WANTED: Love of my Life

27. Service (the one at the church, not the restaurant)

That night I waited, shivering in the cold of the night, outside on the fire escape, hoping against hope that Giacomo might show up, knowing that he wouldn't. My head swirled with unanswered questions. Could I have mistaken the name? What if not? Could Giacomo have been making a joke? Or, the more frightening question, could he have been serious?

500 $ a bottle. One single bottle.

Could he have been serious?

I contemplated going to the park and looking for him. But I knew that was only my hyperactive nature trying to get its way again. He wouldn't be there. Where would he be? I had no Idea. That fact didn't exactly make me happier.

Finally, when I started to feel as cold outside as I felt inside, I climbed back into my room and curled up on the bed. I had never been able to stand the day after tomorrow. I hated disaster movies. But now, the thought of the day after tomorrow was all that kept me going. On Monday, I would see him again. On Monday, I would get... no, I realized with a sigh. I would probably not get my answers. But I would see him again. I couldn't help it. The thought made a smile appear on my face. I grabbed the biggest pillow I could find and held on tightly, imagining it to be something else. Somebody else. Slowly, I drifted to sleep.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

I opened my eyes to the sound of church bells. Damn. As if this Sunday without Giacomo wasn't threatening to be long enough already!

At this precise moment, my mother stormed into my room. Did she knock? I'll give you three guesses.

“Hurry!” She called and swept my bedroom curtains aside. Aggressively bright sunlight flooded the room. “Or we'll be late for church!”

“Yeah. That would be a tragedy,” I moaned.

Sarcasm was wasted on my mother.

“Then why are you still lying there? Get up girl, I have to wake Cathy!”

I have to admit, that cheered me up some. Cathy detested going to church just as much as I did – probably because she couldn't wave any pompoms around. Instead she had to sit still and listen!

As quick as I could manage, which wasn't very quick, I crawled out of bed and started looking for my most demure pieces of clothing. That wasn't hard. I had a big collection to choose from. I pulled on a khaki blouse, a beige sweater and a pale blue skirt that went down all the way to my ankles. How I managed to get down the stairs in that skirt without breaking my neck I don't know. Somehow, I ended up at the breakfast table – only to have to jump up again as my mother came in and sooed me out of the room. Apparently, spiritual nourishment would have to suffice today.

“Do I look alright?” My mom asked, hectically adjusting her hair in front of the hallway mirror.

“You look fine, mom,” I said, in a calming voice.

“Yea, fabulous,” Cathy yawned.

My dad appeared in his Sunday best, a striped black-and-blue suit with a checkered tie, jingling his keys. His keys. The keys to his car. Or, to be more precise, to his 'baby' as he called it. I sometimes wondered how mom had managed to give birth to that monster.

We took the elevator down to the underground garage. There, my dad's baby stood in all its glory. A shiny black offroader with the big red letters GMC on the even more shiny silver thingy between the headlights. When I was nine, I had asked Daddy what make the car was. He had looked at me as if I were the car, and a particularly strange make to boot. Hey, I was nine! I didn't know that everybody in the whole wide world had to know General Motors!