Read 12 Hours In Paradise Online
Authors: Kathryn Berla
“Madeline.” My mom smirked.
“Thank you Mrs. Granny. And Chester. And thank you Dr…”
“Patmont!” Chester yelled.
“Dr. Patmont, thank you so much. You won’t be sorry. I won’t disappoint you.”
“Good-bye,” my dad said abruptly as the window crawled back up. He signaled to pull out into the lane of traffic, and I turned to get one last glimpse of Arash through the rear window. He was pointing excitedly in the direction of the valet parking. There was Troy. Betsy beside him. They looked…
…happy.
“Arash certainly is a character.” Granny chuckled. “You’ve got to give him that.”
“He’s different, Granny, but he’s wonderful,” I said, leaning over the back of their seat, straining against my safety belt.
“Just think,” Chester mused. “If it weren’t for me dropping my glasses, none of this would have happened. I did it on purpose, Dorothy.”
“No way.” I was grinning from ear to ear.
“Way,” Chester said. “Granny? What did Dad and Mr. Jenkins do at the water tower?”
Eighteen Months Later
“Mom, please don’t cry or you’ll get me started all over again.”
“I’m okay, honey. Really I am. I’m good. I’m good.”
She took one last look around my room.
She didn’t look so good.
“Okay. Everything’s in place. If you need anything, you know we can be here in less than four hours.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Or you can fly home anytime. We’re just an hour away.”
“Madeline, she knows,” my father said. “She’ll be fine.”
“I’ll be home for Thanksgiving.”
“I’m happy for you. I really am, Dorothy.” My mom’s voice was husky with emotion. “I’m so excited for you.”
“Mom, can we go? You’re starting to sound really depressing.” Chester was sitting at my desk, having just finished connecting my laptop to the Wi-Fi. “Everything’s working,” he announced.
“Thanks, Chester. Thanks, Mom and Dad for everything. And I mean
everything
. Thanksgiving’s not that far away, and we’ll be texting and skyping every day. Tell Granny I love her.”
“Okay, so I have the car double parked right out front. We’d better get going before someone comes and tickets us. Want to walk us out, Dorothy?” my father asked.
***
Seeing my parents like that. Helpless in their attachment to me, vulnerable to their love for me—it made them seem strangely young. Like suddenly I was the adult and they were the kids. But seeing them drive away, Chester’s face peering through the back window, waving until they turned the corner and I couldn’t see them any longer. That really got to me, and I had to swallow my tears all over again so I wouldn’t appear to be the homesick freshman I really was.
“You okay?” Arash wrapped his arms around my waist and nuzzled the back of my neck, breathing kisses into that ticklish spot where my neck and shoulder meet.
I turned to face him. “Where were you?”
“I wanted to give you your privacy.” There was that short
i
vowel sound again. “I didn’t want to intrude on your good-bye.”
“Thanks.”
He looked through the sheen of tears covering the surface of my eyes and gently tucked my hair behind my ears. “Let’s go,” he said, leading me back to my room.
***
“So this is it. You’ll never forget your first dorm bed, or so I’ve been told. I still haven’t forgotten mine from last year. My aching back sure hasn’t.”
He sat on the edge of my bed, pulling me next to him. Within seconds we were lying side by side, arms and legs tangled together like littermate puppies. He kissed away the dampness under each of my eyes and then kissed the tip of my nose. I took off his glasses, holding them carefully in one hand while guiding his lips to mine with the other. Would I ever get tired of this? I couldn’t imagine it, even if we lived another hundred years.
“All right, you two. Get a room,” came a booming voice. “But not this one, ’cause my parents are bringing my stuff in.”
We both sat up abruptly, the top of my head crashing into Arash’s jaw.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry.”
“Sarah?” I asked, recognizing my future roommate from her Facebook picture.
“The one and only. Better late than never.”
Arash stood up from my bed and immediately shoved both hands in his pockets.
“I’m Dorothy, obviously, and this is my boyfriend, Arash.”
“So pleased to meet you,” Arash said. “I’ll be on my way now and give you two a chance to get acquainted. See you Saturday, Dorothy?” He leaned over and gave me a chaste peck on the cheek.
“Okay, babe. I’ll call you tonight.”
“Whoops, sorry about that,” Sarah said when he was gone. “Bad timing, huh?”
“No, that’s fine. He was just about to leave anyway.”
“Does he go to school here too?”
“No, he’s a sophomore at Stanford.”
“Lucky you that he’s just twenty minutes away. My boyfriend’s all the way in New York.”
I looked outside my window at the swaying palms, which reminded me of that stolen night when Arash and I first fell in love. I thought about how lucky I was. Lucky for a family that loved and supported me. Lucky for the best boyfriend in the world. Lucky for a father who swallowed his pride and became like a second father to Arash after he lost his own.
“Dorothy?”
“Huh? I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Where were you just now?”
“Just thinking about what you said. How incredibly lucky I am.”
“How did you and Arash first meet?”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
“Try me.”
***
My parents often remind me that my whole life is ahead of me.
There’ve been more times than I can remember when I’ve felt it was already behind me.
But that one day, from the time the sun set to when it rose again, my entire life was contained within twelve precious hours.
Reflected back at me through Arash’s eyes.
Sampled by his lips.
Held tightly in his arms.
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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, my thanks to Dr. Arthur Aron for his generous permission to use his thirty-six questions referenced in his brilliant study,
The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings
, published in
Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin
04/01/1997, Volume number 23, Issue number 4, Pages 15
Study authors: Arthur Aron, Edward Melinat, Elaine N. Aron, Robert Darrin Vallone, Renee J. Bator
Thank you to my three sons, Jeremy, Lucas, and Corey, for cheering me on and providing technical and emotional support as needed.
Thank you to Limitless Publishing and their staff for helping me to realize a dream; Lori Whitwam who seems to be everywhere, all the time, helping everyone; my editor, JoSelle Vanderhooft, whose work on my behalf reminds me why an author is nothing without her editor.
Thank you to Beth Kawachi, champion of Arash and Dorothy. My beating Hawaiian heart.
About the Author
Kathryn Berla graduated from the University of California at Berkeley as an English major. She has lived in many different countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of the young adult novel,
LA CASA 758
, published by Penguin Random House in Spain; and the middle grade fantasy,
LITHIUM LUKE AND HIS GAL PAL PEANUT
. Reading, movies, exercise and traveling are her passions–especially travel to Hawaii, location of:
12 HOURS IN PARADISE
.