She would have preferred to die rather than letting him have his way, but Marc’s pleased and admired smile made her evaporate every macabre and revengeful thought out of her mind.
Marc switched off the blender and went towards her.
“Berry, now you’re beautiful! I really have good taste in choosing the more suitable look for you,” he complimented himself with self-important air on his excellent savoir-faire.
“I haven’t understood whether this compliment was for me or it was just a sort of complacency,” got nervous Berenice, forcing herself to chase away Marc’s hands that were immediately at work to straighten better the dress along her sides and on her shoulders.
“Of course the credit for this must be given to me, since you couldn’t even tidy up the bow,” clarified immediately Marc, knotting with lilac ribbons that adorned the neckline to terminate with a soft and small bow. “And if you don’t stop beating me and gesticulating wildly, I’ll end up by touching your bosom, so I’ll have to put up with another cry of yours that will burst my eardrums for sure. Do you really want to conclude our deal by becoming my slave for life?”
“Let me go,” she got more furious while seeing him tidying up the dress along her sides again, but not without giving her one of his pinches first, and in spite of that he went on ignoring her completely.
“At this point I think you’re very stupid or terribly masochist. Do you like to keep on risking my life by any chance? Maybe you’re one of those mad girls who become aroused by torturing the others,” guessed Marc, amused by several expressions alternating on Berenice’s face: from angry to embarrassed, from menacing to almost amused.
“Idiot!”
“I’m wondering whether, when you sleep with your man, you like using rude words with him,” teased Marc, making her get as red as a beetroot.
“You… you… you’re… you’re the worst…” tried to formulate Berenice, without knowing well what to say and Marc’s even more arrogant look did nothing but stop her further. “I… I hate you.”
“I hate you too, my adorable berry,” he answered in his turn with a sweet smile on his lips.
She did not know whether it was more that smile or rather hearing to be hated or called my adorable berry, but Berenice was left speechless for the first time in her life and Marc took advantage of that to pull her into his arms and kiss her.
Berenice’s open mouth yieldingly and languidly welcomed that contact that shot at her rationality like a crazed little ball of a pinball machine, while Marc’s hands, that at first had never moved away her waist even for a second, now were stroking her back for its whole length and slipped into her hair on the back of the neck. When the kiss stopped, their lips parted from each other slowly and unwillingly.
They had to stay at a distance from each other of some centimeters to breathe and collect themselves for what had just unexpectedly happened between them.
Their looks were trapped one into the other, but when they had a regular breathing again, Berenice was seized with fear, which did not passed unnoticed by Marc.
“Berry, I…” he tried to hold her, but Berenice already managed to take two steps backward, enough to move away his embrace.
“Berry?! Do you call her that ’cause she’s plump?” intervened a female ringing voice that made Marc stiffen at once and Berenice fall into an abyss.
A charming and flashy woman had appeared at the kitchen door, dressed in a white close-fitting suit open in the front from which a shirt unbuttoned up to the bras can be seized. And the bras left exposed more than what was allowed.
For Marc it was impossible to know who she was, although he guessed she could be Berenice’s mother. The two women had nothing in common. Her red, curly and wild hair contrasted with the young woman’s brown hair with soft curls. Just the shape of their face was alike, even if Berenice’s was plumper and with high cheekbones, tender and fair skin, full lips and brown eyes with small dark green nuances. These ones were very different from those of the newcomer with her perfect make-up that stressed both her green eyes and red and swollen lips that were surely filled with botox.
“Mother,” she greeted her, cursing herself for having never the courage to get the copy of the latchkey back after she moved.
“Berenice, darling. Whatever became of Neil? I understand that with such radical change—inquired her mother pointing at Mark—I’d have left that poor man too, but you must be careful: upper you go in the world, more rivals you have.”
“Thank you, mom,” answered her daughter tartly, being confronted with those pearls of wisdom that had always the power to make her feel a nobody. However her mother paid no attention to her and went towards Mark, introduced herself with her usual femme fatale way that she had tried to teach to her daughter: stomach in, buttocks out, chin up, languid look, lower lip lightly sulky and a strand of hair to play with.
Of course Berenice had never managed to do that and her mother finally undertook to do that with each boy she brought at home. As if he were almost her boyfriend.
