Just a Proposal by London Casey

Prologue

Olivia

(YEARS AND YEARS AGO)

I nibbledon the slice of pizza.

My stomach felt sick.

Sick for all the wrongs reasons too.

It wasn’t the stomach bug kind of sick.

I would have taken that over this feeling any day.

Marco asked me to help him close last night, which I didn’t mind doing. Antorio had been dealing with the bank all day and wasn’t feeling all that great. Ann Marie was afraid Antorio was going to have a heart attack.

In other words, it was a stressful day and night.

Antorio and Ann Marie had taken me in as their adopted daughter a year ago.

Not really though. That’s just what they told people.

They only ever had one kid. Marco.

They tried for a daughter but nothing ever happened.

So to them, I was their favorite.

Which worked for me.

I loved working at the pizza shop.

It gave me something to do and kept me out of trouble.

Honestly, it was the longest I had been in one place in my entire life.

My home life was decent.

Bill and Wendy weren’t the best people in the world. They had two other foster kids in the house. Jacob and Jennifer were kind of like me. They were loners and outcasts. We made an agreement to never get close. We stayed out of each other’s way and it was pretty good.

I spent as much time as I could at the pizza shop.

There was an apartment above the pizza shop that Antorio used to rent out. Ann Marie said it had been vacant for the last five years. That was my secret hiding place. I loved going up there to do homework. It smelled like dust and must, but with a hint of pizza dough.

That’s where Marco wanted to go last night.

After we closed the pizza shop.

He said he snuck something to drink from his house and he wanted to have a good time.

It was tempting.

Marco was handsome.

I knew what I looked like.

Not exactly pretty (at least in my eyes) but I was the girl that looked like a woman.

And it wasn’t like Marco was going to be the first guy I hung out with.

Except… it was Marco.

It didn’t feel right.

I told him I was going to just go home.

He blocked the door.

He told me I had been flirting with him all night.

I laughed and said he was crazy.

Only he wasn’t laughing or kidding around.

There was a weird look in his eyes.

I told him I would stay. And to go get us a drink.

The second he moved from the door, I ran.

I kind of ran for my life.

When I got home, I hurried upstairs, showered and went to bed.

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to feel.

It wasn’t that Marco wasn’t cute or anything… he just caught me off guard.

I didn’t know he liked me like that.

After convincing myself I was making too much of it, I went to sleep.

There was a knot in my stomach all day.

When I got to the pizza shop and saw Marco, my heart raced.

He refused to look at me.

He ignored me.

Which meant I had embarrassed him.

I felt terrible about it.

I planned on talking to him. I needed to tell him what happened was just… a weird moment. That we could start slow. Figure out our feelings. I had no idea what Antorio would think or do if he found out Marco and I were dating.

I forced myself to take another two bites of my pizza before I pushed the plate away.

That’s when Antorio came over to the table and dropped a torn up leather money bag to the table.

“Can’t eat?”

“Can’t eat,” I said.

“Guilt.”

“What?” I asked.

My face warmed up.

“I trusted you, Olivia.”

“Trusted me…?”

“One rule,” Antorio said. “One damn rule.”

I started to shake my head. “What…”

“The money’s short. It was you. Marco told me what happened.”

“What happened… wait…”

I looked at Marco. He lifted one eyebrow at me.

“You took the money,” Antorio said. “He caught you. And then you told him you were going to tell me that he tried to trap you in the apartment upstairs to kiss you?”

“Antorio, no,” I said. “I didn’t take any money…”

“So you’re saying my son is a liar?”

“Antorio…”

“There are two options now,” Antorio said. “You choose which one. Ready?”

“Please…”

“One,” Antorio bellowed. “One… I call the police. I don’t want to do that. I know your situation, Olivia. The position you’re in. Please don’t make me do that. Which leaves the second option. You leave. Right now. And you never come back here again. If your family wants pizza from here, then I act like nothing happened. We never speak of this. That’s my gift to you. And that’s the only real option you have. Got it?”

