“I want you to go back in time, and I want you to have not ignored me. I want you to erase the past eleven years, where I’ve felt like I don’t know my own best friend.” Reality doused me instantly. “You’re not even my best friend anymore. I don’t know you. I don’t know if you still soak your cereal in milk until it’s disgustingly soggy. I don’t know if you still leave your shoelaces tied because you hate tying them. I don’t know if you still search the movie plot online before you watch a movie because you hate surprises more than anything. I. Don’t. Know. You. Ranie.”
He straightened to his feet, his movements slow and purposeful. The elevator doors glided open, but neither of us moved. He reached out, and his hand cupped my face. “Will you get to know me?”
If I said yes, it felt like I was condoning everything he had done to me. Breaking my heart. Ignoring me. Standing by as the entire student body terrorized me for four goddamned years.
But my God, I wanted to say yes.
You deserve more, Carina Gallo.
I hated that little voice. Was that the Devil on my shoulder or the angel?
Either way, I took a step back and whispered, “No.”
* * *
* * *
Ten Years Ago
“Where were you tonight?” Dad’s voice boomed in the hallway, echoing off the gilded marble floors. In the shadows, he looked ominous, but I supposed that may have been the point.
“I was with Niccolaio.” I started past him. “We went to a party a few streets down. Lacy’s friend threw it.”
Dad would like that. He had been pushing me to pursue her, and she had been a nice distraction for a while, but I wanted the real thing. Not the blonde-haired, blue-eyed knockoff of Gallo. And if I was honest, I never should have settled for Lacy when she chased me. I was lonely. She was there. Nothing more.
It was a bad decision in a life full of bad decisions.
Dad blocked my way. “Then, why were you in North Beach?”
I froze. “Are you having me followed?”
“Answer the question, son.”
I ran a tired hand down my face. “Yes, I was in North Beach.”
Kissing the love of my life.
His rigid voice hardened. “Were you with that Gallo girl?”
Yes, and if I had it my way, I would be with her every second of every day.
“You told me to stay away from her.”
“I did.” He stalked toward me. “You best remember that, or you know what’ll happen.”
Fuck you, Dad.
I met his eyes. Minutes passed before he finally looked away. I turned and headed toward the front door.
“Where are you going?” He was losing control over me, and he knew it. “I’m talking to you!”
And because I was well aware that he could make my life a living hell—already was—I called behind me, “Uncle Luca’s!”
The only person, other than Niccolaio, that Dad hadn’t stolen from me.
* * *
* * *
The Present.
I’m not giving up, Gallo.
Ranie had said that to me before he took a pillow and blanket from the King-sized bed and made his way to the couch in the suite’s living area. I had closed the door to the bedroom, trying to put as many boundaries between us as I could.
It hadn’t helped.
I’d spent the night tossing and turning. He made it seem so simple, like all I needed was to say, “Yes!”, and all the problems that plagued us would dissipate. But nothing could change what had happened in high school, and I couldn’t begin to forgive him if he wouldn’t explain himself. Even if it was ridiculously cute that he’d kept the red dress all these years later.
Ranie stepped out of the bathroom, his hair wet and a fluffy white towel wrapped around his waist. Little droplets of water slid down his chest, pushing past his defined V-lines, and disappearing beneath the towel that did nothing to conceal his impressive bulge. I turned away, but not before he caught sight of me looking.
“You look tired, Gallo.”
I am, thanks to you.
I kept my face trained on the flat screen, where Pretty Woman had returned from a commercial break. “I’ll be fine for our meetings today.”
Ranie had a real estate agent book walk-throughs for potential properties The Down & Dirty could expand to.
“So, confession time…” He paused, and I immediately turned to him, hoping he would finally shed light on high school. “I don’t want to expand The Down & Dirty.”
My brows furrowed. “What?”
“I mean, I will if that’s what you want.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t care about The Down & Dirty. Why are we here if not to expand the club?”
He had the audacity to not look guilty. “Miami Beach is toxic. Always has been. We needed to get away from there.”
“Who’s ‘we’? Because I wasn’t consulted on any of this.”
“I want you, Gallo.” He kneeled, so we were eye-level. “Okay? Just give me this weekend. Please.”
I opened my mouth to refuse. Really. But I found myself saying, “Yes,” because this was Ranie, and I had loved him at one point in my life.
Maybe this weekend with him was what I needed to move on.
* * *
Resentment and bitterness and
old grudges were dead things, which
rotted the hands that grasped them.
Winston Graham
* * *
Nine Years Ago
“What are you doing?”
Brody jumped as I approached him from behind, his whole body jolting at the sound of my voice. I smirked, not used to being able to sneak up on people, but he did look sketchy with his head down and fingers pressed against the grills of my locker.
I could still faintly read the word “Loser” that had been spray painted on the blue metal a couple months ago. I was pretty impressed by the janitorial staff. They had made some junior wait seven months for the graffiti on her locker to be cleaned, but “Loser” had been power washed from my locker when I returned after class. Just in time, because Ranie had stood before my locker, squinting at what was left of the word on the ugly blue paint. Sadness painted his eyes, along with something that looked like, but couldn’t possibly be, regret.
