The Girl I Didn't Marry Read online

  The Girl I Didn’t Marry

  a novel by

  Annabelle Costa

  The Girl I Didn’t Marry

  © 2017 by Annabelle Costa. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the authors’ imagination, and are not to be construed as real. None of the characters in the book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: 2009

  Chapter 1: 1993

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4: 1994

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9: Spring, 1996

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17: Summer, 1996

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20: Spring, 1997

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32: Spring, 1998

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37: 2007

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue: 2009

  Nick

  Cops make me nervous.

  I see the officer from all the way across the night club—he’s not dressed in his usual uniform of the sky blue dress shirt and navy blue slacks, but I recognize his bald head and black goatee from seeing him on his neighborhood beat. I know all the cops around here by sight. They come to my club a lot, and I make sure they have a good time. A really good time.

  There’s no reason to think he’s here to shut the club down. There’s even less reason to think he’s going to arrest me. But still, I’m nervous. I don’t want to end up in jail. My father and my brother have been there before, but not me. Not yet.

  “Can I get you another drink, Mr. Moretti?”

  I look up at the pretty waitress standing in front of me. Her white-blond hair hangs loose around her shoulders, and like all the other girls in the club, she’s dressed in practically nothing. A tiny string bikini bites into the curves of her white thighs and pushes her tits together and up in the air. Not much is left to the imagination.

  “I’ll have another beer,” I tell her. I nod in the direction of the cop, “And give my friend over there another of whatever he’s drinking. Tell him it’s on the house, courtesy of Nick Moretti.”

  The waitress nods and hurries off, eager to please. I’m not just her boss—I’m her boss’s boss. And I bet she’s sick of waiting tables and wants more than anything to get up on the stage. Maybe she sings. Or maybe she dances—she sure got the body for it.

  I loosen my tie with my thumb so I can breathe easier. It’s warm in the club and I think about taking off my suit jacket, but I leave it on. This suit cost more than any waitress here earns in a month and I don’t want it wrinkled. I always take my father’s advice:

  You dress important and people treat you like you’re important.

  I always listened to Pop’s advice. I still do, even now that I’m more successful than he ever was.

  Only a few minutes later, the waitress is delivering a drink to the off-duty cop. I watch her gesture in my direction. This is from Nick Moretti. He owns this place. And by the way, a bunch of your buddies are probably on his payroll.

  I don’t know what she’s saying, but a few seconds later, the cop smiles in my direction. He raises his drink as the overhead lights glint off his bald scalp. I nod in return, not letting on the relief I feel. The cop’s not here to take me away—not today, anyway.

  “Here’s your beer, Mr. Moretti.”

  The waitress plunks another Guinness down in front of me, the condensation glistening on the bottle. I look up at her and she winks at me, her eyelashes thick with mascara.

  “You can call me Nick,” I tell her.

  “I’m Bonnie,” she says.

  It might not be a sexy name, but she’s a sexy girl. Young, pretty, and eager to please. And I can’t help but notice she doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. She lingers by my table, her eyes trained on mine.

  “When’s your break?” I ask her.

  “Right now.”

  I nod at the empty seat to my right. “Would you like to join me, Bonnie?”

  “I’d love to.”

  Bonnie comes around the table, but instead of sitting down, she puts one of her long, thin hands on the place where my neck meets my shoulder. She rubs a muscle I didn’t even know was tight till she got her hands on it. She leans in so that her lips nearly touch my ear and murmurs, “Maybe I could sit with you, Nick?”

  I grab the wheels of my chair and roll myself away from the table, providing access to my lap. Bonnie’s lithe little body slides onto my legs, and I put my left arm around her waist, drawing her closer to me. I can’t feel the weight of her hips on my legs, but I feel her skinny arms wrapping around my neck, I feel her lips pressing against mine, and I feel her tongue penetrating my mouth. She’s got some tongue, this girl. I bet she’s great in bed.

  I already know how this will go down. I may just be a schmuck from Brooklyn, but I’m no dummy. Bonnie will make out with me for a while, then we’ll go back to my place or maybe the back room, depending how much time is left on her shift. And after that, she’s thinking I’ll be so grateful that she can hit me up for whatever the hell she wants. She’s thinking she should be rewarded handsomely for making out with the guy in the wheelchair.

  She has no clue who she’s dealing with.

  I know how to deal with Bonnie, just like I know how to deal with cops. I know the right things to say to keep girls like Bonnie happy—most of the time. I can handle her. It’s no problem.

  But somehow today, the thought of it exhausts me. I’m sick of every time I kiss a girl, having to wonder what she wants. They all want something. Every goddamn one of them.

  Except Jessie. She wanted me for myself.

