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“Oh, my goodness, Keanu, your accent is hilarious, and maybe one day, we might just do all of that if I ever get to meet her. You have studied our slang well.” I appreciate his attempt at lightening the mood. He wields humor like an AK semi-automatic.
I think I sound Australian, but whatever, it comes with being raised by an American father and an Australian mother. The slang? I can’t help it. The words are embedded in my brain and roll out whenever the mood takes me. Living here, in general, I try to keep a lid on the Aussie slang because it’s like a Boeing 747 going right over everyone’s heads.
“What would you like to order?” Keanu has me back on track.
“I would love an extra-large ‘Christmas Cheer’ coffee-to-go and a ‘Happy’s Healthy Sleigh Ride Picnic’ for one, thank you.”
“And your name is…?” His black marker hovers over an empty cup-to-go.
“Ophelia.”
Keanu raises his eyes to the ceiling as though in thought for several seconds. “I’ve got it!”
“Here we go,” Levi murmurs, “this should be good.”
“What?” I am confused.
“Wait for it.” Levi hovers over his friend’s shoulder, rolling his eyes and shaking his head at whatever his friend is up to with the marker and the cup. “Ophelia,” Levi repeats my name in a deep voice, “is a pretty name.”
Keanu finishes marking up the outside of the cup and turns it around to face me. He has drawn a skull and written “Hamlet.”
I hide my smile behind my hand.
“Your order will be approximately ten minutes. The nickname Keanu has graced your cup with is Keanu’s way of being cute and making you his new friend.”
“Honestly, it’s what the doctor ordered,” I reply. Humor truly is the best weapon.
I pay for my coffee and picnic-for-one and take a few steps back and to the side to wait.
I check the time on my phone. I want to be on my way back to my property in Temecula sooner than later. I have my cousin on my father’s side of the family visiting. He lives with his family in Hermosa Beach. I’m paying Chance and his team to landscape around my home and my future business this weekend while we catch up, and I can’t wait to see Aubrey and baby CJ.
I take my earbuds from my wallet and put them in, then find the Spotify app on my cell phone and search for “Earth, Wind and Fire.” They are the best weapon when you want to block out sad memories. “Boogie Wonderland” starts playing, and my foot taps to the groove of the late seventies.
We lived a charmed life in Australia. I have never gone without, and Dad treated my mother as his queen, and I was his princess. They had a great love and respect for each other.
They loved me to the extreme, and I am not complaining about their devotion. Dad wanted to be my hero and find a husband who could take over the reins and provide for me while I didn’t have to lift a finger, but I wasn’t that type of girl. I didn’t wear dresses and jewelry and get my hair and nails done. I wore tight pants and T-shirts with badass boots. I wanted to be independent, earning my own money.
Enter the rebellious stage. I decided to work in a male-dominated field as a bounty hunter. I couldn’t have picked a job farther from what my family intended for me.
The moment I turned eighteen, by law, I was an adult and could start to become the woman hiding inside me, aching to break out.
Eventually, my parents’ love for me triumphed over trying to convince me to be more ladylike, which wasn’t going to work. They saw I was good at what I did, and I thrived on my independence. I refused to be a girly girl. I wanted to work hard—not that there was anything wrong with being a girly girl. The world needs them, but I like to get my hands dirty, and there is time for dressing up on special occasions.
I would always be their princess, just a badass one who got into scuffles locking down skips, the people who fail to make their court dates.
Then my parents died.
My best friend, Gwendoline, and her family opened their arms up and took me briefly under their roof. Gwen drove me to counseling sessions to give me the tools to deal with my grief because I had to learn how to live with a piece of my heart broken away, never to heal up whole again.
Nothing made sense anymore.
Chance, my cousin, once lived in Melbourne, Australia, but he had already moved back to the States, where he fell in love.
I needed to wipe my slate and start over. My grief was suffocating me in Australia. Too many triggers, so I fled my birth country as soon as possible, leaving my Aussie best friend behind, following my cousin’s lead by coming back here. Chance and his sister, Adele, are my only blood-related family, still living. It felt comforting to be living closer to them.
I knew the lease on my father’s San Diego inner-city apartment was up for renewal, so I contacted the realtor managing the property to let them know I would be moving from Melbourne and living in the apartment until further notice.
I didn’t have to work because my family’s inheritance set me up for life if I managed it well. My dad accumulated quite the real estate portfolio in the States before he met my mum, and then together, they built one in Australia, but I wanted to work and keep myself busy—no, Ineededto. It is who I am.
