Nowhere Girl by Carla Ciccone

Author:Carla Ciccone [Ciccone, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2025-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

Skip Notes

*1 We held hands and kissed for six weeks.

*2 My feet were always cold.

*3 In the early 2000s, plasma TVs were only for rich people.

Five

Grown Up

It was nine a.m. and I was crying in the middle of the bank, staring at my mud-splashed rain boots. The day before, I took my dog for a long walk in the rain and worked up the courage to finally confront my boyfriend. I recently learned that he had cheated on me with escorts while on vacation, but I had been too afraid to bring it up. The conversation went eerily well. He was so uncharacteristically quiet, so nearly penitent, that I almost let myself believe his straight-faced denial. Instead, I took what little was left of my self-worth and went to my parents’ place for the night.

When I returned to our condo in the morning, my key no longer worked. In less than fifteen hours and with no official breakup in place, my boyfriend of over four years had changed our locks on me. From the street, I waved goodbye to our dog, Joni, who was jumping up and down in the window, got back into my car, and drove to the bank. He had already been there minutes before me to empty our joint accounts. A bank teller was speaking to me, but all I could hear was the piercing hum of the fluorescent lights overhead.

I was wondering what his next move would be when the teller finally came into focus. “He was trying to get your name off the mortgage and land title, too, but like, he can’t just do that,” she said. Ah yes, that.

A different banker led me by the shoulders into her office, sat me down, and said: “Honey, it’s time to call a lawyer.”

It was fitting that I was crying in a bank. Four years prior to getting locked out of my condo, my now-ex encouraged me to get a job at a bank while I finished my last semester of college. He didn’t like that I handed out towels and opened the gate for basketball bros and floor hockey teams at my part-time job at the community center.

We met during my last year of college. Every time my Tuesday and Thursday afternoon Eastern religions class let out, I saw the same bored-looking blond guy in the hall, waiting for his class to start. He had an intense stare and wore a different designer scarf every day. Based on his scarves and ever-changing kicks, I assumed he was from Europe. When the last class of the semester let out, he chased me down a busy hallway and asked for my phone number.

It turned out he wasn’t European, just a regular Anglo-Canadian, but the vibe was intentional. He wanted to be Italian, so much so that he would sometimes give his name as Enzo when making reservations. His name wasn’t really Enzo, but we’ll go with that for posterity.

At first, Enzo was thoughtful and doting.

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