Fortunately for her, she was gone by the time I got up, having left me a note on the fridge to explain that she was spending the day helping her mom with a garage sale. I was slurping up a bowl of cereal when my phone rang.
I checked the ID and answered immediately. There was no way I was missing this call—bleary-eyed or not.
“Ćao, Helena,” I said with a smile on my face.
“Janja! How are you? Are you free this afternoon? I’m going to be in Orange County this evening to meet some friends. I thought I’d come early and take you out to lunch. Are you busy?”
“I am now. I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“Yes, it’s been over a month and it’s all my fault. But we’ll catch up over lunch, yes?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, I’ll pick you up in hour.”
After I hung up, I pressed the button on my phone and noted the date. The twenty-eighth of March. It was no accident that Helena wanted to see me today—the anniversary date was less than a week away.
Seven years. I blinked the sting out of my eyes and swallowed, determined to dig out my finest outfit to wear when I saw Helena. She was always so elegant, so put together. For years, I’d wanted to grow up to be just like her.
A flash of a memory invaded my thoughts. The night I’d met her it had been the homecoming dance of my freshman year in high school. My third date with Brock. He’d brought me over to the house to take photos and meet his parents, and they’d been so thrilled that he was dating a girl from “the old country.”
I reflected on that night as I spent twice the amount of time that I normally did on my hair and make-up. I pulled my hair back into a French braid and tied it with an embroidered ribbon that Caitlyn had given me at the last regional market. She’d been so happy to hear that I’d agreed to travel with the Ren Faire as their fortune card reader that she’d given me the ribbon to celebrate.
Helena arrived on time, and I was waiting at the curb for her…in the exact same spot where William had picked me up the night before. He’d probably be both shocked and thrilled at my punctuality. I smiled at the thought.
Helena, as always, looked perfect. A forty-nine-year-old woman who looked at least a decade—possibly two—younger than her actual age, she had dark hair and olive skin, and she always reminded me of a sophisticated movie actress from the eighties.
She had high cheekbones and an elegantly constructed face, with a neck like a swan and a beautiful figure. The clothes she wore were expensive but understated, and she attracted admiring looks wherever she went.
There was no doubt she’d passed her beauty on to her son. With his dark curly hair and deep blue eyes, he’d been the most handsome boy at our high school. And he’d picked me. Or rather, he’d listened when the Fates had picked us out for each other.
“Janja!” As always, Helena greeted me by kissing me on both cheeks, keeping alive old country traditions. Like me, Helena had been born in the former Yugoslavia. Unlike me, Helena was ethnically a Serb, while I was Bosnian-Croatian. But we’d met here, in California, and now she and her husband were like family.
Neither of us had found a Balkan-style restaurant in the area that satisfied our cravings for our native homeland, so this afternoon she took me to one of the trendy bistros in downtown Fullerton.
“How is Vuk?” I asked as we were handed our menus and served ice water. “Is he feeling better?”
“This last scare has really changed him,” she said, speaking of her husband’s recent diabetes diagnosis. “We exercise together every day, and he’s finally watching what he eats. Did I tell you we are going to Belgrade in June to see his mom? He wants to lose weight before she sees him.”
“Oh, I’m so happy for you. I just found out that Maja is getting married in June.”
Her fork paused on the way to her mouth and she looked up, brows raised. “Where? In Sarajevo?”
I nodded.
“When? Maybe we can fly out together. Vuk and I don’t have our plane tickets yet.”
I poked around my salad for a while and cleared my throat as I tried to figure out how to change the subject. I had no desire to go there with her, yet it was my fault for bringing it up in the first place.
“Early June, I think.”
“Are you going out early?”
More silence and salad picking from me.
“Janja…”
I sighed and looked away. “I don’t really have the money to buy a ticket right now. I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to do it.”
“It’s simple. You come with Vuk and me to Belgrade, and then take the bus to Sarajevo to be with your family.”
I suppressed a smile. “Thanks. I’ll see what I can do.”
“No, there is no seeing. Vuk has loads of air miles from all the business traveling he does. It will cost us nothing to get another ticket.”
I was almost speechless with gratitude. This was so generous of her to offer, but it was in no way out of character. I only ached at the thought of sitting next to her on that plane with no tiara on my lap.
I had to get it back. There was no way I could show up to the wedding empty-handed. Disappointing Maja would be just like the time I’d disappointed Mama all those years ago.
We finished our meal, and I was using a piece of my roll to sop up the gravy from the plate. Helena teased me about my old world manners and I laughed, blaming her son for the habit.
Our smiles faded just a little bit at the mention of the ghost between us. Without looking at her, I reached for my goblet of ice water. “I can’t believe that next week it’ll be seven years…”
Helena’s elegant dark brows were untroubled, but I could read the pain in the back of her blue eyes. That unique, sharp pain that, I imagined, could only be truly understood by other parents cursed with the most horrible of fates—to have outlived their child. But Helena was no mythical Queen Niobe, who wept unceasingly for her lost children. Helena, in fact, was the picture of dignified strength. I admired her greatly for that—among other things.
