A Promised Fate (30 page)

I ran the cloth up her tan, summer legs, one
at time from the tops of her ankles to the inner space of her warm
thighs.

“As much as I would love to pay a long visit
to freckle number three, I am afraid I would drown.”

And finally, her cheeks flashed the red color
I had been hoping to see.

“That would undoubtedly be the best way to
die,” I said and I leaned into her, pressing my lips to her hot
blushing cheeks. My fingers maneuvered through her messy, slept-in
hair and I removed the elastic hair tie that kept her waves piled
high on top of her head. Tendrils fell with grace, hitting her
shoulders, bouncing around her breasts and curving down her spine
until the dark locks floated on the surface of the water.

“Lean back.” She did and I soaked her hair
and then washed and rinsed it, kneading my fingers from the roots
to the tips until she was water-logged and flawlessly clean.

I wrapped Ava’s legs around my waist and
pulled her in close to face me. Her baby bump kept her too far away
from me. I need her close more now than ever before. “Better?”

“Mmm. I feel brand new.” Ava ran her fingers
on each side on my head through my tangled, limp hair. “Can I wash
your hair?” She bit at her lip and I bobbed my head up and down
eagerly, causing her to laugh cutely.

She washed my hair with skilled fingers,
massaging my head with bubbly shampoo, and then rinsed me clean
again.

“Who cuts your hair?” Her hands still kneaded
circles into my scalp. The feeling was so nice that my eyes shut
and my tense body relaxed. My lips pulled upwards at her silly
question.

“Kip DeMarco on Del Prado Avenue.”

“So it’s a guy?”

“Yes, Ava it’s a guy.”

“Just wondering,” she shrugged. “How often do
you get it cut?”

“I have the sides trimmed ever four weeks and
allover every eight.”

“You’ve always worn it this way?”

“Uh, yeah, pretty much. Why? Do you want me
have it cut differently?”

“No!” She squeaked. “I love your hair. It’s
sexy.”

“Good, because I tried to cut it shorter one
time and I have so many cowlicks, I ended up looking kind of like
Rory for a couple of months. It was horrible.”

Ava giggled the kind of giggle that makes my
heart leap from my chest.

“How long have you been going to Kip DeMarco
on Del Prado Avenue?”

“Twenty years. Why?”

“I just think it’s … cute. I like to learn
little things like that about you. Besides, I’m your wife. I should
know who cuts your hair.”

“It’s cute, huh?” I reached past her to pull
the stopper from the drain.

“Very.”

“Well, aren’t you just learning all kinds of
things about me today? Tell me something that I don’t know about
you.” I stood from the tub, grabbed a few towels and then reached
my hand down to help Ava stand. Wrapping a thick terrycloth towel
around her body and then mine, I tossed another onto the flooded
bathroom floor and helped her step out of the bath.

“I can’t tell you anything you don’t already
know.”

“That is just simply untrue.”

Ava pushed up on her tippy toes and pressed a
kiss to my lips. “I love you.”

“I already knew that.” I said without
removing my lips from her sweet tasting mouth.

She kissed me again, this time slipping her
tongue between my lips. Drops of lukewarm water fell from the tips
of our hair and ran down our clean bodies. I tugged at her hands
inching us out of the bathroom, down the hall and into our room, my
lips never breaking away from hers. I made love with her in the
bed. It was pretty, the kind of moment I would remember
forever.

****

“You know…” I said. We were tangled tightly
together, our limbs crossing over and wrapping around one another.
She had a great, glowing smile on her face. I brushed a half-dry
lock of hair from her eyes and then traced my finger down the
curves of her body. “Plato told a story in his Symposium where the
first humans were originally created as both a man and a woman
complete with four arms, four legs and two faces.”

Ava’s nose scrunched at the ridiculous
idea.

“These humans were very strong and smart and
Zeus felt threatened by them. Scared of their power, he devised a
plan and split them in two, therefore weakening them and reducing
their strength. Humans were angry with him for ripping them in two
and they threatened to stop worshiping the god. So Zeus decided to
give each half a gender, some male and others female so they could
have sex with their counterparts and in doing so, they could feel
whole again. These humans, when split apart were left empty and
they spent the rest of their lives searching for their twin
soul…”

“Soul mate.”

