Page 33 of My Mafia King

I wanted to be her first. First everything. First story. First kiss. First good memory. I thought she needed it.

Although I needed it just as much.

I no longer hated that I was there with my family, away from my friends.

Summer turned out to be magical.

So I didn’t kiss her.

And in retrospect, I don’t think she wanted to be kissed by me. She was too scared––I bet she was.

And she wanted me to be how I was. A beautiful promise.

So it didn’t happen that day or the next, despite spending the entire summer together.

We were linked at the hip.

Inseparable.

And then the day of my departure came, and my heart wept.

I was so caught up in that girl I didn’t realize she was my first love.

Sometimes, something good comes your way, and you can’t see it for what it is, and only later you understand what it truly is.

She was a good story with a bad ending, and looking back with mature eyes, I know it was meant to be that way.

Not more or less.

Although I did kiss her that last day I spent in Sicily, and her reaction was exactly how I’d anticipated it.

She blushed and quivered, and her eyes softened.

She kissed me back, and we ended up kissing for real.

I regretted that I couldn’t be hers and she couldn’t be mine. Maybe her life would’ve been different.

I’m not so sure about mine.

That’s who Carmina Leto reminds me of.

If I didn’t know the other girl was gone, I’d swear Carmina was her spirit playing tricks on me.

The woman has the same hair, eyes, and a mix of daintiness and toughness.

To mess with my head even worse, Carmina is young, much younger than the other girl had she been alive.

We promised ourselves to keep in touch––the Sicilian girl and me––but life moves quickly when you’re seventeen.

I came back and rolled with my friends. School, sports, and soon after, women occupied most of my time.

I had a dire hunger in me for bodies.

Sexy, luscious, ripe bodies, good for sex that never ends.

So, the memory of that girl began to fade, and eventually, it got locked in a dusty drawer of my memory.

We hadn’t tried to reach each other, and I thought she had forgotten about me.

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