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ChapterFifteen
I was in my bedroom, gnawing on my thumbnail as I reviewed the dismal array of clothes in my closet, when I heard a soft knock at my door. Like a special ringtone, I knew it was Yo-Yo. My mother never knocked. She just entered, regardless of what I was doing. Sauntering in, my brother fell into the office chair at my desk and sprawled out his long legs like an overgrown colt.
“How can you stand sleeping in this room anymore? You’re drowning in pink,” he remarked with a shudder of his broad shoulders as he surveyed the pale-pink-and-white duvet, the matching pink of the curtains, and the pink pillows bordered in ruffles. While it was no longer my taste, I hadn’t changed the decoration since high school, because Mother liked it. Both Tasa and I bemoaned our mother’s horrid tastes in decorations. An additional reason for wanting my own home and family.
Giving him a light shrug, I said, “I live with Mother’s taste here and Tasa’s mom’s decorating aesthetic in the city. Of the two, this one is more cheerful.”
“Good point,” he conceded.
Taking a pen from the penholder on my desk, he twirled it between his fingers and said, “I don’t get it. He’s as controlling as Mother. You’re about to graduate and finally be free of every responsibility she’s thrown at you and you go shackle yourself to a man? Especially him. Not only is he dangerous, but he screams control issues.”
“Spying on me, were you?”
Putting aside my hopeless struggle to decide what to wear, I dragged out my suitcase and flung it open on the delicate pink-and-cream floral rug. Influenced by Tasa’s mom, Mother went through a phase of investing in nice rugs. Which no one was allowed to walk on. Half our childhood had been spent skirting the rugs on the floor of the living room, even though we didn’t walk with our shoes in the house. It was a huge moment when Mother had rolled out this rug for my sixteenth birthday.
He shrugged. “You’re my sister. I knew something was up when you came in earlier, but what with the volcano downstairs, I couldn’t bring it up. You’re moving back into the city, aren’t you?”
“I need a break. You’re not totally wrong about Alex,” I conceded, “but the difference is that he listens to me. He’s not irrational. Quite the opposite, in fact. Getting him to embrace human emotions in his decision-making process is a challenge. Maybe I’m attracted to the controlling part of him, having grown up with Mother. But the big distinction is that I hold a degree of power. I’ve seen how my words impact his decisions.”
“He makes you think you have a voice, but you don’t,” he countered in a grumpy tone. Like most almost-eighteen-year-olds, Yo-Yo thought he knew everything. I didn’t bother to correct him. This wasn’t his life; it was mine, and I didn’t have to justify myself to him.
“Yo-Yo, you barely know him. When it came to Tasa, he listened to me.”
“That only strengthens my argument. She ran away because he was so controlling of her. He lost his shit just because you guys went to a club.”
“To be fair, we were two virgins at a sex club,” I quipped.
He made a dismissive gesture. “Please, he managed every part of her life. Jesus, Nina, he was going to force her to marry some guy she didn’t even care about.”
“I regret telling you anything,” I muttered.
He halted in the middle of twirling my pen and fixed his gaze on me. “Hey, you’re not only my sister. You’re my friend.” Dropping my pen, he stood up and paced the length of my room. “He’s not a good man. He’s definitely a criminal, and he’s most likely a killer. I mean, I might’ve been a kid, but I remember seeing the news after his father was gunned down on Queens Boulevard in broad daylight.”
If my brother only knew the extent of the violence. Only moments ago, Alex had confided about his first killing. Or rather killings. My heart almost broke for him. A wave of protectiveness swept over me. He was just a kid, and he’d had to survive a shoot-out and hunt down the guys who tried to murder him, his brother, and his father. I shuddered. I couldn’t imagine the kind of stress he lived with.
I plucked shirts and dresses off the hangers and dropped them on my pink bed. Canting my head to the side, I gazed down on the bedspread. Yo-Yo was right. It really was too much with the pink and ruffles and frills. I’d be embarrassed to have Alex in this room.
“Listen, I appreciate what you’re doing, but you don’t know Alex like I do. He’d never let anything happen to me.”
Yo-Yo stood up, crossed my room, and flicked the curtain open. Taking a long moment to stare out the window, he disclosed, “There’s a guy standing near our stoop. Is that the kind of life you want for yourself? You’re so close to freedom. You can do whatever you want. Follow in Tasa’s footsteps and get out of here instead of latching on to a guy who’s going to keep your life small. Or worse, make it smaller than it already is.” His head twisted over his shoulder, gaze burning with frustration. “Why would you do that?”
“For love.”
There, I said it.
Yo-Yo’s eyebrows hit the top of his hairline. “L-love?” he sputtered out.
I threw my hands in the air. “God, you’re so thick sometimes. Love. I love him. I’ve loved him for years, and it was awful. I didn’t have the guts to do anything about it while Tasa was here. I was loyal to her, so I pined away for him, watching from the corners and shadows. You talk about a small life? My life is expanding.” I spread my arms wide to demonstrate how I felt. “I have a chance to come out of the shadows and live in the light. My life will grow. I will grow. And I want a family. My own family, based on love and mutual respect, not twisted control and manipulation like in our family.”
His jaw dropped, his mouth hanging open. Walking toward me, he stumbled on the carpet. Righting himself, he plopped down on the edge of my bed and stared at me like I’d sprouted two heads and about half a dozen arms.
Carefully pulling out the delicate gold necklace from around my neck, I held up my grandmother’s pale-green jade pendant for him.
“This.” I shook the pendant at him. “This is why I’m certain of him. It wasn’t long after his father was murdered that Nana died. He found me crying on the stoop after her funeral, holding on to her good-luck necklace. I was only his little sister’s friend. He had no reason to come over and sit beside me on the stoop, but…he did. He held me as I cried into his shoulder and asked me what I was holding. When I told him she wore this necklace every day of her life, that she never took it off, he took it from me, told me to turn around and placed it around my neck. He made me promise to wear it in her memory and live like she would’ve wanted me to live. ‘Don’t let one day go to waste,’ he said, ‘and make sure to let her love guide you.’”
I’d been distraught that day. Nana’s death had been sudden and Mother had fallen into a deep depression. Our grandmother was the heart of our family in many ways. She understood her daughter and comforted her when she became overly emotional. She also served as a buffer between our mother and us. Where my mother pushed, my grandmother soothed. Perhaps she and I got along so well because our personalities were similar. Her loss was deeply felt by everyone in the family, except maybe Yo-Yo, since he was still so young when she died. But my father and I definitely felt her absence, especially when Mother’s anxiety ratcheted up.
“That had to be one of the most painful days of my life, and he was there for me. His words gave me strength and I fell in love with him that day. I’ve never taken this off since.”
