and I’m not sure what I’m doing next. I only know that it’ll involve you.”

“What kind of changes?”

“I don’t want to keep spending forty or more weeks a year in anonymous hotel rooms. I just can’t stand the thought of us spending all that time apart. I also don’t want to keep buying art for rich bastards who are only interested in its monetary value. A couple of my clients truly appreciate art and I wouldn’t mind continuing to work with them, but the rest, good riddance. That’ll cut my yearly travel time down to days, not months, and until medical school grounds us, maybe you could come with me on my buying trips.”

“I’d love to,” I said.

“Great. Now all we need is someplace to live before med school.”

I opened my computer to search for apartments. Luca put his arm around my shoulders as we looked at listings and ate our snacks. Every time an apartment caught my eye and I asked him what he thought, his response was, “Looks great.”

Finally I turned to him and said, “Don’t you have an opinion on any of these? You just keep agreeing to whatever I like.”

He paused for a moment before saying, “You told me the story once about your house in L.A. with the kitchen that meant a lot to you, and how you had to walk away from it when your relationship ended. I just…I really want to give you a home, Nicky. Whether this apartment is ours for a year, or longer if you end up going to school in the Bay Area, I just need it to be someplace you love, somewhere you feel good. That’s all that matters to me. So, you lead the way. If you find a place that makes you happy, then I’ll be happy too.”

I kissed him gently and whispered, “Thank you.”

We narrowed it down to a few places to follow up on, and I closed my laptop and returned it to the desk. Then took my glasses off and put them on top of the computer. Luca turned off the light, and we settled in and held each other close under the blanket.

Making all those plans for our future had gotten me thinking, and I just had to ask as I searched his face in the darkness, “Why me, Luca? You could have anyone. What do you see in me?”

He smiled and touched my cheek. “I see a gorgeous human being inside and out, one who has no idea how beautiful he is. I see someone intelligent and competent, who’s just starting to come into his own and realize what he’s capable of, and let me tell you, that’s a glorious thing to behold. I see a loving man with an infinite capacity for kindness, a man who cares deeply about others, and I feel so lucky to be one of the people you care about. I see the person I was always meant to be with, the answer to a prayer. I see what I’ve been looking for my entire life.”

I was so overwhelmed by his words that all I could do was whisper, “Thank you.”

“I need you to do something for me,” he said.

“Anything.”

“Never doubt I love you, not for a moment. You’re my forever, Nicky. Looking back now, I realize I’ve known that since the first time I kissed you.”

“The very first time?”

He nodded. “It all makes sense now. I thought about you a million times after that first meeting beside the fountain. You were absolutely impossible to forget. I was so angry at myself for not getting your name and keeping in touch with you. But everything unfolded just as it should have. We were always meant to be together, but we wouldn’t have been ready for this as teens, not by a long shot. We rediscovered each other at exactly the right time.”

I ran my fingertip along the curve of his full lower lip. “You’re a true romantic, Luciano.”

He smiled at me and said, “Only when properly inspired.”

*****

We’d just started to drift off when a loud crash from downstairs startled us awake. The dog was standing at my closed bedroom door, and when I opened it, he dashed out. Luca and I followed, tense and alert. But when we got halfway down the stairs, disco music started playing and we both relaxed.

Nana had brought half the bar home with her, and a party was going on in her formal living room. Two go-go boys dressed in colorful jock straps and tennis shoes were dancing on a table, and Jessie and a couple guys from the wet brief contest were tossing pieces from a broken ceiling fixture into a trash can. “Hi Luca and Nico,” Jessie called over the music. “Sorry we woke you. Turns out you really shouldn’t swing from chandeliers.”

“My bad,” said a red-haired bodybuilder in a skimpy outfit. “I should’ve known better, but man, I’m so stoned.” He flashed a woozy smile. “Those brownies were way too good, I ate a ton.”