Mena
It seemed like my fingers were working overtime as I was texting back and forth with Pilar. If we weren’t texting, we were talking over the phone.
In the span of just a week, we had gone from acquaintances to close friends and I couldn’t imagine my life without her. We had bonded over everything, from our shared sense of humor to our late night conversations about unserious things.
‘Anyway, how’s that fine man of yours doing?’ I put down my phone just as quickly as I had read that text.
My gaze drifted toward the closed bathroom door which Alessio was behind, showering.
The fresh memory of our kiss was still in my mind. He had never addressed it again, just pretended as if it didn’t happen. It was good because it wasn’t something to discuss, but also horrible because it meant he didn’t felt that ‘thing’ what I felt during the kiss.
It was a strange feeling I had never had before, not with Anson or any other high school flings. And as much as I tried to push that thought aside, I somehow couldn’t forget about that kiss.
Our bond had also grown over the past few days. No, we weren’t best friends, or spending every moment together. He was too busy with work for that. Alessio wasn’t nearly as cold as he used to be, and we got along great. We asked about each other’s days, joked around, discussed silly topics such as which movies sucked.
I heard the bathroom door open, and immediately grabbed my phone to pretend as if I was doing something.
It was a routine of his to step out shirtless, and it would be my routine to stare.
“Got any plans for tomorrow?” He asked, casually.
“No.” I replied, secretly hoping he wouldn’t be working.
“Lucky,” he said. “I have a busy day tomorrow.”
He settled in his usual spot on the sofa while I laughed at his words. “You always have a busy day,” I said, stating the obvious.
Alessio shrugged his shoulders, not saying a word. He had ended the conversation while I was still staring at him as a hopeless fool.
I had intended to allow him on the bed for quite some time now, but I had never had the courage to ask.
However, this time I took a deep breath and decided I would just go for it. “You can sleep on the bed if you want. I don’t mind,” I finally blurted out, my heart racing at the possibility of rejection.
Alessio turned his head quickly, giving me a shocked look. “That kiss got you acting a little crazy, doesn’t it?” He teased, acknowledging what had happened for the first time.
My cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “N-No,” I stammered, but failed miserably.
Alessio, who had noticed, luckily decided to let it go, but not without a hint of amusement in his eyes. “I’m not complaining.”
He gathered his things. “Actually, I’ve been waiting for you to ask me for a while now,” he admitted, moving toward the bed.
“Really?” I squinted as he moved beside me, keeping himself at a respectful distance. Giving up his bed and not taking advantage of the situation made me respect him. These were things that should be seen as normal, but to many, they weren’t.
That day when we had first met, when he had told Dante to stop bothering me, I thought he only did it to get back at his brother. Now I knew he did that because that’s the kind of man he was trying to be. He wasn’t perfect, but he was trying.
I stared as he texted on his phone, and it was maybe a bit too obsessive, but it bothered me that I didn’t know who he was texting. The curiosity was killing me, and after Gian had painted him as someone who couldn’t go a week without sex, I had to know where he was getting it from because I sure as hell wasn’t giving it to him.
“I want to thank you again for what you did for Naty, by the way,” I began a conversation, hoping he would stop texting. He had gone above and beyond for Naty’s schooling, paying her tuition at that private school from kindergarten through high school.
When I told him there was no need for that because we would be leaving one day, he told me it would be enough to transfer to a different private school.
“Don’t worry about it,” Alessio’s eyes were still glued to his phone. “I did it for Naty. I did it from my heart.”
I did it for Naty, I did it from my heart.
Her own dad used to blame me for getting pregnant and Naty for being born. Anson had always done things because he had to, and nothing had come from his heart.
One time, he even went as far as telling me that his life would’ve been better if I had just died in that hospital bed.
I used to beg him to do things from his heart, and this man I hadn’t known for long did it because he meant it.
I had concluded he was probably a cold-blooded killer, a criminal, a monster-but not towards me or my daughter. It was a very selfish thought, but as long as he was treating us the way he had been, I was okay with that.
“What are you looking at?” Alessio caught me off guard. This time, he was looking at me, and I realized I was so zoned out that I hadn’t even noticed.
“No, no, what are you looking at?” I reversed the question, shaking my finger with a stuck-up smirk.
He hummed, twisting his body to take a better look at me. Our eyes locked, and my heart almost beat out of my chest. I knew why that was, and I knew what I felt for him-but thinking it in my head sounded just as bad as saying it out loud. That’s why I let it be.
