Where I Wanna Be
Authors: Vera Roberts
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #African American, #Romance, #Multicultural & Interracial
By
Vera Roberts
For MESY.
© 2013 Vera Roberts, All Rights Reserved
Smashwords Edition
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Eliodoro “Eli” D’Amato had the perfect life: a beautiful wife, an adorable son, and a growing family business. His perfect life was a problem—it was mundane and routine. He knew Thursdays were pizza nights. He knew Mondays were Netflix nights. He knew Sundays were family dinner nights.
Eli also knew… he was unhappy.
When an old girlfriend, Simone Harris, pops into Madre’s, she and Eli get a chance to reconnect with each other. She had traveled the world, loves salsa dancing, and loves cigars. Most importantly, she’s sexy and very available. She makes Eli discover everything he wanted to have and was missing in his life: excitement and passion.
Eli finds himself in a peculiar situation: does he remain committed to his high-school sweetheart or does he pursue what could have been?
Where I Wanna Be is the third story in the D’Amato Brothers series. It is a sensual/erotic book that deals with the problems that arise with marriage, commitment, and trust.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
- Frederich Nietzche
Il primo amore non si scorda mai
.
(You never forget your first love.)
- Italian proverb
La buona moglie fa il buon marito.
(A good wife makes a good husband.)
-
Italian proverb
Simone
High School Era…
This is getting old. Real quick.
Sixteen-year-old Simone Harris stood outside of her new home in St. George, Staten Island. It was two stories tall, painted in chocolate brown with green trim. It had a big porch and the movers already placed two chairs and the table outside. The other movers moved the family’s belongings from the moving trucks to the home, with each box designated for certain rooms.
Simone had already picked out her room based on what she saw on the blueprint. It was the bedroom down the hall from her parents. She had to share a bathroom with her sister, but that was fine. She didn’t care. She just didn’t want to be right next to her parents.
Her arms were folded loosely across her chest and there was a scowl forming on her face. This was the third move in just as many years. Just when she got used to one place, made friends, got to know the neighborhood and the city, it was time to leave. It was fun the first time. It was sad but understandable the second time. It was officially old and tired the third time.
“
You keep pouting like that and you’re going to drag your bottom lip on a trip wire,” Simone’s older sister by eight years, Alicia, stood next to her. She was a little shorter than Simone and lot rounder. There was a sibling rivalry between them, though Simone thought it was one-sided on Alicia’s part. Alicia described her look as bourgeois when Simone thought she really meant
bullshit
.
Simone let out a light sigh. “Don’t you get tired of always starting shit?”
Alicia mocked Simone. “Don’t you ever get tired of being a spoiled brat?”
“
Yes, because I’m the twenty-three year old who’s still living at home,” Simone smarted back.
“
You’re just mad because you had to leave your precious Seth,” Alicia said smarmily.
Simone continued to stare at the house ahead of her. “Shouldn’t you be upstairs unpacking?”
Alicia mimicked Simone’s stance. “Shouldn’t you be getting a life?”
“
Apparently mine is more interesting than yours, if you have to mimic me.” Simone glanced over at her sister.
Alicia got into Simone’s face. “Just remember, I’m older than you.”
Simone shrugged. “And you’re also fatter than me, your point?”
“
Mom!” Alicia screamed in her sister’s face.
“
Leave your sister alone, Alicia,” their mother, Meredith, walked outside and joined her daughters. She was an older, light-skinned, Black woman with long dark hair. Meredith was a homemaker and already accustomed to her husband’s constant moves. “You run along upstairs and begin unpacking. The movers have already moved the boxes into your room.” She directed to her daughter, who promptly left.
Simone kept her stance and didn’t budge. “I know what you’re going to say, Mom, and I don’t want to hear it.”
“
Drop the attitude, Simone,” Meredith warned, “this isn’t easy for any of us.”
Simone smirked. It was easy for her mother. All she did was stay home, plan meals, and go shopping at her leisure. They had a gardener to take care of the yard. They had another worker clean their pool. They had a maid come by the house once a week to take care of their home. As much as Simone loved her mother and everything she had done for the family, she could admit her mother was a housewife in name only. The woman wouldn’t know how to turn on the vacuum cleaner if it was the only thing keeping her alive. “I wanted to live with Aunt Sharon and you said no.”
“
I’m not going to apologize for wanting to have both of my daughters here with me,” Meredith stated. “And you certainly were not going to grow up in that area by yourself.”
“
You make it sound like Houston was the worst place on Earth,” Simone quietly replied. “We had family and friends there.”