Page 12 of Damiano De Luca (The Five Syndicates)
Plautus
The Present
“Have you seen him?”
“Maman!” My eyes darted around the cemetery for prying eyes, and I pressed my phone tighter against my ear. “This is hardly an appropriate time for this.”
“It’s always an appropriate time for a mother to ask her daughter whether or not she’s seen the boy she likes.” The laughter in her voice squeezed my heart.
I knew she was hurting over Vincent Romano’s death. I should give her this. I should play along. Then again, she had played her part in teaching me to build barriers around myself during my childhood. She could reap what she had sowed.
“In no world will Damian and I coexist peacefully. It’s just never going to happen.”
I regretted spilling to Maman after I had fled Texas. Fled Damian. At the time, I didn’t even have it in me to be angry at her for abandoning me in Devils Ridge. Never mind my unanswered hidden texts and emails to her, heartbreak took over. For the longest time, I couldn’t see past the pain.
Nearly ten years ago, Maman suggested I distance myself from Damian and recuperate, and I agreed. After all, why would I want to be near the boy I’d just run away from, tail tucked between my legs, knowing it was the wrong thing to do to someone who didn’t deserve disappointment from yet another person in his life?
Now, Maman wanted me to reacquaint myself with him, and neither I nor my ego understood it.
“You left for Texas, and when you came back, I didn’t recognize you. Your walls had been built higher than I’d ever seen them, and I thought you needed time. It’s been nearly ten years, Renata. Ten whole years, baby girl.” Her shaky inhale startled me, sucked the air out of the space, and made it impossible to breathe. “You need to learn to trust, my darling girl, or you will die alone. Neither of us want that, right?”
I begged to differ. My barriers protected me. Back then, the ugly clothes and unkempt appearance had caused many to underestimate me. The one time I had shed my walls had been for Damian, and look how that had turned out.
I’d since lost the frumpy clothes, but the walls around me never wavered. I rebuilt them, and then I built walls around those walls just because I liked to look at them. It was safer that way.
“I trust you, Maman. You are all I need. All I’ll ever need.” I also needed this conversation to end. “Maman, I’d love to talk more about this”—I approached the crowd, hoping she could hear their murmurs, think I was busy, and abandon the open-yourself-up spiel—“but everyone is at the cemetery already, and the burial is about to begin. It would be exceptionally rude to remain on the phone.”
“Ren—”
“—Bye! Love you, Maman.”
I hung up on her, feeling zero percent guilty and one-hundred percent sick of the emotions clogging my throat. I pushed them down, one by one.
Anger.
Frustration.
Betrayal.
Mistrust.
Love.
Lust.
Loneliness.
Sorrow.
Misery.
Fear.
Swallow. Swallow. Swallow. Swallow.
If emotions were sustenance, I would never have to eat again.
Don’t be weak.
