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  Then I look up, and Karen’s frowning. I realize she just caught me staring at the new girl. Shit, what was her name, again? I was so lost in that heart-shaped mouth I don’t remember a thing. Karen narrows her eyes at the girl. Damn, New Girl. Sorry about that.

  “Layla’s our new intern receptionist from NYU. We’re hoping she’ll do all right.”

  Layla. That’s right.

  Karen turns up her accent even more while she talks. Yeah, I know what she’s doing. The way you speak tells people your tribe. A Hassidic Jew from Brooklyn is going to talk differently than Haitians in Jamaica Queens or a Dominican cat from the Heights. Karen and I are both Puerto Rican––at least, I’m half, anyway––and right now she’s trying to tell the two white girls sitting at the desk that she and I belong in a way they don’t. I stifle a smile. They wouldn’t be so intimidated if they’d seen Karen dancing on the bar two weeks ago. Get a few drinks into her, and she turns into Coyote Ugly.

  “Same ol’, Karen, you know,” I answer after she asks how I’m doing.

  Now I can’t take it anymore. Blue Eyes is still staring at me, her mouth still just a little bit open. I want to lean over and stick my finger in between those soft lips. I want to tell her to suck it and see just how hard she can.

  Shit.

  I lean over the desk and reach out my hand, although in a much nicer way than what I’m imagining. “I’m Nico. Your friendly neighborhood FedEx delivery man.”

  What. The. Fuck. Your friendly neighborhood FedEx delivery man? I sound like Mister Rogers with this shit. This girl is gonna think I’m an idiot.

  For a few more seconds, she keeps staring at me, and I’m struck with this strange feeling that those big eyes see right through my shit. Like she can see any secret I’ve ever kept locked behind the swagger and the smile. And the weird thing is, I want her to see it. Does she want to know about the way K.C. and I used to shoplift candy and beer from the corner bodega when we were kids? Or about my first fight, the one with David Caldero, after he told everyone at school that my little sister was a slut? Because I’d tell her everything and more. Suddenly, I’m an open book.

  Slowly, slowly, she reaches up, like she’s about to touch a hot iron, and takes my calloused fingers. Then she smiles, and I swear to God, if I wasn’t already holding onto the top of the desk, I probably would have fallen over it anyway.

  Lightning. There’s no other way to describe what’s shooting through every bone, every vessel, every nerve of my body right now.

  “Nice to meet you,” she says in a voice that’s low and just a little bit husky. “I’m Layla.” For no reason that I can tell, she blushes, a head-to-toe rosy hue that makes her look like one of the Renaissance paintings at the MET. “I guess I’ll be seeing you every day at six.”

  My big dumb grin is still pasted on my face like a fuckin’ weirdo, but I can’t move. It’s like there’s an electric current buzzing up my arm between her hand and mine, and the longer I hold on, the longer I’m going to need it. Two seconds in, and I already feel like I have to be around this girl to survive.

  Wait, what?

  The shock of that thought yanks me out of my daze, and I pull my hand back, even though I still can’t stop smiling. “I guess you will, NYU.”

  For a moment more, we just gaze at each other, me clutching the desktop, her clenching the arms of her chair. She presses her thighs together, and fuck if that isn’t like a lightning bolt straight to my cock. Well, what do you know? This girl wants me too. As in, wants me bad.

  “Ahem.”

  Karen clears her throat. April snorts, and I catch Layla give her a dirty look before they both resume a couple of bland expressions like puppets. I clear my throat and pull a little at my collar. Suddenly, the thing is feeling very tight.

  “So, ah, yeah,” I say. “I got a few for you today, ladies.”

  God, I sound like a douchebag. I sound like the beginning of a porn video, the ones where some asshat in a too-tight UPS uniform starts boning the secretary with a line like “Do you wanna see my package?” I set my clipboard onto the desktop and turn to unload several large boxes from the dolly, conscious the whole time that there are three pairs of female eyes staring straight at me. April flits around to check the names on the address labels in order to alert the assistants in the back, and I can’t help but wish it was Layla. I’m dying to see what she looks like from the back. If that ass is as sweet as her lips.

