There's not much to look forward to these days and I don't know how I got to this point. Rather, I do know, but there isn't much that I can do to stop this. Having fun feels wrong at a time like this, which is what's stopping me from calling Victoria or Brett and are arranging something. I'm sure they'd find it strange of me, too, because it seems they're taking my situation more to the heart than I am. They're careful around me, especially where it concerns Mary. Going out so out of the question, and to be fair, I don't see much of them these days. I'm having lunch later in the kitchen, and it's the same with dinner whenever I do feel like having some. Dad left a message with Constance. He wants to talk to me as soon as he returns from his trip. I haven't gone to his office yet, though. He might ask me about Luca and I wouldn't know how to answer him. I'm confused about all of this myself. Besides, I'm avoiding the matter as much as possible. The good thing is that mom and Mary a
I pace around the living room before Luca knocks on the front door. I let him inside. I couldn't refuse to see him. If he has something urgent to say, then he can say it. I ignore the fact that we agreed that he would stop following me around in places. This is the farthest thing from my mind at the moment. I'm curious. That's why I'm letting him in. I want to know what he's going to say to me so urgently. Maybe I can say a few things to him, if the opportunity presents itself. What I'm tired of doing is running around in circles with him. Maybe what we need is time alone, so I can tell him clearly, without anyone watching, that I want him to leave me alone. But is that what I really want? I ask myself. I confess that I wasn't expecting to feel this much nervousness. I never felt this way before. Dealing with him was simply something annoying that I had to endure. Somehow, this moment feels different. I can't explain why. Maybe it's the fact that I don't see him the way I used t
It's Mary. I can hardly believe it when I look over my shoulder and make eye contact with her. This can't be happening to me. Not now. Not here of all places. She stares back at me blankly, like she barely sees me at all but something dark is swimming in the depths of her eyes. For a second, the scene before us disappears and it's just the two of us in this room. Her disgust toward me is palpable. I see the way the cornered of her lips turn down in disappointment. I blink and the world snaps back to its original state. I turn my head away from her and make eye contact with Luca instead. He never took his eyes off me. Or his hands, for that matter. I don't say a word to him but he must have gotten the message somehow. He lets his hands fall to his sides and takes a step back. Even so, we're still standing too close, and anyone would know that something transpired between us. For a few painful seconds, nothing is said. I don't know what to say. I doubt that Mary would say anything ei
The sun is hidden behind the clouds, and the day is gloomy and gray. It reminds me of funeral days. I call them that because this is the kind of weather that I've always associated with funerals. I don't mind a cloudy day, but this is different. It's heavy, like the sky is buckling beneath the weight of the clouds. It worsens my mood, and I close the curtains sharply, eager to be rid of the view before me. I have no plans to leave my room. Where would I even go when I'm feeling this down? Last night, I thought that I'd wake up feeling like death itself and regretting my choice of words, but oddly enough I don't. If that makes me a terrible person then so be it. I can't lie to myself. I feel like I could have said a lot more to her, and I keep replaying the fight in my head and wishing that I'd added more to my sentences. Mary deserved to hear what I said. I never realized how fake she was. I mean, she didn't become this person overnight. It was somewhere deep inside of her. Hidden.
Luca There she is. Seeing Laura approaching our table makes my heart beat faster, and I love the thrill of it. I stand when she finally reaches me, and she looks at me with wide and uncertain eyes. I put a hand on her shoulder and kiss her lightly on the cheek. She shivers when I graze my lips against her cheek. A seemingly innocent action. She steps back carefully and takes a seat. Her cheeks are now the color of her lips, and it pleases me to see her react this way. One would assume that a fiery woman like her wouldn't blush when kissed by a man, much less on the cheek, but Laura is a box full of surprises. She's the most interesting person that I've ever met. She intertwines her fingers and looks everywhere but at me. I take the opportunity to stare at her while she isn't looking directly at me. She looks perfectly fine, and it helps me shake the guilt I feel for leaving her alone last night off. I can't forget the haunted look on her face when she saw her sister standing at t
"There's no fucking way that this happened," Brett says dramatically. He covers his mouth with his hand as he stares at me with wide eyes. It's like he's waiting for me to say that what I told him is one big lie, but it isn't. I wish it were. Rather, I don't. I don't regret kissing Luca at all. Victoria is even more shocked than he is, yet she tells me, "You sly bitch! I knew you had feelings for him! Didn't we know, Brett?"He doesn't answer her. "I didn't have feelings for him initially," I say, then pinch the bridge of my nose. "It's complicated. Things just changed one day and I didn't know how to feel anymore. I just started looking at him differently. I didn't want to accept it, though. I kept ignoring how I felt. And then, last night, he came over and it happened. We kissed.""You're not making any sense," Victoria says. "The last thing I heard from you was that you were angry that your sister was in love with him because you felt your mother was forcing her to marry him for
