Forever Now (Forever - Book 1) (18 page)

“Yeah, I think she’s done here. She’s not supposed to have guests, anyway.” The nurse grabbed my arm, and I shrugged her away.

“I’m not done,” I said, getting angry. I wanted to defend Dahlia in any way I could, and right then, the only thing I could do was take it out on the nurse.

“Yes, you are,” the nurse said. “Come on, or I’ll call the orderly.”

“Please give us five minutes,” Cruz said, putting his hand gently on the nurse’s shoulder and diffusing the tension immediately.

The nurse blushed and flipped her hair. Cruz had that effect on women. He was the lady whisperer. She was totally in his spell.

“Well, five minutes can’t hurt,” she said, smiling. “I’ll be right back.”

She batted her eyes at Cruz, flipped her hair again, and left the room, bouncing on her heels as she walked. Take it from me, men make women go crazy.

“She’s such a bitch,” Dahlia said.

“Are they treating you all right?” I asked her.

“I guess so. Practice makes perfect.”

I didn’t know how much to ask her. I didn’t want to pry, but I didn’t actually know what was wrong with her, why she was in the hospital, and what she meant by ‘practice makes perfect.’

“Come closer,” she told me. I kneeled down again, and she leaned forward and whispered in my ear. “When you go to Paris, write to me. Don’t forget me, and I’ll write to you, too. You’re going to have such a wonderful life.”

“I’ll see you before then,” I said. I wasn’t even sure I was going to go. I couldn’t get a scholarship or a student visa without my mother filling out the paperwork, and it looked like the offer of an apartment had vanished like Dahlia’s freedom.

“I don’t want you to come here again,” she said. “I needed to see you one last time. I didn’t want you to remember me like—well, you know.”

“It wasn’t a big deal.” Actually, I would have preferred to remember her how she was at her house, wild and untamed, instead of here, half-dead and soulless. “I’ll visit you every week. At least once a week.”

“No. This is the last time. I mean it, Tess. Don’t come back here but promise me you’ll write when you’re in Paris. Promise me.” She squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back.

“I promise, Dahlia. I’ll write you.”

She let go and leaned back. She smiled and closed her eyes.

“You’re going to love Paris. You’re going to be Hemingway and Fitzgerald,” she muttered, closing her eyes. She drifted off. Her head flopped to the side and she fell fast asleep. I covered her with the blanket, and Cruz and I walked out of the room.

Dahlia’s father was waiting for me in the hallway. He was in his navy uniform, an imposing figure with ramrod straight posture and a permanent scowl on his face.

“I’d like to speak to you, alone for a moment,” he said to me, shooting a quick glance at Cruz.

“I’ll wait for you out front,” Cruz told me.

“Thank you for coming,” Dahlia’s father said after Cruz left. “It calmed her down. Being bi-polar is a challenge. She had a distinctly intense manic episode, which you witnessed.”

I had heard of bi-polar, but I didn’t understand it or what a manic episode really meant.

“But she can be cured, right?”

“She has a long road to travel, but this is a good facility. She’ll always have to take medication, of course.”

That didn’t sound so bad, but something told me it wouldn’t be quite that simple.

“That’s beside the point,” he said, growing even more serious. “I’m about to ship out for six months, and you and I have some unfinished business.”

“The possible’s slow fuse is lit by the imagination”

--Emily Dickinson

Dahlia’s father towered over me. He was an imposing figure. Scary. I couldn’t imagine what unfinished business he would have with me.

“We do?” I asked.

“Yes. Dahlia made you a promise, and I intend to keep it.”

“You do?”

“She was supposed to organize your housing in Paris for a year, correct?”

I swallowed. Tears stung the back of my eyes. I had lost hope of getting the apartment.

“Madame and Monsieur Berger said they would sponsor me,” I said, softly.

“That’s my understanding as well. I’ve spoken to them and have finalized the details. It’s set for June first. I know you have school until June fifteenth, but it will be ready and waiting for you whenever you get there. Here’s their contact information. Let them know when you have an arrival date. They’re good people. A little eccentric, though. But you don’t seem to mind that.”

