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“Thank you so much Cordelia. Thanks so much. I haven’t taught in years and even when I was teaching it was …” I can’t quite explain it.
I sit back and look her over.
“But you got to teach.” She offers.
“Yeah. It was a small thing I was allowed. Then it stopped three years ago. I pissed Antonio off so he taught me a lesson by taking the job away from me and all my books, all the books I loved.”
“Christ… I’m so sorry. Well… this will be good for you and it’s an academy.” She says, eyes wide with fascination.
“I know, oh my gosh I never saw myself at somewhere like that.” I thought something more like a state school. An academy would be amazing. A definite step in the right direction for what I have planned.
My plan which is to basically leave this life and my past behind. Leave it all in the past.
I don’t mean to abandon my family, no never that, but I don’t want to be dragged into shit ever again. The last ten years of my life were about them. Worried over what could happen to them and that they would die if I did the wrong thing.
This next phase of my life will be about me, repairing and growing and being the person I hoped I would be.
This wonderful opportunity is a step toward that and takes out the hassle of job hunting if I get the job.
But I still have one last thing to do.
One more thing to do, one last person to see then I can truly close the chapter on the past.
Gabriel.
I just want to see him one last time then that will be it.
Chapter Seven
Charlotte
He’s still listedas living at the same address. But I don’t want to pitch up at his house and have someone like his wife or a girlfriend answer the door.
I don’t want to do that, it would be too much for me to handle and it would be awkward.
My family is one thing. They would have missed me to no end every day as they told me they did, but I don’t even expect him to remember me. I don’t.
So I decided on the one place I could go that would be safe and casual.
Somewhere low key, as low key as it could be for me because there’s nothing low key about The Dark Odyssey. Nothing whatsoever.
There was nothing low key about it ten years ago and definitely not now.
The minute I step in I notice the wonderous changes.
The floor is marble and the sound of my heels clicking against it is different to the grayscale flooring it previously had.
Tonight, it actually looks like I stepped into Venice. It really does and I’m proud of the way the place looks.
Gabe told me once that the idea was class and sophistication, a place to live out your wildest dreams and being somewhere that looks like this gives people the comfort to do that, not like some seedy back alley set up where anything could happen to you.
I wait in line behind a couple who have been whispering to each other and touching since we came through the door. The woman is wearing a kimono. The man dressed in a suit. He looks like a banker or someone official and professional for his attire.
They look good together and you can tell they’re a couple who are really into each other. They’re here to have fun with each other and not anybody else.
They take the gold masquerade masks the receptionist hands them and saunter away.
I’m next in line. I’m not wearing lingerie so I don’t have on any of the silky dressing gowns and kimono-type wraps most of the ladies are wearing. I have on a dress. A long black evening gown with diamantes splashed all over it. It’s probably more the sort of thing you’d wear for an actual masquerade ball.