I thanked the janitor the next day, but he claimed he hadn’t cleaned it. And I was thankful for his feigned ignorance, even if the pity bruised my ego.
Brody turned to face me. “Nothing. I just saw something sticking out of your locker and tried to poke it back in.”
“Oh. Thanks.” I peeked around him and spotted half a folded sheet of paper sticking out of my locker grate. “You’re doing an awful job.” My amusement surged as I reached out with my pointer finger and poked it back into my locker with one jab.
Brody rolled his eyes at me, and I bumped him lightly out of the way with my hip. I entered my locker combination, careful to angle my body to keep it hidden. My paranoia was high, but in my defense, if the student body got a hold of my combo, I would find all sorts of lovely things in my locker by sundown.
The folded sheet of paper fluttered to the floor as my locker door swung open. I bent to pick it up, and when I rose, my eyes met Ranie’s. His eyes dipped to the paper in my hand, swung to Brody who eyed the sheet of paper with unusual concentration, and returned to his locker. I could have sworn I saw the corners of his lips tilt upward before he buried his face in his locker.
“What is it?” Brody nodded at the paper. “A flyer?”
I flashed it open and shut it immediately when I saw the top line: “Dear Blue Blue-Eyed Girl.” It was probably a hate letter, and I didn’t want any more pity from Brody. He had enough on his plate with his last chance to take the SATs this weekend and varsity basketball playoffs coming up.
“Nothing.” I shoved the paper into my back pocket, where it would stay until I passed a trashcan. “I have to get to class. See you at lunch?”
He nodded, distraction li
ning his handsome features. “See ya, Gallo.”
I paused, slanting my head. Only Ranie ever called me Gallo. And when I turned to ask Brody not to, he was already gone, and the hallway was starting to clear up. I slipped the letter out of my pocket, crumpled it, and tossed it into the trashcan without reading it but, on a last-minute whim, retrieved it.
Glancing up and down the hallway to make sure I was alone, I flattened the letter against a random locker, smoothing out the wrinkles and creases.
* * *
Dear Blue Blue-Eyed Girl,
See what I did there? Really, though, why are you so sad, Gallo? You didn’t use to be like this. You used to smile every time you looked at the sky and wave hello at random strangers because they looked at you nicely. Where’s that girl, Gallo? I miss her.
You probably won't answer this. That's okay. I don't deserve it, and honestly, I'm not entirely sure what I'd do if you answered it anyway. You ever feel like we’re Romeo and Juliet? Speaking in secret. Star-crossed lovers. That kind of thing.
That’s an exaggeration. I go unanswered as much as you do. Could you imagine if the play was just Romeo? Romeo pining after an oblivious Juliet. Romeo watching from afar—stalking, since it’s one-sided. Romeo engaging in grandiose soliloquies alone. Romeo hopelessly in love. And all the while, Juliet never knows. Or maybe she just ignores him. But hey, they’d both end up alive.
You probably think I’m crazy. I hope to change that one day. One day, I’ll ascend, and I’d take you with me, but I have a feeling you’ll already be there. Maybe then we can be together.
Signed,
Another Grandiose Soliloquy by Lonely Romeo
P.S. I only kept the sappy shit because I’m that stupid fucker that writes love letters in pen.
A love letter.
For me.
Carina Amelia Gallo.
It was almost unbelievable, and if I hadn’t been holding it in my fingers, I would have thought I’d dreamt up this letter. Maybe it was a prank. None of it made sense anyway. It was written like it was one of many, and ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of it seemed like riddles and babbling, but one word stood out—Gallo.
Lonely Romeo had called me Gallo.
Just like Ranie did.
* * *
* * *
The Present
“Something wrong?” Ranie flipped onto his side, his body brushing against mine as the bed sagged under the weight of his movements.
When he had asked me to give him this weekend, I hadn’t thought he meant lying in bed, watching the Leo Di Caprio version of Romeo and Juliet on Pay-per-View. But that was exactly what we had been doing for the past forty or so minutes.
“No. Just thinking.”
About that letter from ‘Lonely Romeo’ all those years ago.
“About?”
I swallowed a million questions about the past that I couldn’t bring myself to ask for fear he would deny me again. “South Beach. I’ve never been. Can we explore the city?”
It was odd knowing I was being actively wooed. Each action of Ranie’s, I studied. Each word. Each movement. Each breath. Satisfaction. Disappointment. Everything he did garnered a binary reaction, and it wasn’t fair to him, but it also wasn’t something I could help.
I sighed in relief when he nodded his head. I went to change out of my yoga pants and off-the-shoulder tee, but he pulled me to the door, and I didn’t bother protesting. In his designer jogger sweats and plain white tee, this was the most casual I had seen him since our friendship ended, and I didn’t want to risk that.
I struggled to keep up with his long strides. “Where are we going?”
Since we had flown in, we didn’t have a car, but instead of using his hotel’s car service like I thought he would, he led me to the Metrorail. I didn’t even think someone with his net worth knew it existed.
