“Papà,” I started, “one of the dancers is having a pool party on Sunday in celebration of the Summer Recital. And I was wondering if I could go . . . ?”
“Which girl is this?” he asked.
I shifted under his eagle-eye stare. “Well, actually . . . his name is Tyler.”
Nonna harrumphed. “Since when are you into beta males, Elena?”
I shot her a look for giving Papà the wrong idea.
She pursed her lips and focused on poking at her food.
The table went quiet while he gave it some thought. I swallowed as Nicolas’s gaze warmed the side of my face.
Papà took a drink and set his glass down. “I want the address and the owner’s information. And you’ll take Benito.”
I let out a small breath. Was I being forgiven? Guilt pierced through my chest because I knew I didn’t deserve it. “Thanks, Papà.”
“I’m going inside before I melt,” Nonna said, getting to her feet. “This was the worst day to eat outside, Celia. Don’t know what you were thinking.”
“We don’t break our captains. We kill them.”
—Vincent Gigante
“MERCY.” MAMMA GRIMACED, AS I’D just explained the plot of her book club novel. “I don’t even feel bad for not reading that one.”
She hadn’t read a single one of them—I had.
“Okay, I have to go,” she said, putting a heel on with one hand and an earring in with the other. “Your papà and Benito are out, but Dominic is in the basement. Oh, and help your sister pick out her cake flavor. Tua zia Liza needs to know today. Please, Elena!”
I sighed and climbed off my parents’ bed.
“Leaving!” Mamma’s voice drifted out of the room.
I heard a faint “Finally” from my nonna as she passed the doorway with her servant Gabriella in tow. She’d gone on her afternoon walk, or, more likely, sat on the patio for five minutes of fresh air while gossiping.
A couple of moments later, I pushed the kitchen door open. Adriana sat cross-legged on the counter with two plates of cake before her. Her elbows rested on her knees and her fists were under her chin, while only wearing her yellow polka-dot bikini.
“What are the flavors?” I asked, coming to stand before the island. The sun was the only light in the room, casting the windowpane reflection across the counter.
“Pink Champagne and Luscious Lemon.” She said it like the options were really Tasty Garbage and Rotten Apricot. She was going to drag this out for as long as she could. Asking my sister to make a decision was like requesting her to write out the equation for time travel.
I tried both by scooping some up with my fingers. “Definitely the lemon,” I said, opening the cupboard for a glass.
I didn’t normally have dance practice on Tuesdays, but with the recital coming up we’d had it every day. My thighs burned as I stood on my tiptoes to get a cup from the top shelf. Benito and my other male cousins were all taller, yet they always took the glasses from the bottom shelf just to annoy the girls in the family.
“I was leaning toward Pink Champagne,” Adriana groaned.
“Then Pink Champagne it is,” I said as I filled my glass from the fridge water dispenser.
She shook her head. “No, now it doesn’t seem right.”
“The lemon, then.”
“That one doesn’t seem right either.”
I sighed. My sister could drive a saint to curse. I leaned against the fridge and eyed her over my glass. “Why are you in your swimsuit?”
“Was on my way to the pool, but Mamma stopped me and said I can’t leave the kitchen until I decide.”
After a moment of thought, a smile pulled on my lips. “Mamma left.”
Adriana’s gaze, warm and hopeful, popped up from the plates.
An hour later, with the cake flavor still undecided, Don’t Stop Believin’ played on the pool radio. The sun was hot, sparkling off the blue water as my head emerged from beneath. The cool liquid ran down my shoulders as I waded to my sister, who wore sunglasses and lay still on a floaty. She was a diva in the pool. In other words: boring. I tipped her.
She came up sputtering, pulling her sunglasses off and pushing the dark hair from her face. “I don’t know why you can’t just let me . . .” she trailed off.
The pool sat at the side of the house, allowing a view to the front gates. My gaze followed hers to see a lawn care truck coming down the drive. Oh no. Before I could say a word, she pulled herself out of the pool.
“Adriana, don’t,” I warned. My stomach twisted. I wasn’t sure how she’d seen Ryan this long without Papà finding out. She’d falsified her class schedule, putting an extra time slot down that she could spend with him, but seeing him at the house was too risky.
She turned to me, her gaze soft and pleading. “I just want to talk to him.”
“And say what? That you’re still getting married in three weeks?”
“And whose fault is that?” she snapped.
Ouch.
She was never abrupt with me like this. We might not have talked much lately—because what would we talk about? Her wedding?—but she’d never been hostile with me.
“I haven’t done anything you haven’t done,” I told her.
“I know. I just need to talk to him. You would want to talk to—” she glanced toward the ring on my finger under the water, “—him if you could, wouldn’t you?”
Would I? I didn’t know. Maybe that was the reason guilt felt like a heavy weight I carried around daily. It’d all been meaningless. It wasn’t even for love. And I was the only one who’d gotten out alive.
“The cameras,” I warned her. There was a security system downstairs that Dominic only had to glance at to see what was going on outside the home. I took a deep breath and tried to ignore the unease that swam in my veins. “The living room. Talk to him in there so you can see if anyone comes down the drive.”
The gardener came on Tuesdays and Fridays for lawn care and to clean the pool, so the truck wouldn’t raise Dominic’s suspicion. Let’s just hope my cousin was immersed in Skyrim like he usually was and wouldn’t show his face upstairs. Thankfully, Benito wasn’t here; he had a sharper eye.
My gaze found Ryan, who stood next to his truck, looking in our direction. He wasn’t even wearing his lawn care t-shirt, but a button-up and jeans. I groaned. What the hell is he thinking?
Adriana beamed. “Thank you, Elena!”
Then she was running toward him.
As I lay on my back, arms out, the sun warmed my front while the cool water licked at my sides. My eyes closed. I wondered what it would be like living here without my sister. How long I would coast through the halls until I got the same fate as her. I wondered if my papà would let me take classes this upcoming semester, though I was sure I’d blown that for myself.
I’d been pulled from all writing and political classes six months ago. I was free from a job, all responsibilities if I wanted, but even as the water held me up, slowly turned me in a circle, I might as well be drowning. Drowning in a past mistake I could never fix, but one I could try to make amends for. One I would amend, in the only way I could.