grin on my face, but thinking of Alessandro pasted it there without my say so.
“Look at you, you’re glowing!” she chuckled. “Just make sure he knows no proposing until I clear it.”
My eyes and nose flared. “Proposal? What are you talking about? Once I come back to California, this will all be over again.”
“What are you talking about? You clearly still have feelings for him. Just be with him. Don’t think about it so much. If you fall back in love, you fall back in love.”
It didn’t sound awful when said so simply. I probably was falling for Alessandro again. Hell, I never got up after falling for him the first time. Still, the facts remained the same. Alessandro was deeply rooted in the organization, and that wasn’t likely to change. “I can’t, Sasha. I’m just setting myself up for heartbreak again. He’s still involved in his family’s business, more so now that his dad is gone. I can’t do this life. I just can’t.”
“You’re overthinking it,” Sasha said. “Everyone has different circumstances, but when two people love each other as deeply as you two do, that’s not something that should be ignored. The universe isn’t going to send you someone else like that. Most people don’t even get one. I promise you, babe, if you come running back to California without giving that a solid chance, you’re going to regret it.”
I took Sasha’s words seriously because she wasn’t usually a serious person. Whenever she got that little hike to her eyebrows, and her blue eyes were near vibrating with resolve, I knew she meant business.
“I’ll think about it,” I replied.
“No!” she bellowed. “Don’t think, just do.”
Don’t think, just do.
That could be the mantra of my relationship with Alessandro.
“Okay,” I responded. “Okay. Now, let’s talk fashion since you fucked everything up with your adorable blue hair.”
I talked to Sasha for another couple of hours. She was my rock whenever I felt like I was floating too far away. I had Bella here in Philly, and I’d seen her a few more times, but she could get as carried away as I could. Sasha was good at keeping my feet on the ground and forcing me to look at something from a different angle. I wanted nothing more than to be with Alessandro. Maybe that was all that it took. Maybe I needed to go all-in on that thought and let the universe do the rest of the work. Who knew, it might reward me for finally letting go of all the things I tried to control in my life. I could benefit from just making a decision one way or the other instead of going back and forth. It seemed like everything in my life had always been that way.
I wanted black and white, but I only ever got shades of gray.
Parents who loved me, supposedly, but had other things they dedicated the bulk of their energy to. A twin brother who could be my best friend one day, and one of those guys that I hated the next. A boyfriend who loved me to the very tips of my fingers, but there was still something that could take him from me at a moment’s notice, and often did. It was like purchasing. Some dresses went better with hair but were a worse combination with the skin tone. Some did a great job of making someone short look much taller, but it also made them look heftier than they were.
I wanted black and white, but I only ever got shades of gray.
Maybe that’s why I leaned toward a very definitive fashion sense. Black or white, that’s what I preferred. It was the one thing I could control. The one decision I could make without considering the pros and cons. If I wanted to wear black clothes, I simply did, and that was it. It didn’t demand years of thought. I didn’t take a step outside and walk around for twenty minutes just to see how I felt in the clothes before actually going anywhere in them. They were clothes, and it wasn’t that important, and somehow that comforted me. Decisions that don’t have life-changing consequences; I didn’t get enough of those in my life.
I’d thought of little else than Alessandro since he first asked me on that fake date when we were ten. Fourteen years later, he still occupied more of my brain space than anything else. I needed to make a choice. Either I needed to give a relationship with Alessandro another go, or I needed to say goodbye to him, pack my things, go back to California, and put this all behind me for good.
16
Alessandro
I was running around my house like a chicken with his head cut off.
Willow’s coming over.
I wanted everything to be perfect, and I was definitely running the risk of having some of the house staff poisoning my next meal. She’d been to my house before, so I couldn’t quite find the source of the fear with her coming over this time. Was it because I knew there was a higher concentration of organization radiation here than anywhere else? Was it because Luca had been so hot and cold lately that there wasn’t really any way to tell how he was going to react to seeing her again after so long? Was it because my dad wasn’t there to slap me on my back and tell me to man up and that Willow was a woman that would hit the bricks the second she saw weakness? Maybe it was a seven-layer cake of all of my and my family’s biggest issues perfectly baked with a gun-toting stripper on the inside, waiting to pop out the second Willow was sitting down to eat.
The current stage for my whirlwind was the kitchen. Anna and Antonio, Luca’s children, were sitting at the table coloring, while the Queen herself was standing at the six-burner stove, throwing together a lunch that I trusted only her with. I kept flying by her, looking over her shoulder and asking if she needed anything until she finally held a butcher knife out at me.
“Stop it. You’re making me nervous, and I never get nervous,” she chided. “Go sit with the kids. I’ve got this.”
I went over and sunk down into one of the faded wood seats next to Anna, who was scribbling a tornado of color onto the piece of paper in front of her. My leg was bouncing, but in an attempt to calm my nerves, I leaned over her and looked down at the picture.
“What’s this, pumpkin?” I asked.
She held it up, proudly holding it out to me. “Unco Sandro!”
Molly sputtered out a laugh, hunching over the food.
I stared at the wild collision and indirect patterns of the color lines. I feel attacked. “That’s very accurate, angel.”