Maddie doesn't ask about Friday night and I'm glad. Instead, she respects my space and tells Mom that I decided to come home early because it was 'super lame'. And that's that.
On Saturday, I wake up to three messages.
Hey sexy, thank you for looking out for me last night. Julianne took me home with her and let me know what happened. Last time I play with the green stuff for a while ;) Wanna meet up on Sunday? We can grab some pizza... xx
-May
I reply to May, agreeing to meet up. I could really do with some pizza right now...
Hey Gen, just letting you know that I got May home alright. She'll be fine after I get some food into her system. Just letting you know that if you wanna talk about the night at all, I'm here for you.
-Julianne
Great, so someone told her about the awkward situation with Morgan, Lorrie and I. Urgh.
I'm sorry for last night, we need to talk.
-Morgan
As soon as I've finished reading her text, a cold feeling eases its way into my stomach. The last thing I want to do right now is talk about last night's events but at the same time, I feel sorry for Morgan. She didn't do anything wrong. If anything, she was looking out for me, trying to keep me in the loop. Before I can stop myself, I press the call button and wait to be connected. After a few very long, tedious rings, she picks up.
"Gen?" Morgan sounds rough, most likely recovering from her hangover. Lucky for me, I didn't drink enough to get one.
"Hey Morgan. I, um, got your text." I say, trying to figure out what I'm meant to say in this kind of social situation. Go with your gut. "I was wondering if you'd like to come around to mine today and talk?" Anxiously, I bite at my nail.
"Yes, of course. I didn't know if you'd want to talk or not, I'm glad. Are you sure you want to do it at your house?" she sounds relieved, I can hear her exhaling down the line.
"Yeh, it's cool." I stop biting my nails and look at the clock. It's already one in the afternoon. "You can come over whenever. Bring your bikini, it's too nice to be sat inside." I say, already beginning to feel relieved as well.
"I'll be twenty minutes?" she says hopefully.
"Sounds good." I say, hanging up and rolling myself out of bed. First thing's first, I need a good shower.
......
"Firstly, I need to apologise to you, to your face, for outright putting you in such an awkward situation with Ren. I know that must've been so horrible for you, especially being new and all. I really am sorry, you didn't deserve it." Morgan says half an hour later.
We are both lazing around in the hot pool, bikini-clad, sipping on Gran's raspberry iced tea. In any other situation, this would be lovely. Mom and Gran have left us to it, delighted that I have another friend around, but keep coming out to check on us, asking if we need anything. As soon as Morgan stepped into Gran's apartment, she was flooded with compliments from the pair of them, obviously trying to make my friend feel at home. At first, she seemed embarrassed by the two of them making such a fuss about her but after a while, I could tell that she was feeling the love.
"Secondly," I cut in before she can continue to rain her apologies on me, "you don't need to apologise for anything. You haven't done anything wrong except look out for me. You may have been a little obnoxious about it, but you were very drunk. I don't blame you at all. You were only answering my question anyways." Taking her long hand, I give it a squeeze under the water before letting go. "Seriously, no apologising."
After a few seconds, she exhales in relief.
"Thank you Gen. You're such a good friend." She says quietly. "I do need to tell you something though." She turns, placing her iced tea on the side of the pool, so that she's looking at me, face to face. Even hungover, Morgan looks beautiful with her rich red hair and marble skin. Her bright eyes reflect the light of the pool, glistening as the water ripples. She reminds me of the mermaid Ariel from The Little Mermaid, beautiful and slender.
"Go ahead." I say, sipping my iced tea and watching her. She seems conflicted, thoughts obviously whizzing through her head. I can tell that she's trying really hard to put a sentence together. Whatever is about to come out, it's obviously got some kind of toll on her.
"You know the story I was telling you about Thea last night?" she begins, checking that I wasn't drunk. I give her a nod, not needing to re-live the experience, urging her to go on. "Well, um, there's more to the story. I think you should know about it all before you become attached to Ren. I'm not trying to put you off him, for goodness sakes I love him to pieces, he's like my brother." I ignore the jealous twang in my chest, putting it down to my still-jittery nerves from last night. "But, you need to know what you're getting yourself into, if that's what you're gonna do." She finishes, waiting for me to commit.
"Please tell me, I feel so stuck in the middle. He says that he's protecting me by keeping quiet about it all but I feel so lost like this. I just want to be in the loop." I say earnestly. I meet her eyes, which seem oddly distant and nostalgic. She breaks her eye contact from mine, gazing into the quiet house.
