Maddie's Girls

Chapter 33

I knew leaving without saying goodbye was low of me.

But I also knew that if I said goodbye, I wouldn't have left and I needed to leave. I needed to be able to breathe without it hurting and I didn't feel like I could do that being there, being so close to her.

Call me an idiot and it was very likely that I was one but over the years I've learned not to apologise for what I do to fix what others broke.

Nina was mad. Mostly because she thought I was being irrational, think about it and find reason, she said. As if being reasonable had anything to do with it. I was hurting, I wanted to be away from her. That was all that I cared about. That was all that I had in my mind when I got on a plane and left without looking back.

I have always been aware of my flaws and virtues. I've always known my dramatics could be somewhat irritating to others, I often hoped people also knew how painfully irritating it was to myself, as well.

After the second week of my drastic change of country, I was already settling down. I had a little house in Vomero. My father said if I was going to live there for the next three to four years of my life then I'd have to have the best. We spent days looking all through Napoli. From one neighbourhood to the next and when I liked one, he'd look at me and shake his head, this is not it, he'd say and walk out the door just as he came.

To make matters worse, two days after we arrived, my grandfather showed up and although I could pretend I was okay in front of my father, with my granddad it was a whole different story.

When we finally found a house my father liked, the first thing my granddad did was unpack his bags and unwrap the bottle of wine he had been saving for a special occasion.

I knew what he meant to do and I shouldn't have let him get me into it but...

I couldn't help it. That night, sitting on the cold floor of my new house while eating pizza and drinking wine from plastic cups with my grandfather... I told him everything he came all the way from Argentina to Napoli for. I told him more, actually.

He listened quietly without saying a word as I went off about what I was feeling since I saw her with Maddison since she walked out on me. He didn't seem like he was going to say much about it up until I said something among the lines of "I will love again."

And I think because he was a little too drunk, or maybe just old and bold, he told me something I never would've guessed.

"When I was about your age, I ran away from home," he told me, pouring the last drop of wine into his cup. He put a hand through his white hair, looking away from me. "I ran away from home because I wanted to marry a girl, a girl that my parents didn't approve of."

"Why?" I already had a few guesses as to why but I wanted him to say it.

"She was poor. And black." He smiled a little, a sad and shameful smile. "The love of my life, she was. From Buenos Aires we left to Rosario and then, because I knew my father would find us there, we decided to go and settle down in Cordoba, further away from him. We were going to get married but in the end my father found us and forced me to get married to your grandmother. Don't look at me like that, Corazón, she didn't want to marry me more than I wanted to marry her. I'll spear you the details because I don't think it would be comfortable for you to hear but at the end of it, at the end of years of fighting with my father, I did what I had to do. I married Juana and I tried my best to love her.

"Every day I would wake up forcing myself to love something Juana did, something Juana said and I did... I loved her but I was never in love with her. Everybody has a love story, everybody has that story that surpasses all the others. A love so, so meaningful that no matter how many years go by, you never truly forget. The greatest love, the love of our lives."