1. Half a Drink More

ONE

HALF A DRINK MORE

Francesca

December, Five Years Earlier

“ I really should get home,” I said for the second time since entering the bar on Amsterdam Avenue. It was crowded for a Monday night, but that made sense considering several universities in the area had only finished final exams yesterday. Most of the out-of-staters had already made their exodus home last night. For the rest of us, tonight was our last night to party. Tomorrow, after all, was Christmas Eve.

“Girl, you need to relax,” said Emily, one of my classmates who had ventured out with me on this cold, wintry night.

We were both commuter students who took the D line down to CUNY and back every weekday. Otherwise, we didn’t typically go this far downtown, and if we did make the trip from the Bronx on the weekends, it was only because we were desperate to get out of Belmont.

Emily looked around the bar with open curiosity. “Finals are over,” she insisted. “We have two glorious weeks off. Honestly, Frankie, do you ever let loose?”

I expelled a long breath and took a sip of my cocktail—the only drink I was allowing myself tonight. I rarely drank. That’s what happens when you lose your father to a drunk driving accident before you even enter school—and your mother was the one driving. My siblings and I had been living with our grandparents since I started kindergarten, and my mother had been in and out of jail since.

I had no interest in repeating her mistakes. Not now. Not ever.

“I let loose plenty,” I replied as I set my drink back on the bar. “But I also have responsibilities. I promised my grandparents I’d be home by midnight.”

Andrea just frowned. “For what? Your sisters are grown. Who else are you taking care of these days?”

I sighed and drummed my fingernails on the bar. They weren’t done like Andreas—just a coat of plain polish on their filed tips. “My nephews, for one. Lea needs help in the morning since she’s helping Nonna make dinner tomorrow night.”

“Their dad can’t do that? Or one of your other five siblings? Honestly, Frankie, you never get out. I’ve known you for almost five years now, and not once have I seen you on a date, at a party, or any other normal thing college students do. Your family owes you one night of fun.”

I sighed and took another drink. How could I explain that this was just the Zola way? That as the third youngest of six kids, I was expected to pay back the care I’d received from the elders for most of my life. That even if my two younger sisters were grown, they still acted young as hell and needed my guidance to help them learn something like responsibility. That my older sister had basically raised me along with herself and everyone else, and now that she had three kids under the age of five, she deserved help whenever she asked for it.

That our grandmother was getting older. That she deserved a break. Not me.

Men. Dating. Parties. It could all wait.

But another lemon drop did sound really damn good.

“All right,” I relented. “I’ll have one more after this. But then it’s home for me. Nonna will kill me if I’m hungover on Christmas Eve.”

“Thatta girl,” Emily said, then raised her hand to flag one of the bartenders.

“Let me.”

We both turned. And then looked up. And up. And up.

Then the stranger who had appeared to my right looked down, smiled, and nearly toppled me from my stool.

He was…gorgeous. My own personal Christmas wish, wrapped in a package of six feet and several inches, overgrown black hair, an impish smile, tattoos that ran up and down a muscular left arm, and black eyes that managed to sparkle mischievously despite the dim bar lighting.

He raised an arm thoroughly decorated with swirling black tattoos, from under a plain white t-shirt, and I almost fainted.

“What can I get for you?” asked the bartender.

“Two more for my friends here,” said the tattooed stranger. “And your best lager for me, mate.”

“He’s British on top of all that?” Emily whispered into my ear. “That should be illegal.”

I thought the man’s smirk broadened above us, but he was nice enough to act as though he hadn’t heard a thing.

But that accent. Lord, it was like God had taken literally every fantasy in my little anglophilic head and painted them all on this one dude.

It was too much. Blinding, really.

A moment later, the tattooed stranger paid for our drinks and sank onto a stool beside me.

“Oh, look," Emily said in a particularly wooden voice. "What an interesting poster.”

She rose from her seat and went to examine a reprint of the New York City subway system framed across the room. It was a map we saw every day on our way to and from campus. Literally the worst excuse ever to leave me alone with this British adonis.

Not that I was complaining.

“Cheers,” he said, raising his beer bottle toward my dainty martini glass.

