Cherry Red Summer (Emely and Elyas Book 1)

by Bartsch, Carina

  “Hey!” she cried, trying to swat my fingers away, but I had already withdrawn them to safety.

  “After you salt the veggies to death, they won’t be edible anymore. I’m on a mercy mission.” I gave her an imploring look as I tried to pilfer another chunk of carrot, but received only an angry glare in return.

  “Fine, I’ll stop,” she said setting down the knife. I rolled my eyes but put my hands back in my lap. She nodded in acknowledgment and returned to her vegetables.

  “We’ve been exchanging e-mails,” I said, coming back to her question.

  “Have you figured out yet who it could be?”

  “No,” I said. “Absolutely no idea.”

  “Do you at least know where he knows you from?”

  “All I know is that he’s twenty-four and goes to a different university. Apparently he hangs out once in a while with a friend of his who I know, and that’s how he’s run into me a few times. His friend goes to this school, so the friend figured out my name and e-mail for him.” I shrugged.

  “You’ve known all this for how long and didn’t tell me?” She jammed her knife, tip first, into the wood cutting board. Patience may be a virtue, but it was definitely not one of Alex’s. In her world, withholding information bordered on a felony.

  “There’s not much to tell.” I sighed. “I hardly know anything about him.”

  “But you think he’s OK?” She raised an eyebrow with a conspiratorial grin.

  I hesitated until my mouth took on a life of its own and formed a smile that I would have preferred to keep to myself. “Let’s just say he seems to be really nice.”

  “All right. That sounds promising,” she said. “So what do you talk about?”

  “Everything, really.” I blew out a breath. “I mean, we stay pretty general, but we talk about interests, hobbies, music—the usual stuff.”

  “Has he sent you a picture yet?”

  “Well . . . ,” I started, looking at the floor. “Not exactly.”

  “What does ‘not exactly’ mean?”

  “Basically, no.” My voice got shrill because I could already tell how Alex was going to respond. She would have demanded a photo in her first e-mail, and he would have followed through, too, or been subject to personal acts of violence or deployment of a SWAT team—whichever Alex found easier to pull off.

  “Why?” Alex asked in a tone that implied all that.

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking at the laminate. “He didn’t send me one, and I can’t bring myself to ask for one.”

  Alex dramatically slammed down her knife, put her hands to her hips, and looked right at me.

  God, I already felt bad for her future kids.

  “Emely!” she said. “He knows who you are, but you don’t know who he is! It’s only fair for him to send you a picture. So get your ass in gear and ask him!”

  I knew she was right, but . . .

  She sensed my reluctance, so she took a deep breath and tried to coax me along with a little more patience.

  “What if you finally meet him in person and he looks like Yves Glockenburg?” She giggled at her little in-joke, but since I didn’t find it even remotely funny, I kicked her. Not hard, though.

  “First of all,” I started, “his name was Sören Nordmann and not Yves Glockenburg. Where did you come up with that, anyway? Second of all, he wasn’t as bad as you make him out to be.”

  “Are you kidding?” she said, laughing. “That guy hauled you out to some kind of Star Trek convention every weekend and dreamed of having a Vulcan wedding with you!”

  Now that I thought about it, Alex wasn’t entirely wrong about him.

  “Fine, so he was kind of awful,” I admitted as Alex grinned.

  “But seriously, Emely. I would definitely have him e-mail a photo before you meet him in person.”

  “Meet him in person?” My eyes grew wide.

  “Please. You can’t exactly say ‘I do’ via Facebook or something.”

  “Hold on now,” I said, more to calm myself than to admonish her. “We’ve been writing back and forth for all of one week. I haven’t given the slightest thought to meeting him!” The idea terrified me.

  “Then you should get your ass in gear and get on him about a picture.” She pointed the tip of her knife at me.

  “Hmm,” I mumbled, hoping she would drop the topic. Meet him—pff! Maybe we could start talking about that in, like, five years—but certainly not now.

  “Emely.” She looked me up and down. “You aren’t starting to work yourself into one of your neurotic episodes again, are you?”

  God, I hated it when she said “neurotic episodes,” and she knew I hated it, too.

  “First of all, I don’t have ‘neurotic episodes,’” I said. They were only temporary, mild insecurities.

  OK, dammit. It was true. Sometimes I had neurotic episodes.

  “Second of all—”

  “Second of all?” Alex interrupted.

  “Well, yeah, it’s just . . .” I bit my lower lip. “This one seems to be intelligent. Also, the whole way he expresses himself, so confidently . . . eloquently . . . Plus, he has a great sense of humor.”

  “So what’s the problem?” She wrinkled her forehead. “It’s long overdue for you to swap all the bullshitters you usually hang out with for someone who has a brain.”

  She should talk, I thought, and I promptly zinged her by saying, “Oh, sure, like you have been with loads of winners.”

  She diced her vegetables a bit more vigorously. “That’s different,” she said.

  Before I could explain to her why it wasn’t different, a noise from the back hallway drew our attention. Someone opened a door and closed it again.

  I snorted. My lucky streak of Elyas’s not noticing I was over had apparently come to an end. But my fear quickly dissolved because the approaching footsteps were of someone in high-heeled shoes.

