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Mia relaxed back into her chair. “Hearts can be fixed.”
“Really? How so? I’m not getting a transplant.” I decided that dark humor was the best way to go. Between crying and laughing, I’d always choose the latter.
“For starters, it can be healed because your hubby is actually still around. Brady ended things between us in a few months because he caved to his parents’ command to ditch the half-breed Indian girl who smelled like curry spices. That’s after swearing that he would never leave me. The second he was threatened with being cut off from his trust fund, we were over. Maybe you should give it a chance,” Mia suggested.
Give it a chance? The man had lied to me, pulled the wool over my eyes for years, and then forced me into a marriage. Those thoughts must have shown all over my face because Mia sighed.
She stirred her fresh mojito. “I know you’re all girl power and rage right now, but I’d give anything for a man to look at me the way I catch him looking at you. A man who would take a bullet for me. A man who, no matter the circumstances, has proven that he’d go above and beyond to keep me with him. Some might find it unhealthy, that kind of obsession. But isn’t love an affliction anyway? An obsession with a person you want more than anything and anyone. And isn’t love what all the songs, books, and movies are about? Like with that Greek chick and her thousand ships. Who doesn’t want a man who loves her so much he starts a war over her?”
I snorted but couldn’t keep the amusement from my tone. “You do know that Helen of Troy is like the embodiment of a Greek tragedy, right? And her husband didn’t chase after her because of her beauty, but for political reasons.”
Mia gave me a dismissive wave. “Potato,potato, he did come after her with an army and waged a war over her. And thousands of years have passed, and we’re still discussing her at the pool with a pitcher of drinks. How is that not an epic love story?” She held out her drink to me and we toasted.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t epic,” I admitted. “I just don’t think Kristoff will come after me with a thousand ships if I happened to disappear. But I am sill determined to leave him, so I guess we’ll find out sooner or later.” First I just had to find a way around the people who would try to kill me as soon as I was on my own.
Mia rolled her eyes. “Or you could give him a chance and see where it goes, before you pack your knapsack.”
“Love before pride,” Tommie solemnly agreed.
I narrowed my eyes at them. “Aren’t you two supposed to be on my side?”
“We are,” Mia assured me. “Which is why we want you to think before you let that fine specimen of a man slip through your fingers. I mean, you love the guy. If it were me, I’d never let him go.”
The longing in her voice couldn’t be missed. I knew she was thinking about her spineless ex-husband. Mia’s marriage had dissolved in less than three months, and it had destroyed her faith in marriage. But not in love.
“And best of all,” she continued, “You don’t even have a mother-in-law who hates the sight of you just because your father is a poor teacher from New Delhi and you don’t have a dollar to your name.”
I winced. “I still can’t believe she said that to your face.”
“It wasn’t so much to my face as behind my back and from a distance that she knew I could hear her.”
“Somehow that makes it even worse,” I grumbled. But her words did give me food for thought. Should I give this marriage a chance before I left Kristoff? Could I entrust him with my heart again?
“Do a beta test,” Tommie suggested, as if reading my mind. “Make a list of what you want and what you need from Kristoff in order for it to work.”
A list? What would even be on it?
Empathy. Love.
That was it, I realized. I wanted him to show feelings like a normal human being, instead of always acting like a logic-based machine. I needed proof that I came first, before his plotting and scheming.
Mia snapped her fingers. “Excellent idea! Put him through a series of tests, like Hercules and his labors.”
“What is it with you and ancient Greece?” Tommie asked.
She cocked a brow. “Um, have you not seen statues or paintings of the men in those days? I figured with your obsession for a certain bodyguard named Achilles, who actually has the body of a Greek god, you would know what I mean.”
He grinned. I rolled my eyes. They were being utterly ridiculous, and the discussion was going nowhere.
“I’m giving him the silent treatment.”
Mia’s scrutinizing look washed over me. “And how’s that working out for you?”
“Wonderful.”
She scoffed. “Liar, liar, tiny bikini on fire.”
I recalled Kristoff’s dark looks whenever he noticed me lounging about. “Just because I’m not speaking to him, doesn’t mean I don’t want to make him suffer.”
