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Sonny had thought back and was sure his grandmother and mother had had it. But they had called it a “blood disorder” and tried to rectify the situation by eating a lot of red meat. Because Lucila had a less severe form of it, it had probably gone unchecked, passed off as panic attacks or tiredness, until her body had run so low it didn’t have enough oxygen to sustain her.
Something about the way her legs were positioned, and the sway of her knees, told me she was thinking about something other than the music, though. The look on her face, how she softly brought her hand to her throat, letting her fingers drift over her heart and linger, said everything she didn’t have to.
She was thinking about us. All the nights and days we couldn’t get enough. I’d never buried myself inside of a woman until the first time with her. And I wasn’t referring to sex, though that was how it started—me wanting to give her something of mine to protect.
She was the safest place I’d ever been. The one place I knew no one could find the pieces of me that I wanted to bury. The pieces that were not touched by the darkness and could live inside of her light.
It was the first time that sex, or fucking, had ever become something else entirely for me. It was more than my body using a woman’s to get off. The first time with Lucila, emotions tangled me up, permanently twisting my life with hers. It had become more than just about pleasures of the flesh. It went so much fucking deeper. It was an emotional connection that could never be severed.
Her flesh, though? It spoke to mine. And my dick got hard just looking at her. She carried so many of our memories that it was like a sweet scent around her. I breathed it in, and stronger than a rush in the vein, it could take me back.
How she tasted. The noises she made. How warm and wet she was when I was deep inside of her. When our eyes locked, there was no escaping whatever it was that possessed us.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she gazed up at me. That door opened and shoved us into a room. It seemed like we met in a memory from long ago, locking us out of present time.
When reality set in for her, giving her an out, she stood so fast that I had to catch her before she tumbled down the steps.
“Here,” she said, slamming her hand into my chest. She wanted me to take Mooch’s leash so she could run away from me. She hated that I knew what she had been thinking about. And she knew because she knew me. About this, my face held no secrets. If anything, it was an open book that I dared her to pick up where she’d left off.
“Lucila,” I said, and my voice came out gruff.
All the blood drained from her face, and I thought that I’d have to catch her like I did years ago. She went slack in my arms.
“What?” she barely got out.
The sun had caused the freckles on her nose to appear, and her eyes had specks of gold in the cinnamon. The darkness of her hair only intensified the unique color. She smelled like the bakery, the Italian salad she probably had for lunch, and the sun.
My light. Always my light. My Lucila.
She was fucking perfect.
“What?” she said again, this time more forcefully.
A moment too late, I realized why she was panicking. “She’s okay,” I said, talking about ma. But in a rush that cleared out the sweet memory I’d been in, dread set in.
Ma was doing okay, but she wasn’t okay.
She’d never talked to me about her feelings or the future. But she had a couple of months back. She was planning because the disease could paralyze her mouth and throat muscles. She told me how much she loved me. How much she wished the relationship between me and Michele could have been different. Not because she wanted us to change, but because she knew she was the last link to what connected us. And she’d be worried about both of us after she was gone.
“He’s not who you think he is,” she’d said. “And you’re not who he thinks you are.”
Michele and I had come to a silent agreement long ago. It wasn’t up to either of us to change the other’s mind about that. Some things are what they are.
Resigned, she’d asked me to play the piano for her, so I did. It was easier with music. Because like the woman standing in front of me, she knew she could read my moods by the notes that I’d play.
Then again, it was harder, because the music I played spoke all the words I refused to say. And in words, I refused to say goodbye to my mother. The woman who gave me life and loved me despite myself. The woman who tried to direct a violent future down a different path by music.
She’d once told me that if anyone wanted to find huge masses of locked up potential, the best place to look was prisons. “It’s all caged up there,” was what she’d said. “It’s just that, sometimes what we don’t realize we have is hidden in darkness. We all need light to find ourselves. Just like with anything else, it’s a balance. Daytime and nighttime. There’s a reason—a purpose—for both.”
She’d always seen my potential as caged, but she’d always just seen me. And she loved me my entire life without ever locking me out.
With the last note I’d played—she’d hugged me as hard as she could and breathed me in. “My baby,” she’d said, like she was carrying me in her arms again.
This visit, after I played a soft melody for her, we both seemed to know it was goodbye. The brio Carine Valentino had for life and for her family was slipping away. But neither of us was letting go. That would be the hardest part.
The pain of it hit me in the chest like a stab wound.
“Lilo,” Lucila’s voice was soft. She was squeezing my forearms.