“Cheers,” I said back.

Now that he was seated and a bit closer, I could see that his eyes, tilted a bit at the edges, were blue, not black. A deep dark blue that reminded me of the ocean. Or the sky just before night fell.

He didn’t speak for a moment, just watched me watching him. One lock of black hair fell over his forehead, which he pushed away without thinking. The movement made his bicep flex and the tattoos over it dance.

“So...” he said after he had drained half his beer. “Can I get a name for my troubles?”

I bit back a smile. “What, do I owe you for the drink?”

He smirked, and the movement brought out an unexpected dimple in his right cheek. My god, the man was too delicious for words.

“I’d never charge a lady for the privilege,” he said, his voice practically dripping with aristocratic wit.

And something else, if my years of watching BBC specials had taught me right. He sounded enough like Prince William to pass for peer, but there was more than a little bit of the outer London boroughs lurking underneath that posh accent.

“Where are you from?” I asked. “London, I’m guessing, but where?”

He blinked, clearly surprised. “I didn’t know you Yanks could tell a Cockney from a Cornishman.”

I blushed. “I don’t know about that. But I study English lit and watch enough TV to tell the difference between North and South.”

Again, that grin came out before he took another drink. “London, yeah. South, originally. Croydon, if you know where that is.”

I perked. “I do, actually. That’s where Kate Moss is from, right?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. That’s what we’re famous for. But we’ve got a lot more than models on South End, I promise.”

I giggled. “I’m sure you do.”

I received a grin this time—one that was equally sharp and blindingly friendly. He was like a young wolf who had no idea how sharp his incisor had suddenly grown.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s play a game then. A name, plus three things no one else here knows.”

It was a novel approach. I had to give him that.

“No one else in the world?” I asked. “Or just in the bar.”

He worried his mouth a bit, making me very aware of just how full it was. And how long it had been since I had last kissed anyone.

Even at twenty-two, I could count the number of people I’d kissed on one hand. Riley

“Let’s say the city,” said the stranger. “I like a compromise.”

I giggled again and received another mischievous grin in return. He was that charming.

“All right,” I said. “In the spirit of compromise. My name is Frankie.”

“Frankie?” he interrupted. “Isn’t that a bloke’s name?”

My face colored like it always did when people pointed out my androgynous moniker. “It’s short for Francesca.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “I like Francesca. I like them both, but Francesca fits you better if you don’t mind me saying so. Bit more elegant. Frankie sounds like a barmaid. But you’re the type who should be served at the bar. Not the one cleaning up.”

I frowned, honestly not sure what to think about that. Frankie was what my family called me. They had my entire life. But then again, hadn’t I been doing just what he said my entire life too? Always helping? Always cleaning up?

“Frankie” was exactly who I was.

Except not to this man, apparently.

“It’s just a name,” I mumbled.

“And the rest?” He clinked his bottle to my glass again, pulling my attention back to the moment. “I want those secrets, Ces.”

Another nickname. He pronounced it “Chess,” using the Italian pronunciation of the syllable.

Something warm grew in my chest. I didn’t even know this man, but somehow he’d already found a way to make me belong to him in some small way. Or at least to help me be something other than Frankie Zola, family drudge, perfect student, the quiet nobody in a city full of somebodies who never seemed to stop.

And I...didn’t hate it.

“All right,” I said as I took another sip of my drink. “Three things no one else in New York knows. That’s harder for me, you know, considering I grew up here.”

The stranger’s eyes twinkled. “Figured that.”

Of course, he had. Intelligence practically poured from that mischievous face.

“Okay, okay. Um, number one—and this is basically sacrilege in my house, I’ll have you know—I think Jennifer Lopez is a really overrated singer.”

The stranger chuckled. “Fair enough. She’s really known for her dancing anyway.”

“My youngest sister is obsessed,” I said. “Joni fully plans to follow J Lo’s footsteps from the Bronx to Hollywood fame.”

Another chuckle. But he just waited for me to continue.

“Number two...” I tapped my chin. “Oh! I think Mary Shelley is a better writer than her husband.”