  Shit. I’m going to get myself in trouble thinking things like that. Say something, asshole.

  I clear my throat. Again. “So, you gonna do the honors, NYU?”

  I hand Layla the clipboard, which she stares at until Karen snatches it away.

  “I’ll take care of that,” she purrs as she signs with vigor. She shoots Layla another dirty look after she returns the board to me. “But Layla, this will be your job most evenings, got it? Sorry, Nico. You know we gotta teach these young kids everything these days. You workin’ the door at AJ’s this weekend?”

  “Every Saturday,” I confirm. “You know I gotta pay the bills.”

  “You know I do,” Karen cheers with a flirty smile.

  Damn, I hope Karen doesn’t come by this weekend. She’s nice enough here, but every time she and her posse show up at AJ’s, the Chelsea club where I work the door Saturday nights, things get rowdy, and I’m always the one who gets called in to settle them down. It’s fuckin’ embarrassing, if you want to know the truth. Karen’s a grown woman. She needs to learn to hold her shit.

  “See you tomorrow, Nico.”

  Karen taps her fingernails on the desktop cheerfully before clacking back to her office in her noisy damn shoes. I like heels as much as the next man, but Karen really does look like one of the drag queens at Chang’s. April disappears down the hall with some of the smaller packages, leaving me alone for a second with Blue Eyes while I wait for the elevator. I wonder what kind of shoes she’s wearing.

  I swallow. Say something, Nico. Don’t be a fuckin’ chump.

  “Your first day going all right, NYU?”

  She jerks a little at the sound of my voice––she’s a daydreamer, that much is obvious. I have never wanted to know what someone was thinking so badly. I punch the elevator button and pray it’s stuck at the top of the building with a stop on every floor. I want as much time as I can get here, even though at the same time, I don’t know what the fuck to say.

  “Um, yes,” she says, and that flush starts rising up her neck again. Damn, now I really want to know what she was thinking about.

  “Where you from, NYU?” I ask. “Kansas?” Her blush is so cute, I can’t help but tease her.

  And then she snorts. She actually snorts, like a damn baby horse. It’s the cutest sound I have ever heard in my life.

  “Are you serious? Kansas? Why would you say that?”

  I grin. She’s mad. Her cheeks are a little red, and her eyebrows are scrunched together. It’s fucking adorable.

  “Just ‘cause you got that Dorothy look all about you, NYU,” I egg her on a little more. “Bright lights, big city, and all that. So, Kansas? Am I right? Or is it Iowa?”

  The look of complete and utter disgust on her face is priceless. I would tease her all day long to make her look like that.

  “Um, neither,” she pronounces. “Definitely not. Washington, actually.” And then, after a moment, she adds, “Just outside of Seattle.”

  “Ah, okay then,” I say.

  I’m such a stereotypical New Yorker. Name any place outside of the tristate area. If it’s not Los Angeles, all I see are cornfields. Seattle? It rains there a lot, right? And their sports teams suck.

  Right now, I’m at a loss. I want to keep talking, want to keep making her mad or sad or happy or whatever other emotions are possible on that beautiful face. But all I can do is look down at my clipboard like I have something super important to check. No more deliveries today. Yes, it is Friday. Uh-huh, my name is definitely still Nico Soltero––says so right here. Nico
lás Soltero: FedEx courier, sometimes-doorman, and lame-ass loser who lost his game.

  The elevator bell signals the opening doors, and I sigh with relief as I back the dolly into the car. I need to get my shit together and figure out how to talk to this girl without looking like an idiot.

  “See you tomorrow, NYU.” I raise a hand in mock salute. Jesus. Now I’m a motherfuckin’ ship captain.

  “It’s Layla!” she calls out as the doors begin to shut, but not before I shoot her a wink and smile one last time.

  I’m thrilled when the elevator doors close and she can’t see me collapse against the wall. I feel like I can’t breathe, like one of the guys at the gym just landed a punch straight to my gut.

  Holy shit.

  Holy. Shit.

  I am in some serious fucking trouble.

