by Callie Hart
She stops five feet away, smiling gently at me. Strands of her golden-bronze hair, already lightening from the little spring sun we’ve had here in Raleigh, dance on the soft breeze that sighs between the headstones. With the cool early morning sun bathing her face in light, she looks stunning.
Hell. She’s such a beautiful creature. This girl is beyond the realm of comprehension. She can’t be fucking real. Most days, I’m convinced that I’ve hallucinated her into existence. My mother hallucinated shit on the regular. No reason why I shouldn’t be following in her footsteps. I can’t quite muster the appropriate level of concern when I think things like this, though. If Silver is a hallucination, then so be it. Let me go mad, if it means I get to spend the rest of my life with her. I will descend into lunacy, and I will go gladly. So far, my experience of madness has been sublime.
With a casual nod of her head, Silver points with her chin off to the left, sighing gently on a long exhale. “Thought about grabbing a breakfast ice cream for you from the truck in the parking lot. Then I got to wondering why anyone’d be callous enough to set up their ice cream truck in a cemetery parking lot, and I didn’t wanna support that kind of shady business practice.”
Holy hell. She’s stunning, she’s strong as fuck, and she knows how to defuse a tense, potentially awkward situation in a heartbeat. I laugh, hanging my head for a second. The last thing I want is for Silver to catch me post-breakdown, but too late to do anything about it now. My eyes are still burning, and my cheeks are likely still flushed from my crying jag. I just need a moment to regroup and separate myself from my heartbreak before I give myself over to her completely. “Pity,” I say, clearing my throat. “Could have done with a Screwball right about now.”
“I mean, I haven’t heard Greensleeves yet. They’re probably still there,” Silver teases. “I felt like a Choco Taco myself, but I didn’t wanna look like an insensitive graveyard tourist.”
“Oh, yeah. I hate those fucking guys.”
“Me too. They’re the worst.”
I laugh again, but the sound is strangled this time. Silver doesn’t say anything. She sets down the basket she’s holding next to Ben’s headstone, then she quietly arranges a thick blanket on the ground, kneeling down on it as she then begins to unpack the items she’s brought with her.
Three containers covered with metal foil; one thermos flask; knives and forks; plastic camping plates; and a small cardboard box that looks like it came from the bakery across the street. A cacophony of smells hit the back of my nose as I finally steel myself, finally exiting the stormy emotions that had ahold of me before she arrived. Took me too long, but I meet Silver’s gaze, nodding back at her when she nods at me. She doesn’t need to ask her question; it’s written all over her.
“I’m okay,” I confirm. “Just…tough morning, y’know.”
“I do,” she says, scooting to sit beside me. “I packed most of this up last night. I figured you’d wanna make a trip here and have a moment with him before you could face anything else. And I considered staying back at your place and waiting for you there, too, but I got to thinking that you might eventually need some company, so…I hope you don’t mind?”
“God, Argento, I’m so glad you’re here, I might start crying all over again,” I joke. The joke falls flat though, mostly because of my miserable, borderline-pathetic delivery. Silver leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder. Like the class-act that she is, she doesn’t mention the whole crying thing, even though I was the one to bring it up.
“I’m so sorry, Alex. This is the worst day in the world, isn’t it?”
Yes. For me it is. After the day Maeve showed up on my doorstep with tragic news, and the day I watched Ben being lowered into the ground, today really is the worst day in the world. It should be a momentous, happy day. Birthdays are supposed to be celebrated and enjoyed, but I’ve been dreading today ever since I properly processed the fact that Ben was dead, and I wasn’t going to be bringing him to live with me the very second I turned eighteen.
I’m so grateful that Silver’s not trying to ram rainbows and butterflies down my throat right now. It would have been understandable, forgivable, even, if she’d wanted to try and spin today in a positive light and make a big deal out of it. But she knows me. She gets me. She loves me, and she knows today could never have been anything other than a somber affair.