She rolled her lips into her mouth and then smoothed her napkin across her lap. “I’m going to the cemetery tomorrow. I’ll be out of town next week,” she declared in a flat voice.
I straightened in my chair. “I’ll be there next week. I’ll make sure there are fresh flowers on his grave.”
“You go often,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
I nodded. “His birthday. The holidays. The anniversary of our first date. And…” I left the last one unspoken. The anniversary of his death. Next week. Seven years. Seven years since my heart had followed him into that grave.
Her dark brows twitched together. “What does that work out to be? Every month? More?”
I shrugged. “Something like that.”
She frowned, studying the uneaten food on her plate, picking at it with a fork. “Jenna, we’ve had this talk before,” she said, switching to English.
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“Do you? But you’re still going to ignore it? You’re twenty-five years old. You have your whole life ahead of you. I know he wouldn’t want you living like this.”
“Like what? My life hasn’t ended. I’ve seen other guys.”
“Yes, how is that going with the new one? Douglas, right?”
I grimaced, aware that this would only serve to reinforce her argument. “I broke up with Doug last weekend.”
“Hmm,” she said, her gaze on me sharpening. Heat rose to my cheeks. It was like she and Alex were psychically connected. “Braco wasn’t perfect. You just remember him that way.”
I swallowed, my throat suddenly clogged. Helena watched me as I blinked my tears away. “I know he wasn’t perfect. He was just—”
“Perfect for you, I know. But you were both children. How do you know you wouldn’t have grown apart as you grew up? Jenna…he wouldn’t want you ending your life when his ended. I say this bluntly because I’m talking to a girl who I’ve thought o
f as my adopted daughter for ten years now.”
I reached over and covered Helena’s hand with mine. “Thank you. I understand what you’re trying to do.”
“Then you must listen to me. Somewhere out there, there is someone for you. This belief you have of one true soulmate…it’s not true. It can’t be.”
I shook my head, unable to give her words credence. “So you don’t think Vuk is your soulmate?”
“No, I don’t. He’s my friend and my lover and my partner, but there is no soulmate.”
“You think you could be just as happy with someone else as you are with him?”
She shrugged. “Maybe even happier. Maybe somewhere out there is a Vuk who doesn’t leave his socks all over the floor or likes to do the dishes once in a while. Or who can dance.” At that, we both laughed.
We turned down dessert when the waiter returned and Helena asked for the bill. As always, I wished I were in a position to offer to pay, vowing that someday I’d take her out to a nice eatery and proudly pay the bill myself.
After driving me back to the apartment, Helena gave me a long hug and called me srce moje, which meant, “my heart.” A name a mother called her child. She held me tight, and when I pulled away, she clamped on tighter.
“For me, Janja, and for him. Fall in love again. You must free yourself before it will even be possible.”
I kissed her cheeks, not allowing my tears to fall until she turned away. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I couldn’t allow it—that it wasn’t only myself I was protecting, but those around me. Too many of my relationships had ended with people being hurt or even killed.
I was a wanderer, never meant to set down roots. I’d been torn from my home soil at the tender age of five and had been drifting ever since. In so many ways, it was my destiny.
Chapter 8
William
It’s Monday morning again, and I’m at my desk working on the three-dimensional rendering—again. Mostly I’m checking the work of artists under me, but I’m also cleaning up details and fine-tuning textures. Many have called it tedious, but I enjoy focusing my attention on minutia.
Especially today. I’ve been unable to think of anything besides Jenna since the moment I kissed her—and she kissed me back.
I spent hours last night thinking about that kiss. I couldn’t sleep. I could only remember the way our mouths fused together, the feeling of her body pressed against mine. Now I try to force that image out of my mind as I adjust my goggles. There are lots of things to do today. Things that don’t involve my fixation on Jenna.
And just like the previous Monday, I’m aware of someone standing at my desk. But unlike Jordan, there is no waiting until I’m done with what I’m working on before he speaks.
“Liam,” my cousin says. I should have realized it was him when my nearby coworkers all went silent. Adam doesn’t appear in the art department very often, and though our office is pretty casual, people still get intimidated by the CEO showing up unannounced.
Sometimes I do too, even though I was the one always picking up his shorts off the bathroom floor throughout our adolescence. He also ate up all my favorite breakfast cereal on a consistent basis. In fact, Adam annoyed me greatly when he first came to live with us. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for that to change.
I straighten and look at him. “What?”
“I need you for a sec. Let’s take a walk.”
Let’s take a walk. That’s his favorite way to have a short, discreet conversation with an employee. There may even be a meme of it floating around here somewhere. Or a funny little cartoon drawing of my cousin standing at some employee’s desk asking to take a walk.
When Adam wants to take a walk, it’s usually not a good thing. It is a logical way to get some privacy in an open-concept office, I suppose. But if Adam needs to speak to me, he knows exactly where I live and is well acquainted with my phone number, too.
