"I'll think about it," I say, nodding as I turn from him. "Thanks."
I start back toward Karissa when the dealer calls out to me. "Uh, Mr. Vitale, about the damage. The, uh… bullet holes."
Karissa's eyes drift to me when he says that. I turn away from her again to look at the man. "What about them?"
"Would you like us to fix it?" he asks. "There's no interior damage, of course, since it's an S-Guard… and thank God for that, right? But the body shop can take care of the cosmetic damage."
"Maybe some other time."
I head over to the main desk and pay the bill, pulling the cash straight from my pocket, mourning the loss of my wallet, before heading back to Karissa. Wordlessly, I motion for her to follow me, and the two of us head out of the dealership to where my car's parked near the garage service doors. I open the passenger side for her, and she pauses, regarding me warily. I can see the curiosity in her eyes, and I have all the answers in the world, but she never asks the right questions.
Without commenting, she slips into the passenger side, letting me shut the door. I climb behind the wheel and start the car, merging into Manhattan traffic right away.
She sits in the cool leather seat, still holding onto my passport. She opens it again as I drive, scanning through the pages, a contemplative look on her face. "No Italy."
"Excuse me?"
She holds up the passport. "There are no stamps from Italy in here."
"Oh, yeah, they never bother to stamp it."
"Why?"
"I don't know." I've never given it much thought, always grateful to be waved straight through whenever I've landed in Rome. "Why does it matter?"
"Because you told me you've been to Italy."
I turn to her as I pull up at a red light, surprised by her accusatory tone. "I have."
She looks torn as to whether or not to believe me, and I realize then why it matters so much. She's still looking for a reason to doubt me, looking for justification to hate me, grasping any smidgen of skepticism that comes along to try to convince herself that she shouldn't love me.#p#分页标题#e#
She doesn't want to love me.
I don't blame her.
But the fact remains that she does.
She loves me.
And she probably hates that fact more than she hates me most days.
I look away from her when the light turns green. She seems to, for the moment, decide to believe what I'm saying. She glances back at the passport, scanning over the few stamps I've collected before closing it.
She tosses it in the center console and slouches in her seat, shifting her body so she can lean against the door and stare out the window. "Do your parents still live in New York?"
"Yes."
"Here in the city?"
"Yes."
"And you don't see them?"
"No."
"Why not?"
I sigh as I pull up at yet another red light. Traffic is heavy today. It's going to take a while to get back to Brooklyn at this rate. I'm exhausted, and nauseated, and my body is really starting to ache.
I cut my eyes at her, seeing her inquisitive look. "You sure you're not writing a book about my life?"
She rolls her eyes. "I'm just trying to figure out who you are."
"You know who I am."
"No, I don't." Her voice has a hard edge to it, a slight hint of anger that makes my skin prickle. "You're like a caricature to me, Naz… you're an outline of a man, a vague sketch of a person, and I'm just trying to fill in the rest of the picture, add some color between all these black lines, and I don't know how to do that, how to figure out who you really are, without prying it out of you."
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything," she says. "I want to know everything about you. And I know you told me the answers might not be pretty, but I don't care. If we're going to have any chance in hell of doing whatever it is we're doing, of actually building something together, I'm going to have to understand what makes the answers so ugly in the first place."
I consider that for a moment, sitting in silence as I stare through the windshield at the bright red light, waiting for it to change. Once it turns green, I make an unexpected turn, cutting in front of other cars, ignoring the blare of their horns, as I hook a left down a nearby street.
It veers us away from Brooklyn when I take yet another left, setting us back in the direction we just came.
"Are you hungry?" I ask, glancing at Karissa.
She stares at me with disbelief. I can see the fury brewing in her eyes, anger at being disregarded, at having her questions ignored. Any walls I busted down are already being reconstructed, her guard going back up, her armor coming on.
I'm grateful for it, for the moment.
She's probably going to need it.
"You haven't eaten yet today," I say when she doesn't answer.