Page 89 of Because I Need You
Giovanni: I’m going to drag you into my office the moment you get here.
Me: I can’t wait
God, I couldn’t stop smiling. I set my phone on airplane mode as we reached the door, knowing full-well that once Gio got going with texts or phone calls, he wouldn’t stop. It was odd, feeling this way about him, “of all people,” as Luke pointed out. It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about it more than a few times. I was still so angry about my father, yet I’d fully fallen for someone who was technically in the same “line of business,” if you will. The difference was, Giovanni didn’t kill people. I didn’t know much about what went on behind closed doors outside of the nightclub business, and I didn’t want to, but as long as he didn’t kill people for a living, or for any reason, I could deal with the rest. Taking a life was just something I couldn’t justify doing outside of self-defense. I didn’t actively practice religion, but I certainly didn’t think any of us should be playing God and taking lives.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I felt at my father. I didn’t know the reason he’d done it, but I wasn’t an idiot. I knew it couldn’t have been self-defense. Maybe once, twice, but over three-hundred times? I shivered uncomfortably, my stomach clenching at the thought of it. When we reached the door, I knocked twice and eyed Petra. When I opened the door, she stepped inside, did a quick sweep of the room, and headed back to the door, where I was still standing.
“I’ll be out here. I’ll check in with you in about twenty-minutes.” She set the timer on her watch, then looked down the hall. There was a nurses’ station and a vending machine on the other wing that we could see from here. “I’m going to grab a coke and be right back.”
I let her step outside before walking into the room and shutting the door behind me. This room was colder than her last one, she probably loved that, my grandmother used to set the air at sixty-eight every night. She would’ve set it lower if my mom hadn’t screamed at her so many times to stop messing with the thermostat. I looked at my grandmother. Her eyes were closed, but the television was on, so I knew she must have either just dozed off or was pretending to be asleep. She’d done both on multiple occasions. I sighed heavily and leaned in to kiss her cheek, pulling up the chair to sit beside her.
“Mima,” I said.
No response. Before sitting down, I set the bag of food I brought on the movable take next to me, taking out the box with the two slices of pizza and the smaller box with the cheesecake. Sometimes, she’d open her eyes when she smelled the food. Sometimes, she waited as long as she could. It didn’t matter. I sat back in the chair and looked at the television, set on Univision, for a few minutes, before pulling out my phone and taking it off airplane mode, after all. The texts were instant.
Giovanni: I can’t stop staring at this picture
Giovanni: Does it come in other colors? I’m buying you another one
Giovanni: fuck, Isabel. What the fuck are you doing to me?
I laughed to myself but didn’t respond. I wanted to wait until I saw him in person. Instead, I opened up the news app on my phone and started scrolling. It was always the same heartache, wars, a mass shooting, murder, and some crooked politicians. Then, I caught sight of a face, one that sent a cold shiver down my spine. Beside the face, the headline read: Carson Riley, MISSING. Next to that, the last date he’d been seen. I opened my calendar app and scrolled back, my stomach plummeting. Images played out in my head, the bloody knuckles, the anger, staying back here while I went to Chicago ahead of him. Fear gripped my heart. Had he killed him? Did I care? I truly wasn’t sure, and that scared me more than the possibility of him having done it.
Through the haze of emotions, I decided that I did care, but mostly because he’d lied to me. He did kill people. I knew in my bones he’d killed this man, a poor excuse for one, sure, but it wasn’t like people didn’t change. I couldn’t believe my own thoughts, but it didn’t make them wrong. Some of my middle schoolers had convict parents, who had turned their lives around for the sake of their children. Some of them were already headed toward a dark future, initiating in street gangs, and trying to prove themselves with their fists. I tried extra hard with those. Extra attention in class, extra care in the way I spoke to them, and extra help afterschool when they needed it, and even then, I knew it wouldn’t change the trajectory of their lives. I thought of Gio, who technically, had everything he could possibly ask for growing up, and yet, he was unhappy, angry, would have changed so much about his life if given the chance. Really, that “life” they called organized crime that he was involved with was no different from those street gangs. They liked to think so, of course. When I brought that argument up to him, he’d said that they were absolutely different, since they were organized. He’d emphasized that word, too. I’d argued that it didn’t change the things they did, and once again, he’d reminded me that he didn’t kill people.
