"Million-what!" Dante sputtered. Dante snapped away from Naya's shoulder and found himself sitting across from her with his arms wrapped around his knees, trying to fit into the tiny space he'd trapped his large self into. Naya's face hadn't changed at all, even looking a little bored, as if she'd just announced she'd found a dollar bill in an old forgotten jacket.
"Being a millionaire isn't really that big of a deal nowadays," Naya said with a shrug, "And plus, I'm not keeping most of it."
Dante felt like he'd been punched in the gut. "What?"
"What do you mean 'what'?" Naya scoffed. "The money's probably tainted. Maybe the cops didn't find out yet, but if something down the road connects me to that money, I'm in big trouble. If worse comes to worse, I'll bat my eyes real cute and tell them 'Oh, officer, I had no idea'." Naya widened her eyes and puckered her lips slightly, allowing her face to take on that of an innocent doe looking down the barrel of a gun. Dante had an unsettling urge to believe she was as clueless as she claimed to be.
Dante shook off the feeling, saying, "So you're really just going to get rid of all of it?"
Naya's face reset to her normal resting face. "The money, yeah I'm just gonna donate it to a bunch of organizations, but I'm keeping anything I get from selling the properties, because I know that's clean. And because they were on their way back from signing the house when they were in the accident, and paid for it in full, that includes the house you helped build."
Dante felt a pang in his chest at the thought of her selling the house they'd met in, but it was wrong of him to expect her to live in that house all alone.
"Hey, if you need a place to crash, I can convince my mom to let you stay or …" As soon as he said it, he'd felt stupid. This girl was a millionaire, why would he want to crash with him "and his mom".
"Not yet," She surprisingly said. "I'm still staying in the rental home for now so I can finish high school, and then I'm off to college… but after? I think I might buy my own place around the corner if anything opens up."
"Why? You could live in one of those high class apartments downtown for years just off the money you get from the house. Why'd you want to live here?"
"First of all, I don't want to touch that money. It's just to get me through college and then the rest of it's an emergency fund in case things go wrong. Maybe I'll invest it or something, but it just feels like…" Naya searched for the perfect comparison, "... a bomb that could go off at any time." Naya buried her face in her hands and groaned, and Dante couldn't help but notice that was something he did. "Sorry, I must sound paranoid or something."
Dante reclaimed his place by Naya and let her lean her head against his arm. "Nope, you don't really have to explain yourself to me. I'm believing that you're making the right choices for yourself, and it doesn't really matter what I think. Man, this is all just so messed up." Dante shook his head with exasperation.
"Let's talk about you now. You guys found Manny right?"
"Unfortunately," Dante said, getting a small smack on the arm from Naya, which he mockingly rubbed.
"He's just so mad right now. And the weird thing is, I totally get it. He did something stupid, he got caught, and now he doesn't know what's gonna happen. He's got two options, think about, he can either let himself go down this rabbit hole he won't be able to come out of, or make himself busy by getting mad and blaming everyone else so he doesn't realize that he did this to himself."
"Damn, that's deep. You do something like that?" Naya asked.
"More or less. I went down the rabbit hole."
"Oh yeah? When?"
"Uh…" Dante contemplated telling Naya. She'd probably already put the pieces together, but it was another thing to hear it from the source. "When Gloria broke up with me, I was in a funk for a couple weeks. I guess I thought it was my fault, but now I know she just wasn't ready for that kind of relationship, and honestly, neither was I."
Dante's eyebrows perked up as he made a realization, "Oh, I got really depressed after our first kiss!"
Naya raised her eyebrow at Dante's enthusiasm.
"I mean, after we kissed, I thought it was great, perfect even, but then you ran off and I thought I messed up. I think I was more stressed that one week than I was that entire month I was hung up on Gloria. Then the… bridge thing happened."
"Which didn't do much for your guilt," Naya realized. "God, I'm so sorry. Is that why you got mad at me when you came to see me after? Because you didn't want to take on that guilt?"
Dante had to take a moment to think about it, "Yeah, I guess. I don't think I could have handled being the reason something happened to you." Dante shuddered, "Ugh, I don't like all this dissecting our feelings and shit. It's getting too weird."
Naya looped her hand around Dante's arm and looked up at him with a pressed smile, "We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. Tell me about Manny, how's that going?"
"Well, we have to show up to court on Tuesday. A judge decides whether Manny gets juvie, a probation, or just a small fine. I think my mom's hoping for a month of probation just so he learns his lesson, but my dad's convinced he's going to juvie because he was the only brown kid in the group. Guy leaves for weeks at a time, comes home for the weekend, leaves again, and then blames us? What a douchebag."
Naya let her fingers tangle with Dante's, "Maybe he's scared of blaming himself?"
Dante paused, considering the possibility. He gently bumped his forehead with Naya's. "Why do you have to be so insightful all the damn time?" he chuckled.
Naya bumped her nose against Dante's softly. "To anyone but myself babe."
She'd expected the term to feel wrong and misplaced, but it had rolled off her tongue as if it was the missing piece to the simple response. It felt like definitive proof that the inevitable was happening. Dante wrapped his arm around Naya, pulling her closer to his thumping chest. Not saying anything, they watched the last minutes of the sunset pull the night sky at its tail until finally disappearing over the horizon.