Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance(150)
Driving down the familiar streets, I’m struck by just how little has changed in the time I’ve been away. The same mailbox on the hairpin bend is crooked, leaning at a forty-five degree angle like it always has. I swallow back a lump in my throat when I drive past the tall, majestic silver maple in a vacant, overgrown lot I used to climb as a child. Seeing the lacy white undersides of the leaves triggers instant memories in my head, reminding me of how I used to collect the fallen leaves in early autumn into my pockets and dump them into a massive pile in my front yard, poring over the pretty foliage for hours.
When I drive down the road I lived on with my father, I can’t stop the tears from burning in my eyes. I don’t let them fall just yet, but the urge is definitely building. I haven’t cried at all yet. Not even at the funeral. I think the day of the service, I was still in a state of profound shock. Straight off the train from New York City, I was dressed in my sleekest, slinky black dress and a designer blazer. I was in stark contrast to the working-class attendees, my father’s friends from the industrial side of town, dressed in shabby suits and well-worn shoes. The older women wore outdated, moth-eaten dresses that probably hadn’t seen the light of day since 1995. My professional-grade makeup job made me look like a total fish out of water in comparison to the mostly bare faces filling the pews. Everyone else mourned loudly, unabashedly, unafraid to release their grief and pay their respects, displaying a kind of vulnerability New Yorkers don’t dare embrace.
Meanwhile, I sat in the front pew alone, unaccompanied, looking more like a character from a Lifetime movie about a funeral than an actual mourner in real life. I was cordial and responsive to the other funeral-goers when it was required of me, but I didn’t say much. I mostly sat quietly and kept to myself until it was over, when I returned to my Newark hotel room.
Even then, alone in my hotel bathtub that night, I did not cry. I wanted to. I tried to. But the tears just sat stubbornly behind my eyes, burning and threatening but never quite spilling free. I suppose I was simply too numb to fully embrace my devastation yet. And then, deciding to visit the warehouse in which he died was more of a whim than anything else. I didn’t think it through. I certainly didn’t plan it very well.
I realize now, pulling my car into the gravel driveway, that perhaps I was acting recklessly because I didn’t have anyone left in the world to tell me not to. My mother disappeared from my life when I was a child, and my father was the only one who ever successfully kept me in line. To be fair, I wasn’t a terribly misbehaved little girl — but I have always been obstinate and willful, causing some trouble for my teachers and babysitters growing up. But my dad… my dear, patient, honest father, all he ever had to do was give me a disappointed look and I immediately shaped up. He never raised his voice or lifted a hand in anger, never did anything to clip my wings or tether me down to earth.
He simply loved me, so deeply and unconditionally, that I could not bear the thought of disappointing or hurting him. It was the way I wanted to raise my own children someday. A very distant someday, I think sadly, as I have never even had a serious relationship that lasted more than six or seven months. I was a serial dater, not a serious dater.
Every man I meet seems to want to tie me down and keep me from flying away, even if at first they pretend to be fine with my career ambitions. I suppose my image and reputation precedes me and damns me in this regard. Cherry LaBeau the puff-piece writer doesn’t have big dreams beyond attending New York Fashion Week and landing a Tiffany diamond someday. But the real Cherry LaBeau — the real me that nobody sees reflected in my flimsy, gossipy published pieces — wants something more meaningful, more real. When it comes down to it, when the ditzy pretty-girl image is ripped away, no man ever wants to stick around.
But I know my father would never want his only daughter to be anyone’s trophy wife. He wanted so much more for me, and he believed in me when nobody else did. I just need to find a guy who will have my back, who can keep up with me.
Someone strong and commanding, but mischievous and adventurous…
Instantly and inexplicably, Leon pops into my head. Sitting in the front seat of my car, idling in the driveway of my late father’s house, I snort out loud. What is wrong with me? Is there a “temporary insanity” step to the phases of grief I don’t know about? Why the hell am I fantasizing about a guy who chased me for miles and pinned me to a crooked cop’s car and threatened my life? I watched him torture a guy chained to a warehouse floor, for God’s sake! Obviously my father’s death is sending me into some kind of bizarre crazy-person spiral.