It was a Friday when her mom came to the school, and since she’d already skipped her morning classes, Natalia decided to go back home with her Mom. I wandered back to my dorm room, feeling dejected. Classes were still ongoing, so I was thankful I didn’t have to deal with Casey when I got back to the dorm. I plopped down on my bed, rolled onto my back and threw my arms over my eyes.“Dammit, Dad,” I muttered.He’d actually gone and done it. I had known, but perhaps, deep inside of me, I hadn't really thought he would go through with it. But he actually ran away with Tina’s money. With Natalia’s Mom’s money.My dad was a criminal.Fuck!On the same day I found out, I should have told Tina instead of wavering, no matter what he said. If only I hadn't been selfish in that critical moment, I wouldn’t have excused myself from the table. Instead, I would have sat down and told Tina exactly what Dad told me, even with him sitting right there glaring at me.I’d certainly feel better than I did
A few weeks passed. Mom refused to do anything about Greg. Luca had told me he’d found his dad, but because Mom didn’t want to, I left it alone. I could only steam about it.I woke up one morning to my phone ringing. I heard a groan from beside me, before Luca shifted around and grabbed the phone.“It’s your mom, Natalia,” he mumbled, still half asleep. I blinked my eyes open and took the phone, then slid out of bed so I wouldn’t bother him. Mom already knew about us since I’d told her we were seeing each other a couple weeks back, but she didn’t know we were this close already. It had both surprised and delighted me when she was happy for me, unconditionally.“Hey, Mom?” I said, covering a yawn. “What is it?”“Honey, why do you sound so tired? Did I catch you at a bad time?”It wasn’t all that early in the morning, but Luca and I had been up late last night, and I felt exhausted. Only, it was the good kind of exhausted that came after long, fun rounds of fulfilling sex. Of course, t
LucaAll the drama surrounding the Sext Me line died down. Natalia refused to tell me how she did it, but it meant we didn’t have to worry about people staring and murmuring about us as we moved around campus together.The rest of my final year in college was uneventful. There was only one more surprise, and it came from Dad.When I was worried about getting funds from part-time jobs to keep me up, after he’d paid all my tuition, he sent me money and told me not to worry about working, just hurry up and graduate, then find a proper job.I’d wondered where all the money came from, and he answered when I ask, despite what I thought. His business venture took off. Like, really took off. While he didn’t become a millionaire overnight, he was definitely nouveau riche.It was the day of graduation, after I’d already gone up and received my degree, I saw him. I stood with Natalia, who’d also invited her mom. I wasn’t sure how to react, and immediately, turned to look at Natalia and Tina, but
“Dad, I’m not in the mood for dinner. I have so much work to do,” I said on the phone as I pouted, wondering what trouble he’d gotten himself into this time. I knew it was the only reason he’d called in the first place. He needed money. He always needed money.“Look, I need this deal to go through. If there’s no dinner, then I don’t know when Dante will be back in town. He has triplets in your year at Yale—you must know them.” The words stuttered, and I wondered if it was a bad connection or if he was scared. “Who?” I asked. There were thousands of students in Yale—how could he possibly expect me to know all of them? I didn’t have time for this conversation. Tomorrow was Friday, and I needed to submit an idea for my paper. It was approaching nighttime, and I was drawing a blank.“I don’t know. A couple of them start with the letter A. How hard can it be with Italian names? Something like Alessandro, and…”“Adolfo,” I said, filling in the blank as he struggled to remember the second
It didn’t take long to figure out where our party was sitting as we stepped into the Italian bistro. The four men were so loud, they were grabbing all the attention in the restaurant. I would have found it annoying, but the other diners seemed to find it amusing, waving in their direction and laughing at the noise they were making. I knew them. Alessandro, Carlo, and Adolfo, plus an older gentleman who must be their dad.I’d never spoken to them in my nearly four years at Yale, and I never planned to. I could quite happily continue avoiding them like the plague and feel good about it. I’m sure I looked just as nervous as Dad as I pulled down on my dress one more time. It was silly, I knew, because the moment I pulled it down, it would ride back up again, yet I’d formed this habit in the space of thirty minutes since I put the dress on and left my dorm room. I felt a wave of jealousy seeing them at the table. They were laughing and talking as if they were all the best of friends. Se
“Did I hear right? You exchanged numbers with the boys, right?” Dad asked as he dropped me off at my dorm. I hadn’t wanted him to drive, but he’d sobered up somewhat after a couple of espressos.“Yeah,” I whispered.He patted me on the knee as if I was five years old. “Good. I just need to get Dante on my side so he can look at this app.”Since I’d spent the evening trying to stop myself from getting wet from Carlo’s touch, the scam had flown right out of my head, but the frustration came flooding back with his reminder. “Dad, you never told me you invented things. Why the hell didn’t you tell me this was all part of some scam? I go to school with these guys—did you think, or even care, about how this would reflect on me when it all goes sour?”In the end, he hadn’t even told Dante exactly what the app he supposedly developed was supposed to do. And wasn’t that supposed to have been the whole point of the dinner?I was upset, disappointed, and fed up with him using me. Him being my d
I’d seen Bianca walking around campus as if she was lost, never fitting in after all this time. I’d only ever heard of her dating the one guy, Ben, who broke up with her when she wouldn’t put out, and I’d only seen her with one friend, her roommate Erika, who worked with her at Two Sheets. Unlike Erika, Bianca was far from friendly. It felt like as soon as we stepped into Two Sheets, she headed in the opposite direction. Alessandro says it is because she’s stuck up, the kind of person who thinks she’s better than us. But how would he know if he’d never spoken to her?If anything, Alessandro was the uptight one. If some girl didn’t grovel to him twenty-four seven, he concluded that she wasn’t the kind of girl we should hang out with. He made too many assumptions about people. Sometimes I wondered if we were even related—he was too fucking judgmental.Dad said her dad, Paul, used to go to high school with him. He said he was a mess when they were kids, and it seemed as if things hadn’t
Jesus, this dude was still drunk. Had he constantly been drinking since we left him last night? How did he even manage to get around in his state?Paul was talking, and Bianca complained about needing to complete some paper before her shift at Two Sheets later. I’d been there a few times and bought drinks for the guys, which is how I knew exactly who she was as soon as Dad told us about the dinner last night. Bianca was the kind of girl who was saving her V-card until her knight in shining armor came upon a horse and took her in his arms. Sure, she looked hot last night, but the girl didn’t know how to dress or hold herself. Bianca walked around in sweats and t-shirts, and a knight wasn’t going to take a girl that didn’t dress like a princess. If she couldn’t be bothered to keep up her physical appearance, I hated to think what the inside her dorm looked like. Most likely like Adolfo’s room. As for my other brother, Carlo… any girl would do for him. He was so damn horny. He was so i