It hurt my soul to sell for pennies what I’d purchased for dollars, but I’d wanted a clean sweep, so clean sweep was what I’d gotten. Now… so little was left that I felt almost forlorn. Almost like my ten boxes defined who I was as a person.
“I’m not stressed,” I told Jennifer, deciding not to remind my best friend for the eight hundredth time that nobody called me Squeaks anymore. Except her. “I’m just sort of amazed that my life fits into less than a dozen moving boxes at this point.”
Jennifer was wearing tiny shorts and a tinier top, and with all my might, I wished I could fill out a halter top like she did. I glanced down at my running shorts and llama t-shirt and shrugged. I was pretty comfortable with who I was at this point, all five-feet, two-inches of me. Well, one-and-a-half inches according to my numbers-nerd doctor, but I thought she just liked to torture me.
Hence, the name Squeaks, short for Pipsqueak. I hated and loved it at the same time. I hated it when other people tried to use it, but I loved that it was part of the secret language between Jennifer and me. It’d been that way since we were six years old.
“I’m still low-key mad at you for this,” Jennifer said as she heaved up another overfilled trash bag and headed for the corner outside. The poor trash guys were going to hate me in the morning. At least I wouldn’t be around to hear their salty language from three stories above.
Another moment of panic set in as I looked around my comfy little apartment and sighed. I was going to miss this place so much. San Diego too. I’d lived there for the past five and a half years as I climbed the ranks through San Diego State, first with my Bachelor of Fine Arts and now as I closed out the Master of Fine Arts degree I’d receive after spending the next semester abroad.
“You’ll forgive me after your month-long summer on the beach,” I tossed back. “I hear those do wonders for grudges.”
Jennifer hadn’t been happy about me leaving, but because she was my best friend, the other half of my heartbeat, she understood.
The past eight months had sucked. The boy I’d been with since my junior year as an undergrad had up and dumped me long distance. He was a D-league baseball player somewhere outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and instead of having a conversation like an adult, he sent me a text message letting me know that I was holding him back. Even now, I snorted at the memory. Happily, I’d gone from heartbroken to pissed off in record time.
In addition to listing all of my faults — being a cold fish in bed filled the number one slot — Dustin had also requested I ship all his clothing and belongings to him, and once I’d learned he needed his things to decorate a new apartment he was sharing with his new girlfriend, I’d happily obliged. Oh, sure, I sent his beloved possessions in cardboard boxes just like he’d asked, along with a few cloves of peeled garlic in each box.
Oops.
And all I’d gotten for my efforts was a poop emoji in response.
Pretty anticlimactic.
My only regret was that I hadn’t been able to see the cheating asshole’s face when he opened his things and got a face full of steaming garlic.
“These beaches better be all you’ve made them out to be,” Jennifer groused as she stomped back through the door. Her stick-straight black hair was bound up in a bun on the top of her head, and her forehead was shiny with sweat. I knew my best friend hated to sweat, so seeing her nearly overheating for me made me smile.
Ride or die, they said. Yep, that was us.
The plan was for me to finish my schooling in Cassia, a small island country in the Mediterranean, near Greece. But first, I’d spend a few weeks in various parts of Europe, traveling abroad for the first time before settling down for the last part of my degree. I’d never traveled alone before, and I was nervous, but more excited than anything.
I had a deep, personal connection to Cassia and was lucky enough to have a distant relative who actually remembered me. Well, who remembered my father. To my surprise and delight, my great-aunt was opening her home to a virtual stranger, letting me live with her for the rest of the year.
My agenda was already set. A week in London, followed by a week in Paris, then eight days touring Italy. After that, I’d arrive in Cassia and have a week to acclimate there before Jennifer flashed her pearly whites and her passport through customs and joined me for two weeks. It’d been her idea, not mine, but I was so incredibly happy about it that I was constantly hugging the poor girl when she wasn’t expecting it. I just wished she could go with me to France and Italy too. Or even London, where I’d be touring Windsor Castle, one of my dreams since I was a small girl. But she had to work and couldn’t afford the added weeks away.
