Forever Now (Forever - Book 1) (14 page)

I wondered what Dahlia would say about Cruz, the kiss, and the fight. Would she be able to put a positive spin on it? Could she explain why Cruz did what he did? I didn’t know how I should feel. I couldn’t get beyond the pain of being rejected, the shock of being kissed, and the fear of losing Cruz forever.

But I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to Dahlia about it. I couldn’t say the words out loud. If I did, it would make Cruz’s rejection more real, and it was already too real. I hadn’t even written about it. My first kiss. My first real loss. There weren’t enough words in the English language to write all that I experienced and how I felt about it.

Last night, I stood in the kitchen, listening to the water from Cruz’s shower run through the pipes of the house. I figured he was washing me off of him, scrubbing away his moment of lunacy when he kissed the pathetic invisible girl.

I couldn’t stop my tears, so I tried to distract myself with cleaning the kitchen. But wherever I cleaned, the memories came back to me on a visceral level. I wiped off the counter, and I could feel his body between my legs, his lips on mine. Cleaning off the refrigerator, I saw Cruz’s rage at kissing me, hitting the fridge with all his strength.

I scrubbed every surface and got down on my hands and knees to wash the floor. By the time I was done, the kitchen shined, and I was exhausted. I stood in the center of the kitchen again and listened. There was no sound from upstairs. Not a peep from Cruz. It was as if I was the only one in the house.

I choked back a tear at the thought that perhaps soon I really would be the only one in the house, alone to fend for myself. I turned off each light and slowly walked up the stairs, pausing and listening at each step for Cruz.

I don’t know what I expected. For him to run down and apologize? For him to sweep me up in his arms and tell me it was all a mistake and that he loved me? For him to continue the fight?

It took me forever to climb the stairs. But I arrived at the top, and the house was still quiet. Nothing had changed. I got my robe from my bedroom and went to the bathroom to take a shower.

For the first time in three months, Cruz had hung up his wet towels. They were folded neatly on the towel rack, the ends matching up. Perfect. I touched them--still warm and damp. The whole bathroom smelled of him.

Apples and sunlight.

I stopped in front of the mirror. I was a complete wreck. My hair was stuck to my head in patches and frizzy and wild in others. My clothes and face were covered in cookie ingredients. There were chocolate chips in my hair.

I leaned closer to the mirror to study the place on my chin rubbed raw by Cruz’s stubble. It was the only proof that I had experienced my first kiss. Otherwise, I looked just like him: Pain and anguish as if someone traded my head for someone else’s.

I took off my clothes and stood under the shower, letting the hot water run over me while I shed silent tears. I seemed to have a never ending ability to cry, and it lasted longer than the hot water. When I couldn’t stand shivering any longer, I got out.

No, I didn’t sleep, and I didn’t even try. I lay in bed all night; my eyes wide open in my dark room, listening for any sign from Cruz. But there was no sign. I didn’t even hear him stirring in his bed in the next room.

No signs.

No answers.

The next morning I heard the front door shut. Cruz had slipped out before six. I checked his room to make sure he hadn’t moved out altogether. His stuff was still there, but I knew we would never be the same. So, it was a relief—sort of—to get out of the house, even if I had to risk my life with Dahlia’s driving in her small, glittery car.

“I told my father we must have hula dancing at the party, and you know what he said?” Dahlia asked, driving like a bat out of hell to her house.

“Hula dancing?” I asked.

“Exactly! ‘Hula dancing?’ he asked like he didn’t know what it is. Can you imagine?”

Dahlia continued to flip through the radio stations while she turned onto a long driveway lined with tall palm trees and ended at the foot of a mansion.

“Is this the White House?” I asked, sticking my head out the window.

“No, silly. It’s yellow.”

It was yellow. Lots and lots of yellow. I couldn’t imagine how much yellow paint it took to paint Dahlia’s ginormous palace. A million gallons of paint. Two million.

A lot of paint.

The mansion was at least three stories high with giant windows and columns just like in
Gone With the Wind
. I looked up at the mansion, and my mouth popped open. I was mildly worried that a seagull would fly by and poop in my mouth, but for the life of me, I couldn’t close it. The house was really big.

