Page 94 of Pomegranate Seeds

After a while, she asked a question that not only startled but terrified me. “Would you be sad if I died?” I looked at her with huge eyes. What kind of a fucking question was this?

But she got my look wrong. She buried her face back down and mumbled, “Of course, you can’t be sad. I am sorry for asking.”

“Priscilla,” I said with the softest voice I could manage and caressed her head. The topic was making it hard to be relaxed right now. It was a topic that easily kicked my logic and created chaos inside my brain. I never wanted to talk about it but seeing Priscilla in pain was a worse option. It was both emotionally and logically wrong.

I was going to keep my promise of making her happy all the time. I was not going to upset her over a misunderstanding. It was just wrong.

She looked up at me with her sad eyes. It was even hard to look at her like this, but I managed. “My feelings are very hard to read or understand, and I am aware of that. But it is not like they are fully non-existent. I lack the ability to express my emotions, and the ones I do, I don’t feel them the same way other people do. Sometimes I feel something so intensely that it throws me off because I am not used to it. They hurt me when they exist and when they don’t. So, maybe I won’t be sad in the way you think, but I will be ruined if you died before me.”

“You will?” she asked with an unbelieving voice. At moments like this, I wondered if she thought I didn’t care about her at all when she was all I cared about in the world since the first moment I saw her.

“Of course,” I said, cupping her cheek. “I never want to think about someone from my family dying. It broke me the first time, so I don’t think I can handle it a second time.”

Her eyes softened on me as I brushed away the tears gathering up at the sides. “The first time?” she whispered.

I have never told her about my mother. She knew she died when I was young, but she didn’t know everything else that mattered. I always wanted to keep that part of me in the dark. I didn’t want people to know my weakness.

But maybe that was what marriage was about. Even if it was not, it felt like it because I felt like I could tell Priscilla things that I had never told anyone else. I had known her shorter than anyone in this house, but I still trusted her as much, maybe even more.

“My mother,” I forced the words. I wished I could just do it easily, but it was never going to be easy. This was the story that ruined me.

Priscilla propped up on my chest. Her tears were no more, and she was looking at me with curiosity. She was ready to just listen. No judgments. No criticisms.

If I could love someone, I knew I would have loved her.

I wished I could love her.

I cleared my throat and touched her cheek as I talked. It would keep me sane in this insane story. “I was not always like this. I was not the cheeriest child, but I was a normal kid who could feel like everybody else. I loved my family, and I got sad when I didn’t get chocolate before dinner. I got happy when my mom read me a bedtime story. It was all fine until my mother died. I was maybe too young to be affected by it.” Priscilla shook her head, but she let me continue. “I don’t know why it broke me that much. Death mostly brings people sadness. That was what happened to my dad and Alessio and everyone else who knew my mom. They were sad, but I was nothing. She was full of emotions, and when she died, she also took mine away.”

Priscilla caressed my cheeks and forehead. “Are you mad at her?”

“I can’t be. It was not her fault. It is not like she used magic to steal my emotions. It doesn’t make sense to be angry at her.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense,” Priscilla said with a hopeful tone.

She didn’t understand. “I think I still love her,” I confessed even though I knew it might hurt Priscilla.

I was wrong. She didn’t seem sad at all. On the contrary, she seemed happy and excited. “You can feel the love?”

Oh no. I could not lie to her. “Only towards her. I think it is because my emotions are buried with her, and she is the only person capable of creating emotions in me.”

Priscilla’s small smile stayed, but I saw her throat move up and down with a hard swallow. “Only one?”

I needed her to understand even though it was hard. “It is different, Priscilla. You are like her in a sense. You have so many emotions too. You show them so openly that sometimes I think I am the one feeling them. You create chaos in my brain with those emotions but what my mom does is different. It feels like she holds them in her hand, and I am not capable of feeling them unless it is with her.”

This time she was not smiling, but her face looked more relaxed. She carried so many emotions in those deep green eyes. They all filled my chest, making me uncomfortable and addicted at the same time.

“Maybe we can work on it,” she suggested. She wanted to heal me. I didn’t deserve that. I was a lost cause.

“I don’t think that is possible.”

Priscilla’s golden eyebrows tightened. “Have you ever shared it with anyone? Have you ever tried? You were not always like this, Antonio. There might be a way.”

I have never even thought about it. “My lack of emotions is considered a strength for our business. I never told this to anyone, but my dad knows I visit mom once a month. Everybody in our family knows I turned this way after my mother’s death. They just accept me as I am.”

She shook her head. “This is not about that, Antonio. I will accept you in any state, but I would want to help you too.”

I took her hand and kissed her knuckles. It always softened her. “It is okay, Priscilla. I have gotten used to it. I just hope you can too.”

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