19. Ilaria
19
ILARIA
M y eyes were on Dante, who was sitting with my friends as they ate the early dinner he had gotten delivered for everyone. He was so relaxed around them, as if he knew them already and don’t have to worry about any surprises.
And my friends were laughing at him, trying to get him to squirm with all their questions but were having no luck.
They liked him.
“Okay, are we going out tonight or are we playing 21 questions here?” I broke up their interrogations, plopping down on the couch beside Sammie.
Dante gave me a look from his chair and I know he would rather we stay here but this is my girl’s trip, no matter how he tries to crash it we’re here to party, with or without him.
“I’m flying back to Boston tomorrow morning,” He is throwing a big party for the Fourth of July at Inferno and I think about how I should offer to go with him, to be there for the big event but I’m feeling selfish and want to stay with my friends.
“What Dante is saying is he is an old man and can’t hang.”
I’m teasing him and his eyes glint with something dangerous.
For some reason I want him to come out with us.
I want to dance with him and feel him against me as I move to the music. I want to lose control and know I’m going to get home safe. I’ve been the mom friend of our group for so long, keeping everyone safe that I want someone to keep me safe.
And I trust Dante to do that.
“What are you doing at Inferno for Fourth of July?” Maddie is making conversation and having Dante’s eyes tear off of me as he looks at her giving a polite smile to my friend.
If Dante wasn’t going to take over the Boston family I would say he would be a great politician.
“We have fireworks that people can view from the roof and a guest DJ coming from Las Vegas.”Dante looks so proud, as he should, about the work he put in and I started feeling guilty running away on his opening weekend.
This is important to him and I want to support him.
“We should go back tonight. If we head back we could get dinner at Inferno and go dancing. Plus Dante will comp our drinks, right D?” Tessa looks at us and I wanted to tell her to stop trying to push us together but my friends had made up their mind about Dante and I could see the traitorous bitches thinking and coming up with plans.
“Did you know fireworks make Ilaria cry?” I was going to strangle Sammie. But for now I settled on taking the pillow and slamming it in her face as she made a ‘oof’ sound falling back off the couch
But the damage was done.
“You cry during fireworks?”
Fucking Sammie.
“Are we going back to Boston tonight, staying in, or going out?” I
needed to change the subject.
I wasn’t going to let them get off track though they all seemed to be biting at the bit to tell Dante some other unhinged part about me. I didn’t need their crazy energy polluting him. I had enough of that to provide him with.
My mind was reeling and they were all making me freak out. I should have never allowed any pictures to be posted. I should have changed the wifi. I should have-
“We’re going to take Ilaria to Vegas for her Bachelorette party slash her birthday. We could do a Jack and Jill. You bring your friends and we can all celebrate. I mean she’s going to be turning 24 and that feels like-”
“Let’s go back to Boston. I’m going to grab my bag.” I was standing up as they laughed at my interruption of Maddie’s comment but Dante wasn’t budging and that was making me annoyed.
I glared at them from behind him and they all smiled wider.
At that moment I had no friends. Just a wild pack of hyenas who were ready to ravage the corpse and any shred of my life that was left.
Bitches .
“That sounds perfect. I’ll have Fransisco reach out and set everything up.” Dante was standing, looking at me with a smirk in his eyes as he moved towards me, a hand reaching for my lower back as we moved towards the room that I had been sleeping in.
We had napped earlier, after I had showered, listening vaguely to phone calls that he was having about his business. My eyes heavy from the orgasm he gave me.
I wanted to ask him about the family, what his role was in it right now. Did he want to do more legit business or was he going to be like his father and just have this facade of being a businessman?
I knew his father owned a ton of real estate. Properties that he kept men that worked for him in and empty places he stored the drugs that he moved around the city.
On paper he looked like a kid from the North End who changed the career path from mobster to legit but I knew that the truth was that he was better at hiding it.
Was Dante good at hiding things as well?
“Will you fly back with your friends? I have to make some calls for-”
“I want to fly with you.”
Dante paused, looking at me and I could see that he was trying to hide a smile as he nodded his head, watching me as I gathered my stuff up into the bag.
I should fly with my friends.
They wouldn’t give me a hard time about flying with Dante, they knew I needed to get to know him more but it still felt like I was doing something wrong.
How was I supposed to balance being a wife and a friend?
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I was spiraling.
I could feel myself spiraling out as I threw things in the tote bag I had brought, very aware that I had a wheelie suitcase filled with 150k in cash that Dante could absolutely not know about.
Or the fact that my friends were talking about my birthday/ bachelorette trip and Dante didn’t even know when my birthday was.
“Come here, principessa.”
I looked over my shoulder at Dante, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, his arms out as he beckoned me to him.
Without thinking I was moving towards him, fingers reaching out to stroke the shadow of a beard that was growing on his jaw. I liked the way it felt under my fingers, how he looked rugged and handsome.
Dante pulled me close to him, his lips touching my fingers as I sat down on his knee, eyes on his.
“Tell me something about you that I don’t know.”
I was desperate for anything about him that I could hold onto. Something that made me feel connected to Dante in a way that was for us, something that made it feel like this was normal.