I turn and kiss her on the temple, closing my eyes as I lean my forehead against her hair. She smells of flowers, and sunshine, and the laundry detergent I washed my bedsheets in yesterday when I knew she was going to be spending the night. “Do you know how much I love you, Silver Parisi?” I murmur.
“A lot,” she whispers. “Almost as much as I love you.”
My smile hurts, it feels so sweet. “And do you know how dark and utterly shitty my life would be without you in it?”
“Pitch black?” she guesses. “Charcoal black? Obsidian black?”
“Obsidian black, probably.”
She nods wisely, as though this choice makes the most sense. “I’m glad your life isn’t obsidian black. I’m glad I lighten it up just a little.”
I sit up straight, shifting so that I can take her face in my hands. Her eyes skip over my features one by one, and her irises look like mercury, like shifting lightning trapped inside a glass bottle. “You don’t just light me up a little. You are the goddamn sun, Argento,” I tell her. “You give off so much heat, and life, and joy that it’s fucking spilling out of me. I have more light than I know what to do with. It’s just that losing him…losing Ben…that pain was a black hole that just kept getting bigger and bigger for a second there. I thought it was gonna swallow me whole. You kept me going, though. You gave me what I needed to cling on. And I was a shit, and I’m so sorry for the way—”
She cups her hand over my mouth, slowly shaking her head. “Despite the rumor mill at Raleigh High, you’re human, Alessandro. And people break open and fall apart when people they love die. It’s a brutal truth. Never try and apologize to me again, or I’ll revoke your backrub privileges”
“I don’t seem to recall there being backrub privileges.” The words come out muffled, since she’s still covering my mouth with her hand. She laughs, winking at me suggestively, lowering her hand.
“If you play your cards right, there might be backrub privileges down the line. In the meantime, I have a question for you.”
“Oh?”
She looks very serious indeed. “On a scale of one to ten, how weird is it to eat a birthday breakfast in a cemetery?”
“I’m gonna say that would be a seven, but I’m also will say that I’m ravenous and I don’t care how weird it is. Whatever you’ve got in those containers smells fucking delicious, and I think we should devour all of it right now before it gets cold.”
I’m not really hungry. I just want to make her smile, which she does as she unwraps the dishes, unveiling her birthday breakfast masterpieces: chicken and waffles in one dish, pancakes and freshly cut strawberries in another, and, last but not least, bacon and cheesy eggs in the third. So much food we’ll never come close to finishing it all. We give it a good goddamn try, though. The second I fork some of the chicken and waffles into my mouth, I realize I just how hungry I actually am, and I get to work.
Ben wouldn’t mind us eating at his grave. He’d wholeheartedly approve, I think to myself, as I drain my second cup of coffee from the Thermos Silver brought to our macabre early morning picnic. He would have gorged himself on Silver’s pancakes until he made himself sick. Pancakes were his favorite.
Once we’ve finished stuffing our faces and we’re so full we’re groaning, Silver grabs the picnic basket, dragging it toward her. I begin to stack the dishes, thinking it’s time to clean up, but Silver stops me. “Not yet. If we’re breaking cemetery etiquette, we might as well do it properly. You need to open your presents,” she says.
I just stare at her, a little dumbstruck.
Her smile begins to fade. “Oh, fuck. P
resents are a little much. I shouldn’t have gauged that a little better. Sorry.”
“No, no. I just, uh…it’s just that I don’t think anyone’s bought me a birthday present in…” I wrack my memory, trying to do the math. And then it hits me: I haven’t received a birthday present since my mother died. That is just too fucking depressing to admit out loud, though, so I simply laugh and shrug, like it’s no big deal.
Silver hesitates, as if she knows exactly how long it’s been since someone was kind to me on my birthday, but mercifully she doesn’t say anything about it. She reaches inside the basket, producing a small box, wrapped in blue and white stripy wrapping paper. I accept the box with trepidation. How the fuck do normal people receive gifts? How do they fucking react? What the hell do they say? Most importantly, why does this feel so fucking awkward right now?
“Uhh…thanks.” God, I’m such a fucking moron. “I…the paper’s cool.”
