Kidnapped By The Mafia

3

“Well, you I have to put up with.” She tossed her hands up exasperatedly. “You’re blood. But she? She is…piss!”

Holy hell. I’d never heard Dylan speak to me that way. Not even close. I really was dead to her.

“Watch your mouth,” he snarled, his face turning frosty, impassive.

Whoa. Why was he defending me?

“She should watch her legs!” Dylan flipped him off. “While she’s at it, she should probably get dressed before she gives Tuck a lap dance.”

“Dylan.” He pinned her with a look that made me shrivel into myself in fear. Dylan stared him down, and it looked like an entire conversation passed between them wordlessly.

With a slow shake of her head, she let her shoulders sag, exhaling. “God, you’re pathetic.”

Row? Pathetic? I doubted he could even spell the word. Row was magnificent. Spectacular. Self-assured, talented, and formidably hot. He’d always been bigger than life. Even as a kid, he had known he was destined to be a great chef. When he was ten, he’d used test tubes and droppers to measure ingredient quantities to come up with new recipes. When I was ten, I had taught myself how to laminate my eyebrows using a glue stick and an eraser.

Finally, the words that were bunched in my throat rushed out like a river.

“Dylan, I’m so, so sorry.” I crouched down, hastily picking up my discarded bra and turtleneck. I’d been wearing Cher from Clueless’s iconic yellow outfit, which I’d sewn for myself. My white knee-length socks were muddied.

“Actually, sorry doesn’t even begin to cover how I’m feeling. What I did was deplorable! It was all a huge mistake. I’m sick to my stomach. Horrified, disgusted, revolted—”

“Stop. I’ll f*****g blush.” Row rolled his tongue over his inner cheek, propping his unlaced army boot against the hood of his car. I ignored him. He wasn’t really offended. Sarcasm was his native tongue.

“…revolted, no, repulsed by my own actions,” I continued.

“Did you swallow a whole-ass dictionary?” Row’s whiskey-tinted eyes slanted into furious slits. “Also, you can say it felt like s**t until you’re blue in the face, but your body told me a different story when you dripped all over the hood of my car.”

“Argh! Blasphemy.” Dylan pressed her palms to her ears, squeezing her eyes shut. “The mental image is now burned into my retinas, and I have no other choice but to murder both of you.”

“I swear I didn’t mean to! I was drunk,” I continued, lying through my teeth. I had always been a liar. My white lies were like makeup. Small, harmless concealers designed to fix up the blemishes of my life. To ensure my loved ones’ minds were at ease. Lying was second nature to me. If I thought someone I cared about wasn’t going to like my answer, I made up another one especially for them.

I shoved my arms into my sleeves, covering up, my eyes clinging to Dylan’s beautiful, distressed face. “It was a huge mistake. A one-off.”

I couldn’t lose her. Couldn’t lose my best friend. She was there when, in kindergarten, kids had made fun of me for wearing a socks-and-sandals combo. She had started wearing them to school too, as a fashion statement. A middle finger to the bullies. Dylan always marched to the beat of her own drum. She always did the right thing, even if that thing was scary. The opposite of me, she never lied. She wore the truth like a badge of honor, even if it was ugly.

She had been there when my babushka had passed away, braiding my hair and listening to me for hours. There for the laughs, for the tears. For the college rejection letters, for fights with my parents, and when we’d veg out on the couch in our pj’s, watching Teen Mom and polishing off my entire fridge.

“All I hear is me, me, me.” Dylan’s tear-rimmed eyes rolled in their sockets, and she tipped her head back, chuckling humorlessly. “It’s all about you, isn’t it? You were drunk. You made a mistake. You feel disgusted. You have anxiety. What about me? Did you ever stop to think how much I hate it when my friends hit on my brother? How everyone wants to befriend Dylan Casablancas because her brother is hot?”

She thought I’d used our proximity to hook up with Row? That was ridiculous. My crush on Ambrose Casablancas was akin to my crush on Chris Pine. Just because it was there, didn’t mean I ever had any plans to act on it. He was the least attainable person on planet Earth, with his mood, hair, and allure all darker than the pit of his own soul.

Plus, it wasn’t like I’d planned to date him. I didn’t do boyfriends. And I definitely didn’t do relationships. Relationships were for other humans who could “people” normally and not topple over like a fainting goat at the slightest social interaction.

“Dylan!” I rushed the four steps between us, erasing them completely as I fell down to my knees at her boots. The little stones dug into my shins with gusto. Blood oozed from my scraped flesh. “It meant nothing. I swear. I never looked at Row twice before today.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. “You know I always thought he was freakishly tall and a little frightening—”

“And the compliments just keep on coming.” A wry sneer rolled off Row’s tongue above my head. He was leaning against the hood of his car, arms folded, not a care in his world. “Is your secret talent pissing people off, Cal?” I hated him so much in that moment.

“Worst-kept secret, as you can see.” I flashed him a glare, gesturing toward his sister.

“Don’t you dare answer my brother like that.” Dylan shoved her finger in my face. “He’s way out of your league and the height of your love life.”

I was in complete agreement with her. Row was the entire deal. Hot, smart, and talented as hell. Not only was he not in my league, we weren’t even playing the same sport. He was football and I was…cheese rolling. Or something equally as eccentric.

“All I’m saying is I never meant for it to happen. It was a small lapse of judgment.” I pressed my palms together, still begging her on the ground, my clothes filthy and askew. For a reason unbeknownst to me, I had underestimated how important it was to Dylan that I wouldn’t mess around with her brother. Probably because literally every other girl at our school had. Or had tried to, at some point.

