When The Sun Goes Down - A Midnight Mafia Novel

Chapter Twenty

I woke up just a few short hours later. Alessio was surprisingly still there, and even more surprisingly asleep. I don't know why, but I guess I had expected him to just vanish whenever I fell asleep. It was hard to imagine him doing normal things like sleeping or eating.

I watched him for a few moments. He looked calm and peaceful. If I didn't already know he was such an asshole I might have thought he even looked boyish and innocent without that pissed off scowl on his face.

I rolled out of the bed and tiptoed to the bathroom where I crawled into the bath tub in almost complete calmness before breaking down. I always did this. Hid in bath tubs when I was upset. It started when I kept seeing girls crying while in the shower in a cliché twist on movies. I had thought it looked insane the first time. They're just showering, washing their hair almost completely calm, they put their hand on the shower wall and all of the sudden the break down. It made no sense to me, how do you go from shampooing to sobbing? But after seeing it in several different movies over the years I decided to see what all the fuss was about and to go cry in the shower.

I'd been hooked then. See I was in a house with five guys and only three girls, and grandma hardly counted since she was usually asleep anyway. Crying didn't get your point across or sympathy where I grew up. It was a point of weakness. To my older brother and cousins it was something to be made fun of for, to be called a sissy. To my cop far and cop uncle it was a weakness we needed to toughen up. So something about getting this moment in complete seclusion, away from the room I shared with three others, in the one room that was ruled as a one person only room, it was easily my favorite place in the house.

I'd do my homework in the bathtub, I wrote my first love letter in the bathtub, reminisced about my day in the tub. Even once I moved out and I didn't need to go to the bathroom for privacy, I still took refuge there when upset. When my first report was turned down, I cried in the bathtub. And then again, when my first report was printed I ran again to the same place. My first heart break, bath tub. I spent nearly two hours hiding and crying in the bathtub before finally getting my shit together enough to go to my own brother's funeral.

Closed in places in general worked for me. I could settle for closets, a bathroom stall, even hiding under the blankets was a relief. Just so no one could see me and I couldn't see anyone. I think it helped to center me honestly, to have no distractions. Just me.

Except now it wasn't just me. Because as desperate as I was to just have this moment to hold myself and cry alone he wouldn't let me. I must have been too loud in the bathroom and woke Alessio because here he was screwing everything up again.

I just wanted to mourn the loss of my cousin. My cousin who loved my quite dearly, and who I in turn loved dearly. My cousin who was hardly a teenager, who may not have come down here if I wouldn't have disappeared. I just wanted to mourn him but here he was screwing everything up.

Alessio had me by the arm and was pulling me up to my feet despite my incoherent blubbering and curses and my trying to push him away.

I refused to take the step over the ledge of the large Jacuzzi bath tub so he just dragged me over it. I was smacking at his chest and telling him in between snotted lips to leave me alone. But he didn't care.

I couldn't hear the soothing words he was trying to tell me, or maybe he was cursing at me, I couldn't hear anything but I felt the air against my ear as he spoke. We both fell onto the bathroom floor in a heap. I smacked frantically at his chest but he didn't seem to mind. He pulled me on to his lap but I pushed away.

We did this fight, almost like a tango. I was straddling him while trying to push away but he was as determined as I was.

He finally saw a good opening to get a better hold on me. He wrapped one arm around my waist and held the other behind my back and kept his hand on the back of my head. I struggled for only a few more moments before collapsing against him completely and wrapping my own arms around him.