by Seth Eden
It started out as a genuine gesture to try and get her to see me and turned into a childish attempt to prove to her that she was missing something by not being with me. I was wrapping money around pebbles and chucking them at her window, but she was not opening the curtains. In fact, she’d turned the light off. By the early evening, I was so annoyed that I could have started spitting fire. I picked up my phone and called Ricky.
The line clicked on with Ricky on the other end, laughing already. “Hey, man. What’s coming next? A car?”
“Shut up. Did you have anything to do with that picture?”
“What picture?” His voice got quiet, then he called, “Did you take a picture of me? Willow!” His voice returned to normal volume. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“Whatever. Look, I need you to leave the house.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m coming over.”
Ricky’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I really don’t think she wants to see you.”
That knocked all of the rage out of me in one fell swoop. That’s right. I was actually trying to accomplish something meaningful. One could argue it was my penchant for losing sight of the goal that lost me Willow in the first place. I needed to not make that mistake again.
“I have to see her,” I responded with all the sincerity I could muster. “I…” My heart started to crack again. “I have to tell her I love her. That’s it. I’m going to tell her one last time what she means to me, and if she rejects me after that, I’ll let her go.”
Ricky let out a sigh. “All right. Give me ten minutes.”
7
Willow
“Where are you going?”
Ricky and I had spent the majority of our day by the pool. Apart from being constantly interrupted by Alessandro’s incessant gifts, we were having a great time.
I didn’t realize Ricky had such an active dating life, given he’d pitched a tent far up the Varassos’s asses. Apparently, he’d come close to getting down on one knee for one woman until she discovered who he worked for and hit the bricks. Can’t say I blame her. Who would want to stick around knowing they could be raided or killed at any given moment? No one wanted to live that life, and I told Ricky so. As long as he stayed leashed to the Varassos, nothing but pain and loneliness were in his future.
“I forgot I have a date,” Ricky obviously lied.
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, watching him get up off of the lounge chair he was on. “What’s her name?”
Ricky looked at me. “R-Rachel.”
I tipped my sunglasses down the bridge of my nose to peer over the lenses at him. “Veronica, what?”
“Rachel…Greene.”
“Oh, Rachel Greene, of course. Did you meet her at a coffee shop?”
Ricky’s lips poked out, and his eyes turned to the sky. “Oh, shit.” He started to laugh, and I joined him.
“Why are you lying? Where are you going?”
Ricky was really the only reason I was still in Philly at all. My mom had flown the coop immediately after the funeral was over. It probably shouldn’t have offended me so much that she decided to leave for her monthly vacation during the one week I was in town, but I was a little frustrated. After everything we’d been through, the least she could do was make an effort to try and spend some time with me or be marginally apologetic for the compromised parent she’d become. That said, it wasn’t like I was jumping through any hoops to hang out with her, either, so maybe I was hypocritical. I was supposed to be the kid, and she was supposed to be the parent, but I was only setting myself up for failure with that thought process. She hadn’t been the parent since the Varassos started padding her bank account. I’d stuck around to catch up with Ricky, so to say I was annoyed when he suddenly jumped up, saying he had to go, would be an understatement.
“I gotta go see Gabriel,” Ricky replied.
“Oh.” My head fell in disappointment.
“Yeah, I mean, I know how you feel about ‘em, so…”
I readjusted my gaze back to him. “Yeah, but I don’t want you to lie to me about what you’re doing. In fact, when you’re dealing with them, that’s the exact opposite of what I want you to do. I need you to be honest with me about what’s going on. What if something happens to you?”
Ricky walked over and knelt next to where I was laying. “Hey, what would happen to me? I’m Teflon.”
“I’ll admit you’ve found girth from god knows where, but you’re not bulletproof, Ricky. Neither are any of the Varassos.”
“You mean like Sandro?”
My heart backflipped at the mention of his name. “He is one of them.”
“You knew that when you started dating him, you know?”
I pulled my glasses off of my face so I could look into Ricky’s cerulean eyes properly, eyes reflecting my own. “I’m aware, but I got smart.”
“You also got lonely,” Ricky volleyed, shocking me. “Come on, don’t act surprised. I know you, Willow. I’ve never seen you happy the way I saw you when you and Sandro were together. I named all these chicks I’ve been dating. Who’ve you dated in the past six years?”
I didn’t like being ironed so flat. I appreciated a billowed cover that hid all of my feelings. “I’ve been busy with my career.”
“Sure, that’s why you’re laying poolside with not a care in the world.”
“I’m on vacation!” I stood up from my lounge chair. “I didn’t come here for you to rake me over the coals. I wanted to spend time with you, but if you’re going to judge me, then I’ll go buy a ticket home right now.”
I took off for the door to the house, and I could hear Ricky’s feet on the pavement behind me. He took hold of my arm and flipped me around. “I don’t want you to go. I want you to be happy.”
“I’ll be happy when I’m back home,” I replied.
“Will you?” Ricky asked, his eyebrows peaked and all-knowing.
