Page 1 of State of Mind

CHAPTER 1

His brothers used to always joke that he had the baby complex, because he was supposed to be the baby. His parents had treated him like a little king up until he was three when his mother’s illness turned out to be another screaming, shitting, angry baby with red cheeks and a full head of dark hair. He remembered feeling betrayed, staring down at the ugly little squirming slug in the bassinet feeling like the world had betrayed him. People stopped looking at him, playing with him, giving him attention.

And all for what?

The red-faced lump who didn’t know the four whole letters of his name the way Luca did?

It got more complicated though, when his parents came home and tried to explain to all the siblings that Adriano was deaf. Luca didn’t quite know how to process the word, and being three, even his mother’s simple, “It means he can’t hear you,” wasn’t enough. Luca still didn’t like him right away. He still wasn’t sure that this was a good idea.

It didn’t last, of course. With all of his other siblings off to school, Luca spent most of the day with the baby and watched him grow. He learned to help—he learned to take pride in filling in the spaces where his chubby little hands would fit. He could feed Adriano and hold him sometimes—if he was very careful and had a pillow on his lap. And Adriano started to get bigger, and Luca managed to coax his baby brother’s first smile out of him—and then his first laugh.

Adriano made him feel important after that, because he was attached. Because he loved Luca more than anyone else. Because Adriano cried and sometimes only Luca could soothe him.

It didn’t take long for Luca to start truly understanding the difference in his sibling. He reacted to lights, and to heavy sounds, and to things that made the floor vibrate. He made loud noises because he didn’t know he was doing it, and it annoyed everyone but Luca.

Adriano was bright-eyed and so smart, and everyone overlooked him because they didn’t want to learn how to speak with him in sign.

But Luca did.

He enjoyed being Adriano’s link to the rest of the siblings. Where his brothers and sisters got all the attention, it made him feel important. He enjoyed being the big brother with strong fists that could threaten little asshole kids down the street who mocked the way Adriano laughed and the way he sounded when he begged Luca to push him on the swing higher and faster.

It wouldn’t last, of course. Luca would have no idea how fast things would change when Adriano stepped into the world of porn—but then again, none of their family did.

Life was mostly a struggle for money before Adriano became a star and his career took off. Six kids and two parents were crammed into a three-bedroom house in La Mesa, they rode the bus everywhere, and his mother prepared pasta dishes made from boxed casserole kits and sauce from the jar while quietly mourning her inability to live up to her mother’s expectations.

Adriano’s first big check had changed everything. His first video pulled in six figures and offered more money than his parents had ever seen in the entirety of their marriage. And it was just the first of many.

Adriano showed up, asking Luca to interpret, as he presented Pietro with enough money to leave his shitty, ambulance chasing practice and start something that would light a fire in his gut. He bought Luca his first condo and his first art gallery. He sent the girls to Florida, he sent Gio and his wife to New York. The money kept coming, and Luca kept taking, and suddenly, he didn’t have to try anymore.

‘This feels wrong,’ he told Adriano one night when his brother was trying to hand him the keys to a new Bentley. ‘You can’t keep giving me this shit. I didn’t even do anything.’

Adriano had just laughed though and pulled him into a hug, because Adriano was always freer with his affections than any of their other siblings. He was the baby, but he held Luca like he was younger, and smaller, and waited until Luca’s body went relaxed in his embrace. ‘You spent your entire childhood taking care of me. This is the least I can do.’

Except, it never did feel right. He’d lie in his bed with sheets that cost more than his first car and stare up at the ceiling and wonder what the fuck any of his life even meant anymore. He’d stopped trying, but then he was forced to wonder if he’d ever really even started.

And maybe his sad, sorry little life was his own fault. Pietro had taken what Adriano offered him and made something of himself. He used it as just a place to jump off and held his own, and his real wealth had come from his own hard work. And what did Luca have? He was the patron of a handful of art galleries, he owned an expensive car, a posh condo steps from the water, and constantly entertained a crowd of so-called friends who were with him only because he was free with his time, and his cash, and his booze.

He was miserable, and he was lonely. But more than that…he was empty. While his siblings had worked hard for what they had, Luca had simply allowed them to give—allowed himself to take—and that was where it ended. In the quiet moments, when he was alone in his condo with his too-expensive furniture, paintings he didn’t understand, and the bottles of wine more expensive than his college rent, he hated himself.

Deep down, he knew that made him more of a bastard, because there were so many people just blocks away that would have given a limb for even a fraction of what he had, and he somehow found it in himself to lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling and wonder how he could stop being such a shallow prick.

And it only got worse when Adriano abandoned his entire life, disappeared, and came home practically married to an adorable baker with a crooked smile and a sea of freckles across his cheeks. And Luca wanted to laugh, at first. He wanted to pull his brother away from this man who clearly didn’t fit and ask him what the hell he was thinking. And he almost had, the first night Adriano brought Noah home for Sunday dinner. And then he watched Adriano watch Noah—like the man hung the moon and lit the sun, and he knew that whatever those two had was important. And he knew it was something he would never, ever have. Not as the person he’d become.

Two years passed, with Noah and Adriano together, and it killed him to watch a little bit more each day.

His envy was cruel, and it was vicious, with sharp teeth and jagged claws. He was grateful that they were in LA, that Noah’s schooling and Adriano’s work kept them busy and occupied. Luca’s envy often felt too close to hate, and his brother deserved happiness without complications. It was easier to like his Tweets, and to send him the occasional texts, and to keep himself apart.

Luca’s coping mechanisms had never been particularly healthy, and he was aware of that as he buried himself further into more bottles of wine and familiar arms belonging to people who would never truly love him and in throwing cash at people whose attention could distract him from the ache in his gut. He was well aware that no one in his life was permanent, and no one in his life cared about him for the person he was instead of the zeroes lining his pockets, but he’d take what he could get. But something had to give. He was feeling a desperation unfamiliar to him, and he knew if he didn’t address it soon, he’d do something reckless. That, he knew, was the last thing any of his family needed.

“Luc?” came a soft voice to his right. The room smelled like wine, sweat, and sex, and his body was deliciously sore from their late-night acrobatics. “Why are you awake?”

Gabrielle was probably his longest friend—or at the very least, his longest fuck-buddy. They’d been introduced at a gallery showing, and he was drawn in by her quiet snark about modern art, and they spent the night sitting in the rafters sharing a bottle of cheap gin and all the cheese he managed to sneak off the buffet table. At the time finishing up her undergrads with her sights set on grad school. She desperately craved rising above the expectation the world had for a daughter of immigrants—her sights set on Stanford, and Luca had truly liked her. It was no trouble at all to pay the tuition, no trouble at all to make sure she didn’t want for much, if anything, while she worked her ass off to become someone he could never be. And he understood why she stuck around. Maybe she liked him a little as a person, and she was one of the few people he trusted with his vulnerable spots and existential crises. Maybe it wasn’t much, and it most certainly wasn’t forever, but it was something, and he needed her right then.

Luca turned his head to stare at her with a soft smile. Gabby had fallen asleep after his tongue had given her three screaming orgasms. After she was out, he crept into the bathroom and got himself off, then curled back up around her in bed to stare at the wall until the sky started to lighten along the horizon.

Luca reached down and brushed a stray curl behind her ear. “I haven’t slept.”

“Jesus.” She pushed up on her elbow and narrowed her eyes at his alarm clock. “Does that say five? Like a.m.?”

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