Page 71 of Tito

Bang! Bang!

“Reggie!” Mel screamed. “It’s me! Open up. It’s an emergency!”

Relief washed over me. I flipped on the bedroom light. “It’s Mel!”

At the same instant, a shirtless Tito pulled open the door.

Mel shot past him, not giving him so much as a second look. She was covered in filth, and her hair was a disastrous mess. “Where are you?” she sputtered. Her eyes darted in every direction. “Reggie! Where are—”

“I’m right here.” Shocked at her appearance—and actions—I stared at her in disbelief. “What’s going on?”

Her hands were shaking. “We need to talk.”

I took a step in her direction. “Mel. What’s going—”

“Can we…” She darted toward my bedroom. “Talk in private?”

Worried about whatever was troubling her, I gave Tito an apologetic look. “Be right back,” I whispered.

Tito nodded, and then closed the front door. Filled with nervous curiosity, I turned to the bedroom. With bare feet that were just as filthy as her hands, Mel stood just inside the door, shaking.

“What’s going on?” I asked, looking her over. “You’re filthy, and it’s like…” I glanced at the clock. “After midnight on a Tuesday—”

“I hit him,” she muttered. “Hard.”

She was currently screwing a hot-tempered Italian bad boy she met online. It was only a matter of time before he did something that would require my father’s intervention.

“Who?” I asked. “Franky?”

Seeming disoriented with her surroundings, she wrung her hands together. “No.”

I’d seen Mel in a lot of bad situations, but I’d never seen her rattled. Not like she was, at least.

“Who?” I asked.

“I can’t remember.” She looked at her hands as if she’d never seen them before. “Some guy.”

She wasn’t simply shaken by whatever had happened to her. She was delirious.

“Some random guy?” I asked, taking a step in her direction.

Now wringing her hands frantically, she quickly stepped away from me. “I stopped…we had a few drinks. He said let’s go to your house,mine is too far away.” She looked up. “I think I killed him.”

“Killed him?!” I gasped. “Like? Dead?”

She swallowed hard. “Maybe.”

My heart raced. “What the fuck, Mel?”

“He came home with me. I was uhhm. We were…I was in the kitchen,” she stammered. “You know how I get when I’m drunk…I…I was uhhm. Grilled cheese. I felt this…” She raised her hands to her throat. “He had a knife. He pushed it...he said he was going to…” Her lip began to quiver. “I smacked him with the. I hit him in the face. With the skillet. Hard. Like. A bunch. There’s blood everywhere, Reg. Lots of blood.”

Mel’s internet dating had produced other-than-favorable men, and her dates—if you could call them that—were typically disastrous. I feared that one day something bad would happen. That day had arrived.

My stomach convulsed. I swallowed repeatedly against the bile that rose in my throat. “Is he really dead?”

She raised her hands to her face. “I’m not sure.”

I realized the filth that covered her was blood. I reached for her arm, but he pulled away.