Every corner I took at Club D, every time his name was whispered in the hall, every time Quentin or Abe would show up, or citrus would float in the air, my heart seemed like it might burst from expectation.
My heart would fall into a dark pit and something heavy would settle in my bones each time he was still gone after my hope rose to insane levels.
Expectationandanticipationwere two words added to my Aniello Assanti list. Together, they were almost as vicious aslost.
At least they reminded me that my heart and lungs still worked. I’d get breathless when the hope that he was close would make my heart feel like it could fly right out of my chest. Then it would crash into the ashes once more, when disappoint set in, only to rise out of them again when the hope would return however long after.
It was fucking madness.
My emotions were on a roller-coaster ride, but my body was full of energy I had no idea what to do with, while I sat there, strapped in.
“What are you doing with your life,amica?”
I stopped scrubbing the counter. “What?”
Cilla sat on the sofa, scrolling through her phone. She never took her eyes off it. “It’s the weekend. Saturday. And look at you. You’re like Cinder-fucking-ella cleaning for her wicked stepsisters. Except they’re all in their own rooms in this dark palace, but you’re still cleaning for them.”
“I’m cleaning for us!”
“You’re cleaning because you have no idea what to do with yourself.” She turned and looked at me, narrowing her eyes. “Even monsters have to work.”
I pulled up my old, baggy sweatpants. “You’re stuck in a romance book,” I said.
“Nah,amica,” she said, shaking her head. “If I was, you wouldn’t look likethat.All of the heroines in romance books, no matter when, wake up with gorgeous hair,tousled, and fresh breath.”
I laughed and flung a sponge at her. She ducked, and it went right over her head, but then she went and got it before Bambina snatched it and never gave it back. The dog was a hoarder. I had found all kinds of shit in her tent earlier when I was cleaning it out. She was a collector of wrappers, it seemed. Especially cheese ones.
“My hair isn’t—”I ran a hand over it and shut up. I hadn’t bothered brushing it after I’d woken up. I went straight to cleaning.
“That bad?” she scoffed, throwing the sponge back at me. I flung it in the trash. “If we set you up outside of an all-you-can-eat buffet right now, someone would either buy you dinner or put a coin in your rusty old bucket. Or offer you a swipe of deodorant.”
“Bitch,” I said, smiling at her.
She opened her arms. “The number 1, and you love me for it!” She went to the stereo system, put some music on, and started one of her shows. She put her pretend microphone up to my mouth, and when I pushed it away, she took it back. “Get dressed,” she sang to the beat of the song, “and let’s go get something to eeeeat—yeah!”
“I guess even lo—sick heroines have to eat,” I said moving toward my room. I’d almost admitted to her that I was in love with Aniello.
Even though she probably knew it, I hadn’t even said the words to him. Maybe I didn’t have to, not with what we were both doing. But still. It felt right to say the words.
I wondered if he would say them before I did?
She put the phantom microphone even closer to her mouth. “That’s not booklife,” she sang, high-pitched. “That’s reallife.” Her voice went low and deep.
Bambina barked at her, and the smile lingered on my face even when I jumped into the shower. It wasn’t as big when I stepped out. As I got dressed, I wondered how it would be to date Aniello. To have something normal. Something that probably a lot of people took for granted.
It was never that simple in this life. Nothing ever was. And I finally understood why Cilla enjoyed getting lost in romance novels. Most of the ones she read were so different from our life. The hero or heroine had something to say, and the only thing holding him or her back was the fear of rejection or losing someone again.
In our life, we had to fear the barrel of a gun, or worse, if we did something that was the equivalent of not being loyal.
I remembered hearing about this one girl who had gone missing. All they found of her was her ear. She’d gotten too chatty with the wrong people, and they found out.
“What happened?” Cilla narrowed her eyes at me when I met her in the kitchen. “You slip and fall in the tub or something?”
When I gave her a confused look, she pointed at my face. “You look blue all of a sudden.”
“I’m not sure about this outfit.” I shrugged.
I didn’t want to ruin her night just because I was a sad sack of bones. She’d been going through a lot. I wanted her to have fun and enjoy life.