He handed me a card with the Berger’s contact information. “Good luck,” he said, dismissing me now that the message was relayed and he had nothing more to say to me.

I stared at the card for a while, not believing my good luck. An apartment would be waiting for me in Paris on June first. It was an impossible dream come true. I felt like I had fallen through a wormhole into another dimension where dreams came true and good things happened to me.

“Thank you,” I croaked.

Then, even though the nurse had banished me and Dahlia told me not to return, I ran back into Dahlia’s room and threw my arms around her. “Thank you, my very best friend. You saved my life,” I said.

***

I couldn’t stop crying. After I said goodbye one last time to Dahlia, I got my purse and ran past Cruz in the lobby, out the door, and into the parking lot. He chased after me and caught up as I reached the car.

“What is it?” he asked. “Are you okay?”

Was I okay? Why was I crying? How could I explain it to him? How could he ever understand what I was feeling, overwhelmed with so many emotions: disbelief that I was able to go to Paris, trauma of seeing my friend in the hospital, anxiety that I could make my dreams come true, and joy that anything was possible. My senses were bursting, and I didn’t know how to handle them.

“Tess? What is it?”

“I think I’m going to Paris,” I said, finally.

“So why are you crying?”

“I don’t know!”

Cruz started to chuckle, softly at first and then much louder, until he was clutching his side, rolling with laughter.

“Don’t laugh at me!” I shouted, slapping his arm. But his glee was contagious, and soon I was roaring with laughter, too.

Cruz drove us to Jack in the Box to eat fifty-cent tacos and talk about Paris. We sat at a table for two by the window, and I told him all about Madame and Monsieur Berger and their offer for the small chambre de bonne in a good neighborhood in the center of Paris.

“This is awesome,” he said. “A whole year, rent free. It’s like a miracle.”

It was. Cruz was so happy for me that I didn’t want to tell him about the scholarship, the student visa, and the impossible paperwork that I could never get my mother to sign. But he saw through me and knew somehow that my path to Paris wasn’t quite so smooth.

“We’ll figure something out,” he said after I told him.

“She needs to go to the embassy and sign it there. I have a passport, but I need a visa.”

“We’ll figure something out,” he repeated. I had gotten so far, applying to the Sorbonne and securing an apartment for an entire year, but finding my mother and getting her to do what needed to be done would be slightly more difficult than splitting an atom with a hardware store hammer.

Despite the odds stacked against me, for that moment while eating cheap tacos with Cruz, “we’ll figure something out,” was good enough.

“Tell me what you’re going to do when you get there,” Cruz said. “Tell me about what you’re going to see.”

I did. I laid out every fantasy I ever had about living in Paris, about taking my notebook to a café in the early mornings and writing while sipping a café au lait and eating a buttery croissant, about walking along the Seine as the sun set, about spending hours in the museums, soaking up the art.

“I can picture you there,” Cruz said. “I can picture you doing all of those things.”

Cruz believed in me and believed that I would make it to Paris and become a great writer. He believed what I had only hoped for. But his belief was catchy, and suddenly I could picture myself in Paris, too, and really believe that we would figure out how to make it happen.

We.

“How much money will you need?” he asked me.

“As much as I can get.”

“You don’t have any hidden away, by any chance?”

“No. I had some, but—“ I bit my lower lip. “Well, the thing is—“

Here’s the thing about having a rotten mom. You can know you have a rotten mom. You can even tell someone you have a rotten mom. But you always hold out a kernel of hope that you’re wrong, that she’s going to come back into your life and
poof
transform into a cookie-baking, hugging supermom. And if I said out loud just how rotten she really was, how she stole all my money, it would make it real, and I couldn’t hope that I was wrong any longer.

But here’s the other thing. Cruz deserved my honesty. Cruz deserved my everything.

I told him about my summer’s savings and the empty cookie tin. He listened to my story without interrupting, and when I was done, he put his hand on mine and said, “We’ll figure something out.”

We ate ten tacos and drank a gallon of Diet Coke. It had gotten late, but we couldn’t stop talking. Cruz told me funny stories about his work at Neiman Marcus, about the woman who was allergic to cologne but insisted on sniffing him and her head blew up to twice its size.