  Hmm, maybe Elyas had discovered a new side of himself? Womankind would undoubtedly be thankful—and I would be the first to say so.

  I knew that was pure fantasy, so I joined Alex in craning our necks to see who appeared from the hallway. I was more than a little amazed to see the woman who entered the common room and headed single-mindedly for the apartment door.

  She looked like she had stepped out of a glossy magazine. Her clothes clung so tight you could see every inch of her exceptionally beautiful body. She was tall—taller than me by at least a head—and I could only gape at her silky smooth legs, which her short skirt scarcely covered.

  The woman seemed so perfect that I felt positively hideous in comparison. Who had created this being? Some kind of porn god?

  Whoever it was, he was most likely male.

  I continued staring, taking in all the details. Her hair was a mess; individual blonde strands had come loose from her bun and were whisking back and forth in the wind of her motions. Her tan skin transitioned to a rosy pink in her cheeks, and her face seemed to be literally glowing.

  You didn’t need much imagination to guess what she had just been doing with Elyas.

  “Hello,” she said with a strained smile as she walked past us, the peanut gallery. After she had closed the apartment door behind her, I couldn’t take my eyes off the spot where she had last been. When I finally looked over at Alex, her eyes were as big as mine. We gulped in unison.

  “Moving on from the topic of neurotic episodes,” I mumbled.

  “Um, what was that? Some kind of Photoshop project?” Alex asked. “I’m hoping yes. Anything else would be too much.”

  We each needed some time to recover from laying eyes on this divine apparition. Alex was the first one to shake off the experience, and she returned to dicing. I, in contrast, still felt strange. Until this moment, I had assumed Elyas wasn’t all that particular in his choice of women. Now I wondered how I
had fit into his prey profile. I didn’t have the first thing in common with the woman who had just passed through. I doubted we were even members of the same species.

  The idiot who could answer my question emerged from his room, shooting my mood even deeper into the basement. His approaching steps grew louder until he finally entered the living room, also with ruffled hair. He stopped for a second when he caught sight of me. Another one of his rakish smiles passed over his lips as he continued toward the kitchen.

  Actually, my lucky streak hadn’t quite run out yet: he had clothes on. Only his belt, which was hanging off his hips from his casual jeans, was open. He had on a black T-shirt emblazoned with a large red number 69 across his chest.

  Nice.

  He sauntered barefoot over the laminate and leaned on the counter across from me. “Emely,” he said grinning. “I wish you’d made an appointment beforehand. Then you could have avoided that unpleasant encounter.” He glanced at the kitchen clock. “But you’re in luck: I’ve just gotten my second wind. If you want, I can squeeze you in quickly, between other engagements.”

  I snorted and crossed my arms over my chest with a toxic glare. “Watch out, or my knee might end up between something in a second.”

  “Is that an offer?” he asked with a chuckle. “I’m open to any new technique you can teach me.”

  “Anytime, any place,” I answered with a grunt. He got up from the counter, retrieved a water bottle from the fridge, and then took a seat on the counter where he had been leaning. I watched him drink, and then my curiosity about his T-shirt got the best of me.

  “What does 69 stand for?” I asked. “The number of women you’ve slept with? The sexual position? Or your IQ? I’m betting on the last one.”

  “How about centimeters?” he replied.

  “How about you take your IQ with you and go take a shower?” Alex said, scoffing. “You and your stupid banter. Could you lay off for once?”

  Instead of leaving, he drank some more water and kept giving me silent, intense looks.

  I seriously wondered sometimes what was going on inside that silly skull of his when he looked at me that way. It was probably better I didn’t know.

  I swung my feet around a bit. Trying to ignore Elyas, I looked around the room. Eventually I noticed the clock and realized it was much later than I had thought. I had been putting off my long-overdue call to my mother for a week now, and had to finally get it over with this afternoon.

  “Sorry,” I said to Alex. “I’ve got to get going. My mom is waiting. And since the average IQ in this room has tanked in the past five minutes, for once I think I might prefer talking to her instead of hanging out here one second longer.”

  “Well, who am I dicing vegetables for then?” She put her hands on her hips.

  “I’ve been wondering that, too,” I said, casually hopping down from the island, stumbling, and nearly running into the refrigerator. If that weren’t embarrassing enough, the idiot across from the island chimed in with a gloating laugh.

  “Um, the door is that way,” he said pointing. “Or do we have a hidden elevator in the fridge I don’t know about?”

  “Very funny,” I growled, blushing. If only he would pop his thick head into the oven and see if there was an elevator in there.

  I straightened my clothes and decided it was definitely time to go. I gave Alex an embarrassed hug good-bye, ignored the still-amused jerk watching me, and walked toward the door—the actual one, this time.

  “Elyas, at least you’re going to stay and eat, right?” I heard Alex ask, and I turned around to look at them both.

  “Oh,” he said, scratching his head. “You know, sis, I’m not really hungry. Plus, I was just about to go take a shower.” He scurried out of the kitchen.

