Okay, so the apartment was not in the greatest part of town.
It wasn’t like the rave location, where Brianna thought she could get shot at any moment, but she wouldn’t exactly call it safe either. The building was old—a brown-bricked walk-up from days gone past. Brianna found herself imagining what it was like seventy years ago, when this area was still Italian Harlem and organized crime blended into every corner of it, behind the colorful threads of first-and second-generation Italians who had packed into these buildings and banded together as a community to survive.
Now it seemed like there was just Tino and Nova left.
Echoes from the past, romantic in a way, but so very isolated too.
Left behind.
Forgotten.
That night, under the glow of the streetlights, Brianna could almost feel old Italian Harlem still humming around her. Like she could reach out and touch the ghosts.
Quite different from the building itself, the apartment was beautiful, smelling of fresh paint and new furniture. Carina and Bobby camped out in front of the television, scattering DVDs everywhere, complaining about how old the titles were. Brianna got the impression the movies were left over from a time before Tino’s and Nova’s lives here stopped.
Nova and his girlfriends disappeared into a bedroom down the hall.
So Brianna wandered into the other bedroom. The walls were lined with old trophies and Bruce Lee posters. It was mustier, as if this part of the small apartment was the least important, forgotten like Tino and Nova had been.
Then she spied mousetraps on the floor, and feeling as dazed as she was, she decided she didn’t want to be standing there. She crawled onto the bottom bunk bed that was bigger than the top, so she scooted back against the wall because it made her feel hidden. She drew her feet up and looked down at the trap, which was probably too big for a mouse.
She kept staring at it, feeling like she was seeing rat ghosts just like she was seeing Italian ghosts. Lost lives. Lost memories. Lost dreams. The reflections of light on the floor seemed to come alive. Living, breathing, begging to be remembered, and what if it was real?
Tino came into the room and pulled off his jacket. She stared at his back, with those hard, cut muscles decorated with the faint white lines like painful memories carved into his skin, and she felt unbelievably sad.
About all the stories that were lost in the walls.
And all of Tino’s pain that was still very visible.
He set his gun on the dresser. Then he pulled off his jeans, sliding his underwear down with them, and Brianna couldn’t help but look. Italians had such nice asses. At least Italians with the last name Moretti did. Carina was always getting comments on hers, but her brothers didn’t lack in that department either.
Firm, round, incredibly grabable.
It was only for a couple of seconds, and then Brianna must have made a sound. Tino jerked his jeans up and turned back to her. “I thought you were watching movies with Carina. What’re you doing?”
“I’m hiding from the ghosts.” She let her gaze run over Tino standing there shirtless. For some reason she remembered riding on the train with him that first time to Bed-Stuy when she wondered what he was going to look like in a few years. Nothing could have prepared her for how quickly he grew into himself, and she couldn’t taper the hitch of longing in her voice as she asked, “What are you doing?”
“I was gonna take a shower.” He frowned at her. “Ghosts? Are you freaking out?”
“I think so. Are you gonna leave me?” She looked back to the rattrap on the floor, seeing the reflection of light from the window and feeling again like she was seeing something alive, but not really there. “Can I come with you? I won’t look. I swear, I just—”
“Come here,” Tino cut her off by crawling into the bunk. She was still curled up against the wall, knees up to her chest, so he caressed her ankle. “Shoes on the bed. Is that how you do it at your house?”
“There are ghost rats on the floor,” she told him as he pulled off one of her shoes and tossed it aside.
“Ghost rats I can deal with. It’s the living ones I hate.” He grabbed her other shoe and slipped it off her foot. “You have to think about something nice. Something beautiful. Otherwise you’ll ruin the roll.”
“How do you know?” she whispered as she watched Tino kick his shoes off. “Because you’re a drug dealer now?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Do you like being a drug dealer?”
“I don’t care.” He reached up and caressed her hair, tucking it behind her ear. “It could be worse. A lot worse.”
“Would you kiss me like Nova kissed those girls?” she asked because she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Tino’s fingers in her hair felt too wonderful, and nothing else really seemed to matter. “You said I’m supposed to think about something beautiful. That’s…beautiful.”