She heard Marc introduce himself with his real name and deduced from her mother’s unchanged attitude that she did not recognize him.
It took fifteen minutes to interrupt the conversation between the red-headed and explosive Tina and Marc, the guy who could just as easily have been her boyfriend as far as her mother knew.
“So, how long have you guys been together?” asked Tina after a while.
“We aren’t together. Marc is a friend of mine,” immediately clarified Berenice, growing exasperated for her mother’s behavior.
“My darling, I wasn’t born yesterday and you aren’t a child any longer. You can tell me that you’ve a new love.”
“Yes, Berry. You can tell her,” echoed Marc with a menacing look. He had realized that Berenice’s mother was coming on to him without even hiding it, which was definitively irritating him. Perhaps if she had understood well he was with her daughter, she would have stopped hurling her bosoms into his face that she pushed against the bottoms of her shirt from which a lace bra could be made out.
“Yes, mom. Marc and I are together. We’ve been for a short time,” agreed Berenice.
“Oh, sweetheart. Holding on to such man won’t be easy! Marc, my dear, I wonder how many women are chasing you, eh?”
“I’ve eyes only for your daughter,” explained Marc at once, trying to smile.
“Yes, yes, of course,” whispered Tina winking at him, that was to say: “I don’t believe you one bit, but you’d better not tell that to poor Berenice.”
“Mom, w ould you mind telling me why you came up to here?” intervened the daughter who knew her mother very well and knew she was a real troublemaker.
That question made Tina come to her senses and she finally remembered the reason why she paid a visit to her daughter.
“Right. This morning I went to have my monthly lymphatic drainage massage and guess who I met?”
“Miriam?” tried Berenice, referring to her former high school classmate with whom her mother loved so much to compare her to spur her to lose weight.
“No, Miriam doesn’t come any longer. She’s got bigger than a monk seal.”
“She’s just had a baby,” justified Berenice.
“Yes, but if she doesn’t drop those fifteen pounds at once, I envisage her divorce within fourteen days.”
“So who else did you meet?” asked the daughter, surrendered, who knew her mother’s logic: everything going around the world was measured by weight.
“I met Doctor Jacob Kleferd,” she revealed resentfully.
Oh no!
“Mom, I can explain…”
“Really? Thank goodness! I do need to listen to your explanations since today I couldn’t give not even one of them, after making a complete fool of myself before the doctor! Do you want me to tell you how I felt when he told me you didn’t come to his studio after postponing the check-up for five times because of your job?”
“I’ve been busy,”
lied Berenice.
“Berenice, you’ve a problem.”
“I haven’t, mom!”
“Berry,—intervened Marc, worried—do you have a problem?”
“Marc, please don’t you start. Mom, you’re overacting.”
“My darling, I’m saying it for you. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror?”
I look at myself everyday! Just to remind to myself your words each time I get up in the morning.
“Yes, mom. I’ve already told you I’m alright with that, ok?”
“It’s not true! And since you got your own apartment, you got even worse. But, Berenice, my sweetheart, don’t you want to put on a beautiful skirt, a decent dress not like this one that only makes you look like a stockily built groundhog, or just a good pair of Slim Fit jeans? My darling, when are you going to look better and go to the dietician’s ?”
Berenice wanted to sink into the ground: her mother had just ordered to go to the dietician’s in front of Marc!
“What?” intervened Marc again, upset by what he had just heard. “That dress l ooks perfect on her!”
How could that woman humiliate her daughter so much and grumble about his choices of look!
“Berenice, I love you. Come to live with us again and you’ll see…”
“No, mom. I’ve already told you.”
“Well, do what you want,” got angry her mother who hated her daughter’s stubbornness. “Don’t say I’ve never tried to help you when your boyfriend cheats on you with a Small-Sized girl!”
“Mom, I’m sorry, but…”
“No, Berenice. You never listen to me! That’s enough! I’ll never make appointments for you to the dietician’s or nutritionist’s! Do it yourself. This is my last present for you,” she said putting a pack of pills on the table. “Doctor Kleferd handed it to me for you. You should take these pills twice a day in order to melt the fat and drain the liquids.”
Having said that, without saying goodbye to those present, Tina made for the front door and went away, leaving her daughter dealing with her greatest awkward situation: facing Marc.