"Okay." She barely whispers before clearing her throat and nodding, as if to encourage herself. "Thea met Enzo in her senior year, after moving to the area with her family. They were instantly attracted to each other, he practically followed her around everywhere she went, worshipping the ground she walked upon. He was at her house every weekend, they rode to school together, they were always together at school, and they even went on a weekend break to California together. Within the space of a few months, the pair of them had fallen in love. Really fallen in love." She stops to take a sip of her drink before continuing, her eyes still gazing at the house distantly. "One day, at school, a random guy walked onto the campus with a rifle strapped around his chest. He told a bunch of juniors that he was looking for Enzo Alessandri. The school went into lockdown, locking all of the students into their classrooms and the police were called. We were only fourteen at the time, everyone was terrified. We all thought we were going to die. I remember that the police rocked up and after a few hours, we were told that we could go home. The situation had been... dealt with." She must sense the horror stretched across my face because she suddenly turns to look at me, her jaw tense. "Everything went back to normal for a while, Enzo and Thea wouldn't leave each other alone, they were always together. A rumour started around school, apparently Thea was pregnant with Enzo's baby. It was the height of high school gossip back then. She left school early, with Enzo, one day. She was going to the hospital for her first scan apparently, no one really knows why they left early. They didn't come back. After a few weeks, things began to speculate. Everyone was saying they'd eloped, being cast out from his Italian family. Some people said they'd gone to live on Rose Street in the protection of his Italian family. They are so very notorious for their protection programmes." She says this last part coated with a rich sarcastic tone. "But the rumours were cut short when a few weeks later, Enzo came back battered and bruised beyond recognition. He was only eighteen. He had broken bones, parts of his skin were missing, he had third degree burns all over his back, and they'd chopped his beautiful Rose Street hair off. Some people say that they even branded him with a poker, a reminder of what he'd been through until the day he died. After he'd recovered from his wounds, he wouldn't talk for months. The family of Thea went slowly insane. The father of the family committed suicide, he couldn't cope with the loss of his eldest daughter. When he did talk, he explained to the police, and his family, what had happened. The pair of them had been abducted on their way out of school. They'd been parted immediately and taken to a very dark, damp warehouse area, hours away. It was there that a group of men, all family like the Rose Street boys, known now as the The Shelley's, had tortured him for no apparent reason. They probably did the same to Thea. After weeks of playing with his mind and physically torturing him, they explained to him that the reason they were doing it was because he was a Rose Street boy. Part of the 'business'. Part of the Italian protection gang. The legacy passed down generation to generation. It turned out that The Rose Street boys had taken down one of the Shelley sons during a physical drug-raid of a flat in Flagstaff, a few months before. They told Enzo that they'd murdered Thea, throwing her in front of a moving cargo truck on the highway, killing her and the baby." She stops for a second to catch her breath. At this point, my heart is tight and I feel so very sombre. "They killed her, Gen, for the simple fact that she was dating a Rose Street boy. She had become caught up in their world, their reality. A reality which she thought she was ready to take on because she loved him... Enzo still lives on Rose Street, working for the family business, not that anyone knows what that actually entails, other than protection. He's not the same person that he once was, he's hardly a person at all anymore."
After a few long minutes of silence in which Morgan stares distantly into the house and I stare into the rippling waves of the water, I take one of her hands and squeeze it.
"Thank you for telling me Morg." I say quietly, pulling her in for a hug. "You've helped me take a step forwards in understanding what Lorrie was talking about last night, what he's protecting me from."
She doesn't say anything, only nods.
"There's one thing that I need to ask you though." I say, trying to process the story and what it means. "How do you know so much about Enzo and Thea?"
"Because Gen," she says, turning to look me sadly in the eye. "Thea was my sister."
......
"We'll have a large margarita, a bowl of hot nachos, a green salad and an American BBQ flatbread, pleaseee." May says enthusiastically the next day.
We're down in the city centre, just me and her, at a flashy pizza joint, eating away our problems. The smart-looking waiter flirtatiously smiles at May and scurries off into the kitchen with his little pad and pen.
"Is it just me or did you notice his sexy little bum in those jeans? Don't mind if I do." She winks at my amused expression, taking a large gulp of her cloudy lemonade.
"Can we be serious right now?" I laugh, raising an eyebrow. "There's kind of a lot to talk about." I filled her in about my fight with Lorrie and my conversation with Morgan on the way here. She listened intently the whole time, deeply considering everything like an English student would consider a text.
After I finish telling her, all she says is, "I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about her relation to Thea, I didn't think it was my place to say anything. I need some food. Right now."
Now, fulfilling that demand fifteen minutes later, I sit with her by the window, sipping my water whilst she sips her lemonade.
"Firstly, tell me what's going on inside of your head." She says whilst leaning forwards and cupping one of my hands, which is manically fiddling with my fork.
"Where do I even start?" I say, trying and failing to keep the exasperation inside of me. "I guess this all explains why Morgan has been so off with me. She instantly knew that Lorrie liked me and she instantly knew that I liked him. I mean for goodness sakes, she's had to go through this whole process already, three years ago. No wonder she was so cold with me at the start. No wonder she tried to put me off riding with Lorrie to the party. No wonder she felt obliged to tell me about Thea. The poor girl must feel so much pain, watching me obsess over Lorrie. She's practically reliving the past!"
I sit forwards in my chair and sigh. May doesn't let go of my hand, instead she nods, a sign that she knows where I'm coming from.
"What else?" she asks.
"Then there's the whole situation of this ominous 'family business' that everyone seems so afraid of. I have so many questions yet Lorrie won't answer any of them because he wants to keep me out of the loop. I know that they're involved with drug lords and protecting people and that's about it! Not exactly settling is it?" I laugh hoarsely. "He said he wants to keep me away from all of that business, now I can see why. But if he wants to keep me away from it, why would he even involve me in the first place? It takes two people to flirt, two people to start liking each other. He was the one who asked me to ride with him to the party! He gave me a cute but annoying pet-name! He gave me all of the looks, the intense feelings. So why? He wants to protect me from people like that, people that have vendettas against his family, people that want to hurt him and will use me to do it. I'm not stupid, I can see why he's pushing me away. He wasn't joking when he said it was dangerous. But..."
"But?" May gently presses when I begin to stare into space hopelessly.
"But," I repeat slowly, meeting her steady gaze again. "He's wrong when he says that I can't handle it. He's wrong to push me away." I remove my hand from hers and start fiddling with my fork again, nervously. This time, she lets me. "I like him May. I really like him and can't help feeling the way I do. I want a glimpse of his world, regardless of how dangerous it is. He taught me that scary can be beautiful."
"What you seem to be missing here, is the simple fact that you cannot glimpse at Lorenzo's world Gen." She pauses, offering me a sympathetic smile. "It's all or nothing. If you're not prepared to give it all, then you're better off with nothing."