“What’s this Hermione like?”
She was sweeping the kitchen again. My landlord was a bit of a prick and would nickel and dime me on returning my deposit if given the chance.
“Old,” I said, summarizing just about all I knew of my father’s aunt.
My father was born in Cassia and left for college in the U.S. when he was eighteen. He’d never returned to his homeland after that, much to the dismay of his lower nobility parents and relations. They’d had a good life in Cassia. Wealth. Titles. Land. An ancestral home with more rooms than this entire apartment complex combined.
“But she’s also gracious and open-minded,” I added in case I came across as anything but grateful that she’d allowed me to spend half a year freeloading in one of her guest rooms.
It’s your ancestral home too, you know, Hermione had written in her email, encouraging me to treat it as such when I got there.
“You’re sure about this, Iliana?”
Again, a question Jenn had asked me a million times by now.
I rolled my eyes as I closed the top to the last box. “It’s too late for me not to be sure at this point, Jenn.”
The thing was… I was sure.
I was so excited and had already planned this little reinvention of myself down to the very last second. The new and improved, more worldly Iliana Costas would be more relaxed and easy going all around. She would be studious and serious. She would have a fresh manicure on her hands weekly, and she wouldn’t let the paint chip away until it resembled some sort of Rorschach blob.
“I’m going to hook up tonight,” I said before the idea had fully formed in my head. I heard the commotion in the kitchen stop, and seconds later, Jenn’s pretty head popped out of the doorway, a curious look on her face.
“What did you just say?”
“Sex,” I blurted out, more to confirm it to myself than to my friend. “I’m going to have sex tonight. With a cute stranger, I think.”
Jenn was frowning at me, her dark brown eyes clearly conveying the doubt roaring through her mind. “What? Why?”
I swiped sweat from my forehead with my forearm. “Sex. Also known as intercourse, or coitus, or fornication. Maybe doing the nasty, banging, fu—”
She growled at me. “Thank you, Miss Thesaurus, but I think I get it. What I don’t get is why tonight? It’s been, what? Eight months since you’ve experienced…” she wrinkled her nose, “coitus.”
I lifted my chin. “Seven months and twenty-eight days, thank you.”
Her jaw sagged. “You’re counting?”
Dammit. My nerd was showing.
“The past doesn’t matter. I’m embarking on a new future. An exciting future. I want more fun in my life, so why not kick that off tonight?”
She snorted. “By having coitus?”
I threw a roll of tape at her, which she ducked with a grace I could only envy. “Exciting coitus.”
She picked the tape up and placed it on the counter. “Okay, so you want more D in your life.” She grinned, showing straight white teeth. “And by D, I don’t mean Dustin.”
“Yes.” I nodded, not denying it despite the fact that I hated the way it sounded. I hadn’t had sex since Dustin went to New Mexico in October. It was a week shy of June.
It was time.
“I’m going to find the hottest gu
y in the bar tonight and convince him to send me off with a smile.”
Jenn laughed. “You won’t,” she said, challenge in her voice.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “I will.”
She narrowed her eyes right back. “I bet one—”
The phone rang, cutting into our conversation. Happy to not be placing bets on my sex life — or lack thereof — I lunged for it, glancing at the screen. I frowned at the jumble of numbers that didn’t look familiar and wasn’t saved in my phone. It could only mean one thing… Mom and Dad.
“Hello?” I answered, and from the sounds and shrieks in the background, I knew it was them. They were running a small relief agency on the edge of a large jungle in Kumasi, Ghana. It wasn’t a normal phone call from my parents without some bird screaming bloody murder in the background.
“Hi, baby!” It was my mother. Sofia Costas was a painter, and her art classes had been the hardest to get into during her tenure at San Diego State all through my high school years. But as soon as I’d gotten into the school and was all set to study in her very same department, she and my father had decided to open a relief agency in Africa.
