But I needed to do something to make myself look older, more sophisticated, and better than Jacinda.So I opened a magazine and found a look I liked.The model was so unbelievably lovely, and I convinced myself that if I cut myself some bangs, I could pull off her look.
Sam was away on a family vacation and couldn't talk me out of it, so bangs I cut.In my attempt to get them cut as straight as possible, I cut too much.
But before panicking, I gelled my hair down and then added a bucket load more product to keep it flat, and you know what, with my smoky eye makeup and red lips, I thought I looked edgy, like someone mysterious.
Confident I was pulling off the look, I went and met everyone at the barbecue my parents were hosting.I strode toward them and asked if they'd like to have dinner with me.
They grinned at me and then said maybe it wasn't such a good idea.
Oh my god.I wanted the earth to swallow me whole.Because I know they had made plans to meet Jacinda at some charity event before.But I kept my tears in check until I turned around and made my way back to my room, but oh, not before I passed Jacinda.
First, she giggled, then laughed until she held her sides in agony, intermittently pointing at my hair and apologizing for being a bad friend at the same time.She was not a friend of mine.
Of course, with the heat and being splashed with water by a cousin on my way to stake my claim, by the time I got to them, the product had slid off my hair, and it looked like a tuft of dried grass right above my forehead.I asked them to have dinner with me with that on my head.And Jacinda witnessed everything, my rejection and my humiliation and my bad haircut.
It was my birthday a week later, and I couldn't get out of the rut I'd placed myself in, so I wrote them each a hate note and sent it to their homes.
It wasn't anything too bad, just the usual.I hope your pillow is warm on both sides every day for the rest of your life.I hope the next time you brush your teeth, the tube of toothpaste you used is rotten and you discover it too late.And some other ones in the same vein.
I sent them anonymously every year on my birthday, and I felt miles better afterward.Until my last birthday when I decided to grow up.They were never going to be mine.
"How did you know it was me?"
"How could we not?Only you would wish every fruit we bite into is rotten and every chair we sit in squeaks.You repeated that with our shoes as well."
I turn blood red.They were not supposed to know it was me.
"Why did you stop, Isabella?"
"Because I got over you three."
"You got over us?"Marcello asks as if I punched him in the face.
"Yes," I say, sensing an exchange of power for a change, my way."You weren't worth it anymore.I may have been crazy over you when I was eighteen and then hated you for five years after, but I'm over all that.Over all three of you."
"The fuck you are," Lorenzo growls.
"Wait, you really went through all that trouble to become the owners of Onyx just to ask me about a hate note?That can't be true."
"It's completely true and coincided with the fact that we knew about your grandmother's wishes for you to marry the head of the Onyx in exchange for a sum of money."
"But that would mean you wanted to...marry me?Why?"