  Apparently I was not the only one unimpressed by Alex’s cooking. Bon appétit, I wished her in my thoughts as I left the apartment to make my way down the five flights of stairs. Not exactly fun in this hot weather, but going down was easier than going up. That much was sure.

  Back in my dorm room, I managed to overcome my inhibitions and call my mother. My procrastination was just making it harder, after all. Better to get it out of the way.

  My mom was . . . well, my mom. She was a special case. I didn’t have an easy time with her, and she seemed to take advantage of my good nature on a regular basis.

  Whenever I talked to her, I spent most of the time tuning her out, letting her go on and on about whatever oh-so-important detail she absolutely had to get off her chest, without interruption. Importance was in the eye of the beholder, and my mother and I had long had different perspectives on this issue. Nonetheless, I bravely held out, providing her with enough “hmms” and “uh-huhs” to make her think I was listening and positively bowled over by all the latest village gossip.

  It was not without reason that I usually put off our phone calls as long as possible, or called when I knew my father would be home alone. Talking to him was so delightfully uncomplicated, and often just hearing his voice was enough to calm me down from even peak-level college stress.

  I did not dislike my mother, Carla. On the contrary, I loved her from the bottom of my heart. But she was an extremely trying person and stressed me out so much sometimes that I practically ripped my hair out.

  Tonight she prattled on and on about the latest news, without stopping. After about an hour, she finally got to the subject of me. I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, squeezed the bridge of my nose, and braced myself for the barrage of questions, whose content could be inferred by listening to my side of the conversation alone:

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Yes, it’s very hot here today too.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “No, Mom.”

  “No, really, Mom.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “No!”

  “Mom, are you crazy? The professors are all over fifty!”

  “No, there’s definitely not anyone for me there!”

  “No, I’m totally sure!”

  “Mom!” I said interrupting her. “Please stop trying to get me to date!”

  “No, you’re the one with the problem, not me!”

  “No, Alex doesn’t have a boyfriend either.”

  “Yes, she’s still alive.”

  “Mom! Stop, you’re driving me crazy!”

  “I couldn’t care less whose mother you ran into at the bake sale for African orphans!”

  “Yes . . . I know . . .”

  “Everything’s fine at school.”

  “No, you don’t need to send any money. How’s Dad?”

  “I see,” I said, smiling. “Tell him I said hi.”

  “Hey, don’t be mad, Mom, but I still need to fit in a jog today.”

  “Yes, I want to go jogging—”

  “It’s not that hot . . .”

  “No, I won’t trip!”

  “All right then, take it easy, and I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Yeah . . . bye.”

  “No, I definitely won’t be getting to know anyone there!”

  “Yes, I know . . . bye.”

  I hung up with a loud sigh. My mother was going to be the end of me one day. That much was sure.

  After our phone call, I lay on my bed for quite a while. Once I recovered and started to think about going for a jog, suddenly a thousand reasons popped in my head for putting it off until tomorrow. But, no, I thought, forcing myself to sit up. There was no getting out of finally doing something about the deplorable condition I was in. I had gotten up this morning determined to go for a jog, and, dammit, I was going through with it.

  Resolved, I struggled off the bed and walked over to the closet. After I changed, I pulled my hair back and grabbed my iPod. I slid it into the pocket of my running shorts, looked around one last time, an
d left my room as fast as possible before I could have second thoughts.

  When I hit the humidity, I hesitated again. It was way too hot to exercise outside, but who knew when I would feel inspired to try again. That’s why I wanted to carry through with it today, no matter what.

  I planned to start the jog in a nearby park, and I was already sweating profusely by the time I made it there. This was my first day jogging, so with steely determination I set aside any sign of lethargy, switched on my iPod, and stuck the earbuds into my ears. I picked Bob Marley because reggae was the perfect pace for my speed. While stretching, I sang softly along to “Redemption Song,” whose theme of emancipation from the limits of the mind fit the situation perfectly, and then I took a deep breath and started jogging in slow motion.

  A narrow gravel pathway wove all through the park, and even though the onlookers in the park were still too many for my tastes, I was glad the hot weather seemed to have diminished their numbers. I tried to block everything else out and focus solely on my feet. Just act like you know what you’re doing, I told myself, struggling onward.

  Easier said than done, of course. Before long, my legs started feeling like I’d run a marathon. Unfortunately, my watch confirmed that my perception had little to do with reality, because I’d been jogging for only seven minutes.

  Right, left, right, left, I thought, clenching my teeth and forcing my legs to stick to it. Could I be so out of shape that I was out of breath after only a few minutes? No. I wouldn’t allow it! I doggedly stared at the ground, and I refused to let my lack of vigor conquer me again. I had to at least show it who was boss. Today was the day!

  Unfortunately, my lack of vigor had a trump card up its sleeve, and it was all too happy to play it. Very soon I noticed an awful pain in my thighs. I cursed to myself. But when I looked up to see how far I had gotten toward my objective, I stopped dead in my tracks. I was looking right into two turquoise-green eyes, whose owner was casually jogging toward me.

  For God’s sake. I couldn’t believe it. Why was I always crossing paths with him?

  His lips were moving, but thanks to my music I couldn’t make out his undoubtedly glorious words. Elyas with the sound off was substantially more tolerable.