A Little Too Much

Chapter Twenty-Nine

IT’S THE END of April. The first really warm day of the year. I pull out a black-and-white halter dress that I love but haven’t seen since August. They say it’s only supposed to hit seventy today, so it might still be a little cool for it, but I don’t care. I feel like I’m coming out of a long, dark tunnel, and damn if I’m not going to bask in the sun.

I Frizz-Ease my hair and spiral it around my fingers, then brush on mascara and call it good. Alessandro called me at ugly o’clock this morning because he knew, rightfully, that’d I’d oversleep my alarm, so now I’m late.

He’s making breakfast before we go to the youth center, and I promised him I’d be at his apartment by eleven.

Tomorrow is his birthday and I want to think of something truly amazing to do for him, but so far I haven’t been able to come up with anything. On my birthday, last month, he took me on a posh dinner cruise around the harbor. It was beautiful and magical and we danced all night to the jazz band under the New York skyline. There’s nothing I could do for him that would compare.

I hurry to the subway and when I get to Alessandro’s new apartment, I’m only fifteen minutes late, which by my clock is on time. His studio in the West Village got snapped up right after he left for Corsica, but he found a sublet from someone at St. Veronica’s. It’s totally boring compared to his old place.

He buzzes me up and when he opens his apartment door, the breakfast smells wafting into the hall make my mouth water. But the look in his eyes makes me hungry in a whole different way. He pulls me through the door, and before it’s even closed, his mouth is attacking mine. I kiss him back and start on the buttons of his shirt, but he takes my hand and weaves his fingers into mine. “If you were here fifteen minutes ago . . .” he says with a teasing smile and a raised eyebrow.

I roll my eyes and blow out a frustrated breath.

He kisses me again, a soft brush of his lips across mine. “I missed you last night.”

“Me too.”

I’ve been spending a lot of time at Alessandro’s apartment over the last two months, but I also really like living with Jess, so I try to split my time. Last night we went out for girls’ night, which meant just the two of us. I took her to Filthy’s because, believe it or not, now that I’m not working there anymore, I kind of miss the place. We hung out and drank and just let loose. I almost fell off my stool laughing when Jerry hit on her.

Alessandro turns for the kitchen and I follow. As he starts scooping some egg dish from a pan onto a plate, I look down and see a wedding invitation on the counter. Next to it is a hand written note.

Dear Alessandro,

It was so good to hear from you, and thanks for sending your address. I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I saw you last. I think about the time we spent together in Rome often. It seems like just yesterday.

I hope being back in New York is bringing you the peace you deserve. It’s amazing that you were able to find Hilary again after all these years. I’ve prayed everyday you would find contentment in this world and I can’t even tell you how it makes me feel to know how happy she makes you. She sounds amazing. I hope one day I can meet her.

Trent and I were planning to wait until next year to get married, but an amazing opportunity for a paid internship came up at a children’s museum in England. Since we’re not willing to live apart, and our parents don’t want us living in sin, we’ve moved the wedding up to this summer, after graduation. All the information is enclosed. I hope you and Hilary can make it.

I hope your family is well and your mother is continuing to improve. Say hello for me next time you talk to them. Please take care of yourself, and keep in touch. I miss you.

Love,

Lexie

“She misses you,” I say when I look up and find Alessandro watching me.

“And I miss her too.”

“But you don’t still love her.”

He moves the few feet to the table and sets our plates down. “She helped me at a time in my life when I didn’t know I was in need of help. She was the shot of reality that I needed to finally understand the priesthood wasn’t where I belonged.”

“If she had felt differently . . .” I flick the invitation. “If she wasn’t in love with this Trent guy—”

“Who happens to be her stepbrother, by the way,” Alessandro interrupts with half an ironic smile.

“Wow. Seriously?”

He nods.

“Okay . . . so if she hadn’t been in love with her stepbrother, would you still be with her, do you think?”

“Everything that’s happened to me has happened for a reason. It’s all brought me to right here, right now.” He pulls me into his arms and plants a kiss on me that curls my toes. “To you.”

I drape myself over him and kiss him hard. He kisses me back, but then peels me off and sits me at the table. “We’re late.”

We sit and I stare warily at my food. It looks amazing and it smells better, but I find myself dissecting it before I take a bite. When I don’t find any rubber cockroaches, I look up and see Alessandro smirking at me.

“You’re slacking,” I tell him.

He just shrugs and takes a bite.

“I don’t know how you managed to talk me into this,” I lament over my breakfast, which tastes as good as it smells, but it’s a lie. I do know how he talked me into this. He snuck it in while I was feeling all drowsy and sated, basking in post-coital bliss, when he knew I didn’t have the presence of mind to know what I was agreeing to.

The bastard.

“It’s for the kids, Hilary,” he says, catching my glower. “You’ll be amazed how good it feels to know you’re giving them the courage to dream.”

“They’re going to hate me,” I mutter as he reaches for my hand.

“They’re going to love you.” His lips brush my cheek. “Just like I do.”