I was welcome, of course, but as an eighteen-year-old young woman who’d moved seven times in nine years, I didn’t want to leave San Diego. I wanted to go to school with Jenn, just like we’d planned. I wanted to study photography under Dr. Jean Lillem. I wanted a dorm room and a tiny fridge that wouldn’t hold much more than a Snickers bar and contraband beer.
I didn’t want malaria netting, thatched roofs, and all significant travel done on a motorbike held together with electrical tape.
No. I wanted the future I’d built for myself since the second half of my junior year of high school, when we’d moved to San Diego and the beautiful city became my home.
“Hey, Mama,” I practically yelled, speaking louder out of habit. She could hardly ever hear me. Our conversations were always short and choppy. Our e-mails were much longer and more in-depth.
“All ready? Is everything packed?”
I glanced around my nearly empty apartment and sucked in a breath, suddenly more emotional than I’d been all day.
This was really it.
“Yeah,” I said, hoping the choked feeling in my voice wasn’t obvious. Mom was great at picking out when I was upset within seconds of calling me.
“Don’t worry, Silly Illy,” Mom said, observant as ever, and using yet another nickname I secretly loved. “Change is always scary, but this might just turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you. You never know.”
I considered “you never know” to be my family’s personal motto. Anytime I’d fought against a change they were implementing or a move they were planning, my mother and father reminded me that I never knew just how exciting or momentous the situation might turn out to be.
“You leave Monday, right? First stop London? Do you have all of your tickets?”
“Yep.” I glanced at the calendar, and the little kid in me whispered a reminder that it was just two sleeps away.
Somehow, my photography portfolio had impressed the University of Cassia’s Arts Department enough to accept my study abroad package. And what’s more, I’d also managed to get an internship assignment in the Office of the Royal Photographer, although I thought that had been helped along by my father’s connection to the little island.
Oh, yeah. I was going to photograph the Cassian Royal Family, following them around while I finished school. I was excited.
I was by no means a royal expert, but I knew there was a king named Demetrius and a crown princess who was very young. The queen had died a few years ago without having any more children, and as far as I’d been able to research, the king had no intentions of remarrying. Other than that, there was a brother who recently died, and a nephew who was in the Cassian Army to complete the royal lineage.
From the moment I was accepted, I’d been studying the royal family and the surrounding nobles but had focused most of my time understanding protocol and etiquette, which I was told was the most important thing for me to do. If I didn’t, I’d be bowing to the wrong people and causing international incidents by ignoring the right ones.
They weren’t the London royals, but they had quite a following.
I was an American citizen, and just because my father was born in Cassia didn’t mean I automatically had dual citizenship. My father never filled out the proper paperwork, something that might have made my life a lot easier the past few weeks as I filled out visa after visa application, trying to get all my documents in order.
“Here’s the last of it,” Jenn said, reappearing as I assured my mom that I would email her before boarding my flight to London.
“We need to head back to the camp,” my mother was saying, the connection sounding bad. “I’ll talk to you soon, darling. Be safe!”
Assuring my mother I would, I hung up the phone and searched the empty rooms for anything I might have left behind.
Everything was gone, and within its place were shadows of memories I was sad to be leaving — even the ones involving Dustin. The first night we spent in the apartment together our senior year. The day I’d opened my acceptance letter into the MFA program at the kitchen counter and knocked over a glass of red wine, staining the off-white carpet. The small chip of paint from where I’d kicked the door the night Dustin dumped me.
Good and bad. There was good and bad everywhere, and it was all going to be okay because I would focus on the good while being watchful for anything bad.
Another thing my parents taught me.
Air-kissing the empty apartment goodbye, I carried the final box down to Jenn’s car where we’d head to the FedEx store and send them off to Cassia.
After that, we had some bon voyage drinks to consume. I’d get dolled up and use liquid courage to bring an end to my self-imposed dry spell before starting the next chapter in my life.