  Bonnie shifts on my lap and my right leg suddenly goes into spasm. It surprises her enough that she stands up, her eyes widening as she watches the way my leg jumps up and down on the footplate on its own volition. The first time my leg did that, I had a similar surprised reaction.

  “What are you doing?” she asks, because she has no idea I can’t control it.

  “Gimme a minute,” I say through my teeth. My Brooklyn accent is almost undetectable except when I’m agitated or with old friends from the neighborhood. I worked on getting rid of it during my years at an Ivy League college followed by Harvard Business School. But it’s still there, under the surface, waiting to show everyone who I really am.

  I readjust my leg, hoping that will do the trick. The spasm subsides and I let out a br
eath. But when I look up at Bonnie, I can see her enthusiasm has waned. She’s got a tiny crease between her eyebrows.

  “Are you going to be okay?” she asks, like she thinks I’m gonna drop dead any second.

  “Fine,” I mutter. I can barely look at her. “You should go back to work though.”

  Bonnie hesitates for a moment, then nods. I watch her tight little ass disappear in the other direction, but I don’t feel any regret about sending her away. I don’t want her. Not really. It would have been fun—not gonna say it wouldn’t. But it would have just been a distraction from the only girl I really want.

  The girl I blew forever with.

  Chapter 1: 1993

  Nick

  Today is one of those days that started out ordinary. First my older brother Tony got into a fight with Pop because Tony won’t stop hanging around what Pop calls “the low lives.” Then Ma started yelling at Tony to eat his breakfast of sausage and scrambled eggs. Finally, Pop told Tony he needed to get a haircut and that’s when my brother stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

  And I just sat there, eating my own eggs and sausage and thinking about what an idiot my brother is. Pop don’t ask much of us—why can’t he just do it?

  “At least Nico’s a good kid,” Pop said to my mother.

  I am a good kid, as far as Pop is concerned. I get good grades, I don’t get into trouble, and I keep my hair cut short. Anyway, nobody messes with me. In this neighborhood, everyone knows you don’t want to mess with Angelo Moretti’s son.

  That’s a normal morning for me—Tony storms out, I eat breakfast, then I ride my bike to the middle school where I’m in ninth grade, in time for homeroom at a quarter to nine. But today is different. Because today Mrs. Leary tells us that there’s a new kid in the class. Some girl who just moved here from Milwaukee. I don’t even know where the hell Milwaukee is, but when Jessica Schultz stands up in front of the room to introduce herself, I suddenly get very interested in Milwaukee and everything there is to know about this girl.

  “Tell the class about yourself!” Mrs. Leary barks at the girl in her crackly voice. Mrs. Leary’s ancient and deaf, so she yells all the freakin’ time. But you can get away with a lot in her class because she can’t hear anything going on in the room.

  Jessica Schultz squeezes her fists together and looks up at us with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Bensonhurst has got a lot of Italians, so most of them have dark hair and eyes like I do. We got a couple of kids in the class with blue eyes—nothing like Jessica’s though. And her hair—shit. I’ve never seen hair so blond before. It’s like somebody spun gold out of her scalp. I can’t quit staring at that hair.

  I can’t quit staring at Jessica.

  “I come from Milwaukee,” Jessica tells us in a voice that’s barely a squeak. “I lived there all my life. But my dad got a new job here, so… now we live here.”

  A few kids snicker. Jessica tugs on her green sweater, which is too small on her. All her clothes are bordered on too tight, but the sweater is the worst. Or the best, considering how you’re looking at it. I don’t think it’s on purpose though. I think she grew out of it and hasn’t had a chance to get one that fits better. Or maybe can’t afford it. Lotsa kids in this class are wearing clothes that are too tight because they can’t afford something bigger yet.

  I don’t got that problem. At all. Pop buys me all new clothes because he says I should have better than Tony’s shitty hand-me-downs.

  Jessica’s bluer than blue eyes meet mine from across the room, and for a second, it’s like I can barely breathe. I never looked at a girl and felt this way before. I kissed a couple of girls before, like Mary Castellano in the bushes behind the basketball court last month. That was fine—I liked kissing Mary. Since I grew four inches over the summer, girls seem a lot more willing to go behind some bushes with me. But I never wanted to kiss a girl in the bushes as much as I want to kiss Jessica right this minute.

  And while I’m staring at the blue eyes, the gold hair, and the tits nearly splitting the seam of her old sweater, I get the craziest thought in my head:

  This is the girl I’m going to marry.

  I wouldn’t say it to anyone. If you’re fourteen years old and you go around telling your friends you want to marry some chick you just saw for the first time five minutes ago, they think you’re nuts or a pussy or something bad. But I’ve never wanted anything as bad as I want this. Aside from wanting to take over my father’s business someday.

  “You can take a seat, Jessica,” Mrs. Leary tells her.

