“Add that to the list of why I wish I could time-travel.”
Fifth floor, fifth kiss.
“This moment isn’t so bad,” Orion says.
This one isn’t.
Frankie Dario
6:40 p.m.
Frankie is going to kill Rolando.
He considers grabbing the gun from his closet, but a bullet is too merciful. He wants to personally beat Rolando to death. There are any number of ways to do that: the leg of the chair that just popped off as it crashed into the TV’s entertainment center, the TV itself, the boots by the door, the defrosted ham Gloria was supposed to cook for dinner, a kitchen knife, some good strikes with the ring of keys. His fists will do the trick just fine too.
“Rolando, get out here!”
“What are you doing?” Gloria asks.
Frankie points his finger at his wife—at the woman who no longer wants to be his wife. “You brought this man into my house, so let’s see how much of a man he is.” The door opens, and Rolando steps out. Paz tries following him, but Rolando nudges him back into his room. Rolando turns to Gloria.
“Don’t look at my wife!”
“You need to calm down,” Rolando says.
“You don’t make the rules in my house!”
“We’re all happy to leave your house.”
Frankie begins closing the space between himself and Rolando. “You can get the fuck out of my house, but you’re not leaving with my family!”
“I am not your property,” Gloria says, getting in between the two men.
Frankie shoves Gloria into Rolando’s arms. “Then you can both get out of here! But Paz isn’t going anywhere!”
He has no interest in being a single father, but he’ll be damned if another man raises his son.
“Where I go, Pazito goes!” Gloria shouts, brushing her hair out of her face.
“Over my dead body!” Frankie says.
He takes his first swing.
Valentino
6:41 p.m.
Orion holds his chest and takes a deep breath. “How’s your heart doing because mine—”
The shouting becomes clearer at the top of the sixth floor. It’s Frankie.
“You can get the fuck out of my house, but you’re not leaving with my family!”
A woman says something, maybe about property?
“Then you can both get out of here! But Paz isn’t going anywhere!”
“Where I go, Pazito goes!”
“Over my dead body!”
Then there’s a clap, like flesh on flesh, and a thud.
The woman screams “HELP!” before crying out in pain.
I drop the bedding, shaking in fear.
Everything in my heart tells me this is going to be the moment I’ve been dreading, but nothing stops me from racing up those steps.
“Valentino, no!”
“Stay back, Orion!”
I get to the sixth landing without a sixth kiss.
Frankie’s apartment door is open. He’s on top of a man pummeling him with nothing but his fists and a woman—I’m assuming his wife—is on the floor with her palm pressed against her devastated face. Then a door opens and that little kid, Paz, watches in horror at his father as he beats someone bloody. Is that man a Decker? I’m frozen over how unreal this is.