Rating: PG-13, though it is subject to change.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of The Fast and The Furious, no
infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Only the characters of my own creation may I stake a claim on.
Distribution: Wherever, though I would like to know where.
Notes: This is set mere months after the credits rolled. Dom has returned from Baja and all else will be explained later.
I've never been good with goodbyes.
The sappy, the indifferent, the brief, the melodramatic: you name it and it makes my skin crawl. I'm not sure why saying goodbye wigs me out the way it does. This one shrink my mom made me see in ninth grade said it was because I had some kind of emotional trauma with letting people go.
Whatever.
He said the problem most likely took root at a very young age—when my pop died. Or maybe, he had said, when my mother and I left Dom. Just up and gone without so much as a word or, more importantly, a goodbye. But I think that would've had more of an effect on Dom than me. But, like I said, whatever. I don't believe in all that mess about "deep seeded, repressed emotional disturbances that have manifest themselves on my personality and life's outlook," the very words of my tweed clad, tea drinking, wedgy-prone psychiatrist.
That's bullshit.
I'm tough, there's no doubt about that, but it's not Dom's fault. Not Mama's, not Mia's. Hell, not even Pop's. I just don't like to be treated as if I'm some welcome mat with the words 'take a walk on my face' tattooed on my forehead, thank you very much. If there's one thing I've learned after nine years of living alone with my mother, save for the occasional drunk, live-in boy toys she has a knack for, it's to never rely on someone else.
I'm all I've got, and I know that.
So I guess that if you'll want to hear my story, you'll want to know some things about me. My name's Bianca Caprice Teretto, quite the long shot from Dominic and Emilia, I know. But I was Mama's baby, and she wanted a more "refined" name for me than Anne, as my dad suggested. No one ever calls me Bianca, though, just B.
I'm not some gorgeous, curvaceous beauty with raven hair, emerald eyes, and a chic yet classy style that exceeds my un-exceedable bank account—puh-leeze. Overkill much? I'm tall, very uncommon for the women in my family, measuring up to 5'9" and three quarters and weighing in at 130—soon to be 125 if and when this new diet I'm on kicks into action. I was the star spiker of my old high school's varsity volleyball team, a la Gabriel Reese. Yeah, I wish. But anyways, my hair's long, straight, and dark brown like my eyes, and I wish my butt was smaller and my breasts were bigger.
But what woman doesn't?
When I was six, my pop died in a car accident. I wasn't at the tracks that day, but I know all about what went down the next day. Dom was seventeen when he was sentenced for beating that guy who killed our dad, and he was tried as an adult. After the trial, before Dom had even been sentenced, Mama packed Mia, twelve at the time, and I up and moved us to Phoenix.
We stayed a dingy two-room apartment where nothing ever worked. The water ran dirty most of the time and the refrigerator didn't do much more than turn our meals from hot to lukewarm. But we never really noticed because there was never much food in that fridge anyhow; we always ate out. I don't see how Mia and I kept our figures while chowing down on Micky Dees every night. Mama worked a night shift at a diner around the corner from our apartment, bringing in measly paychecks that barely covered the bills she forced me to pay, claiming that math had never been her thing. Truth was, school had never been her thing.
Two years later, when Dom was released at nineteen years old, Mia was up and outta there before Mama could even protest, as she had constantly been doing ever since we moved to Arizona. She left in the middle of the night with just a small suitcase—didn't even say goodbye—and that's when the big feud between Mama and Dom started. Mia, then thirteen, absolutely refused to come home, arguing that Dom was pulling in three times the amount of cash that Mama ever did. So Dom took over as her legal guardian and my life was pretty much over at that point. Mama was so upset over Mia leaving, she couldn't bear the thought that I might do the same. So for the next eight years, until just last month when Mama died, I was under severe lock and key. Home, school, work, and then back home. No exception, no variation.
I'm seventeen, going into school this year as a senior, and I've never been on a date. Never driven anything with wheels, never gone out with friends. Oh, my bad: What friends? Mama was a wonderful woman, who taught me how to be strong and I'll love her forever for that, but 'overprotective' was her first, middle, and last name.
She died last month, a car accident ironically enough. Guess she never could escape my father or his legend no matter how hard she tried. So, seeing as I am still, unfortunately, a minor, Dom is my new, obligatory legal guardian. I haven't seen him in nine years—ten this coming March—and to say that I'm nervous would be the crowning understatement of the decade.
I'm petrified.
What if he hates me? Views me as some sort of infringement upon whatever family he's already built—assuming of course he's built one? Will he recognize me? Will Mia? What will he be like? What will she be like?
Do I really give a damn one way or the other?
Shrugging, part in unconcern and part to help ease the straps of my backpack onto my shoulders, I step off of the smelly bus I was just trapped on for five hours straight, the need to pee just about causing my bladder to explode, and onto the tarmac of the bus station. I glance around and follow the crowd, hoping that the horde of my former fellow bus passengers will have the common sense to find the bus station that I am apparently lacking.
I concentrate on walking, one foot in front of the other in sequence without stepping on other people. It helps take my mind off of all the questions that are attempting to run me over like a stampede of credit card holders on their way to sale at Macy's.
I stop just shy of the large, sliding double doors of the bus station, letting the cool air conditioning wash over me. People are bumping into me, cursing me for stopping so abruptly and right in the center of the entryway, but I could care less. And what would I say anyway? "Please forgive me for making you take an extra step to avoid smashing into my back?" That's a waste of my infinitely valuable breath.
Besides, I'm not even sure I can talk. That nervousness I was feeling on the bus has officially been upgraded to terror singed with blinding panic. My palms are sweaty, legs shaky, and I think the butterflies in my stomach just became bats. It's official: I so don't want to do this anymore. He's in there, just beyond these sliding doors, watching, waiting, doing God knows what.
But what if he's not there? What if I'm stuck here, without a ride? Stranded? But, oh God, what if he is here? What then?
I want this cold rush of air conditioning to carry me away with the passing breeze, turn me into a puff of air that will float away and take me far, far from here. I want to run back onto the bus, beg and plead with driver to take me somewhere, anywhere but here. I want a spaceship to suddenly appear overhead and use it's futuristic acquiring ray to kidnap me and take me back to the mother ship—"Beam me up, Scotty." I want to do anything but walk through these doors.
And then I hear a voice, timid and questioning, and oh God, it's his voice asking over and over again, "Bianca?" and suddenly I've run out of options.
I've never been good with hellos either.