The night was about to go from sad to “hell yeah” in about two hours.
I hoped.
***
I guessed I hadn’t been clear when I described to my other good friend Sela what kind of place I wanted to celebrate my last day in town at. I’d been vague, hoping not to inconvenience or micromanage the pick, but ended up being incredibly underwhelmed by the Green Dragon.
It was a Chinese food joint by day, and by night, they piled all of their chairs and tables in the basement to make a dance floor. The DJ set up shop on a converted buffet table, and on Tuesdays, I learned, they even brought in “Dave and Deb’s Karaoke,” in case I was interested.
“Fun night,” Mr. Hom said, smiling brightly. I returned the smile instead of explaining to him that I was leaving the country and his bar was just about the last place I wished to be.
As it were, the nightlife side of the Green Dragon was less than exhilarating.
Not that I was dressed for exhilarating. I looked down at my llama shirt and gym shorts, snorting. In an epic mix-up, the box of things I’d set aside to pack for my three weeks abroad — including the dress I’d planned to wear tonight — had been shipped.
So… here I was. Not dolled up, as I’d hoped. And I’d be spending a bunch of my limited budget on a new freaking wardrobe tomorrow. At least I’d run these through Jenn’s washer, so the sweat stains were gone and they smelled fresh.
Well, it wasn’t like this place was fancy.
There were a couple of middle-aged folks in Birkenstocks swaying to Taylor Swift, a few Mai Tais too far in. There were a few booths along the sides occupied, so we grabbed stools at the bar and started the night.
“Tiki Bowl, please!” Sela started the drinking by buying us all a bowl of alcohol each. Not saying it wasn’t delicious, but up until that moment, I’d never been served a drink in a bowl with a pedestal on the bottom and a tiki face on the side.
Halfway through my Tiki bowl, my cheeks began to heat up and the songs started to sound much, much better.
“We should dance,” Jenn said, leaning on me
. Her own bowl of rum and juice was nearly empty.
“Soon.” I signaled the bartender over, and when he appeared before me, I shouted, “Water.”
Jenn groaned.
I wasn’t trying to be a killjoy, and I wasn’t trying to ruin our night, but we’d just gotten there. I didn’t want the night cut short because we went overboard too quickly. Holding each other’s hair back within the first hour of arrival would be just pathetic.
For her part, Jenn didn’t argue and sucked down her water before ordering a round of snacks for us all. The food helped settle the alcohol, and the water had given us enough of a break that my head was clearing.
Looking around, I took in the Asian decor once again, wondering how I’d never noticed this place in our little neighborhood before. In my defense, Dustin hated any kind of foreign food, so my options had been limited when we were together. And I normally ate at home to save money while going to school.
As I glanced down the small hallway that led to the restrooms to see where Sela had wandered off to, I happened to glimpse the back view of a tall, broad-shouldered man with the most perfect pair of jeans on the most perfect ass I’d ever seen.
What on earth was a butt like that doing in a place like this?
Trying to play it cool while I waited for Adonis Butt to return, I nibbled on fried wontons and sipped a soda.
“What are you staring at?” Jenn asked, and before I could lie and say that I was really only waiting for Sela to return, Jenn’s mouth dropped open, and I followed her stare.
It was the beautiful butt man, only this time he was facing us, and if I thought the rearview was breathtaking, the front side put the back to shame. It wasn’t exactly perfect lighting, but as he walked beneath a ceiling light in the hallway, tall, dark, and handsome was the only thing that came to mind.
Wavy, medium-length hair was pushed back off his face while the dustings of a goatee brought attention to his full lips. Even in the dim light, I swore I saw dark brown eyes. He wasn’t just good-looking, he was dressed impeccably in dark wash jeans and a white button-down shirt. The top two buttons were undone, and his sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing tanned expanses of chiseled man flesh.
Claiming My Vengeance Page 24