Without a word, I save and close my work, remove my glasses and set up my desk so that it’s perfectly arranged for me to pick up where I left off after the lunch break. I trail behind him off the floor of the art department, ignoring the gazes following us. None of them will dare to ask me the details later, so I ignore them.
We’re walking down a back hall on the way to R&D when he stops for a minute and turns to me. “I don’t have a lot of time, but I needed to have a quick conversation with you. Whatever the hell is going on between you and Jordan needs to stop.”
I fold my arms across my chest and he seems to take great interest in that gesture. “Nothing’s going on between me and him.”
“That’s not a good thing. I get that he pissed you off. He pisses me off a lot, too, but he’s your friend. He’s my friend, and most importantly, he’s your boss.”
I shrug. “So are you.”
His eyes look up at the ceiling, then fly back down. “Yeah, we’re family. That’s different. We’re stuck with each other, and if we ever did get like that, your dad would probably kick both our asses. Jordan is a good guy. He screwed up, but he genuinely feels bad about it. And I can’t have another feud going on in my office, Liam.”
He’s referring to the dispute I had with Gene, a former co-director in the art department. We had artistic differences, and apparently those differences had been broadcast everywhere. We’d both been branded the “temperamental artists” by employees in other departments.
Things had been okay until the day that he blatantly took credit for my work. From then on, I refused to work with or even speak to him. Adam tried to do what he could to resolve the issue, but in the end, Gene found a job somewhere else. Adam ended up admitting that it was no great loss to have him gone.
“Look, you need to learn to separate the professional from the personal.” Adam straightened. “Jordan didn’t fuck you over—”
“He did. He gave me bad advice.”
Adam took a long breath and released it. “But it was you who chose to take that advice. You need to work on what it means to forgive someone. In the end, this hard-ass attitude is only going to cost you, not others.”
“My ass is not hard.”
Adam looked away and laughed. “No, I mean…look, I love you, guy, but you do have a problem with this. In all the years that I’ve known you, you’ve never been the forgiving sort.”
“Why should I be? If someone ruins their chance with me, then that’s it. They’re gone. I don’t need people like that in my life.”
Adam was rubbing the back of his neck now and looking down the hall in both directions. “So people can’t be human and screw up? If they make a mistake, they’re dead to you forever?”
I shake my head. “I’m not going to kill anyone.”
“It’s an idiom, Liam. It means you’ll act like they are dead even if they aren’t. You’ll sever your relationship with them? It was one thing when it was Gene. He proved that he had no morals whatsoever and ended up going somewhere else—win-win for us. But that’s not happening with Jordan, okay? He’s not going anywhere, and you have to learn to get along with him.”
When I say nothing, he sighs and looks at his watch. “I have to get going for a lunch meeting off campus, but dude, think about this. What if your first duel had been your only chance to beat that other guy? You got your second chance—give one to Jordan. That’s all I’m asking.”
I thought about that for a moment. “I did.”
He frowns. “You did? What do you mean?”
“I told him that he could make it up to me by helping me train against a left-hander.”
Adam’s expression changed. “That’s great.” He smiled. “You’ve made me happy.”
I frown. “I wasn’t doing it to make you happy, but I’m glad you are. I just hope Jordan comes to the training or else it will be like he’s dead to me.”
“I’ll make sure he does. I’ll come too.”
“Good,” I say. “I don’t have as long to prepare this time.”
Adam nods. “We’ll h
elp you all we can, and just…think about this, all right? Sometimes the moral high ground isn’t always the best place to stake your claim.”
“Huh?” I say, completely confused. Was he even speaking English? All I can picture is a bunch of gold miners rushing around driving stakes into high, hilly ground.
He sighs. “I just mean that being stubborn and holding onto grudges isn’t always the best way to go. But I can sit here and explain that to you until I’m blue in the face and you probably won’t listen. Maybe when you get into a relationship, you’ll figure it out. Or else you’re just going to be lonely, because no one is perfect.”
Perhaps he is referring to himself and Mia. They were far from perfect and had broken up several times before finally ending up happy together. Maybe those are the chances he’s referring to. Did he have to forgive her for something, or did she have to forgive him?
Or maybe it was both? It makes me wonder if getting into a relationship means learning new things about yourself. And making changes. I don’t like changes.
I mull over those thoughts as I finish up my workday. On the way home, I stop by a fruit stand. It’s strawberry season in Southern California and the stands are everywhere, selling them freshly picked and packed in large boxes. They’re dark red and almost the size of small apples. I end up buying a full box, even though I know I can’t eat them all before they go bad. So I stop by my dad’s house to leave some with him and his wife, Kim.
I ring the doorbell and enter, like I always do, and Kim comes around the corner. “Liam!” she says. It didn’t take long before she picked up the habit from all of my other family members to call me by that nickname. Kim has been my stepmom for only a short time now—almost nine and a half months. And the fact that she is Mia’s mom makes Mia my stepsister.
“I brought strawberries.” Because I know she’s going to invite me to eat dinner with them—she always does—I add, “But I can’t stay long—”
For The One (Gaming The System Book 5) Page 10