Page 10 of Ruin

“Get out.”

My voice is low and dangerous, and she takes a step back.

“Tommy, I—”

“Get the fuck out. Now.”

She grabs her purse and practically runs to the door.

When it clicks shut behind her, I try calling Giovanna again. Straight to voicemail.

I stay where I am for a while, then stand unsteadily and stumble the few feet to the couch where I fall face down. My mind wants to immediately return to my fantasy of Giovanna, but I won’t allow it. I don’t deserve her, not even in my imagination.

Instead, I fantasize about how I’m going to remove Tony the Motherfucking Hack from the planet as soon as I can walk a straight line again.

4

Giovanna

So did you fuck Tony or not?

The text cuts through my father’s droning monologue like a blade. I want to hurl my phone across the room. Goddamn Lexi. I’ve told her ‘no’ a thousand times—in group chats, private messages, in-person—but apparently Antonio said that we did, so she won’t stop bringing it up.

I’ve made it crystal clear that Antonio is full of shit, but everyone believes him, even Lexi.

Come on. You don’t have to lie.

Tell me the truth! Did you bleed?

You know I want alllll the details, bitch!

My jaw clenches. The ‘details’ aren’t worth sharing. After Antonio’s attempted love con bullshit in the elevator, I went to go find Tommy’s suite with the intention of waiting forhim.

But Dragovari Tower is fucking huge, and I wandered around for hours, lost, until I finally called him over and over. When he didn’t pick up, I ordered an Uber and added this shitty night to the pile of shitty Demonio New Year’s Eve galas I’ve endured over the years.

Why Antonio decided to brag about fucking me is beyond comprehension, but he’s been texting every day to check in on me, swearing he never said anything. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. I don’t really care.

My plan is to hand Tommy my V-card then head back to school and build a life that has nothing to do with my family’s position or anybody back home. Clean slate.

But it’s been two weeks since I texted Tommy to fuck off on New Year’s Eve after he didn’t answer my calls, and I haven’t heard from him since.

Since then, I’ve just been hiding out at my parents’ house, waiting out winter break, so I can go back to my apartment on Bleeker Street and back to school.

That can’t happen soon enough. Usually, my parents take separate vacations over Christmas, leaving me on their Long Island estate alone. It’s always been that way. They were ghosts haunting my childhood, absent phantoms who left me to raise myself, though my mom was around more than my dad. But this past year, my father has been suffocatingly present, obsessed with monitoring who I date and maniacally focused on keeping me away from Tommy.

Case in point, he’s standing in my doorway as I wander around packing, going over New Year’s Eve for the thousandth time, pushing me toward Antonio and awayfrom Tommy.

As if on cue, a text comes in from Antonio:

Gigi, will you please just see me? I want to

make it up to you. Please? Let me take

you to dinner tonight?

My father stops mid-sentence, his lecture grinding to a halt. “Is that Tommy?”

I look up, irritated. “No.”