I looked at Marco again.

He curled his lip at me and nodded.

This was what I got for running from him.

And nobody was going to believe me.

Because of my past.

My past always haunted me.

I chose the second option and walked out of the pizza shop with a broken heart.

My life was nothing but blame.

I was blamed for everything.

All the time.

Was it so wrong to just want to have a family and feel trusted?

* * *

Tyler

(YEARS AGO)

Crosby brushed up against my arm. “Can I hold her?”

I looked at him and saw the tears in his eyes.

He needed this.

Lucy crawled into Crosby’s arms and he hugged her tight.

“Uncle Crosby,” Lucy’s little voice said.

Although she said it like Unca Crozzy… which Crosby said he hoped she’d never change saying it that way.

I swallowed hard and put my hand to Crosby’s back.

I guided him from behind the large, black SUV to the passenger back door.

I opened it, Mila looked at me and burst into tears.

In the front seat, passenger side, Ma sat there.

Numb.

Silent.

Nobody could blame her.

“Crosby, keep Lucy for a minute,” I whispered.

I reached for Mila and she fell into my arms. Her hands clawing me as she bawled into my chest.

“Why, Tyler, why?” she screamed into my chest. “Why him? Why this?”

I hugged her tight. “I don’t know, little sister. I don’t know.”

I told her to look at me.

I swiped my thumbs on her cheeks to wipe away the tears.

“We need to do this for him,” I whispered. “For Ma. Okay?”

Mila nodded.

She took a deep breath.

I moved her next to Crosby.

Then I opened the passenger door and touched Ma’s shoulder.

She looked at me. “Tyler.”

“Hey, Ma,” I said.

“You look so much like him. I hope you know that. I’ll always think of him when I see you.”

“That’s good, Ma. We have to go for a walk now. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Ma said.

She fought the emotion off… until I took her hand and squeezed it once.

She fell into me just like Mila did.

I gritted my teeth.

How the fuck did my dad die from cancer? How? Of all the crazy things that man did in his life, cancer was the thing that took him?

I carefully got my family to the cemetery.

Me. Ma. Crosby. Mila.

And Lucy.

Poor Lucy.

She didn’t understand exactly what was happening.

She was too young.

When Crosby saw the casket, he looked at me.

I moved closer to him.

I took Lucy back into my arms.

She put her head on my shoulder and tried to wrap her arms around my neck.

With my right hand, I grabbed Crosby’s arm.

He tilted his head toward me, taking heavy breaths.

It reminded me of when he was a little kid. He’d get hurt and he would do everything in his power not to cry. So he’d take deep breaths and fight off the pain. I would hug him and tell him it was okay to cry.

Crosby’s bottom lip quivered.

To my left I heard Mila sob.

I moved Lucy to my right arm and reached for my sister.

She leaned into me and cried.

I looked at Ma and she looked dazed. Her eyes wide with disbelief.

“Now, don’t worry about me. All of you. You got that? The doc said it’s a little cancer. That’s all. Nothing I can’t fight off. I’ll be back on my feet in no time. You hear me? I don’t want any sad faces…”

Ma looked at me.

She began to nod.

She looked ready to pass out.

I hurried behind Mila and pushed myself between Ma and Mila.

Ma leaned into me and took a few deep breaths.

“It’s okay, Ma,” I said. “You can cry. Let it all out.”

I heard a grunt.

I turned my head.

Crosby was pissed.

I saw his hands ball up into fists.

Mila let out a loud cry.

Ma tried to fight off her emotion.

Then I felt a gentle rumble on my right forearm.

“Daddy,” Lucy’s tiny voice whispered. “I pooped.”

I shut my eyes.

My kid just shit at your funeral, Dad.

For a second I thought I heard him laughing.

I opened my eyes and everything was blurry for a few seconds.

I swallowed it down.

I had to keep myself composed.

They were all depending on me.

My father was dead.

That meant the entire family was now on my shoulders.