“When shit would get too tough at home, Niccolaio used to take me to South Beach. We’d spend our day in the Metrorail because Dad couldn’t track our phones through all this underground cement.” He grabbed my hand and paid the two dollars each for our way through the twisting metal gates. “I still come here sometimes. Not as often as I’d like.”
This had to have been post-friendship breakup. Ranie was coloring in the details of his life, the things that I had missed out on since we’d parted ways. He was giving me the opportunity to get to know him. All I had to do was take it. I kept quiet, hoping he would continue and give me more. Any morsel of his life I could devour.
“The Metrorail doesn’t stop at any tourist destinations, so it’s mostly natives that take it. It’s like a city down here.” He led me past bustling crowds. “All this money, and I’ve never been to New York. Never seen its subways. But this,” he gestured around, “is the next best thing.”
“Why don’t you go to New York?”
He grabbed my hand, so we wouldn’t lose one another as we swerved through a group of people entering the next train. “I can’t. Each family has its borders, and they can’t be passed. I’ve been in De Luca and Camerino territory.” He kept his voice low, and I ducked closer to hear him above all the noise. “But the Romano family has a generations-long blood feud with mine, and the Rossi family is tied to the Romano family by marriage and blood. Both territories are off limits.”
“So, you go here.”
He nodded. “Come, see this.” He pushed past a corner, and a soft melody rushed to me. It was a melancholic rendition of Yiruma’s ‘River Flows in You.’ He led us closer and tossed a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills into the upturned hat in front of the elderly musician, who greeted Ranie by name. “Wesley’s been here every time I’ve visited, always playing those keys like he was born with them attached to his fingers.”
People pushed past us, but Ranie placed me in front of him and wrapped his arms around my body, guarding me against the crowd. The tune floated through the air, filling the station with its lamenting descants, like a concert hall supplanted in real life. I closed my eyes, and the crowd rumbled in the background, but the noise only augmented the song, filling the dips and rises in the melody in a way instruments failed to.
I couldn’t measure the time we spent in the station, my body pressed against his, listening to Wesley play. Time was incalculable around Ranie, another thing he illogically defied. When the pianist’s fingers grew sore and my stomach grumbled, Ranie led me out of the station.
We walked to get food, but five minutes later, when my stomach growled again, Ranie rolled his eyes and tracked down a cab, which drove us to Rocky’s, an underground restaurant in a hardened area of South Beach.
“Let me guess…” I carefully trekked down the steep flights. “No cellular tracking down here?”
His lips turned up. “Didn’t you know? Your man’s a rebel.”
My man.
He hadn’t meant it like that, but it was nice hearing it. I wanted Ranie. It was undeniable at this point. Except I wanted the truth more, and my truth was, I shouldn’t have wanted him, but I had never truly stopped.
I needed to build walls around my heart.
Quickly.
* * *
* * *
Seven years ago
“Why do you still look at him like that?”
I swiveled my head from Ranie, who dribbled the ball on the soccer field, to Brody. “What?”
Brody jabbed a finger in Ranie’s direction, his movements jerky and swift. “Why do you still look at him like that?”
I fidgeted on the bleachers. Only because my butt was sore from sitting through a whole half. Right. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Except I did. Four years had passed since Ranie and I went our separate ways, and hope pushed and pulled my heart, like a never-ending game of tug of war. Pitiful behavior wasn’t something to defend, so I feigned ignorance.
“Yes, you do.” A light sheen of sweat gleamed from Brody’s forehead. He tugged at his shirt collar and slid his right sleeve up his arm in one
impatient jerk. “The first thing you do when you enter the cafeteria is turn your head to his table.” Only to make sure Lacy Ryan isn’t there! “You go to every soccer game, and you don’t even like soccer.” School spirit is important, right? “And somehow, every year, from freshman to senior, you end up in all the same classes as him.”
Now that wasn’t my fault, so I latched onto it like it would absolve me of all his other valid points. “I have nothing to do with that! Blame the school.”
His lips curled up in an ugly smile, and I couldn’t understand why he was so… so angry. He opened his mouth to say something, but pounding cheers shook the bleachers. Good. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
I turned to the game. The ball rested in the back of the opposing team’s net, and the crowd chanted Ranie’s name. He had scored, and I’d missed it.
As his teammates whooped and hollered, he jogged to the half line, never one for victory dances. But when his foot hit the center circle, he glanced to the bleachers, and as if he’d known to look for them, his eyes met mine.
Victory shone in them.
* * *
A long-simmering resentment
against the world can burn off more
calories than you might imagine.
Paul Russel
* * *
The Present
“Where to now?” I slanted my head Ranie’s way and hid my grin as surprise flashed across his face.
It was well past midnight, and he had taken me around the city already, showing me all his favorite South Beach places, interweaving stories of why he would run to South Beach. The private Ranieri Andretti Tour: South Beach Edition was enough to convince me to move here, but I could feel him hiding something from me—the big secret that connected the little anecdotes of why he had needed a place away from home.
Ranieri Andretti: A Second-Chance, Enemies-to-Lovers Mafia Romance Novella (The Five Syndicates Book 3) Page 6