Dahlia parked her car in front, and a valet jumped around to her door and opened it for her. “How many people live here?” I asked her.

“Just my family.”

“How many people are in your family?”

“My dad, my mom, and me,” she said, counting on her fingers. That sounded about right. The house was just big enough for her family…and the entire city of San Diego.

The valet skipped around to my side and opened the door. He handed me my bag and parked the car among the Bentleys, Porsches, and Maserati’s.

I grabbed Dahlia’s shoulder. “Dahlia, what kind of military is your father? Does he
own
the army?”

“He’s in the navy. A captain. But my mother’s grandfather invented Saran Wrap.”

“Wow,” I said, looking up at the columns. “I use Saran Wrap!”

The front door was a couple stories high. A man in butler clothes opened it before we even knocked.

“Thank you so much, Martin,” Dahlia said and punched his upper arm, playfully.

“I’m with Dahlia,” I said because I was more or less sure someone was going to throw me out. I so did not belong there.

Dahlia was Saks Fifth Avenue.

I was Walmart.

Inside, there was marble everywhere and a long circular staircase. The house was decorated from top to bottom for Christmas, and classical music was playing from another room.

“May I, Miss?” the butler asked me and took my bags.

“Take those up to my room, please,” Dahlia instructed him. She tugged me behind her. Her long, silky dress swished along the marble floors as she walked, and I stumbled behind, my mouth still open, trying to take in every bit of luxury and opulence of her house.

We entered a huge living room. A monster fireplace took up most of one wall, and at least ten couches and countless armchairs filled the room. I had seen pictures of Hearst Castle and this was right up there with that.

As big as it was, it was filled with wall-to-wall people, standing and sitting, eating the hors d’oeuvres, which were passed around on silver trays by men in tuxedos, and drinking champagne from crystal flutes. Someone played relaxing classical music on a concert grand piano at the end of the room, along with other musicians, who played a whole selection of violins and cellos.

The guests were impeccably dressed and made up. Ball gowns and tuxedos. Armani and Chanel. These were the beautiful people I had read about, I realized. Rich. Successful. The crème de la crème of society.

I hoped nobody would talk to me.

Dahlia pulled me to the center of the room, spun around and announced as loud as she could, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my best friend! We are going to have such a good time!”

There was no reaction from the partiers. They continued chatting among themselves, and the musicians didn’t miss a beat. I thought that nobody noticed us at all. But a tall, imposing man in a dress navy uniform stormed over. He was fighting mad, and I resisted the urge to run away. He grabbed Dahlia by the elbow and pulled her up against the wall. I followed, even though he scared the bejeezus out of me.

“Just what do you think you are doing, young lady?” he demanded from Dahlia.

“It’s a celebration, Daddy!” she yelled.

“Shh. You’re making a fool out of yourself, as usual. Can’t you quiet down?” He hissed between clenched teeth.

A woman in a designer gown approached us, swaying as she walked. “Now Fred,” she said, slurring her speech. “This is a party. No harm, no-no-no foul.” She smiled and stumbled. He caught her and took her glass of champagne away.

“If you embarrass me again, you’re going upstairs. Do you hear me?” he told Dahlia.

“Yes, Daddy,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. Her eyes filled up with tears. “This is my friend, Tess.”

“Hello, Tess. Keep your friend in line,” he told me. “Don’t let her loose the dogs into the kitchen like she did last year. And no dancing on tables!”

He dragged the drunk woman away without looking back. Dahlia wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Never mind him,” she said to me. “He’s just my father. You know how fathers are supposed to be strict. It’s play acting. Not real at all.”

I didn’t know a thing about fathers because I never had one, but I was pretty sure her father wasn’t play acting.

“All right then,” she said, clapping her hands together and grabbing a silver tray of hors d’oeuvres from a server. She popped a mushroom cap into her mouth and offered me the tray. Her mood changed from sad to ecstatic in a split second. She was blowing hot and cold like an air conditioner on the fritz. “Time for your surprise,” she said, smiling. “Come on. Follow me.”

