Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Some even went so far as to tell me that I “really needed to see a shrink.”
Everyone wanted me to change, to be more “normal.”
No one, save for Vega, just accepted me as I was.
I’d always figured, with my cousin, it was a mix of her very laid-back attitude as well as a pretty deep understanding of where I’d come from, why I was the way I was.
“If all that came out of that whole shitstorm was a need for things to be clean, babe, I think you’re just fine.”
I didn’t tell people about that part of my life. I didn’t want that mental image to clash with the version of myself that I tried so hard to present to the world.
I never even thought to tell the guys I’d tried to date over the years.
But then there was Cesare.
With his understanding nature, his kind eyes, and his half-naked body that, well, put me a little off-guard.
He was covered in tattoos.
I don’t know why but I hadn’t really anticipated them extending beyond his arms, hands, neck, and those few on his face. Which was weird. I mean, who would tattoo their hands if their torso wasn’t covered as well?
And his was.
But it somehow didn’t completely mask the defined muscle underneath, either. Little indents I found myself wanting to reach out and run my finger along.
Surely, that was the only reason I took his invitation to sit down on the freshly made couch, still hugging his pillow, and talk to him about my past.
My past that I tried like hell never to think about myself.
“I don’t know where to start,” I admitted.
“With your parents is usually how it all starts, isn’t it?” Cesare prompted me.
“Right. Well, I didn’t have a father. I mean, biologically, sure, but I never met him.” My mom once admitted to me that she didn’t actually even know who he was. Maybe there would have been more of an identity crisis involved with that had it hadn’t been for, well, all the stuff that would follow.
“That’s rough,” Cesare said, placing his hand on my knee. “My mom passed when I was young.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, my heart breaking for him.
“It was a long time ago. So it was just you and your mom.”
“That might be… an exaggeration,” I admitted. “My mom wasn’t around very often. I was pawned off on the neighbor when I was really small. As I got older, I was just alone in the apartment.”
“What was your mom doing while you were alone?” he asked, seeming to understand that I needed the encouragement to keep going. I just wasn’t used to talking about myself much.
“From what I can tell about her record, shoplifting, running cons, anything she could do to get money without actually working a job.”
“Sometimes people do what they need to do to survive,” Cesare said, giving me a chance to defend her.
I didn’t want to do that.
“Don’t paint pictures in your head about her being a down-and-out single mom doing everything she could to take care of me,” I said, wincing at the bitterness in my own voice. “My mom was a horrible person.”
“In general, or to you?” he asked.
“Both. I mean, she could be charming when she wanted to be. That was how she ran her cons. No one lets their guard down around people unless they seem kind and innocent, right?”
“That’s true,” Cesare agreed.
“At home, though, she was… mean. And angry and bitter.”
“At you?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? Can’t imagine you were a bad kid.”
I wasn’t.
I was the best kid I could be.
I thought if I could make myself small enough and quiet enough and well-behaved enough, I might be able to avoid her outbursts.
The screaming.
The hitting.
The nights I went to bed without food.
The problem was, when you were stuck with someone as miserable as my mother, it didn’t matter how “good” you were. They would always find fault in you. They would always punish you for it.
“For existing, I guess.”
“You deserved better than that,” Cesare told me, and the little kid inside of me wanted to cry hearing it.
“Eventually, when I was nine, she finally got arrested on a charge that she couldn’t weasel her way out of. She was sent away. And I went to live with my grandmother. And things were… okay at first. Until my grandpa died.
“They had one of those relationships, y’know? Those meant to be, all-consuming, love story relationships.”
I used to sit at the kitchen counter working on my homework when my grandpa would come in. Sometimes with a handful of wildflowers he picked for my grandma. Other times, he would grab her hand and twirl her around the kitchen, dipping her all the way back, her hair almost brushing the floor, then laying a big kiss on her.
It had been both embarrassing and mesmerizing as a kid.