“Exactly. You make me whole.”

“You make
me
whole,” she nodded and
brushed the tip her nose against mine. “Zeus was an egotistical,
pompous, self-righteous, womanizing, jerk.”

“Don’t tell him you said that.”

Ava’s eyes flashed bright. “Is there still a
Zeus?”

“Yes. But he’s no one you or I know.”

My lips pressed a series of kisses on the top of
Ava’s sleeping head. We had spent our afternoon reconnecting and
talking through what felt like a world of issues. Ava talked openly
with me about her newest anxiety. The trigger for her most recent
panic attacks, she said, was hearing the family talk of the baby
and the fears she had of creating life. I understood her
completely, having felt the exact same worry myself.

Her nightmare, the one that made her sad, she could
not fully explain.

“It’s just a feeling, a sadness that fills all the
little spaces of my mind. The darkness is complete and blocks my
vision so that I can focus only on the nucleus of sadness at the
center. There is nothing there for me but tears and the dream keeps
coming back.” Ava spent hours talking with Dr. Phillips about the
sadness that visited her at night. She expressed her anxiety about
becoming the mother of a new baby and her concern Max might be
thrown off base by the presence of another child, and a helpless
infant at that, into our home. She told him she thought balancing
the care of two children with the demands of our somewhat unusual
marriage, while still dealing with the post-traumatic stress from
her kidnapping only a year prior, might be a more difficult task
than she could handle. Her doctor is concerned about her feelings
of sadness and plans to keep a close eye on her emotions through
the rest of her pregnancy and after the baby comes. I asked her if
she worried about post-partum depression. “The sadness is only in
the dream,” she assured me. “I am happy in the waking seconds of my
life.”

“I want you tell me how you feel
every
day.
You don’t need to try to battle anything alone.”

“I will.”

We talked more and made love again. I made her giggle
and my now-lighter heart doubled over with happiness. Ava began to
forgive me for keeping my secret. She understood the fear I had of
telling her who I am. Ava was still upset, though, with the idea of
Persephone. She hated the possibility someone might be able to lay
claim to me.

“There will always be a
what if
in the back of
my mind, Ari,” she said and her eyes were tired, worried. “
What
if
she comes …
what if
there's a 'spark' and Persephone
is reborn?
What if
her claim is upheld by the nature of the
descendency of the Greek deities?

And my fear? My fear was that the power and danger of
Ava’s doubt might prevail. I tried to convince her again...

“It’s not like that. I won’t bind myself to promises
made for me in my name by someone else. That rule does not govern
me and it never will, Ava. My life is bound to you. You are where I
have made my promises.”

We fell asleep in the late afternoon with the warm
sun cascading down on us from the bedroom window. It was our first
random nap since Max had been welcomed with loving arms into our
home nearly nine months before.

My nightmare spread across my dream world moments
after we drifted off. Images of waves crashing far below, of rocks
tumbling without restraint and of a sky lowering with malice
brought me my feeling of terror and sorrow. And again, Julia was
there. I could feel her. I felt a bubble of anger burst in my head
at the thought of her.

Dimly I heard our backdoor open, followed by three
quick bleeps from the alarm system. The words “Oh crap!” floated up
the stairway and fast footsteps rushed to the side hall. The number
pad chirped with each digit pressed and the alarm gave one final
sound, a deeper beep telling me the alarm had been disengaged.

Leaving one final kiss on the top of Ava’s clean
hair, I eased out from under her. Slipping on jeans, I closed the
bedroom door tightly behind me and walked to the top floor
banister.

Rory looked up at me from the living room. “I’m
sorry.”

“Nah, you’re ok.” I eyed him. Something was terribly
wrong.

“Ah, God.” He looked down at his sand-covered
flip-flops with an embarrassed grimace, yanked them off and then
stood barefoot and awkward in a pile of grainy sand on our floor.
“Christ, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here. Your Ma said I
shouldn’t come… She was right. I’m an idiot.”

“Dude, it’s fine. Take a breath.” I walked down the
stairs toward him. “Ava's asleep … I was just sitting there
anyway…”

“Yeah?”