We wound through the crowd from couch to couch until we found the couch that Dahlia seemed to be searching for. An old couple was sitting on it, speaking to another old couple on a couch facing them.

“Surprise!” Dahlia yelled. “Let me introduce you to Madame and Monsieur Berger.”

The old woman turned to her and smiled. “Bonjour!” she said.

“They might not need me; but they might. I’ll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.”

---Emily Dickinson

Old people smell. You’ve probably smelled them. They smell like—you know—old. They have a kind of musty scent. Different. Like they’ve moved on to being not quite who they were. They’re people plus.

Evolved.

I love the smell of old. Everything old. People, books, buildings.

There’s not a lot of old in San Diego, and there wasn’t a lot of old in my life. No grandparents and my mother liked to hang with a younger crowd.

Monsieur and Madame Berger smelled like really old—ancient old—in a cloud of expensive perfume and cologne. I liked them immediately, even though they were different from any people I had ever met.

Madame Berger dripped diamonds. She was covered in shining, shimmering rings, bracelets, necklaces, and earrings. It was like Zales had opened a store on her tiny body. She wore a navy blue Chanel suit, and her hair was perfectly done in a hairsprayed mound on her head.

Monsieur Berger was dressed in slacks, a black turtleneck, and a blue smoking jacket with a coat of arms on his chest pocket. A nobleman. I wondered what he thought about the French revolution. I wondered how his ancestors escaped the guillotine. He took a cigarette out of a gold case and lit it, blowing a thin trail of smoke above him.

This was my first contact with French people. They weren’t at all what I had expected. I expected a whole different smell with fewer diamonds.

“Bonjour ma belle,” Madame Berger said to Dahlia, who hopped up and down before she gave the old woman two kisses on her cheeks. European style. “So much energy,” Madame Berger observed.

She was right. Dahlia plopped onto the couch arm next to Madame Berger. She tapped her feet on the floor, and bounced up and down in place, as if she was riding a horse.

“Madame Berger, this is Tess Parker, the one I told you about.”

“Mais oui. Mais oui,” Madame Berger said, putting on her glasses in order to study me better. “Come here,” she told me in a thick accent.

I took a couple steps toward her and leaned down. “So fresh,” Monsieur Berger said. “N’est-ce pas?”

“Yes, so fresh,” Madame Berger agreed.

I didn’t know what “fresh” meant, but it was obviously good because they were smiling, and they signaled for me to sit next to them on the couch.

Dahlia clapped her hands. “This is great! This is great! It’s like the sun and stars aligning, or you know, Twinkies.” She jumped up, and skipped across the room, bumping into a server and sending a plate full of bacon-wrapped scallops flying through the air to land on a half dozen of San Diego’s elite. Without missing a beat, she skipped off to the next room. I wondered if I should run after her.

“Stay with us,” Madame Berger said, reading my mind. Her bony hand clutched onto my arm with surprising strength. “We ‘ave only just met.”

They explained that they lived part-time in an apartment in Paris and the rest of the time in a house in the south of France, but they were about to go on a cruise around the world for four months. It sounded like heaven, a life I had only dreamed of.

“Where do you summer?” Monsieur Berger asked me.

“The same place where I winter, spring, and fall,” I said.

He laughed. “Delightful!” he said. “Such a robust sense of humor.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t joking.

“Tell us what you want to become in life,” Madame Berger requested.

I didn’t often tell people I wanted to be a writer. It was almost embarrassing. I was more the dental assistant, office receptionist kind of girl, and telling people I wanted to be Hemingway was sure to bring in the laughs. But I didn’t think the Bergers wanted me to be a dental assistant or a receptionist. I was pretty sure they would like me to say I was going to be a writer. So, I did.

“Comme Pierre,” Madame Berger said to her husband.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“She say you are just as our friend, Pierre. He is also a writer.” Monsieur Berger signaled to a man standing by the fireplace, and he walked over to us. He was tall and slim, and he wore a black, fitted suit and shiny shoes. His dark hair was cut short and his eyes were a striking blue.

“Blue,” I breathed. He was a very handsome older man, probably in his thirties. He walked with complete self-confidence, but not in a stuck up way.