  The doors open at the bottom floor, and Flaco, my route partner, is standing in the lobby of this building impatiently. He’s got his skinny arms crossed, and he’s actually tapping his foot, like a damn girl.

  “Yo,” he says when he sees me rolling out the empty dolly. “What the fuck took you so long? Happy hour’s done in forty-five, and I cannot wait to get my drink on.”

  But I must look a little shaky still when I get closer, because Flaco leans down, lurching over me with his big, lanky body. He grabs my cheeks, checking my eyes like I’m in a coma. For a second, I think he’s going to kiss me.

  “Pendejo! What the fuck are you doin’, man?” I bat his hands away, and he jumps back like a hopping spider.

  “Just checkin’,” he says with a horsey laugh. “You looked kind of crazy there. Everything okay?”

  I nod. I’m not going to tell him about this girl––no way. Flaco gave me this building a long time ago so he could take the modeling agency next door. He never has any luck with anyone, but that doesn’t stop him from trying every chance he gets. I keep telling him you can’t hit on clients––that’s an easy way to get fired. But that never stops him. He hears about the cute new receptionist at the law firm, he’s gonna be stealing the dolly tomorrow. Guaranteed.

  We drop off the truck and file the paperwork to finish the day’s route right after this building, our last stop of the day. Within an hour, we’re out of these monkey suits and on our way to Traveler for some hard-earned beers.

  “Yo, Frankie!” I call out when we get there, banging my hands on the bar top.

  Fridays are my nights out, since I usually have to work Saturdays, and Sundays I’m either fixing shit around my mother’s place or watching my baby niece, Alejandra, while my sister, Maggie, studies for her night classes. Fridays are my day to let loose.

  “Hey, Nico. What’s happening, man?”

  Frankie, the bartender, has known me since I first started at FedEx. When I first got the job, I was crazy excited. Good wages, benefits to share with everyone, even a pension if I stay long enough. It meant no more getting school supplies from the YMCA. No more choosing between the phone bill and the electricity. It meant I could move the fuck out of my mother’s tiny one-bedroom apartment and get my own place. That was definitely the best part.

  But five years later, after driving the same goddamn routes and hefting the same goddamn boxes day in and day out, I’m getting tired. This job is starting to feel like the rest of this city has for the last twenty-six, almost twenty-seven years of my life. Tired. Dirty. Same fuckin’ attitudes, same fuckin’ shit.

  This year is the last year that any of me and my three siblings live with our mom. Selena left for Vermont last year with her boyfriend, and Maggie finally moved in with Jimmy, her kid’s father, last year, and come June, Gabe graduates high school and is off to college. I’m so fuckin’ proud of my little brother––full scholarship to CUNY, that smart kid. Makes everything worth it. Ma will finally have the place to herself, which she deserves more than any of us.

  And it means I can finally get the fuck out of New York.

  “What’re you drinking tonight, man?” Frankie asks as he slides a coaster my way.

  I twist my lips around, looking around the bar. Flaco is already hitting on a pack of Happy Hour chicks in the corner. They’re cozied up at the pool table, where he’s bent over the back of one girl, trying to sneak a feel under her dress while he “teaches” her how to shoot. I snort. The guy is corny as fuck, but I can’t deny he’s got some game.

  One of the other girls, a friend, gives me a smile and a wave. She’s blonde and cute. There are a lot of cute girls in New York. But I know her type. Probably works as somebody’s assistant somewhere, or maybe she’s an intern. She’ll be looking for a fun night here and there, maybe even looking for a ring one day, but not from a guy like me. I’d be something to remember when she’s older, that time she went slumming with the dude from uptown.

  Some nights I’m willing to play the part. A few well-placed Spanglish phrases, maybe boss her around a little, and I’ll get an invitation back to the apartment in the Village she probably shares with three other girls. We’ll hook up a few more times, but after a while she’ll get bored. She’ll meet an investment banker, some guy who’s worth trapping. An asshole who’ll make her a millionaire even while he’s cheating on her every chance he gets.

  Sometimes I’m okay playing that part. But tonight, I’m just not in the mood.

  “Just a PBR,” I tell Frankie when I swing back around. “Looks like Flaco’s taken care of.”