“I swear. Come on in. You want a drink or something?”
He followed me to the kitchen and eased on a stool.

“Nah.”

Rory’s eyes were tight, his face looked pinched. His
eyes avoided mine and I saw him fight the tremble of his bottom
lip. He popped his knuckles to distract himself from the shaking in
his fingers.

“She’s gone… Jules. She, um, she finally realized I'm
a freakin’ idiot and left me.”

“What do you mean she left you? What did she
say?”

He sat quiet, his face twisted harder. Rory shoved
his palms into his eyes and rubbed hard. “She didn’t say anything.
She just left, sometime last night. She packed up her clothes, she
took her stuff and she left.”

Rory dug in his pocket and removed a folded and
already tattered note. He tossed it onto the countertop in front of
me. From the looks of the worn creases, he had opened and refolded
this small sheet hundreds of times in the few hours that he had had
it.

“
Roar, I love you, but I can’t keep doing this
anymore. Please don’t call. I won’t answer.”
I read her nervous
scribbles to myself. And noted a watermark in the ink from where
one of them – Julia or Rory -- had dropped a tear.

“I don’t know what to say, Rory. “I’m sorry” doesn’t
feel right in this situation. It’s not strong enough …”

“Has she called you yet? Has she been here?” He was
bitter. Rory knows, just like the rest of us, that I am the first
person that Julia runs to for help.

“Uh, no.” I raked a hand through my hair. “I mean, if
she came by the house, we didn’t hear her. I haven’t checked my
cell all day. Let me grab it and I’ll look.”

He nodded and watched me as I walked away, back up
the steps and into our room. Ava had burrowed down under the
blankets. She was one snuggled blob with a big belly. My phone was
on the nightstand, turned to silent and hooked to a charger. I
didn’t want to look. I couldn’t decide what would be worse, Julia
calling me or Julia not calling me. If she had called, I would have
to tell Rory and he would be upset with me, heartbroken that Julia
had run to me. If she had not called,
I
would be
worried.

“Nothing.”

I slid my phone across the countertop to him and he
investigated my call log and texts. His shoulders fell, either in
disappointment or in relief, maybe both.

“I couldn’t decide what I wanted to see on your
phone. If she had called you, I’d be pissed, but at the same time,
at least I would know she was okay. You know?”

“Yeah, I know…”

“She'll call you. You know she will, Ari.”

He was right. She would call me.

Uncomfortable, I was in need of Ava's skill of having
just the right thing to say. I needed her to swoop in and tell Rory
whatever it is he needed to hear. I glanced through the house, up
the steps to where I could just see the edge of our bedroom
doorway.

“I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“No, don’t go, Rory. I mean … do whatever you want,
but seriously, I want you to stay. You aren’t bothering us. You
never bother us. I kept Ava up all night; she’ll be asleep until
dawn.”

“
Pfft
.” He sneered.

“What I meant was that we have been fighting … a lot.
Last night was bad.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s been a rough couple of days … a bad week. I
feel as though I haven’t even spoken to Ava, like had real
conversation with her, in ages. I miss her.”

“At least you still have her.”

“What are you going to do, Rory?”

“What can I do? I can’t hit her over the head with a
club and drag her back to my cave, although the thought is
tempting. I don’t even know where the hell she is. I don’t even
know who she's friends with anymore. She doesn’t talk to people
from our old school. She doesn’t hang out with anyone at UCLA, she
doesn’t really work besides helping Andy with the center. As far as
I know, her friends are Ava, Lauren, August and Collin…and
you.”

“She helps my dad at
House to Home
?” This was
news to me.

“She’s been helping him – at least that's what she
said. She sorts his mail and takes some of his calls – nothing
serious.”

“Huh. Did August or Collin see her leave last night?
Did she talk to either of them?”

“No. They didn’t come home after the show. Collin
said they crashed at Rachel and Nigel’s place in L.A. Julia and I
rode home together in the limo alone and I could tell that
something was up, you know? Something was bothering her all night
but she still had a good time with me, I thought. We made love,” he
rubbed at the back of his neck. “I fell asleep and then in the
morning she was gone. I thought, oh, here she goes again – just up
and disappearing for a few hours … but then I found the note.” He
let me see his tears.