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Francine receives our drinks and pushes mine towards me with a wink. I take an immediate sip.
“Yes, I saw what the fool Steven was doing, but it’s too late to pull off that title, I already like you. A lot. I mean, really a lot.”
I glance sideways at her. "Hmmm … is that your attempt at impressing me?"
She cowers comically, back slouched, tone sheepish, eyes shifty. “Is it working? I really need a full-time gig here after this internship is over.”
She looks so funny I can’t hold my laughter back. Maybe this internship is going to be all right, after all.
She takes a sip of her drink. “The buttering up aside, do you have your eyes on any of the guys from our team?”
“Nah. Do you?”
Her head tilts slightly towards the tall French intern in our party. I noticed earlier that he has been turning both female and male heads alike. “He’s so goddamn full of himself,” she spits. “I’m obsessed.”
I eye the green-eyed, dark-haired, calve-length coat clad stud. “He’s very handsome, but way too obvious for me.”
“Obvious? What’s wrong with that?” she asks indignantly before turning to gaze dreamily in his direction. “He looks like fun. If I don’t get a full-time position here at the end of the day, he’ll be mine … at least for one night.”
I smile. “You don’t spit into your own rice bowl?”
“Never.” She turns back to me. Her eyes are sparking with a need for drama. “But you … you have a story to tell, and I want to hear it.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Story?”
“You’re carrying a torch for someone, aren’t you?”
My eyes widen. No way she can tell. “What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know, but I can always tell when someone’s “I’m available” light is off and it’s always because their heart’s taken.”
I bite my lip. Never in my life has anyone asked about him. He is my deepest secret and regret. I have never forgotten him and never stopped wishing I had never told Dad about him. Over the years it has become a recurring dream. In my dream, he is not the boy who kissed me, but a beast. An angry, revengeful beast. I have never spoken about him to anyone. Not even Mum or my best friend and it feels very good that someone else has recognized something so important to me.
“Spit it out,” Francine urges impatiently.
I take a deep breath. “It’s a pathetic story, and not very adult like either.”
She grins. “Now I’m even more intrigued.”
“You’ll probably laugh, but here goes. For some weird reason, I kept the son of our gardener in my heart for long time. Well since I was eleven.”
“The gardener’s son? I need snacks for this,” she says, “and a refill.” She places her order, and immediately turns to look at me expectantly. “Go on. Was he raking you instead of the leaves?”
“No, he wasn’t. There’s actually not much to the story. It was just one stupid episode.”
“One episode? Wow, what happened?” she asks, popping a salted cashew nut into her mouth.
“Well, he grabbed me and kissed me. I was so young I didn’t understand how fragile his situation was. I ran back to the house and told my dad. He kicked both him and his father out. End of story. I haven't seen either of them since.”
She looks vaguely disappointed. “So no one was thrown in jail?”
I shook my head.
“So why is he still on your mind? Wait, how old was he?”
“Fifteen.”
“Hmm. Does that mean you haven’t dated anyone since then?”
I pick out a Wasabi covered peanut from her bag. “Honestly?”
“Of course.” She grins. “We are training to be lawyers here.”
“No.”
“Shit,” she whispers. “Must have been a damn good kiss.”
“It was … primitive, but I didn't sleep for days after.”
“Whoa! I wish someone would give me a primitive kiss.”
I shrug. “It’s probably not the kiss. Just one of those unresolved issues in your life that messes with your head and—”
“Incoming,” she interrupts.
At the warning I turn my head and sight Steven coming my way.
“Are you in the mood to have your ass licked?”
“Ugh. The things you say.” I slide off my stool. “I’ll be in the Ladies.”
“I’ll get rid of him in five.”
On my way to the Ladies I start to regret telling Francine about the gardener’s son. I don’t even know why I told her. She’s practically a stranger. Worse, it’s probably changed the way she sees me. Even I can see how pathetic and senseless it is to allow that ancient incident to hold such a momentous importance in my life, but I can’t help it.
I simply can’t let go.
