Chapter 6
6
BENNY
B y the time I get home, I’m having an allergic reaction. Some kind of rash breaks out because I’m practically clawing at my chest, right over my sternum. I can’t think, can’t focus, and breathing isn’t easy. It doesn’t even feel automatic anymore. I concentrate on taking air into my lungs.
I shake my head but that doesn’t clear my vision at all. I’m not eighty-three years old, and it isn’t the heat that’s got me turned around. I saw Daisy May Cooper on the sidewalk today, like she’d come back from the dead.
I know it’s fucking melodramatic, but it feels that way.
I’m not still in love with her. I don’t even think that’s possible after so long apart. I kept looking for a letter. We did that back in the day, passed notes to each other, written in cheap, plastic-smelling blue ink on notebook paper. Any day I’d find one in my mailbox, I thought. I believed that for a long time. I never got the six-page, tear-stained letter I expected, one explaining how she had to follow her dreams. That she’d always regret leaving me behind but my life was here. It was practically a country song by the time I finished imagining that scene.
How many men has she been with since me? How many times has she told some guy she loves him? Nope, I can’t go there.
Finally, on the verge of a full-blown panic attack, I decided a cold shower is what I need to snap my ass back to reality.
I stand under the bite of icy water, grit my teeth and say ‘fuck’ about two hundred times. Nothing helps. Just like nothing helped when she left.
But I clawed my way back. I no longer look like a pasty-faced whiner that hadn’t seen the sun in six months. I hit the gym, gave up drinking alone and drinking when I’m upset. I put my skills to use, righted the ship on the family business since my dad had spent the two years of my devastation alienating a lot of our allies. I built it back. I slipped in to shore up my dad and instead of seizing control, I just stand there, young, strong and level-headed, and earn their confidence.
This is why I feel like I’m being ripped apart by something with giant claws. Seeing her incinerated the self-respect and resilience I thought I’d built up in the past few years. That’s ashes now and sifting away in the wind. Because Daisy May Cooper can undo me with a look, see right through all the bullshit I’ve told myself about moving forward.
I’m a grown ass man, second in command of the largest criminal organization in the state of New Jersey, and she could bring me to my knees in an instant.
Everything I thought I’d become, everything I’ve taken pride in was a stupid fairy tale I used to keep me going from day to day. It was a painful coming of age. That is what I tell myself to be able to get up in the morning.
No matter what I thought, I never stopped waiting for Daisy to come home to me.
There is no limit to what I’ll do to get her back. I’m not even ashamed of that because I’m hooked, and I never met a junkie that had an ounce of shame.