“I don’t know if I’ll be back tomorrow,” he suddenly announced.
“Do I have to come with you then?” I asked, shamelessly hoping I could tag along. Although almost everyone treated me kindly, I still felt more at ease with him around.
“No,” Alessio replied, “you can stay here.”
“Are you meeting a woman?” I blurted out before I could stop herself. The question slipped out, surprising even myself. I immediately felt regretful, worrying that I might have crossed a line.
“I’m sorry, I mean-I won’t mind if you do. That’s really none of my business and all of this is pretend anyway. You’re free to do whatever you want-because we’re friends,” I stammered, trying to backpedal and ease the tension I feared I had created.
“Right-so are you,” Alessio’s expression softened, and he smiled weakly. “Friends?”
“Yes.”
“I have to visit twenty Fanucci businesses in just a day. Trust me, you don’t want to come along with this one,” he said, leaving no room for argument.
I wanted to get into it deeper, asking which businesses, and why he had to be the one to do it. I didn’t, because I had already made up my mind and decided it was to keep Domenico happy. He started with nothing and was the type of person who would boast about his son getting ahead on his own because he truly deserved it, not just because it was given to him.
“You can invite Pilar to come over. It can get lonely in this place,” he suggested.
“I don’t want to bother her,” I said, thinking about how Pilar had her own life to live without me dragging her into mine.
“But you want to bother me?” Alessio chuckled, leaning his face close to mine. His words seemed to imply that he was aware I wanted to come with him.
“I wasn’t…I didn’t…” I couldn’t find the right words. Alessio showed me a comforting smile, lightly tracing my cheek with the back of his index finger.
“You need to loosen up. It’s not that serious,” he said, his gaze locking with mine. He leaned in, and for a brief moment I wondered if he might kiss me again. But then he pulled away and slightly shook his head as to convince himself that he wasn’t.
“What’s the deal with your family?” he asked, shifting the topic. I knew what he was getting up, especially with it being after that ‘loosen up’ comment. He was trying to dig deeper so he could find out whether it was just Anson who had ruined me or if my family included.
“Naty is my family,” I said defensively.
“You know that’s not what I mean. You never told me about your family.”
“What about them?” I shot back, regretting it right after. He could’ve easily dug up my past if he wanted to, but he wanted to hear it from my mouth.
I’m sure he wouldn’t understand, but having such a distant relationship with my mom and siblings was humiliating to me. I was always the one to initiate contact, and, opposed to my life in school, at home, I had always been the odd one out, feeling like an outsider even within my own family.
“I have a lot of family, but everyone is just out doing their own stuff.” I admitted with pain in my heart. “I didn’t grow up like you did, with family around all the time. I don’t even have a dad. I envy you.”
“There’s nothing to envy when everyone always misunderstands you,” Alessio responded. opening up about his own struggles.
“What do you mean?” I asked, genuinely curious. He didn’t ping me as the type of person to care about what anyone thought of him.
Alessio sighed before explaining his point. “Being a Fanucci means living with people’s wrong assumptions about my character,” he said. “There’s no point in trying to change what they already think of me, so I just go along with however they decide to treat me.”
“How do people think about you?” I asked carefully.
“I think you know.”
I did know. The Alessio I was getting to know was far from the menacing figure I had been warned about. Whether it was customers at the old place I used to work or the people I used to work with-all of them seemed to fear the same thing: the Fanuccis.
My thoughts drifted to the older woman who had also warned me to stay away from them, Mrs. Rodriguez. I had promised to return, and now I had to live with the guilt because I didn’t.
I wasn’t planning on visiting her either, because after she would learn of this engagement, she would shut the door in my face immediately.
That was the price of being a Fanucci.
They either respected you, hated you, or feared you.
“I saw you as a weak target in the beginning because you were so scared of us, and I just went with it, making you my fiancee and threatening to kill you if you denied,” an unexpected confession left his mouth all at once. “I’m sorry about that, by the way.”
“Thanks.” I forced a smile, forcing him to bump my fist and he did.
It had crossed my mind that if I had told him the truth about Naty’s existence, we wouldn’t have ever been here, yet the two of them still got along better than anyone would expect.
“You know, I’m glad you scared the shit out of me,” I yawned, turning around to go to sleep. “Because I’m glad to be here.”