Silver looks heavenward, groaning. “The paper was ninety-nine cents from the general store. It was all they had left after Christmas. Just open it up already, Moretti. I’m gonna break out in hives if you make me wait much longer.”
She grumbles as I open her gift with care, peeling back the tape and unfolding it at either end instead of ripping through the stripy paper. At one point, she almost snatches the present from my hands and tears into it herself. I manage to get into the box before she has chance, though.
Underneath the wrapping paper is a small jewelry box. Amused, I hold it up, arching an eyebrow. “Bling, Parisi?”
“Argh! Open the damn box, Alex!”
“Okay, okay! Little Miss Impatient.” I snap the box open, curious as to what I’ll find inside. And there, on the blue velvet cushion inside, is a gold medallion. It’s small—the same size as the St. Christopher I wear around my neck—but there’s no saint engraved on this medallion’s surface. It’s a crest. One I’m unfamiliar with. I take it out of the box, inspecting it closely. Along the bottom, around the outer edge of the coin’s surface, is the word ‘Parisi.’
“It’s kind of stupid, I know. But that side bears my family’s crest. And on the other side—”
I’ve already flipped it over, to find the Moretti family crest on the other side.
“I know how you feel. I know that, with your mom gone, and…now Ben too,” Silver says, struggling with the words. “I know it might feel like you’re alone. But you’re not, Alex. I am your family, and you are mine. Parisi. Moretti. They’re just words, really. Ideas. I had both our names engraved on this to show that those ideas are one and the same. We’re bound together forever, Alex. Always. Two sides of the same coin.”
I hold the medallion in the palm of my hand, turning it one way and then the other, battling with my emotions. I try to string a sentence together in my head, but every time I think I’m almost there, whatever sentiment I’ve cobbled together doesn’t do justice to what I’m feeling.
I put the medallion back on its cushion briefly, so I can reach up and unfasten the clasp on the chain around my neck. Silver watches intently as I thread her gift onto the chain so that it hangs right next to St. Christopher.
“It’s nothing really. Just a little trinket—” Silver begins to say, but I cut her off, crushing my mouth to hers. The kiss is long, and deep, and it burns in my fucking soul.
When I pull back, I say, “It’s not nothing. It’s everything, Silver. It’s more than I know what to do with. Thank you. I’ll die before I take it off.”
We pack up our picnic, and we get ready to head back to the apartment. As we leave, I whisper a goodbye-for-now to my brother, not caring if Silver hears it. “See ya around, little man. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Happy birthday, Alex.”
44
CAMERON
When you have kids, your dreams, your hopes and your aspirations are no longer your own. Every positive thing you wish for becomes a wish offered up on behalf of someone else. For your children, you pray for health. You pray that they’ll be content and never suffer heartbreak or misery. As they play and you watch their personalities develop one day at a time, you hope that life will be kind to them, and you’ll be able to arm them with every skill and character trait they’ll need to navigate the murky, treacherous waters of adulthood. Most of all, you hope that they’ll find someone to love and be loved by. For a family and a support network of their own, that will bring them joy and fulfillment. At least that’s how it was for me. From the very first moment I held Silver in my arms, I knew that whatever wishes or luck I’d been allotted in this life were now all hers. Max came along, and it was only natural that his name be added to my fevered pleas for happiness and safety.
I gave up on asking for anything for myself. Seemed greedy, when I had two small people depending on me, who needed me to take care for them to the best of my ability. I never resented the fact that I’ve had to sacrifice most of my own dreams along the way. I’ll forever keep on using up every scrap of chance, luck, and fate that comes my way on my children, too, but…tonight, I make a rare exception. I allow myself one wish, purely for me and no one else.
God, I hope everything goes well tonight.
The house is eerily quiet as I collect the keys to the new car from the mail stand. I hover by the front door, my palm resting on the cold, smooth metal of the handle, listening for a second to the roaring silence.
