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“To be fair, I’m not sure she even knows what is really happening between them. But the way her eyes sparkled at the mere mention of Cleo, tells me she’s smitten.”
“Smitten and in love are two very different things,” I mutter, starting to get worried for my friend. Cleo isn’t just smitten. She’s head over heels in love with the red-haired vixen. This doesn’t bode well for Cleo if the only feeling Anya has for her is infatuation.
“They’ve just met each other, Teo. It’s perfectly normal for Anya to have her reservations. Especially because… well, you know.”
“Because Cleo is a woman,” I finish her sentence for her.
“Yes.” She nods. “Falling in love with a person of the same sex isn’t something that happens where we are from.”
I scoff at that.
“It happens plenty. The only difference is that the north does things behind closed doors where no one can judge them for it. We express our true feelings out in the open. As it should be.”
“Yes. I’m starting to see that,” she retorts on a long-winded sigh. “Our two kingdoms could not be more opposite to one another if they tried. It has me a bit confused as to who is right and who is wrong.”
“Why does there have to be right or wrong?” I ask, my tone losing its hard edge from when she walked in the room. “Haven’t you figured that out yet? There is nothing wrong with following your heart. No matter where it might lead you.”
She stares at me for the longest time, and now I’m the one who is shifting uncomfortably in my seat.
“What?” I blurt out. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because.” She smiles. “When I look at you, I can still see the trace of the boy who was one of my dearest friends. And yet, he’s grown to be this exceptional man, and I missed it.”
“Friends? Is that what we were?” I smirk, licking my lips when her cheeks turn pink. “If my memory is correct, then we were much more than just friends. Friends aren’t each other’s first kiss.”
Friends don’t propose at the age of fifteen.
Friends don’t obsess over the other every waking moment of their lives.
“We were friends, Teo. All four of us were,” she rebukes, leaning away from my desk to walk over to one of the open windows in the room. She stares into the distance, and I wonder if she’s also reminiscing about the night we shared our first kiss.
“Fine. You want to pretend that’s all we were, then I will oblige you with that delusion. Just so you know, my memory is crystal clear.”
There is a ghost of a smile playing on her lips that has my heart daring to hope again.
“You’ve made new friends, though. Cleo being one of them. You never mentioned her when you came to Tarnow to visit,” she says, her way of steering the conversation to safer territories.
“That’s because I hadn’t met her yet,” I reply, turning my chair to the side so that I have a perfect view of her silhouette.
“How did you meet?” she asks, intrigued.
“After yesterday, I’m not sure you’re ready to know.”
She turns to her side to face me, resolve stitched to her stunning features.
“I want to know.”
“Do you?” I laugh. “If that’s true, then take a seat. I don’t want to overwhelm your sensitivities to the point you faint on me.”
“I think I can handle whatever you tell me,” she rebukes with a no-nonsense tone.
“Are you sure about that? Okay. Then I’ll tell you. At seventeen, I met Cleo when she was working at a pleasure house.”
I try not to laugh when her gray gaze turns to two wide liquid pools of silver.
“You mean a brothel?”
I nod.