Mom doesn't take her eyes off me as I sit down. I catch myself over analyzing her demeanor and facial expressions. She looks exhausted; she didn't sleep last night. If she did, she slept very little. Negative emotions begin brewing within me. I don't like where this is going and she hasn't said a single word to me yet. The smoke from her cigarette tickles the back of my throat. I ignore it as I sit down, even though my eyes sting and water. She gives me a level look and I try to match it. I opted not to ignore her but that doesn't mean that I will let her pin all the blame on me as she has tried to so many times before. I meant what I told her last night. This is her fault. If not entirely, then partly. She should never have spread those rumors. She should never have assured Mary that she would marry Luca. She finishes her cigarette and lights another before she speaks. I sit watching her patiently. I tell myself to be calm. Finally, she looks at me and says, "Your sister isn't we
Honestly, I didn't think that I would end up here. The last few 'events' were awful for me. I was so concerned with avoiding Luca that I didn't allow myself to have any fun whatsoever. It was torture, being there and knowing that I wasn't wanted by my family, and it was even worse when mom bought me that plain dress and got Mary a designer one. This event is a little different, though. For starters, none of my relatives are here. Dad is still away on his business trip. He should have been back by now, but something unexpected happened and he had to stay longer. I spoke to him the other day and we didn't talk about Luca at all, but I could tell that he wanted to ask me how things were. I kind of wish he had because then I'd know that he's worried about me. This is a silly thought, though, and I know it. My dad doesn't have Italian roots so he would rather not meddle in things that he doesn't understand. Of course if he knew all the details of my situation with Mary, he'd intervene,
LucaI'm the last to see Laura, mostly because I want us to be alone for a long time. There's a lot I have to say to her, and I suspect that there's a lot she wants to say to me. She recovered well, and the doctors expect that she'll recuperate fairly quickly. She's tough. She broke a few ribs during her fall and fractured her skull, but she'll be just fine. It could have been a lot worse. She could have died. She could have been paralyzed from the neck down. But she survived. When I saw the crime scene, I realized that a miracle must have happened, because there was no way she had made it out alive when Miguel and Mary had over twenty guns in the apartment with them. The bloody scene was also an indication that something terrible had happened. We didn't have the details, but the police connected the dots fairly quickly. Miguel and Mary were lovers. Judging by the evidence they found, he was involved in the shooting. I was disappointed. Beyond that. I had no words for what I felt. I
I crack my eyes open. The light ahead is too bright, so I close my eyes for a while longer before opening them again. My head spins. I'm awake yet tired. My closed eyes make me fall back asleep. When I awake, I'm in the same place, but my mind is so hazy that I'm having a hard time figuring out where I am. I look to my left. My head practically snaps in that direction. There is someone beside me. Someone in white clothes. I look at her face, and her eyes widen a little and she leaves the bedroom. I groan. I wanted to ask her where I was and who she was, but I couldn't open my lips. My tongue is too heavy in my mouth. When she returns, she isn't alone. There's a man in a white coat beside her. He says, "Laura. Laura. Can you hear me?"How does he know my name?I fall asleep to the sound of his voice. I sleep easily. I dream of nothing. I have no concrete thoughts. I wonder where I am and wonder when my head will stop being so fuzzy. When I reopen my eyes, I see something interesting
“Stop!” Mary shouts. We both turn to look at her. She takes a few steps and reaches Miguel’s side. She stretches her arm out. “Give it to me.”“Why?”“I should be the one to do it,” she says. “Just as you’re the one who’s going to kill Luca. That was the plan. That’s what we agreed on.”“We never agreed on anything like that,” he says with a frown. “It was my idea to lure her here and so I have to be the one to do it.”“Miguel,” she says through gritted teeth. “Give me the knife!”I can’t believe they’re fighting over who’s going to kill me. It’s truly unbelievable. I look back and forth between them helplessly. If I stand, he might stab me in the back to stop me from reaching the door and that’ll ruin all of my chances of escaping. I don’t want to die here. I can’t die here. I’m suddenly so desperate to leave here and live. I want to see Luca again. I want to see my father again. Constance. My friends. I can’t die here at the hands of these deranged people. I can’t be another victim
