Page 29 of My Mafia King

My father worked long hours like everybody else, and my mother worked hard, too. We sort of knew everybody had difficulties, but it was part of life.

Back then, I considered myself lucky to have heard that girl’s story. And after hearing all those things about her, I became even more fascinated with her.

She didn’t speak much. Just kept her eyes down and stayed focused on her meal.

And that was the other thing about her.

The way she carried herself ignited my curiosity.

The girls I knew back in New York were loud and chatty. They liked to talk my ear off.

I liked them. They were confident and fascinating in their own right, but this girl… She was different than everything I knew.

And I did everything I could to get her attention.

And I spectacularly failed.

We didn’t sit next to each other. And she always had someone by her side.

It was either her mother or some relatives of hers.

I suddenly became shy myself, which wasn’t even in my genes, and all I did was observe her.

She wore a long white dress with some tiny print on it.

The skirt covered her legs while her top obscured most of her shape.

She was skinny––I’d say that now––with not much of a chest or anything else going on for her, and her lips were delicate like blooming flowers.

That caught my eye.

She looked like she was made of silk or the petals of a flower. That’s what my mind had conjured up back when I was only seventeen.

Her hair was midnight black. And she had a flower in her mane.

She’d never smiled that evening, or maybe I didn’t catch her doing that, and my cousin told me she was younger than me and attended a local school with a few other kids. She was sixteen.

Kids often consider themselves grownups. And that’s how I felt at the time, so I didn’t regard her as a kid.

Although we both were.

To me, she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and no matter how much I’d tried to catch her attention, she stubbornly kept her focus on her food.

It was like she was fully aware I was staring like an idiot and wanted to protect herself from my prying eyes.

Before long, our dinner was over, and once I got home that evening, I forgot about her.

The following day, I left the house, moved around, and talked to people.

And she came to mind again.

I knew where she lived––my cousin told me––but I thought it was weird enough staring at her the night before that strolling past her house would make me look even worse.

We met again the following Sunday.

It wasn’t like we really met each other.

We attended church and saw each other but never had the chance to talk.

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