We’ve both spent some time with the counselor who volunteers at the youth center, and I’ve made some pretty good progress at learning to trust, but I still can’t get used to hearing him tell me he loves me. And I haven’t been able to say it back yet. I’m still afraid of Alessandro leaving. I know there will come a time that he’ll have to go back to Corsica for his grandparents. But, as much as it scares me, I’m beginning to trust that, if he leaves, he’ll come back. It’s a pretty huge leap of faith for me, but he’s worth it.

We clean up after breakfast, then he tows me toward the door. I look for my jacket before remembering that I didn’t bring one. There’s a little pang of disappointment when I realize I’m going to miss having Alessandro help me on with it.

We step outside and I close my eyes and breathe in the fresh air. Only in spring does New York smell like this. It makes me feel hopeful, like everything’s starting over fresh, and we can make it whatever we want it to be.

When we emerge from the subway twenty minutes later, and start walking toward the youth center, I’ve decided that no one’s really going to want to sing. I mean, kids like video games where peoples’ heads blow up and spray the screen with blood and gray chunks. Compared to that, how boring is it to stand around a karaoke machine singing?

We walk into the youth center and there’s a group of teenagers shooting hoops on the half court. One of them, a Latino boy who’s probably around fifteen, looks up and whistles through his teeth.

“Padre! That’s a mighty prime piece on your arm,” he says, making an obscene gesture near his crotch with his hand.

“Watch yourself, Christian,” Alessandro warns, placing his hand on my back and guiding me past.

“I’m watching something else right now,” he says with a shit-eating grin, his eyes glued to my ass as we walk by.

The girl next to Christian steals the ball from his hands, shooting it at the hoop and catching nothing but net. She shoves him and says something in Spanish that sounds an awful lot like trash talk.

I like her.

“Why did he call you Padre?” I ask once we’re past them.

“It’s just a nickname I picked up.” He waves a hand at the group of boys at the free weights that we’re approaching. “Alex thought my accent sounded Spanish and started calling me that, and it stuck.”

“But you’re not a priest.”

“I work for the Church.” He shrugs. “To them it’s all the same.”

As we pass, one of the boys on the free weights, a buff black kid with ink up his right arm that I recognize as the kid Alessandro was boxing with last time I was here, knuckle bumps Alessandro and grins.

“Alex,” Alessandro says.

“Looking good, Padre,” he tells Alessandro, but his eyes are on me. Or more accurately, my chest.

“I’ll see you in the ring once I get Ms. McIntyre situated.”

“I’ll situate her,” Alex mutters with a grin.

Alessandro gives him the eye and ushers me past.

“I’m taking you down today, Padre!” he calls to Alessandro’s back.

“Not if you don’t keep your feet moving,” Alessandro jabs without turning around.

“Horny, aren’t they?” I mutter, turning back to see him following me with his eyes.

“Grown men lose their capacity for rational thought around you, Hilary,” he says low in my ear, gliding a finger down the inside of my upper arm and sending goose bumps skittering over my skin. “What else would you expect from hormone-driven teens?”

He guides me past the small boxing ring, with punching bags hanging from stands behind it, to a glass door in a wall of windows in the back of the gym. He pushes it open and we step through into a small room with a round table and several chairs. On the table is a karaoke machine.

“The rental place guaranteed me it’s loaded with a variety of music,” he tells me. “Everything from Rolling Stones to Beyonce to Broadway.” His eyes spark as he says Beyonce’s name. I wasn’t sure if he remembered, but it’s clear from that look that he does.

“I told you,” I say, looking around the empty room. “No one’s going to want to do this.”

He leans close and I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he says, “There are still a few minutes, Hilary. I guarantee you there will be interest.”

A little part of me hopes he’s wrong. But a little part of me also hopes he’s right. I don’t really have anything to teach them, but if there are kids who want to sing, I think that would be totally cool.

He moves to the table. “I’m honestly not sure how this thing works,” he says, looking over the karaoke machine, “but one of the kids will be able to help you with it, I’m sure.”

I push the power button and the display screen lights up. “I’ve got it.”

He nods and just looks at me for a second before hiking his duffel higher on his shoulder and backing toward the door. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

He turns and I watch him through the glass wall as he disappears into the boys’ locker room.

A wiry Latino boy comes in the side door of the gym with his head down and his hands dug deep in his pockets. He slouches toward me and I brace myself for the hormone fest, but he looks up a little shyly at me as approaches my glass room. Christian catcalls him from the half court and he hesitates at the door, looking like he’s thinking of turning back, but then he steps through. “Is this for the singing?” he asks without looking at me.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m Hilary. What’s your name?”

“Tony.” He glances up from under long dark lashes, then his eyes flick to the machine. “What you got on that thing?”

I shrug. “Go check it out.”

He saunters past me and pulls up the menu on the machine as three younger girls make their way across the gym. “I remember you from American Idol,” the short, blond one tells me with wide, amazed eyes as they step into the room. A round, dark-haired girl next to her nods.

The taller Latina girl looks me over skeptically. “Padre says you’re in a Broadway show.”

“Off-Broadway,” I clarify.

“Which one?” she asks.

“It’s called Don’t Look Back and it opens in a few weeks.”

