"Hello my name is Mary, I'll be your waitress this evening. Can I get you something to drink?" She said while only looking at Marco. I mean I couldn't blame her, but it still bothered me.

"What would you like Babe?" he asked me as he reached across the table and grabbed my hand.

"A coke please." I said to the waitress

"And for you handsome?" she asked as she ran her hand down his arm and I could tell he wanted to flinch away but was trying to be polite.

"I'll have the same." he said

She stood there for a few short awkward seconds before she turned and walked off. Marco slid out his side of the booth and side into my side.

When she returned to our table Marco quickly ordered a pepperoni pizza so that he could skip the flirting from the waitress. She didn't seem too happy but she placed the order with the chef anyway. Again we sat in an awkward silence until the pizza arrived. Neither of us seemed to know what to talk about.

I finally got up the courage to ask how he became Max's adopted son.

"Oh it's a long story." He replied "Let's see where do I start?"

He chewed on a slice of pizza as he thought and after what felt like an eternity of silence he said "My mother was a housekeeper for a very rich man. She ended up getting pregnant by said rich man and he paid her to get rid of it, aka me. My mother couldn't do it so she took the money and ran. She changed her name and started a new life. We jumped from state to state until I was 7; That's when she landed a job at a mansion that houses its workers in a separate building at the back of the property. The older children were in charge of watching the younger ones while their parents worked at the Mansion. Life was great, we had a roof over our heads, food in our belly and mom loved her new bosses. It all changed when I was 13."

He stopped talking then because the waitress handed him our bill and her phone number. She mouthed "call me" before walking away. I don't know why that caused so much rage within me but it did and my mind roared "He's mine bitch!!" I snatched the number from his hand and crumpled it up. Marco had the stupidest grin on his face as we walked to the cashier to pay for the pizza and drinks but I ignored his smirking, I was too busy sending daggers at the waitress.

Once we were back outside we climbed back onto his bike and took off down the road. I wasn't sure where he was taking us until we ended up on the top of Hudson bluff. There was a nice soft blanket and pillows laid out on the ground near the cliff.

He helped me off the bike, then took my hand and said "I wanna show you something."

He led me to the blanket and motioned for me to sit down, before sitting down beside me.

"Now close your eyes and lie back on the pillows." he said

I gave him a quizzical look.

"Just trust me." he said

I was still giving him the look so he rolled his eyes and laid down beside me, with his arms behind his head.

"Okay but no funny business Mister." I said jokingly. He chuckled as I quickly joined him and when I looked up at the night sky from our spot on the cliff; I saw the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. The stars were so bright in the sky, each one twinkling like glitter. I grew up in a city so I had never seen so many stars before; it was truly breathtaking.

"Wow!" I said

"I know, it's beautiful right?"

I wasn't sure how long we laid there staring at the stars before he started finishing his story from before.

"So where did I leave off?" he said

"Things change when you turned 13." i replied

"Oh right 13 or was I 14? Anyway it was the year my mom's new employer threw a banquet and her old employer aka my father and his family showed up for it."

"Whoa! Wait! What?"

"Yeah I'll get to that. I was running some errands for the chef a few weeks before the banquet and bumped into Paul at the market. He was there with David getting things for Max, and the three of us just hit it off. We started hanging out alot after that; and I got to meet Dwayne a few days later. I learned that Max was their adopted father and they had just moved into the huge plantation at the end of town. They promised to come hang with me the night of the banquet since the staff's children weren't permitted to partake in the banquets. David and Paul never showed up so I decided to play soccer in the field behind the staff house with the other staff children.

I guessed my fathers other son must have seen us and begged his mother to let him play with us, so the two of them walked over from the main house. The minute she saw me she started freaking out because me and her son looked so much alike; in fact the only differences were our hair and eye colours, and he was a bit taller than me, we both looked like miniature copies of our father. The commotion caused several staff members to come running including my mother which didn't help. She recognized her right away and knew exactly who I was. She immediately calmed herself and made up some crazy lie about it being pregnancy brain or something and shooed everyone away. Everything went back to normal after that and I never saw them again that night, but my mother never returned to our room that night and in the morning her coworker and dearest friend found her drowned in the pond in the garden."

"Oh Marco, I'm so sorry."

"Wait, it gets worse." he replied "I was so upset about her death that I stole a bottle of liquor from the main house and ran off into the woods to drink away my pain. I nearly had it gone when that crazy bitch showed up with two men and began screaming about how I'd never get her son's inheritance and that the two men would end the threat. They then beat me until I was near death, and that crazy bitch stabbed me while two men held me down."

He then lifted up his shirt to show me the scars on his chest.

"Oh Marco." I said before hugging him.

"I'm not sure how long I laid there after they left but I fought as hard as I could to not die, I even prayed which was something I had never done in my life. I remember saying I didn't want to die and begging someone, anyone to save me. The last thing I remember seeing was Paul's face before the world went black. When I came to; I was at Max's house, he'd saved my life and told me I was more than welcome to stay with them, so I did. I found out a few years later that my father knew what his wife had done, he didn't care; he wasn't even a little bit upset about it, to this day they still think I'm dead."

We laid there in complete silence after that. I had no idea what to say to him. Eventually I blurted out "You should totally start haunting them."

He bursted out laughing and said "Paul said the same thing about a year ago."

The two of us laughed for several minutes before falling into silence again. After a while I got up the courage to roll onto my side, grab the collar of his jacket and kiss him.