All the cubicles are empty and I stand alone in front of the mirror and stare into my own eyes. They are cloudy. As usual any thoughts of him automatically weigh down on my spirit. It is almost like a loss I can’t get over. The way my mother still grieves for her lost baby. I have even seriously considered looking for him and apologizing. Maybe that will free me and make me see that the memory of him as the tortured, tragic, dark-eyed savage and his grand passion is something my young, impressionable brain has idealized out of all proportion.
For all I know he may have become absolute scum or a terrifying sociopath.
Maybe then the memory of the first time my heart fluttered will no longer be an open wound, but simply a faint scar. Maybe then I will stop devouring every second-chance romance I can lay my hands on. The rational part of me knows these books are just a fantasy, but the irrational part of me doesn’t care. It wants what it wants. I’ve drowned myself in fantasy after fantasy of such tales. They are sweeter to latch onto than the sad reality of a boy I cannot get out of my mind after all these years.
“Excuse me.”
My heart jumps at the interruption and my head whirls around. At first I am not sure why I feel so bothered at the presence of the man standing just inside the door. He is clad in a blue and white checkered dress shirt and a pair of dark jeans. His face is weathered, his hair a dirty blond, and his eyes a lifeless blue.
Then I realize why my body instinctively contracted with fear. I am standing in front of the sink of the women’s bathroom. I force a smile to my lips. “This is the women’s bathroom,” I point out, in the wild hope that for some unfathomable reason he truly does not realize so.
His watery blue gaze doesn’t waver. It remains steadily on mine. He doesn’t even blink, and I know then that I am in deep trouble. Unable to hold his dead gaze I lower my eyes, turn on the faucet, and pretend to wash my hands while my panic-stricken mind tries desperately to remember what my father taught me to do, but the only thing I can remember is my father telling me to be vigilant at all times. A bit late for that though.
“I need to know what the time is, please?”
“I’m not wearing a watch,” I say as casually as I can, and lifting my eyes I look directly at his reflection. I need to keep him talking. Someone is bound to come in.
“That’s a shame,” he murmurs, taking a step forward.
Oh God, my dad’s greatest fear is going to be realized. I am going to be kidnapped! My pepper spray is in my purse, but my purse is zipped up. I try not to show the panic clawing at my heart. I remember Dad saying, Scream. Scream as hard as you can. I open my mouth to yell, but in an instant, he is on me.
A callused hand wraps around my mouth and the thick pungent smell of sardines and onions overwhelms me just as I feel a sharp prick on my upper arm. I continue to struggle with all my strength, but I sense my limbs becoming heavy. My vigorously beating heart seems to slow down, and all I can think about is my father. He is going to be royally pissed, and I am now most definitely never going to be free from his surveillance, perhaps for the rest of my life.
Chapter Three
Liliana
I awake in a pitch-black room no
t knowing who I am, or where, or how long I have been here.
Then the fog in my brain lifts and I remember. Instantly, a deep fear overtakes me, to the point I cannot move at all. I dare not even breathe. Shutting my eyes, I think of my father. I see his strong face. What would he do if he were in my shoes? He would never lay down and die. He would fight until his dying breath. I open my eyes and try to make sense of my surroundings. I am not in some garage shed somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
I realize I am fully dressed in my own clothes. My body has no pain and I’m lying on clean smelling sheets, the mattress is extremely comfortable. I am also not bound in any way. My frightened brain finds the least threatening explanation: I’ve been itching to get out from under my father’s wings to chart my own way, but to him I’m just ripe to be scammed, cheated and abused, so this is a trick he’s pulling on me to teach me to be more vigilant.
Slowly, careful not to make any sound in case there is someone else or thing in the room with me, I sit up. When my bare feet hit the ground, they connect with the roughness of a cheap rug. I stand with my hands stretched out in front of me and carefully grope my way in the dark to the nearest wall. Then I begin to feel for a door. My hand closes over a handle. Hardly daring to breathe I turn it. It is firmly locked, of course. I exhale slowly.
Hopefully, the light switch will be right by it.