“What’s it about?”

It’s about two sisters who go through a bunch of sh—” Damn, I have to be careful. “ . . . who go through a really hard time with some things that happen to them.”

Her gaze grows more skeptical. “Are you one of the sisters?”

“I am,” I say as a shivery rush courses through me. I still have to pinch myself sometimes.

Working in the theater is different than I thought it would be—which really means it’s no different at all. It wasn’t some big transformation, like the caterpillar turning into the butterfly or anything. I guess when it happened to Brett, I was just so in awe that it looked that way to me. But I’m no different. I’m just me . . . except maybe stronger.

The girls file into the room and head for the karaoke machine as another boy and girl arrive. They join the others at the machine and, as I move to the door to close it so no one will feel embarrassed, I look out into the gym and see Alessandro just emerging from the locker room in a snug gray T-shirt and black athletic shorts, with a towel slung over his shoulder. He loops the towel over the ropes of the boxing ring and takes a jogging lap around the gym before stopping at the ring again and stretching.

“Are we gonna use the mic?” the blond girl asks from behind me, shaking me out of my I-can’t-believe-that-gorgeous-hunk-of-man-flesh-is-mine daze.

I suck the drool off my bottom lip and close the door, then turn back to find the group staring at me. “This is a small room, so you can use it if you want, but I don’t think we need it.”

The kids start choosing their songs and the three girls who came together decide to sing a Taylor Swift song I recognize but don’t really know. One of them, the Latina girl, has potential. The others are just sort of screeching.

Through the window beyond them, Alessandro has boxing gloves on and he’s working a punching bag. He’s pulled off his shirt, and the sight of his rippling muscles sends the muscles in my groin rippling. I force my eyes back to the girls as they finish and work really hard not to stare out the window as Alessandro climbs into the ring with Alex.

The girls each do something solo, then the other girl, who showed up with the boy who it turns out is her brother, takes her turn. They all pick the more current hop-hop stuff that’s on the machine. Her brother comes up next and raps something I’ve never heard before. Then Tony gets his turn. When the music he chose starts and the first piano chords of “Suddenly” from the Les Misérables movie flow from the karaoke machine, I’m sure he must have pushed the wrong button. But then he begins singing . . . and my jaw hits the table. His voice is rich and pure and nothing like I would have expected from a wiry, shy sixteen-year-old kid. Just listening to him sends goose bumps rippling over my skin.

The other kids are whispering to each other and snickering, and I so want to yell at them to shut up, but instead, I lift my palm in warning when the blond girl looks at me, and she shushes the others. Tony, thankfully, isn’t looking at them. His head is tipped down slightly and his eyes are closed. When he finishes, he opens them and goes back to his chair and sits as if he didn’t just rock my world.

“That was amazing, Tony,” I tell him and Rapper Boy snickers again. I look at the group. “How many of you are in junior high?”

The three Taylor Swift girls raise their hands.

“Excellent. And high school?”

The others either raise their hands or, in Tony’s case, I get a shrug and a glance.

“Are you guys involved in music programs at your schools?”

I get a few mumbled yeahs.

“Great. Most schools still have at least a choral program, and many have drama, so if you wanted to do musicals, that’s a good place to start,” I say, looking straight at Tony. “There are also community drama programs outside of school.”

That catches Tony’s interest and he glances up at me, but then drops his gaze again when he sees me looking.

“If you’re thinking you want a career in music, there are lots of options,” I continue. “You could always try to find a job teaching music, or if you wanted to sing in the theater, there’s Broadway here, but there are also theater communities all over the country if you wanted to live somewhere other than New York. There are a hundred ways to make music a part of your life. You can write music or perform it, you can sing in open mics, community groups, or churches,” I say, gesturing out the window at the gym . . . not that this is a church, really. “Or you can . . .” but I trail off as my eyes catch on Alessandro again, in the ring. He’s sparring with Alex and the sheen of sweat over his chest and abs, the ripple of his taut muscles, the way he moves . . . it’s just so . . . yummy. “ . . . you can sing in the subway,” I mutter mindlessly.

There’s a snicker. I pull my eyes away from Alessandro and find the group grinning at me. I clear my throat. “So . . . how many of you think you might want a career in music?”

All four girls raise their hands while Rapper Boy sneers and jabs his sister and Tony fidgets in his chair. He glances up at me and I give him a tiny nod.

“If you guys want to choose another song, go for it,” I tell them, and the three girls leap out of their seats and pounce on the machine. For the next hour, I listen and give whatever pointers I picked up while training for Idol. I can’t help my eyes flicking toward Alessandro, though, and something kicks in my gut when I see Marie standing at the side of the ring, watching. The dance girls in their tights and leotards are starting to set up the half court, carrying the dance bar onto the court from against the wall. Alessandro and Alex finish up in the ring and Alessandro pulls off his headgear and gloves, then towels off all that sweat that I really wanted to lick. Once his shirt is on, he combs a hand through his gorgeous hair and ducks between the ropes to where Marie is waiting. She presses up onto her tiptoes, and he smiles as he leans down and kisses her.