Elora.Elora.Elora.The only person I can think of, the only person I can trust. She was my only friend, and hopefully, she will be more than just a friend to me in the future and will play an important role in my life. Yeah, who am I kidding about?
She would probably have a worse place in my life than a friend when she finds out the real me. The mafia part of me.
What was insane was that I trusted her and could tell her everything about it. Personally, I felt like hiding the whole concept of being in a mafia family and possibly the being the next heir would not only be better but more mature in certain respects. It'd blow my cover all over.
I mean, a mafia gangster's kid doesn't go to school but they take after their role and train for years. And if I cant go to school, learn and become whoever I want to be in the future then I'll end up being more like my father, the mafia gangster I once believed I would never be which would result in a lot of things one of them being that my father would be right again. And I didn't want him to be.
Here I was sitting in my father's office after a busy day in school with no Elora. My medicine, the only person that could make this horrible day better, it was even horrible now that I was sitting in this hideous office. I lied. The office had been painted black, and there was just one floor-to-ceiling window facing the main highway. A desktop processor, a journal lied open and a collection of papers sitting under a turtle-shaped piece of junk were sitting on the reddish desk.
The ac unit was blasting in the middle of the corner, and there was a hinged chair in the centre point of the office. In a section was a bookshelf, stacked with books, with an even more stack of papers under a collector's item that was shaped to look like a lawn tuft. If you leaned way back in the chair and cranked your neck hard over, you could see the sky from my office window, delft-blue and cloudless and so bright it looked solid. In short, it was stunning.
It made me feel calm, I guess it was the only thing other than Elora that could actually calm me down. I smiled. A genuine one, it was hard smiling especially when there was no one there to make you smile. Normally you would have family and friends to pull a smile on your dead, living lips. But I guess I didn't have any of them other than Elora, who didn't come to school today, unfortunately.
Elora's pov,
Sickness too often happens in waves rather than just one thing at a time, but I never think how good things happen in bunches too, building me higher and stronger in those long stretches of health. It's all about making the most of the positive things and letting the negative things move by as if it were elevator music, I suppose.
So this crick in my throat, this cold, this muscle aches, this pain in my head like a slowly building bruise... All are part of living, reminding me to respect health and treatment.
Today I never went to school not having the chance to witness his handsome face. He had the kind of face that stopped you in your tracks. I guess he must get used to that, the sudden pause in a person's natural expression when they looked his way followed by overcompensating with a nonchalant gaze and a weak smile. Of course, the blush that accompanied it was a dead give-away. It didn't help that he was so modest with it, it made the girls fall for him all the more. Despite all the opportunity that came his way he was a one-woman-man who prized genuineness and thoughtful conversation above lipstick and high-heels. He was handsome alright, but inside he was beautiful.
But that beautiful that was inside of him was definitely something I didn't deserve to be given or even witness. What was crazy was that it was like an addiction. I couldn't stop wanting to be in the presence of that beauty of his. It was magical. So surreal. I adored it and I just couldn't help but crave for more of his beauty. And I promised myself I was going to witness it tomorrow. I didnt care if I was coughing blood or if my legs stopped working, I was going to show up to that damn school no matter what. And with that, I fell asleep.
Meanwhile, Fransisco's office...
They say a bad parent was a traumatised infant, trapped in the flames of their own misery, more hurricane of their thoughts than poetry or spirit. I suppose that's right. There is a path to forgiveness in that a way to see the greater image and move on with your own soul intact, head held high. We will learn to heal when we see it, learn to love again and be a person we approve of in a way that is profound and calm.
But I guess that's not how it works, some people tend to hold grudges and hold onto the past and life isn't always about that. Sometimes you have to move on and that's something not everyone seems to notice. Life's too short to be holding onto grudges. But I don't blame him, he got it from me and I guess we are not people who forgive.
I am a bad parent, I never meant to be. I wonder if it's just what happens when you take a love that strong and mix it up with ambition and fear. Like every decision ever made, they are based on a combination of the facts at hand and the personality involved - core motivation I guess. Ambition and love came together to make pushiness, to drive my kids forwards, and at the same time addressing the fear, reassuring me that they would be happy in the world when I can no longer walk a pace behind them, ready to catch them if they fall. My love was never conditional or time-limited, it has no expiry date, but in my failure to adequately transmit that I failed in the worst possible way. All my kids ever needed to know was that I'd love them no matter what they chose to do with their lives, that they were free to make their own choices.
I have kids, but Antonio doesn't know that and I don't think he needs to know that. The only thing he needs to know is where that girl is and when he's gonna get her to me. I need her.