  Jessica scurries to a desk two seats in front of me. Good thing it’s just homeroom because no way I’d be able to concentrate with her straight in the middle of my field of vision.

  I glance over at Kevin Price, my best buddy here at school. He’s looking at Jessica too, and when our eyes meet, he winks at me. Kevin loves new girls. I don’t try too hard to imagine what he’s thinking about.

  The bell rings and Jessica stands up, looking uncertainly down at her schedule for the day, her pale hands shaking. I should offer her help finding her first class. I should, but for some reason I can’t. I’m glued to my seat.

  “Nice tits, new girl!” Kevin leers at her.

  Jessica looks up at him, her blue eyes widening like she’s never heard that kind of language before. Maybe kids are nicer in Milwaukee than they are in Bensonhurst. Welcome to Brooklyn, New Girl.

  Kevin might have a smart mouth, but I don’t talk to girls that way. Ever. One of Pop’s words of wisdom that he tells me all the time:

  Always treat women with respect, Nico.

  So I do. Always. I treat ladies the way they deserve to be treated, whether it’s some chick on the street or hundred-year-old Mrs. Leary. I don’t yell dirty things at them when they walk by the way other guys in my class do. Maybe Jessica don’t count as a woman yet, but I figure close enough.

  I smack Kevin in the arm and hiss at him, “Shut up, you idiot. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “What?” Kevin looks at me, wide-eyed. “She does have nice tits.”

  Well, he’s right.

  “Just don’t talk to her that way,” I say.

  Kevin smirks at me. “So, what? You into her? Because it’s fine if you are. She’s too chubby for me anyway.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Kevin,” I mutter.

  I look at Jessica’s seat and see that she’s gone. She probably hurried off after Kevin shouted at her. I can’t blame her.

  But even though she’s gone, I know I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about her.

  Chapter 2

  Jessie

  I hate Brooklyn.

  I hate my new middle school.

  I hate this stupid tight, itchy sweater my mother made me wear.

  I wish I were back in Milwaukee. I had friends there. We had a beautiful house with a lawn and a basement with a ping pong table. Now all we have is a tiny apartment with barely enough room for my bed and a dresser in my room, and definitely not enough room for a ping pong table.

  All because Daddy got laid off from his job, and my parents started freaking out that they were going to lose the house, and then this opportunity came up here, and all of a sudden, we were moving. It didn’t matter to them that it’s October of my last year of middle school, and all the kids here know each other and I don’t know anyone. Nobody seemed to care about that.

  I spent all of last night sulking in my new bedroom, which is about half the size of my old bedroom in Milwaukee. I put my Bonnie Tyler “Faster Than the Speed of Night” tape in my boom box and lay on my bed, listening to it over and over. By the end, I was just listening to my favorite song on the album, “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” I kept rewinding the tape so I could hear it over and over. And over. The tape is probably all worn out over that part.

  Mom came in while I was midway through my twenty-somethingth time listening to the song. I was on my back, my arms and hair splayed out all over my new bed that was too lump
y. She looked at me for a while, and finally said, “Could you at least listen to a different song?”

  “I like this song,” I said.

  “So are you having a total eclipse of the heart?”

  I knew she was making fun of me, but I didn’t care. “Yes, I am,” I said. “My heart is back in Milwaukee and now it’s completely blacked out and dead. My heart is in a total eclipse.”

  “Oh, come on,” Mom said. “It’s not that bad. Maybe more like a partial eclipse.”

  She didn’t get it. Only Bonnie Tyler really knows what I’m going through.

  My first day at the new school starts out with the old lady teaching homeroom making me introduce myself to the class. I don’t even know what to say, so I just tell them where I’m from. I guess I could tell them that my favorite TV show is Saved By the Bell. Or that I like making friendship bracelets. Or that my favorite thing to do in the whole world is sing, especially “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” although I don’t know if I’m very good at it.

  But I figure they don’t care, so I just say I’m from Milwaukee and leave it at that.

  All morning, hardly any of the other kids talk to me. Well, that’s not entirely true. The boys keep yelling things at me, a few flattering but some really mean. I knew this stupid sweater was too tight. I hate it.

  By the time I get to lunch, I’m ready to ditch school and hitchhike a ride back to Wisconsin. I might have done it, except just as I’ve gotten my food, a skinny, dark-haired girl grabs me by the arm.

  “You’re the new girl,” she says, her giant brown eyes focusing on my face so intently that she can probably count all the freckles on my nose.

  I nod because I’m not sure what else to say.

  “Justine?” she guesses.

  “Jessica,” I say.

  “I’m Christina,” she says. “But everyone calls me Chrissy. Anyway, you can sit with me if you want.”

  I did want to. Badly. The alternative was taking my tray to the bathroom to eat there.