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“Okay, Alice, you first.” Blake motions to the blonde as we get down to the water’s edge, and she walks over to where a surfboard is waiting in the sand. I feel another of those tiny flickers of jealousy that he didn’t pick me first, but I quickly quell it. It’ll be my turn soon enough.
“Have you done this before?” A tall, thin, dark-haired girl to my left turns towards me. “I’m Michelle, by the way,” she adds.
I shake my head. “No, this is my first time. Oh—Gia. I’m Gia.”
“Nice to meet you.” She glances back towards the water. “I’ve been here for a week. This is my third lesson. Blake’s a really good teacher—very patient. Which is great, because I’m far from a talented surfer.” She laughs self-consciously.
“I’ve only been here a couple of days. I went out exploring yesterday—I met Blake at that bar.” I gesture up the beach. “He told me I should come check this out.”
“I’m glad you did! It’s always nice to make new friends. Here, let me introduce you.”
She nudges me towards three other girls who are standing and talking in a small circle, and I’m quickly introduced to Melanie, Bethany, and Victoria. The entire foursome has similarly perfectly fit, toned figures, all of them exuding careless wealth and the kind of sleek gloss that only comes from having lived that way their whole lives. It only takes me a few minutes to find out that they’re here on a bachelorette week away, and Victoria holds up her left hand. There’s a gigantic oval-shaped diamond on it, and she waves it so that the sun glints off of it, sending out a prism of rainbows.
“That’s gorgeous.” I’m glad I slipped my band off and left it in my tote again. If anyone looked closely enough, they might notice the thin tan line on my left ring finger, but I doubt any of them will.
“He picked it out himself.” Victoria grins. “After I left a bunch of magazine photos in very conspicuous places, obviously. I might have accidentally forwarded him an email about ring styles I liked, too.”
I bite my lip, thinking of what ring I might have liked to have. I hadn’t ever really considered it. Pyotr hadn’t given me a ring at our engagement, telling me instead that it was his family’s tradition to gift an heirloom ring at the altar. And Salvatore had just pushed a gold band onto my finger. I hadn’t even had a chance to think of whether I liked an engagement ring I’d been given or not.
Now, I probably never will. I can’t imagine Salvatore going out of his way to buy me a ring, especially when he doesn’t have to. As far as he’s concerned, he’s done everything he has to do in order to protect me. There’s no reason to go further than that.
“Where are you from?” Michelle asks. “I live in Boston. Victoria and Melanie co-own a clothing store in San Francisco, and Bethany owns a chain of restaurants in Seattle. You can imagine we don’t manage to get together very often, so this vacation has been really nice.”
“I’m from New York.” I bite my lip. Thankfully, she hasn’t asked what I do—I have no idea how I would actually answer that question. I never put much thought into why the only friends I’ve had—the only friends that my friends have—are the daughters of other mafia families. But now it occurs to me why that is. Who else could understand us, and our way of life that doesn’t entirely fit into the twenty-first century? I can’t tell any of these women, as nice and eager for friendship as they seem, that I’m the daughter of a mafia don, that my marriage was arranged, that I’m here on my honeymoon, and my husband is my godfather, who upended my planned wedding at the altar because he claims to have been afraid for my life.
I can only imagine what the looks on their faces would be.
“What brought you here?” Their curiosity seems genuine, and I feel bad having to skate around the truth. But I can’t really give it, and I don’t want to talk about Salvatore, especially not with strangers.
Right now, all I want to do is escape from my reality, and that’s what I came down here to do. Not be reminded of it.
“Oh, just—you know.” I raise one shoulder in what I hope looks like a casual shrug. “Just needed to get away.”
That, at least, is true—even if it’s probably not the reasons that they’ll assume.
“I hear that!” Michelle laughs, only to turn and glance towards Blake as he calls her name for her turn. “Okay, wish me luck.”
I watch as she strides down towards the surfboard. Alice doesn’t appear to have done too well—her hair is half out of its ponytail and plastered around her face. Michelle, on the other hand, seems to be keeping her balance fairly well for all her claims that she was bad at it.
While we wait, I end up learning a little more about my new friends. Victoria and Melanie both went through fashion school, intending to open up a boutique clothing store. Victoria’s fiancé is a hedge fund manager in San Francisco. Bethany has aspirations of opening a new restaurant in Los Angeles in a few years. They’re all clearly from wealthy families—they all grew up together in Boston, where apparently Michelle stayed and became a lawyer, but they’ve all gone on to inherit their trust funds and have their own aspirations and careers. Victoria is the only one who’s engaged, although Melanie thinks her boyfriend is going to propose any day.
It reminds me that I don’t have aspirations like that—or rather, I can’t. My life has always been set. I can’t have my own career, business, or plans. My life was always going to revolve around the husband that was chosen for me and my place in the mafia world. It makes my stomach sink when it hits me that even if I had married Pyotr, even if he wasn’t what Salvatore claims, that would still have been my life.
I believed that it would make it better that Pyotr seemed to see me as an equal. That I’d be his partner in running the Bratva, not just someone left on the sidelines. But being here, seeing the full lives that these women have in vivid color, I wonder if even that would have been enough. Or, if one day, I would have wished for more.
I hadn’t realized how much I was missing. And I don’t know if it makes it better or worse that I’m experiencing a small part of it now.
Michelle and her friends must have signed up as a group, because Blake calls their names one after another, before bringing them all down to the surfboards together for a final group lesson. I spread my towel out on the sand as they all go to meet him and watch, nervous for my turn. I don’t want to embarrass myself.
Finally, Blake calls my name. Michelle grabs my arm as I pass, flashing me a smile. “Meet us up at the bar when you’re done,” she says. “We can all get drinks and lunch. We’re going to go do some shopping first.”
“Okay.” I return the smile, nodding. “That sounds great.”
Blake is waiting for me when I make my way down the sand, his blond hair plastered to his skull and darkened from getting wet. The sun is glinting off of his damp abs, and I try not to look too hard. I’m sure he’s used to women ogling him all of the time, but I’m not supposed to.
It cuts both ways, though. I left my shorts and crop top on my towel before coming down to meet him, and I can tell from the way he looks at my skimpy bikini that he likes what he sees. All that Pilates paid off, I think wryly, as I wait for instructions. I might have plenty of insecurities, especially when it comes to my own husband, but at least I know I can hold my own against all the other gorgeous women on this beach.
“Alright,” he says enthusiastically, as if he never gets tired of trying to give awkward women lessons on how to use a surfboard. “We’re gonna push it out into the water, just up to like hip-deep, and then you sit on it. Just try to get your balance at first, okay?”
