Amore pericoloso

Chapter One

Katherine

Fate. How the word is ironic. Some people live their whole lives thinking their lives have been laid out for them. Some don't believe in the concept. Me? I think it is a way to punish people and to antagonize over things we can not change.

When you are a little girl, you truly believe that you will have a fairy tale life. You will meet the guy of your dreams, who treats you like a princess. You two will date for a while, exchange sweet nothings and innocent moments, before you decide that you will be together forever. Your wedding day will be perfect. The dress, your hair, your makeup, everything will make the day perfect. As you walk down the aisle, and your eyes meet with your future husband, everything will fall into place. And in that moment, everything is perfect.

But life is not a fairy tale. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. There is only the day in and day out agony and dulling mundane redundancy of life. If you are lucky, you find a decent job and marry a decent person. If you are unlucky, you remain alone, scared and hungry, contemplating if your life is worth the torture you are enduring.

Or, if you're me, life is about to take a hard left and your world is about to be turned upside down.

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Rain. I have always thought it was peaceful, even if the wetness was inconvenient. As I look out the window of the little diner I wait tables at, I wonder if this storm is going to bring any business in. Like clockwork, I grab the coffee pot and walk over to the first booth, where my regular, Jerry, sits reading the paper.

"More coffee for ya, Jerry?" I ask, still looking out the window as the drops hit the ground. The thunder cracks in the background and I shutter. The storm is turning.

"Eh, I suppose, while you're here Katie." Jerry says, sweeping his large blue eyes up to look at my face. "Some storm out there, isn't it?"

"Mother nature is definitely mad today." I agree, shaking my head, making my long auburn hair fall down in my face. I quickly brush my waves to the side and sigh. I have never been what I consider pretty. Yeah, I have wavy auburn hair but that unusual color makes my eyes seen unnaturally grey. I'm relativity short for a girl, only being five foot two, but I have nice curves to balance me.

"Yeah, she is awful mad. How about you? What are you mad about today?" Jerry asks as he picks his coffee up to take a sip. I roll my eyes. What is there not to be mad about?

I live in a small town on the coast of Maine. It is a small community where anything bad rarely happens, and when it does, we don't talk about those things. So when my parents, may God rest their souls, got into a car accident two years ago I was expected to mourn in silence. I was their only child, both of their parents had died when I was young, and neither had siblings who lived in Maine. I was alone. Was I angry? Of course I was. Who was God to take them from me? Why was I being punished?

I shook my head at Jerry before I walked back to the main counter to set the coffee pot back on the burner. He smiles and wishes me a good day as he lays his money on the table. I sigh as my only customer, my only company, leaves me alone in the diner once more. I stumbled across this job after my parents died. My parents always told me I was going to school to be a glorified hippy, but I wanted to save the world from the pollution and destruction we had done as humans. I was in my second year of college at The College of the Atlantic when I got the call from the hospital that my parents had been in an accident and that I needed to come immediately.

My father, Henry, was a pediatrician who specialized to work with children who had cancer. He was dead on arrival at the hospital. Apparently, his side took the hardest hit when the car went through the intersection. My mother, Mariana, was a kindergarten teacher. My mother was an angel walking this earth. She worked with children, she volunteered her time, she made sure that anyone who needed was taken care of. She was in a medically induced coma for over six months, and finally, I had to give her the peace she deserved.

Since both of my parents were gone, I had to take over the household. It soon became too much for me to support and continue my education, so I left college. I sold my family home where all of our memories had been made and moved into a tiny apartment in the city. I started waiting tables to keep the heat on and put food on the table. And my life lost purpose, as I went through the motions.

No one tells you how important your family is. No one explains the emptiness and loneliness that you experience when you no longer have anyone calling you to check on you or to invite you home for Sunday dinner. How you will miss your mother's incessant worrying and your father's warm hug on cold days. I will live everyday wondering if there was anything I could have said or done differently. If they would still be proud of me or if they went to their graves disappointed in me.

I snap back to the present as the bed on the door chimes and someone enters in from the storm. The large figure has their hood up so I can not see their face, but I try to sound cheerful anyway. "Hello! How are you today?" I ask, a little too enthusiastic.

The hood drops to reveal an interesting face. A chiseled jaw, jet black hair, and piercing blue eyes that are clouded and hard. "Do you have coffee here?" he asks curtly, with an accent I don't recognize.

I stand there a moment in awe. He is a beautiful man and the accent has intrigued me. I wonder where he is from? Where is his family?

"Miss?" he asks curtly again, "Is there any coffee here?"

"Ah, yes, yes. Let me grab you a cup." I say shaking my head, trying to make myself focus on the task at hand.

"To go please." he states distractedly, as he pulls out his phone. "Che cosa hai bisogno?" he barks into the phone, his brow creasing.

I turn back to the coffee pot and pour the coffee into the Styrofoam cup. "Cream or sugar for you, dear?" I ask sweetly as I set the cup in front of him. He waves his hand dismissively as I plug the total into the register. "Dollar fifty is the total."

"Come potresti avvisare questo? Sarò lì a breve!" he yells into the phone and throws a twenty dollar bill down. He grabs the coffee and heads straight out the door without looking back.

"Sir! Your change!" I call after him, but he is gone. Who is this man? Where did he come from?

"Well thank you." I say weakly to myself, as I take the very generous tip from the cash. Maybe today is going to get just a little bit better. I throw myself back into my work until the end of my shift. Normally, I would hate closing down the diner, however, I have no one to rush home to today.

"Bye Larry!" I called as I waved to the cook as a head out the door. He gives a curt nod back, and I chuckle. He doesn't like me anymore today than when I started, but I keep trying. My mom always said to "kill em with kindness" and I am trying to live my life as she would have wanted me to.

I step out into the cool night air and the breeze hits me. I shiver and stick my hands back into the pocket of my coat.Casually, I take my first step off of the stoop before the darkness enfolds.