“Yeah, probably.” Bailey’s hand left my cheek and a moment later, I felt her lips there, replacing the touch. “Sleep, baby,” she said. And then she whispered the three words that seemed so natural to her, only this time I didn’t just hear them, I felt them. She kissed me once more, and I found myself giving in to the exhaustion (and maybe a little of the alcohol), but before I was there, in the place too dark to find light, I murmured, “Ti amo, mia bella ragazza.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, but I was too out of it to answer her, so Tiny did it for me. “It’s Italian. It means I love you, my beautiful girl.”
*
I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when I awoke to the sound of Bailey’s voice, soft and warm as it flooded all my other senses. “She was a nurse,” I heard her say. “…at the children’s hospital. Sometimes she’d take me there on her days off so we could visit with the kids.”
“She sounds nice,” Tiny said, and I slowly opened my eyes. They were sitting at the small table and chairs set up in the corner of the basement, empty takeout boxes sprawled out in front of them.
“She was nice,” Bailey responded. “I mean she is nice. I probably shouldn’t talk about her in past tense. It’s not like she’s dead… that I know of.” She peered down at her hands resting on her lap, a frown pulling at her lips. She was obviously talking about her mother.
“Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate the two,” Tiny said. “Sometimes it’s almost easier to pretend like someone is dead when they choose to be absent. Makes it hurt less.”
Bailey looked up, same frown, same soft eyes. “You sound like you’re talking from experience…”
Tiny nodded. “My dad. He bailed when I was fourteen, and I haven’t heard from him since.”
“I’m sorry,” Bailey said, the genuine sincerity in her voice clear.
With a shrug, Tiny laughed once. “He used to take me to ball games whenever he could, and my favorite part was always the hotdogs. Now every time I smell hotdogs, I think of him. How fucked up is that?”
Bailey laughed. “It’s not fucked up at all.”
“What about you, Bailey? What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of her?”
She thought for a moment, and then a small smile crept to her lips, and it was such a fucking shame that the only two people who got to witness it were a drug dealer and his muscle. “Fall leaves.”
“Leaves?”
She nodded. “Not all leaves,” she said, her eye roll making her seem younger.
“So why fall leaves?” Tiny asked, a slight tease in his tone.
“Because fall was her favorite season… we used to have this massive tree in the backyard, and we’d always wait for a huge pile to build up before going out there and running through it all. Some people have snowball fights. We had leaf fights.” She paused for a moment, the memory causing her to frown. “It was the last thing we did together.”
Silence so deafening blanketed the room, and when Tiny’s hand reached out and covered hers, I croaked out, “Bailey, did you take your insulin?”
“I made sure of it,” Tiny answered, squeezing her hands once before pulling away.
I cleared my throat. “What time is it?”
“Late,” Tiny said.
“Are you hungry?” Bailey asked, getting up and coming over to me. She placed a hand on my cheek, her smile matching her voice, warm and all consuming.
I shook my head and grasped her wrist. “Will you come to bed, baby? I just want to hold you.”
She nodded slowly, her smile widening as Tiny started to clear the table. “Thanks for taking care of her,” I told him, but I was watching Bailey walk to the bathroom.
“Maybe let her take care of you tonight, Nate,” he said quietly. “I think you might both need that.”
A minute or so after Tiny left, Bailey returned with a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of aspirin in the other. “I thought this might help,” she said, indicating for me to scoot over so she could sit down on the edge of the bed.
I did as she wanted, and sat up to take the water from her, thanking her as I did.
After taking a couple of the pills, I set the glass on the nightstand and focused on her. “You and Tiny talked all night?”
She nodded. “We did. It was nice.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I like him.”
I chuckled. “Me too.”
“I learned something,” she said, her cheeks darkening with her blush.
“Jesus,” I murmured, settling my hand on her leg. “He better not have told you embarrassing stories about me,” I half joked.
She didn’t find it funny. Instead, she reached up, her finger tracing my jaw. “Ti amo, mio ragazzo bel rotto.”
I love you, my beautifully broken boy.
31
Bailey