  I push the brim of my hat up so I can watch the Knicks game on TV, ignoring the sound of the bar behind me. But I can’t focus.

  Fuck me, that girl. It doesn’t take much to conjure that face again. That long black hair. That pale olive skin. Those bright blue eyes that basically shot an arrow through my chest. How old is she? I get a lot of practice looking at IDs––she’s not more than twenty, twenty-one at most. Too young. But damn if I can’t just see those full, heart-shaped lips pouting at me, ready to be kissed. Fuck if I can’t imagine them wrapped around my––

  The bar suddenly explodes at some play that just happened. But I have no fucking clue what it was. Shit. This is bad.

  “Hey, fuckface! You gonna join us or what?”

  I turn around and find Flaco with his arms slung around two girls, both giggling up a storm. He’s grinning like an idiot, and behind him, I see Goldilocks giving me the eye. The way she’s looking at me, I know I’ll get lucky tonight if I want, maybe even in the cab on the way to her place.

  I finish my beer and get up, thinking I might as well take advantage of the distraction. But I have a feeling I’m going to be thinking about someone else with long black hair and blue eyes the entire time.

  ~

  CHAPTER THREE

  Layla

  The subway ride back to my dorm is sweaty, gray, and mostly uneventful. At seven-thirty, the 6 train to Canal Street is still packed enough that there is condensation built on the windows. There are college students like me, young urban professionals finally getting off work, other people on their first leg to Brooklyn or Staten Island. The lights flicker from time to time when the car twists a little or swings on the track.

  I barely notice any of it, with Nico’s smile flashing through my head. It’s ridiculous, really. We spoke––if you can call my minor paralysis speaking––for all of five minutes, maybe. He’s a tattooed delivery guy, pretty much the exact opposite of anyone my family would want me to be with. I shake my head, catching a few curious looks from other people on the train. Whatever. Like there aren’t thousands of crazy people in this city.

  Like pretty much every other female NYU student, I used to dream of when I’d be dashing about New York in town cars and yellow cabs like Carrie Bradshaw. But I quickly realized that no one but tourists, wealthy businessmen, or Fifth Avenue housewives use taxis unless they’re really late or they’re too drunk to find their way home by subway. Definitely not poor students like me. So, like everyone else in New York, I walk or take the train.

  On a single train car, you can easily hear four or five different la
nguages being spoken. It’s a far cry from the Seattle suburb where I grew up, always feeling like an outcast among the skinny blonde women and their cloned daughters I went to school with.

  It didn’t help that physically, I take after my father in almost every way possible. I inherited his dark hair, his wide, full lips, and the shadows that are always under his eyes. The only features I get from my mother, a blonde, picture-perfect Stepford wife, are her fair skin, her long, straight nose, and her blue eyes that glow against my dark hair in the right light. It wasn’t until we visited Brazil, when I was fifteen, that I realized where I got my hips from––my father’s side of the family endowed me with an ass that gets some attention in New York, but that used to make me cry when I didn’t fit into the size-zero jeans the rest of my friends wore in high school.

  But even so, it didn’t ease that feeling of discomfort, of not fitting in. I wasn’t like the rest of my friends, but I’m not like my father’s family either. I don’t speak Portuguese––my dad staunchly refused to teach me, and my mother never learned it either––and I don’t totally look like all of them either. I was just somewhere in between.

  Maybe that’s why I became obsessed with New York when I visited in high school with my parents. It’s a city full of in-betweens. Of people like me.

  I spill off the train with the rest of the crowd when the black and white sign for Canal Street blurs in front of my window, and hurry the five-block walk, watching for black ice around gutters and curbs while I dodge the Chinatown crowds. Canal Street is a rainbow of activity, even at eight o’clock at night in the middle of winter. The Chinese tchotchke shops are still open, their wares toppling onto the sidewalks, red lanterns, kites, t-shirts, shop after shop of cheap produce, fish mongers, and butchers. I pass the bakery where I sometimes buy pork buns for twenty cents each––change I could scrounge up on the street if I needed to. Not tonight. They’re good, but they don’t fill you up.