It took everything within me to come here. I park outside the apartment building. I stare at the third floor. The windows are all closed. It's hard to imagine her in there, in my apartment. Polluting my sacred space with her negative energy and bad intentions. I climb out of the car. I don't allow myself to think. She wants this to end, we can end it now. I've hidden behind people for far too long now, and look what has happened. I can't let anyone else die because she's targeting me. That's cruel. I'm just as bad as her if I let such a thing happen. I didn't tell Luca. I didn't tell anyone I was coming here. I'm unarmed. I didn't call for help. There is no plan. There is just me. Me and her. As it's supposed to be. I close the door and take a deep breath before entering the building. The sun is starting to set and the sky looks beautiful; too beautiful for such a thing to be happening. The oranges and the purples are magnificent. I'll never forget the way the sky looked when I con
Yesterday feels like a terrible nightmare. Twenty-four hours has passed since those men stormed into the hotel and shot seven people. Seven people lost their lives, Luca's father and my mother were amongst the dead. I can't believe it. I repeat the facts to myself over and over again and still can't believe that such a tragedy has happened. It can't be possible that my mother is dead. That Luca's father is dead. And all because of some silly revenge that doesn't matter. All because I fell in love with Luca.I'm devastated. I don't think I'll recover from this anytime soon. I'm crippled by pain. And the worst part of all of this is Luca's pain and how raw it is. Marc didn't deserve to die at the hands of those traitorous shooters. I call them traitorous because they were invited to the party under some head of some family I don't even remember. It doesn't matter. What's done is done. We've lost two members of our family. My father is inconsolable. Sarah is inconsolable. Luca is abso
The wedding ceremony was absolutely beautiful. It was only Luca's family, mine, and Brett and Victoria. We didn't need a lot of people there. I've learned during all of this that Luca doesn't necessarily have a lot of friends. He has people he is very well acquainted with, but no close friends. He doesn't let anyone get close enough to him, because there's a side to him that he only shows the people he loves and he needs to keep it protected. It's too tender to be exposed to the world. I consider myself to privileged to be loved by him. He takes care of the people he loves. He knows how to love. I said yes with tears in my eyes. I didn't think I'd cry, but I did. Everything feel so official now. We're finally married. I'm his wife, not his fiancée. It's strange to think that I became his wife without having been his girlfriend first. It's just one of the many thoughts I had when he slipped the wedding band on my finger. We kissed and he held me for the longest time. I was hesitant
Luca Our wedding is tomorrow, and I'm not sure what to feel about that. It’s not that I’ve suddenly become indecisive. I know I want to marry her. I’m sure of my love for her. I’m not happy that we’re marrying this quickly but I also understand why it has to be done. My father was right; anything could happen to me at any point. If that’s the case, Laura is entitled to everything I have. It’s safer this way. But despite this, should we have given it more time? Would it have been best if we waited for things to blow over? That way, we could I have done things more calmly and wouldn’t have to rush like this. I don’t know anymore. I turn to look at Laura. Her back is facing me and she looks like she’s been asleep for some time now. I notice that she doesn’t really sleep at night. She spends a lot of nights awake; like me. So whenever she sleep, I feel easy enough to sleep as well. But tonight is different. I don’t want to sleep. If I do, I’ll wake up and it’ll be tomorrow. The weddi
"How's my favorite preggie doing?" Brett asks as soon as I answer the phone. I can't help but smile as I pop a grape in my mouth. "I don't feel pregnant yet, you know? It's just normal. I won't even lie."He chuckles and says, "You're just a cold-hearted bitch. My mother said that she could feel me from the second she found out that she was pregnant.""You haven't considered the fact that maybe she lied?" Victoria asks. I can tell from the sound of her voice that she's looking for a fight with Brett. "My mother said she didn't feel me either.""Well, that's you," he says with a sigh. "I'm different, then. Maybe those babies are the most magnificent and remarkable ones."I frown. "You're saying my baby won't be remarkable?""How can you say that?""I'm not saying the baby won't be remarkable!" he exclaims. "I'm saying that I was! Jesus! Give it a rest, you two! Stop being so annoying! Just stop!"I giggle and Victoria does the same. She then says, "I can't believe that we didn't get t
When Luca asked me whether I wanted to marry him anytime soon, I said yes. I would have waited longer if it were up to me. I really would have. I had no problem living the way we did. Alone. Free. Not caring about what anyone thinks. Not following traditions too much. It was the liberty I felt when I left my parents' house. But now that I was pregnant, that all changes. My father would want a date. And I'd have to give it to him. So I did. Things were happening quickly again. I was feeling quite overwhelmed with everything. My father was very happy when I told him I was pregnant. He was even happier when I told him I'd marry Luca in two weeks' time. He was strict about that even though he wasn't raised in our world. My mother was ecstatic as well. I never in a million years would have guessed that she would have reacted that way to the news. She even cried as she held me. I didn't know how to react so I simply watched her. The same happened with Constance, although with her my re