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“And you just had to watch?”
“Girl, I wasn’t going to not watch. Plus, he marked you,” she smirked.
“He marked me?”
“I told you he would.”
“How did you get that from a five-minute conversation you couldn’t hear?”
“I saw the way he was looking at you––like you just fell from the damn sky.” She threw her hands up to emphasize her point.
She tilted her head, studying me with an unveiled curiosity. “Since you told me about one hundred times not to ask you a certain question this day, I’ll start with the fact that, Lena, you look gorg!” she beamed.
I returned her smile, genuinely.
She knew not ask the dreaded questions that seemed to come with funerals. She wouldn’t point out how I looked like the girl everyone thought was in the empty coffin.
Only the person responsible for my aunt’s death would know my sister wasn’t in the ground beside her.
“You look amazing, too.”
The woman in front of me was not the same Melody Belluci I’d been best friends with since middle school. That waif thin, sloppy ponytailed girl had been replaced by a woman whose dark hair was piled on her head in a meticulous up-do wearing a navy dress that clung to a naturally toned figure.
“The teen years were good to me.” She shrugged off my compliment. “I want to say I’m glad you’re back but considering what today is and why you had to come, I’d feel like a vain bitch.”
“I can’t believe I’m back either. Never thought I would be,” I sighed wistfully.
“Speaking of being back, what are you doing here? I told you to finish your trip.”
“Hmm, lounge on a beach and drink cocktails, or go home to support my best-friend, who I haven’t seen in two years on what has to be one of the hardest days of her life?
The decision was such a hard one to come to,” she said sardonically, giving me a small smile.
The glass entry door flew open and the man I had been ready to ask about next walked out, just as dramatic as ever. If Melody’s hug was bone crushing his was debilitating.
“I’m so glad to have you back.” He shook me back and forth, crushing my face into his solid chest.
“Don’t break her Peyton,” Melody chided with a smile, smacking his arm.
“The way her body feels she can take a lot more than that.” He let go and smiled down at me with a wink, his hazel eyes as full of life as always. I smirked at his lobster bow-tie and blonde coiffed hair. He hadn’t changed a bit.
“People are starting to leave. Didn’t think you’d wanna be the last one here. And you should let me take you to eat something before I drop you off at home.”
“I think that sounds like the best idea I’ve heard in a long time.”
There was no need to explain to them how badly I didn’t
want to go back to the house that held memories of a childhood that ended in tragedy.
Chapter Three
My mother told me all a whore wants is to be loved. My father told me no sane man would give a whore what they desired most.
They both agreed after a certain number of bodies that, the whore was better off dead.
I sat in an iron wicker chair, stroking the stubble on my chin with my thumb and studying the two women in front of me.
My brother Elias and our cousin Sergio joined me at the round patio table, indulging in Cobb salads and silently watching the show.
