“It hasn’t been that long,” I laugh. “But I missed you too.”
After she finally lets go, Gianni smiles and envelops me in a hug too. “Hey, sis.”
“Hey yourself. Have you been working out?”
“A little,” he says, and I can see the heat in his cheeks. Gianni is all of seventeen and too cool for school and everything else. Except with me.
“Alright, out of the way,” Bella says, shoving Gianni aside. Our youngest sister is the spiciest of us all, though I probably come in as a close second. She’s fifteen, her hair is bleach blonde with colorful streaks and chopped off in a messy pop, and I haven’t seen her without fishnets in at least six months.
“I missed you,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says back. She’s the tough lover too, which makes sense. It can’t have been easy growing up without Mom entirely and watching Dad at the peak of his downfall.
And speaking of downfalls…
“Look at this place,” I say as we all head into the restaurant. “Has it changed at all?”
“Nope,” Gianni grins.
“And guessing by the smell, I think it’s even the same oil.”
We all laugh and head to a table in the corner, the same one we always sat at when we were younger.
“God, this brings back memories, doesn’t it?” Eliza says as she slips into the booth.
“It does.” I feel myself smile.
“Do you remember,” she goes on, “how we used to come here after you worked a shift at the grocery store and you bought us all dinner?”
“And we usually had to walk because my car was never running right,” I add.
“I just remember all of you taking turns carrying me because I complained about my feet hurting,” Bella says with a grin.
“Anything was better than staying at home,” Gianni says as the waitress approaches, a girl too young and too new to know the history in these bacon-scented walls.
“Anything is still better than being at home,” Bella huffs. And those words hurt.
I watch my siblings, who are all a decent handful of years younger than me, as they order waffles and pancakes and fight over whether strawberries or syrup is a better topping. Bella orders black coffee for herself, and it hits me how grown-up she is while still being a kid. And it makes me wonder whatthings might have been like if our mom had been around. It’s a question I have asked myself here and there throughout life.
Growing up without one is hell on a kid. It doesn’t matter how old you are or whether you are a boy or a girl. Moms, it seems, are the stitching to a family’s fabric. And when that stitching is gone, everything just sort of falls apart. Dads included.
I remember turning to him when I realized she was gone. Like really, really gone. And looking up at him for answers. For stability. Reassurance. But he had nothing. He offered no comfort, no answers, no promises. He started leaving for work earlier and coming home late, though it wasn’t because he was working. He was going straight from the job site to the bar, coming home way past bedtime or not at all. And the times he did come home, he was too drunk to be a dad.
After a month or so of that, I realized the hard truth: I was the parent now. Bella was little. Eliza was afraid. And Gianni was angry. So I stepped into her shoes, metaphorically and physically. We lived years upon years on hand-me-downs and makeshift dinners. I used cash I found in my dad’s wallet when he passed out at night to buy groceries. He didn’t seem to notice because he didn’t eat anything I made.
He just drank. And drank.And drank.
Eventually he became the bottle. Sour, empty, gone. And while he still comes around, he hasn’t changed. It’s more like he comes home when he needs a place to crash. His kids don’t acknowledge him. I doubt he even notices they’re there.
It’s why this job was such a big deal. It’s why I made a point of being so damn good at it. As I moved to the city to be closer to work, I hyperfocused on being the personal assistantto Ransome Rozanov. And that bled into hyperfocusing just on him.
He was a man of action. A man of stature. A man people listened to, respected, aspired to be. And he was dead fucking sexy the day I met him. It was… distracting. Appealing. Mysterious. And consuming.
“Amara? Are you listening to this?” Eliza yanks me from my thoughts and I am brought back to the noisy table. “Gianni says that he thinks his car—you know, the junker in the garage?— could beat a Ferrari.”
“It could,” he says with a cocky grin, his tattooed forearm on the table.
“Ferraris race jets,” Bella snorts.