“Small?” Row inquired behind me.

“Huge,” I corrected, my head so hot I felt like it was going to explode. “Thick too. Better?” I shot him a dirty look.

“Infinitely.” He fished in his front pocket for a cigarette, producing a pack of Gitanes. Of course he smoked French cigarettes now.

“Wow. Okay.” Dylan scrubbed her forehead, shaking her head. “Guess I’m about to vomit the three slices of pizza I just ate.”

“Please forgive me, Dylan. Please,” I said desperately.

Row shook his head, trudging to the driver’s seat. He slipped inside and started the engine.

Dylan stared at me like a queen deciding whether to spare a lowly subject from execution. Her lips curled, arms folded over her chest archly.

“You know, Cal, I’ve always looked up to you. You’re gorgeous, funny, smart, a kaleidoscope of colors and facts about the nineties; I mean, damn, you’re a walking Wikipedia about serial killers and ghost stories, and still have the most sunshine personality I’ve ever known. It’s tempting to stick around, to let those Calla Litvin sunrays kiss your skin. But when you strip it all off…the playlists, the outfits, the good times…when you look inside and examine what kind of friend she is…she sucks.” Dylan shook her head, her arms dropping to the sides of her body. “Grow up, Dot. And do it far away from me because I never want to see your face again.”

She strutted back to Tuck’s red truck, slid inside, and barked at him to drive. Shockingly, the guy who had spent the last four years stuffing cigarette ash and condoms into our lockers did as he was told.

I stayed on my knees, in the freezing cold, mulling over her words. My fingertips numbed at the edges. Chill draped across my shoulders like an oversized cloak. I tilted my head sideways, at Row’s headlights. He flicked them on and off, his silent way of telling me to get inside before he changed his mind about not leaving me to walk home and catch pneumonia. He was stone-faced. The same standoffish version of himself he gave anyone who wasn’t Dylan and his mom. And, sometimes, me.

Cocky.

Calculated.

Corrupt to the bone.

Humiliated, I pushed my palms against the ground, staggering up to my feet. I began limping toward his car, icy mud falling off my knees in clumps. Behind the windshield, Row’s expression was flippant.

I tried to see myself through his eyes. This pitiful, crumpled creature. Mangled and stained, like a discarded supermarket list at the bottom of a cart. A beautiful girl, the townsfolk all agreed behind my back, but so very odd, just like her father.

Tucking myself in the passenger seat, I shut the door and hung my head low and fingered the friendship bracelet Dylan had given me. At least I still had it. My finger caught in the elastic string, and as if on cue, it snapped and broke, the beads raining down my seat and onto the floor. I hastily tried scooping them, but I couldn’t feel my fingers.

“That went well.” He flicked the bottom of a Gitanes with his finger. Another cigarette popped from the pack, and he clasped his teeth around it, lighting it like a movie star.

“I’m such an idiot.” I flicked mud from my knees, banging the back of my head against my seat. I didn’t let my tears loose, even though it was near impossible. “I traded my best friend for a fling.”

“For all she knows, this could be the romance of the century.” He rolled his window down, a cloud of smoke drifting past his lips.

I shook my head. “Dylan knows the score. She knows I can’t fall in love. That I’m…” The rest of the sentence perished in my mouth.

“A narcissist?” He bowed a brow.

“Broken.” I frowned. “But thanks.”

“You’re not broken, Dot.” He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, patting my thigh offhandedly. “A little cut, sure. All diamonds are.”

Not me, I thought. Underneath my sunshine personality, all you’ll find is darkness.

“So.” He swiped his tongue across his upper lip, eyes hard on the road ahead. “I need to tell you something.”

He was going to warn me off bothering Dylan. He was so protective of her and knew how much she hated me right now. But I couldn’t bear it, the idea of her not being in my life anymore.

“Please don’t say anything,” I begged. “My night is hideous as it is.”

“It’s not about Dylan.” Of course it wasn’t. It was about how awful I was. Sleeping with my best friend’s older brother. I was wrong about Row. He was going to hurt me after all.

“Row, please. There’s nothing to talk about. Trust me, I’m as horrified about you and me as you are. Probably more.”

He punched his steering wheel, muttering something under his breath. “Would you get out of your own f*****g head for one second and listen?” he seethed.

“No thank you. My head is a terrible place. It’s exactly where I deserve to be right now.”

I wanted to apologize for the way I’d treated him. To try to beg him to reason with Dylan. But I also wanted to hold on to whatever little pride I had left in me.

We zipped past lush New England trees, English lampposts, and the local library, all cloaked by a bluish-orange dawn. The lighthouse gleamed behind a curtain of my unshed tears. With piercing pain, I realized that home wasn’t Staindrop, Maine. It was the Casablancas siblings. And I was forever banished.

“I really am sorry, you know,” I murmured when he stopped in front of my house, the engine still running. His stare was glued to the windshield, his jaw so tight it looked painful. “You guys are like my family. And I…I…” Like you so much. You are the two people I always felt truly myself with. But I didn’t have the guts to say these words. I swallowed. “And I hope everything works out for you.”

Row’s eyes, blank and hollow as a Greek statue’s, were still trained on the road ahead. “Good luck at Columbia.”

“Good luck in Paris.”

“Don’t need luck; got talent.”

He drove off without sparing me a glance. I stared at my clapboard stilt house, the color of strawberry ice cream, with the wraparound porch, pastel-potted plants, and knitted sweaters Mom wrapped the tree trunks in. Kooky, like its occupants. And I knew it would be a long time before I saw it again.

I never wanted to set foot back in Staindrop.

Not if my life depended on it.