My date laughed outright. “That’s not a matter of debate,” he said. “Frankenstein is a bloody classic. A lot better than Shakespeare, in my opinion.”

“You’ve read it?” I perked up.

He was so different from most of the boys in my graduate program. English students tended toward soft, scholarly, bookish sorts. My sudden date would have towered over any of them with just his shadow.

He looked a bit sheepish. “Well, I’m British, so, I reckon I had to somewhere along the way. I was shite at school, though. So don’t judge me for not remembering a word of it. I liked the bits when the monster watches the family, though. Forget their name.”

“De Lacey,” I said automatically, thrilled we were even having this conversation.

Talking about literature with anyone outside of my classes had always been an impossible affair. Maybe he was a student. At Columbia, probably. There was no other explanation.

The stranger’s smile grew adorably lopsided. “De Lacey. Yeah. Anyway, I liked that part. It was...I dunno, I suppose a bit familiar.”

I knew the part he was talking about. It was probably the most hopeful part of the narrative—the part where Frankenstein’s monster watches a family of humble cottagers through a winter, learning to speak, feel, and think by example of their humanity.

But it was sad, too. As the reader, you knew the monster’s hopes would all be dashed. Eventually, he would catch sight of his reflection in the lake, and his horror at his hideous reflection was an obvious foreshadowing of the family’s eventual reaction to him as well. To his realization that as a strange hybrid creature, he’d never be fully accepted by the human family he so adored.

“Familiar how?” I wondered. What did my enormous conversation partner identify within that scene?

His expression darkened a moment, but he shook his head. “No, no. You’ve got a third fact still.”

I pressed my lips. I didn’t want to be put off. But a deal was a deal. “You’re not getting out of that. But, all right, the third fact is...”

Suddenly I could only think of one thing. One idea I’d never vocalized to anyone.

“I—I don’t want to live in New York anymore.”

The stranger looked up as if surprised, though why, I couldn’t say. After all, he didn’t know me other than these three little statements and my name.

“Why not?” he asked. “I thought all New Yorkers thought this city was the center of the universe.”

I shrugged. “Plenty do. But I...I don’t. I’ve never said it to anyone, but sometimes I think about leaving. Going somewhere else where no one knows me. And I can be...well, not one of six siblings. Someplace I can be whoever I want.”

“Like where?”

I shook my head. “You’ll laugh. But I swear it’s not because I met you tonight. I’m a graduate student. I study British literature literally all day, every day.”

He grinned. “Where, Ces? Come on, out with it.”

I blushed. This was going to make me sound like such a flirt. “London. I really, really want to live in England for a while.”

That smile immediately turned into a full-blown grin. “Well. I can’t say I hate the idea,”

Something in my stomach flipped.

“Your turn,” I said before grabbing my drink. “You name, sir. And your three things. Make them interesting, please.”

He chuckled again. “I suppose you deserve that. Right, my name is Xavier Sato. But my mum called me Xavi.”

Xavier. It was a lovely name. Almost as lovely as Xavi. I liked them both. And somehow, they both suited him.

“And three things no one in New York knows about you?” I pressed.

“Well, that’s easy, since no one in New York knows me anyway,” he replied. “One, I’m a chef. I speak the language of food, not books, so you’ll have to read to me while I cook if that’s all right with you.”

I swallowed thickly as my eyes drifted down to his forearms, those fingers. The idea of those broad, capable hands chopping, sauteing, those hands reaching across a counter to feed me some delicious morsel while I held a book on my lap...how could he possibly know that was practically porn to a girl like me?

“Two,” he continued, “I really hate mushy peas. It’s treason where I’m from, but I’ve only ever had one version I like at a pub in Camden.”

“And three?” I pressed with a smile. “Make it good.”

“Three...”

He looked me over, his eyes slowing as he passed over my neck and shoulders, flickering over my figure, which was encased in an admitted tight red shirt. It wasn’t revealing by any standard, but it did cling to my curves and cut off just above my navel, showcasing just about every curve I had.

All of which seemed to arch slightly under that heated gaze.

“And three”—Xavier reached a long arm across the bar to drift a finger over my wrist—“I really, really like your shirt.”