“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do, Ricky? I can’t do this whole life that they do. I can’t be a part of the world that took our dad away. I can’t be part of the world that made Alessandro turn his back on me and turned our mother into a realistic, materialistic robot. This world consumes everyone in it, eventually. It’s going to take you, and if I let myself get too close to it, it’ll swallow me up, too!”
“You’re wrong,” Ricky said. “It’s not like that.”
I crossed my arms. “Oh, yeah? Where’s Marco?”
Ricky went silent. Marco was one of the four Varasso brothers, the second oldest under Luca. He and Ricky were almost as close as Ricky and Alessandro. For a long time, whenever I checked in with Ricky, he would tell me about what he, Marco, and Alessandro were up to. What part of the country they were in on any given day, or the silly things that Marco and Alessandro did in a vapid attempt to convince me of their humanity. It was rare to hear a story about Ricky’s day that didn’t involve Marco, and then, one day, he was gone. He was missing from all the stories. He wasn’t hanging around anymore, and Ricky wouldn’t even mention him in passing. If he’d died like the Varasso patriarch, I assume I would have heard, but the total absence of him meant he was likely in jail or on the run.
I coaxed Ricky. “I’m waiting.”
“He’s…” He turned his back to me and started for the stairs.
I followed him. “Exactly. Something happened to him, Ricky. I’m not dumb. You may not want to tell me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know.”
Ricky took a few strides up the stairs and then stopped and turned around. “There’s nothing wrong with loyalty, Willow. What our dad did, he did because he was loyal. Alessandro turning you down even though he’s so in love with you that he never got over you, that’s loyalty. You just packed up and moved to California and never looked back. You could pull a page from their book.”
I wasn’t sure where it had come from, but it probably had some tie to what had happened to Marco. I shook my head. “You’re blaming me?”
Ricky walke
d back down the stairs. “I’m…” He made a little noise and stomped his foot like a child throwing a temper tantrum. “Why does there have to be any blame at all? Why can’t we just be people who operate a little differently from the average folk? If someone like Alessandro loves you and wants to take care of you, what’s so wrong with that?”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I replied, “but some wives have to deal with their husbands working too late or wanting to have a few too many beers with the guys. I would always have to be looking over my shoulder. I would never be at peace. I’d be with Alessandro, and sure that would make me happy, but the risk is not worth the reward.”
“Being with me would make you happy?”
Ricky and I looked over toward the front door, and Alessandro was standing there leaning against the doorframe. I didn’t even need to ask how he got in. Obviously, all of the Varassos had keys to the place. They owned it, after all.
“That’s what you took away from that?” I asked.
Like a rollercoaster headed downhill, my blood coursed faster and faster through my veins. Suited like he always was, Alessandro’s appearance was simply comforting to me. Some people liked the smell of their mom’s home cooking, but I had Alessandro’s ever-errant curls and cogitating gaze. I was trying to push my feelings back into their hiding place, but they were snaking across the ground toward his feet, pulling me toward him.
“Yeah,” he responded, “that’s what I took away from that.” He had a dumb smile on his face like the concept made him truly happy.
Ricky walked up to Alessandro and bumped forearms with him before walking through the door and closing it behind him, leaving Alessandro and me alone.
“Tell me more,” Alessandro said softly, “about how happy you would be.”
8
Alessandro
It might have been dumb for me to be on cloud nine from an isolated piece of the argument Willow was making to Ricky when I walked through the door, but I was. If nothing else, it meant I wasn’t alone. Willow still had feelings for me, too, and even if she felt like she couldn’t be with me for whatever reason, that was a hill I was willing to die on.
That or the hill that had her standing in front of me in a lime green two-piece bathing suit, with her hair framing her face in messy, uncombed after swimming curls. Even with her eyes narrowed in irritation and her hands on her hips, she was better looking than any of the models on any magazine or television show I’ve ever enjoyed. If I didn’t think she’d hit me, I’d tackle her to the ground on the spot.
“I know that you have a tendency not to hear everything that someone is saying to you, but I also said the risk would not be worth the reward,” Willow repeated.
“Yes, but would I be a reward?” I asked, and Willow rolled her eyes.
“You are insufferable,” she replied and started to make her way up the stairs. “Now, if you can go, I’m about to change and buy a ticket back home.”
Home.
What was the best way to tell her that I wanted to be her home, that I wanted her to be mine? Willow gave me feelings that I didn’t know I knew how to feel. I’d been reaching out for her longer than I realized, and all I wanted to do was get to her. To have her look at me honestly and tell me she wanted what I wanted, too. Was it such an impossibility?
I started up the stairs after her, taking the opportunity to admire her shapely form pushing the limits of the fabric. In the trend of people rating their lovers on a scale from one to ten, I would rate Willow at a solid ten thousand. I loved Willow for who she was as a person, but her sexiness was a big bonus.