“My favorite dessert is a limoncello and ricotta pie. I’m not big on sweets but I like to go out at least once a month just for something. Let me guess, you want to eat sweets before dinner?” The crinkle around his eyes as he smiled at me shouldn’t be as charming as it was but I liked his laugh lines.
I smirked because he was right.
“I’m getting better as I get older but if I could have some form of ice cream every day or cheesecake, yeah, I probably would.” Dante slid my legs over his so I was fastened in his lap, all his attention on me.
“And you drink your iced coffee like it’s candy. My sweet Ilaria.”
His lips were on mine, kissing me softly as I leaned against him. Humming as his fingers slid into my hair, tugging me close to his lips as my hands slid over his soft polo.
I liked how he played with my hair, how he liked my natural curls and couldn’t stop touching them. It was such a small thing that made me feel seen.
“Why do fireworks make you cry?”
My back stiffened at Dante’s words and I pulled back, blinking as I looked at him, wondering why he was bringing this up again.
Swallowing as I pulled back, going to stand but Dante was sliding his hand around my waist, his eyes watching me as he looked at me with that obnoxiously happy look on his face.
He didn’t know about this heartbreak and I wasn’t sure I could talk about it.
“No, Dante. Please…no.”
This was an off limits topic, something that was too deep, too personal. I could already feel the way my fingers were shaking as he looked at me.
Dante wanted to get to know me and I groaned as I let a hand come to my face, feeling the way the memory flooded me.
My mother smelled like apples. My dad always joked that she was Miss New England, a secret Kennedy because of her love of Cape Cod and tortoise shell sunglasses.
She always was dressed in the perfect outfit, hair styled at the local salon she would visit twice a week, nails painted red, pearl earrings in that had been a gift from my Nonno for her wedding to my father. She was a vision of class and poise.
Until she got sick.
My mother was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer my Freshman year of college. And it all happened so quickly.
She begged me to have a normal life, to tell her stories about college when I was home on the weekends; she refused to let me see her as she got sick. Wanted to act that while I was supposed to live it was okay if she was dying.
The girls were there with me, coming home with me and meeting my mother when she was at the weakest part of her life.
There were good days, where Becca did her makeup and Madeline and Tessa cooked. Sammie would bring records over and we’d have dinner together with this blended family of mine.
It was like my mother was showering the girls with memories so that when she left they could try to fill the hole that she left me with.
But by Junior year I was well aware that my mother wasn’t going to see me graduate. It was just one of many milestones in my life that she was going to not be there for.
“I want to see the fireworks.”
My mother was in the hospital at this point and it was the unspoken truth that this time she wouldn’t be coming home to us.
My father was at home, gathering a few things my mother asked about so it was just the two of us in the hospital. The girls having given us some space to just be together.
“Ilaria, it’s okay.”
She was brave, knew what she wanted in a way that I didn’t think I would ever be. It was her idea to get in the wheelchair, tell the nurse it was just a bit of fresh air. But she had stolen a key and we made it to the roof of Mass General. Listening as the sound of the Pops drifted towards us.
July 4th.
My mothers favorite holiday.
Maybe it was because of her apple pie veins that she loved it so much but in the time before we always had big parties in the backyard. My father would shoot off illegal fireworks bought in New Hampshire and my mother would tell him he was going to blow his hands off. But I knew that he did the show every year because they were her favorite.
“I’m going to die, Ilaria.”
She said it so plainly like she was headed to the store to get something but I could feel her words, making me choke on air as she reached out a hand to take mine.
I wasn’t sure when her hand had gotten so thin, her skin thinner than before with veins bulging in them.
Was this really the same hand that slid through the knots in my hair when I was a kid?
The same hand that twirled me around the kitchen as we listened to old records and sing with our spatula microphones when Papa was away on business?
Was this the same hand that zipped my prom dress up for me when she told me I was beautiful?
“No.”
I shook my head, that childlike sense washing over me. My mama couldn’t die. I needed her. There was so much that I needed to ask her, needed her to tell me, and moments I couldn’t live without her by my side.
And she was being taken from me.
“She held my hands and told me that she loved fireworks. That she hoped she could see them from heaven. She told me she loved me. She told me that she’d always be there, up in the sky shining down and watching me. She told me Papa might have been the love of her life but me, I was her greatest love story. And then she made me look at her, kissed my forehead one more time as she looked me in the eyes and said I had to say goodbye to her now. That we got to have a goodbye. And I was too scared to not listen. I hugged her and told her I loved her. That I would make her proud and…she let me hold her as she left. The finale of the fireworks behind us as the nurse came onto the roof for a cigarette and found me holding my dead mother.” I wiped at my eyes as if it was going to do anything against the tears that flowed down my face, “So that’s why I cry when I look at fireworks because I’m looking for my mama.”
Dante held me against him, another sob slipping through me as I let myself grieve, to cry against him as he stroked my hair, laying soft kisses on the crown of my head.
He pulled me away from him after a moment, slipping his thumb over my cheek as he caught some of the tears that were falling.
“We can have fireworks every night if you want, principessa. I can’t wait to see them and know your mother is with us.”
He was so serious, I didn’t think what he was saying was crazy and at that moment I realized that Dante might be the man my mother had always wanted for me. Maybe she had sent him to me to save me from everything.
Maybe Dante could make me fall in love.