“And I’ve got another modeling job next week,” he told me. “A catalog. So things are looking up for both of us. What are you doing for New Year’s?”

I had never done anything for New Year’s except babysit. This year Mrs. Maclaren was going to stay home, and so was I.

“I’m going to Tijuana for New Year’s with the usual suspects to go dancing and you know,” Cruz said. “How about you come with?”

“To Tijuana?”

“It’s fun.”

“I can’t dance.”

“I’ll teach you,” he said.

“Your friends wouldn’t want me around.” That was true. As far as his friends were concerned, I was invisible. They wouldn’t appreciate me showing up for their party at a club in Tijuana on the biggest party night of the year.

“Sure they will. It’ll just be Eric, Dana, John, Tiffany, Felicity, and Caden.”

It gave me hives just thinking about it. “I don’t know.”

“You’ll go.”

“You have so many friends,” I said.

Cruz smiled. “That’s a good thing, Tess.”

“Okay,” I muttered.

He cupped his ear with his hand. “What was that?”

“I said okay.”

“You’ll have a good time. I promise.”

Yeah, right. I would have looked forward more to my own hanging.

“Not unless Webster changed the meaning of ‘good time.’ I still think you’d be happier with just your friends,” I said. “You have so many of them. Who do you like the most? Eric?”

Cruz shrugged. “He’s probably number three on the list.”

“Dana?”

“I don’t know. Number two, maybe.”

“Who’s your best friend out of all your friends?”

He raised an eyebrow and studied my face. “You are.”

“What did you say?”

Cruz had beautiful eyes, but they were more than that. They were kind, gentle, a true reflection of his soul. He locked eyes with me and laid his hands on mine on the table.

“You’re my best friend, Tess. Didn’t you know that?”

***

I would have given anything for a good case of chicken pox or at least a broken leg. Anything not to go out with Cruz’s model friends.

I had begged Cruz all week to let me out of my promise to go with him to Tijuana on New Year’s, but he wouldn’t take “no way” for an answer.

He kept saying I was going to have a good time. But I knew different. I was going to have a miserable time. The worst time. Joan of Arc had a better time being burned alive. I mean, at least she knew it would be over fast.

I, on the other hand, was faced with hours and hours with Cruz’s stuck up model friends. At best, they would ignore me all night. At worst, well, worst could be pretty bad. I hoped they would ignore me.

I put on the dress Cruz had given me for my birthday and borrowed a pair of my mother’s shoes that she had left behind. They were a little tight, but they were a lot more fashion model friendly than any of my shoes.

I brushed my hair, took a deep breath and one last look in the bathroom mirror.

“One last chance for chicken pox,” I said. But nothing started to itch. I turned off the light and opened the door, jumping back in surprise to see Cruz’s friend Dana standing there.

“Cruz asked me to see if you needed any help,” she said as she studied her nails. They were black and pointy. I looked down at mine. No polish and cut short with a nasty hangnail on my thumb.

“Oh, thanks, but I’m done. All dressed,” I said.

Dana scanned me from my feet to the top of my head. “You’re going like that?” she asked.

“Uh, I guess so?”

She exhaled and rolled her eyes. She pushed me back into the bathroom and threw her bag on the counter.

“This is going to take some work,” she said.

“Is it going to hurt?”

Dana and I were night and day different. She was wearing a skintight black micro-mini dress that barely covered her butt. I was wearing a flowy long dress. I was soft, slightly mushy. She was rail thin. Skeletor, Angelina Jolie kind of skinny. She had to be starving.

I wasn’t starving. I had eaten two dozen chicken nuggets, a half of a box of Cheez Its, and two bags of Sour Patch Kids while I was babysitting earlier in the day.

Nervous eating.

But it didn’t help.

I was still nervous. I almost ate the triplets’ stash of Halloween chocolate, too, but I was already feeling like I was going to vomit.

Where Dana was sharp angles, I was round curves. Where she was tight mini, I was flowing long skirt. And where she was slick makeup and hairdo, I was sadly natural.

Dana was determined to change that.

She carried a whole arsenal of beauty products in her purse. She laid out a curling iron, brushes, and a Sephora amount of cosmetics on the counter.