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CHAPTERFORTY-FIVE
“Don’t cry, Mom,” I begged as I pulled away from my mother. She’d been weeping as she said goodbye to me, and we were starting to attract stares. “I’m going to college, not dying.”
Matteo chuckled, and I could see my brother’s face over my mother’s head. “I better get this kind of sendoff next year or else I’m going to develop some sort of complex.”
This made me chuckle.
And the sound of it caused my mother to pull away from me. She brushed the tears from her eyes before placing a hand on my cheek.
“How are you already so grown up?”
The question made me roll my eyes. “I’ve been grown up for a long time.” Sometimes, I felt like I’d been born a fully-fledged adult. From the moment I was born, I was given a legacy that I was supposed to live up to, which is why I’d fought so desperately to get out of New York.
Now that I was, I wondered if I would finally be able to breathe.
“You’ll always be my baby,” she said, sniffling.
Matteo chuckled. “Yea, a big baby.”
I reached across my mother and punched my brother in the shoulder. “You better not take over my room,” I warned. It felt like a normal thing to say, and these days, I craved normalcy.
“Why the hell would I want your room?” Matteo laughed as he spoke, his normal easy smile on his face. For the last few weeks, Matteo had been by my side. When I’d been moping around the house, he’d been there doing his best to try and cheer me up.
For better or worse, my brother had my back when it really mattered.
“Your brother isn’t going to touch anything.” My mother’s voice was stern. “You’ll always have your room, and Boston isn’t too far. You could take the train down on long weekends.”
This time my father chimed in. “He’s not going to want to spend his weekends hanging out with his family. I’ve never been to college, but I’m pretty sure Dom says this place is party central.”
The horrified look on my mother’s face was incredibly comical. If I hadn’t been worried about upsetting her further, I might have made a joke.
“Eli’s not going to party. That’s not his thing.” She reached out and ruffled my hair. I tried not to get embarrassed. After all, there was worse going on around me, and my mom deserved this moment just as much as I did. “He’s an academic.”
“All college kids drink.” My father rolled his eyes, but he was smirking at me. “It’s part of the experience.”
There was a grumble from my mother, something about this being the most prestigious school in the world, but I blocked her out.
Being here was amazing, but it was also hard.
The last time I’d been on campus had been with Carla. And as much as I tried to ignore the way that I longed for her, I couldn’t stop those feelings from bubbling up.
“Why don’t you two go get in the car,” my father said to Matteo and my mother. “I want to talk to Eli for a moment.”
My mother looked like she was ready to argue, but Matteo swooped in and caught her attention. He was good at that.
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked my father, not taking my eyes off of my mother’s form. “After everything that happened…”
My father’s heavy hand clasped my shoulder. “She’ll be fine. She would have been like this no matter what. She’s proud of you, but you know how your mother can be. She loves you and Matteo more than anything. The idea of not seeing you every day is just making her sad.”
He smiled as he looked after her, love in his eyes. My parents’ marriage had always been a good one. It wasn’t until I’d fallen in love myself that I realized how deep they felt about one another.
These past few months being near them reminded me of the emptiness of my own life.
“Have you heard anything from Moreno?” I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to ask the question.
There was no point in it. Moreno and my father agreed that it was best for Carla and me to move on with our lives, and they’d had some unspoken bond around not telling me anything. I wondered if Carla was in agreement. It was hard to know. Last I’d seen of her, she’d been led away via handcuffs.
My father released a heavy sigh. “I probably should remind you that you should be focusing on starting school, but I know you won’t stop, so I’ll tell you what I know.”