A year ago, my kids were bickering with one another, the television was baring, my wife was hollering at anyone who’d listen, trying to find something she’d misplaced, and everything felt so alive. Now, the cavernous old house feels abandoned. So weird. It feels as though I’m a stranger here now. A ghost, haunting empty, forgotten rooms.
Outside, the evening’s balmy, dusk just setting in. My favorite thing about summer: the fact that it doesn’t get dark until eight in the evening. A light, playful breeze tugs at my jacket as I jump in the car and tap my destination’s address into the onboard GPS. During the twelve-minute drive across town, my mind races out of control as I consider all of the things that could go wrong once I arrive.
By the time I pull up to the curb outside the small, neat little cottage set back from the road, I’ve almost talked myself into calling the whole thing off and driving back home again with my tail between my legs.
“Jesus, Dad. Don’t be such a coward. I thought us Parisis were made of sterner stuff?”
The voice in my head—Silver’s voice—might be a figment of my imagination, but that’s exactly what my daughter would say to me now, if she were sitting next to me in the passenger seat. She’d roll her eyes, laughing at my discomfort, and then she’d find a way to bribe me into hauling my ass out of the car and up the flower-lined pathway that leads to the cottage’s red front door. Silver would never let something so irrelevant as nerves prevent her from taking a step into the unknown. She proved that well enough when she packed up her room and moved across the country to Dartmouth with the guy she promised to marry. Kid always has been far braver than me.
Steeling myself, I glance down at my phone, checking the screen for the fifteenth time since I left the house. No cancellation texts have come through. No apologetic messages, asking for a rain check. Looks like this is all still a go…
Come on, you stupid bastard. You got this. You’re handsome. You’re funny. Your beard looks fucking amazing. Get out of the damn car or I’m gonna kick your ass.
As pep talks go, this one’s pretty bad. The promise of a beating’s obviously an empty threat, since I’m not a fan of pain and I’m hardly going to thrash my own backside, but it does light a persistent albeit small fire underneath me. Next thing I know, I’m grabbing the flowers I bought at the boutique florists on the high street from the seat next to me, and I’m getting out of the car and slamming the car door closed behind me.
One foot in front of the other, Cam. Left, right. Left, right. Left, right. Nice work. You’re not nervous at all. You’re confident. You’re a fucking catch. You’re successful. Yo
u’ve got money. You’ve got all your own teeth… Oh, that’s just great. Awesome. Well done. You’ve got all your own teeth. Like she’d go out with a guy who was missing—
I’m halfway up the path, berating myself for being weird, when the front door opens and a man steps out into the fading, honeyed light. Our eyes make contact, and I nearly drop the bouquet of flowers onto the ground.
“Al—” I catch myself before I can finish his name. It isn’t Alex. This man’s older, with deep frown lines and a tired, sickly look to him that makes me think he drinks too much. A broad smile forms on his face, altering his features entirely so that he looks nothing at all like my future son-in-law in less than the blink of an eye.
“Yeah, we share a passing resemblance, huh?” the guy says. So this must be Giacomo. Has to be. There’s no other reasonable explanation for how similar he and Alex look. Their dark hair and their dark eyes are so alike it’s uncanny. The way he holds himself, like he’s ready and prepared to throw a punch at the slightest provocation, has Alex written all over it. But there’s something fundamentally different about this man. There’s an edge to him that I don’t like. I can’t put my finger on it…
“You always early for a date, man?” Alex father asks, as he slaps together a pair of leather gloves. He puts them on, frowning at me like he can’t quite figure out what to make of me. “You ask me, looks a little too keen. S’posed to make ’em sweat a little, y’know.”
Rocking back on my heels, I take a look around the front yard—the small yet well-manicured lawn; the rose buses underneath the cottage window; the little yellow windmill, nestled in amongst the ranunculus and the pretty wild daisies—and I run my tongue over my teeth. “This might come as a shock to you, Giacomo…but people aren’t toys. You’re not supposed to play games with them or try to manipulate them. Life’s far less complicated if you’re straight up with people. I’ve found that being honest…being yourself…it gets you way further than if you’re constantly striving for control and power over others.”
