CHAPTER 88

Rosa

And really, did I need a smart guy? Gabriel wasn’t dumb; he just wasn’t school smart. My sister would never understand street smarts because she took our way of life for granted. Since we’d become part of the Laterza family, our circumstances had improved substantially. I remembered when our father was in prison and it had been very hard on my mother.

It was almost like my sister didn’t grasp the life we were born into. She also wasn’t dumb. She saw it through rose-colored lenses where I saw it with non-tinted Rosa lenses. Gabriel was exactly who he needed to be for the life in front of him and I resented my sister for thinking otherwise.

“Having a fiancée is not his fault,” she rebuked.

“Fault has nothing to do with it.”

“I don’t understand why it bothers you,” she said. “I’ve hooked up with plenty of guys and have no plans to marry them. It’s your senior year of high school. If you don’t get Gabriel Caruso out of your head now, you’ll be miserable after graduation. Enough is en