Turning my face some, I look at the place where everyone is still drinking, the music turned up, laughter floating out like barks in church. Everything inside of me constricts, and this empty cave in my chest seems to echo with the hollowness.
I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to have a heart there, but the area is so fucking numb, not even the beats register in my ears anymore.
Yeah, looking out at the water does something to me. It makes me feel like I want to jump in and dare something much bigger than me to take me. It feels like a live wire in my veins because not much challenges me.
It makes me think of a kid in our class who had to be taken out—boredom got to him so much that he started flunking out. It wasn’t until they tested him that they realized he was a fucking genius.
I’m certain that if someone tossed me into raging seas, I’d become a fucking genius too. It’s the thrill of the test.
There’s not much else out there that’s stronger than water, especially when it’s pissed off and out to make a statement.
A grin comes to my face. Exactly like a woman.
Except, I’ve never met any who test me like that. Who challenge me.
Fucking feels good, but the numbness in my chest doesn’t take long to drown out anything that could potentially be.
They and it all feel the same—women and life.
What the fuck am I doing with my life?
That’s something I haven’t asked myself in a while, if ever. I can’t even remember if the thought has ever crossed my mind.
Maybe when Luca tells me I should be doing something different with my life, like claiming my rightful place as heir to the Fausti throne. Or when Elliott’s parents tell me I should be making better choices, like getting my shit together before I go to college in the fall.
College. It sounds all right. Looks good on paper. And it’s free since I have a scholarship. But my tests in life are different from the ones that excite genius boy—my tests are up to the same level as this water.
For a man like me,that’sa fucking test. Not sitting behind a desk or swinging a bat because I can. It’s existing with a power that’s only controlled by the moon.
“Fuck me,” I mutter. “This must be what a life crisis feels like.”
I’m “too young” to be going through a mid-life one, and up until this moment, I didn’t give a fuck about anything else but what I wanted to do. After I planted my ass in the sand, though, and started listening to that siren’s song in my ear, something clicked in my mind and changed my entire perception. Of this beach. Of this place.
Of my life.
Would I leave this beach a new man? Highly doubtful. I am who I am, and all that shit, and fucking around is on my agenda tonight, since time is limited before we leave. But I’m positive I’ll never forget this moment. The way the water makes me feel, and how it’s even challenging me and a decision I’ve not yet made.
Luca—and joining the family.
He envisions a life for me, and he’s seen me in a role that he demands I was born to claim, even before I was born.
Sometimes I wonder if fucking around is what I’ve been doing because the challenge I need lies within his grasp, and even though he has what I need, my resistance challenges him.
Like this water, my family in Italy is a force, and what I crave, they can give me.
That’s the thing, though. Fuckgiving. I demand toearn, and that’s where we don’t see eye to eye.
If I ever accept who I am and what it means, it’ll be because I do it on my own terms, not because it’s something that exists in my blood. If I only claim it because it exists, that means it has power over me, and fuck that.
Nothing or no one tells me what to do with my life. Not my family, not even this water. Nothing is strong enough to put shackles and chains on me.
A monster would have to eat me alive before it could subdue me, and even then, I’d make a comeback in the form of heartburn or some shit.
I wonder if heartburn would make me feel mine, that vital organ my family steals from a man’s chest when the offense is personal against them. Maybe it could eat away at whatever separates it from whatever is buried below the surface, filling that empty cave with something other than nothing.
What am I even thinking? Even acid can’t touch the steel barrier between the same ol’ shit and what other people seem to experience daily—feelings.
My family already stole that from me, that vital thing in a man’s chest. Or maybe I was never born with one to begin with. Too fucking risky, seeing as they steal hearts whenever payment is due. It’s better not to have something that can be taken and controlled.