That aside, I appreciated that Willow was an intelligent person with an iron-clad will, who didn’t back down from a challenge. She was stubborn to a fault, to the point that she would occasionally sacrifice her happiness and sanity to prove a point—case and point, our current situation. Even that stubbornness was something I admired about her. Nothing made me happier than putting in days and days of work trying to get her to admit defeat, even if it was something menial. She would poke her bottom lip out and throw an adorable temper tantrum that typically started with her trying to ignore me and ended with her staring at me, waiting for me to kiss her frustrations away. Back when we were together, not a day passed where I wasn’t happy to wake up dating Willow Morietti. I truly believed I’d marry her one day. If it was socially acceptable for head over heels fourteen-year-olds to wed, I might have done it already.
“Are you following me?” Willow growled. “Don’t follow me. Go home.”
“I came all the way over here to talk to you. The least you could do is hear me out,” I said. She turned into her bedroom, and I followed in after her.
“I don’t want to hear what you have to say.” She lifted her suitcase from the ground onto her bed, opened it, and started sifting through the clothes.
Memories flooded my brain. It felt like I’d stepped through her door frame into the past. All the numerous days that I spent in that room, trying to get Willow to make out while she tried to entice me to study. All of the times we’d made love in her bed. It was easy to get away with because her mom wasn’t around much. All of the occasions I came storming up here and nearly broke down her door because I was pissed about one thing or another, and all she had to do was cup her hands on either side of my face, look into my eyes, and whisper my name, and the anger would crawl out of me. I missed everything we were back then. If I could have stepped back in time, I would have.
“Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve been up here.” The carpet was still the same knotted blue threads, and the walls were still cream with dark blue baseboards. Why did I expect it to look different, as though it had changed with us?
“Me too,” Willow replied. “It was weird walking back in here again.” She wasn’t looking at me, only pulling different articles of clothing out of her suitcase while folding up others. I moved to sit on the bed, the ecstasy that filled me as I did both arousing and calming. Willow’s bed; it was a place that brought me nothing but joy, regardless of what was done there. She closed her suitcase with force. “Can you go? I have to change.”
“So change. I’ve seen you naked dozens of times.” I tucked my arms behind my head and made myself comfortable against her backboard.
She snatched up the clothes she picked out and stomped off toward the door to the adjoining bathroom. “When I come back, you should be gone.”
“Hey, remember when you tried to sneak me in your window because your mom was dating that I’m gonna be your kids’ new dad guy?” I remembered myself trying to scale the lattice vine fence outside that was barely strong enough to hold the vines curled around it, but I tried to move all one-hundred-seventy pounds of me up it. “You sat there looking down at me, and I kept thinking to myself, I gotta get to her, I gotta get to her.’”
She was only standing a few feet away from me now, and I was still repeating that to myself.
Willow leaned against the door frame and looked at the window with a nostalgic smile. “Yeah. When I looked at the fence from outside, I didn’t think it was that high, but when you were climbing it, I was so terrified you were going to fall and die.”
“That was probably one of the dumber things I’ve done.” My eyes landed on Willow’s. “Don’t regret it.”
I watched as she briefly lost control. She took a cautious step toward me before stopping like an invisible forcefield pushed her back. She closed her eyes, put her back to me, and pointed toward the doorway out. “Go.”
“I don’t want to.” I stood up off of the bed and moved a little closer to her, the scents of suntan lotion and some sweet, fruity perfume filling my nose. “Willow, look at me.”
She shook her head. “Please just leave.”
“Do you really want me to?” I asked. I took a couple more steps forward. “I was joking downstairs, but I heard what you said. Being with me would make you happy.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“Yes, you did. You
don’t lie to Ricky. I know you.”
“You don’t know me,” she said.
I took another step, and I was so close I could reach out and touch her. Her head cocked gently to the side, and I knew I was close.
“You don’t know me at all.”
“I know you, Willow Morietti.” I brought my hands up to rest on her shoulders. “I spent my whole life getting to know you. Every single day, I woke up wanting to know more about you.” I tried to fill my cup with Willow, but I never found the top. The more I poured, the deeper the glass seemed to be. “I love you. I always have. Can you tell me, honestly, that you don’t feel the same way?”
Willow remained silent, and I moved my right arm to wrap around her stomach, her soft, porcelain skin like silk beneath my fingertips. My left hand ghosted forward, brushing against her cheek and cupping her chin to turn her face to the left, giving me access. All it would take was one utterance of no or stop or even for her to pull away. If she stepped away from my embrace, I would know proof-positive that she had made a decision to leave me in her past. It was like we were both tugging at the same rope, trying to pull the other to their side. Willow was spilling across the line, leaning toward my side. I was so close to what I’d dreamed of without fail for months upon months with no reprieve.
“I’m going to kiss you,” I whispered into her ear. “If you don’t stop me, it won’t end there.”
“If I was going to stop you, I would have done it already.” Her eyes fluttered closed, and she leaned back.
I couldn’t have been convinced I didn’t win the lottery. I pulled our lips to meet as what was left of my dam of restraint crumbled, sending a flood of waves crashing forth.
9
Willow