She was terribly embarrassed and that pack of pills seemed to blink on the table as for fear of going unnoticed.
Mortified, she took the pack of pills and without looking at the astounded Marc went to her bedroom.
“Berry, where are you going? Wait,” called Marc, making her start.
Berry, do you call her that ’cause she’s plump ?, had said her mother. The same think she had thought herself the first time Marc had called her with that nickname.
“Stop calling me that!” said the girl furiously before shutting the door behind her.
“Berry, can I come in?” he asked knocking at the door.
“No, you can’t. Leave me alone.”
She heard him beg her and say to her that he absolutely had to talk with her or ask her whether she was hungry, but she did not answer any longer. She sat on the bed and let those damned and hateful tears run down her face.
She hated to cry more than anything else in the world, but that moment she felt the need to unburden herself and feel sorry for herself.
Her mother has been spurring her to lose weight for so many years, suppressing and mortifying her with inappropriate sentences spoken even in front of others. Her favorite one was: “Now then, my darling, when are you going to drop these excess pounds?”
It was not the first time such scenes occurred, but this time it was different. This time Marc was there.
Not whoever, but Marc Hailen.
But it was more than that…
No, that would not have been enough to make her cry.
She was not so weak.
The truth was that she had believed in Marc’s look when he had told her she was beautiful.
For once in her life she felt herself really beautiful. Not very beautiful, but beautiful at least.
So beautiful to deserve a kiss.
A wonderful kiss that she would have never forgotten, but always kept confined in her heart as the most precious of her treasures. A memory. Just it. Because just a memory would have left to her.
Everything would have been perfect and magic if her mother had not ruined the ending with her entrée. She sobbed loudly. How could she come out of that room and look Marc in the face after what had happened?
She felt like she was dying at the thought of her own body wrapped in that dress with Marc’s hands running along it, feeling and caressing her stockily built groundhog body, as her mother had called it.
She clumsily tore off her dress that she threw under the bed and sought refuge in one of her comfortable and soft suits.
Then she saw the slimming diet again. She felt her cheeks burn for the humiliation, which got her so angry that she threw the pack of pills against the wall in front of her.
The thud alarmed Marc who knocked again.
“Berry, is everything alright? Can I come in?”
“Yes, all is well. Leave me alone. I’m tired and want to rest.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m.”
She heard him beg her again, but she did not answer any longer.
She went to bed again with her laptop.
Every time her mother demoralized her, she tended to spend the rest of the day eating ice cream and caramel popcorns in front of her usual favorite movies: Just Wright and Phat Girlz.
Unfortunately, she did not have any ice cream, and popcorns had ended up into the waste bin thanks to Marc, but the movies were saved in her laptop.
She switched on it and immediately noticed the changed desktop.
There was not the usual lavender stretch any longer, but the photo of Marc who was smiling at her.
She studied it and realized that is was taken just in her room, on the bed, with the laptop’s built-in webcam. Behind Marc she could catch a glimpse of the head of the bed. In his hand he held a piece of paper on which he had written ‘Just for Berry’.
She smiled and saw a new folder for her on the screen.
She opened it.
It contained photos and short videos of all that he had done when she was away.
She laughed while watching the video in which he was examining her fridge, considering almost each product inacceptable and accusing her to be a bad cook for sure, since she used so much precooked food.
Also the photo regarding the moment in which he got furious for her card of the previous day made her a laugh.
She went as red as a beetroot in front of the photos portraying her sleeping on the sofa with him next to her playing any kind of trick on her and then ending up in giving a kiss on her temple, or watching the video made just that morning where he started his skit saying: “What’s the betting that she’ll fly into a rage?”, and then he opened the door of the bathroom. The scene showed Berenice herself having a shower, while he was getting closer and stealing the bathrobe hanging by there. She saw him repress a laugh, pretending to peek at her and then flinging out triumphantly.
Although Marc had only been living with her for a very short while, she realized he was really adorable after all.
Watching all those scenes made her feel definitely better.
Marc had obviously given a hang about her privacy, but at that moment it did not bother her so much.
On the contrary, it relieved her in a sense: unlike anyone else, now Marc knew everything about her. She had nothing to lose. Moreover, he had soon be moving and most likely she had never seen him again. Still, that thought made her very sad.
She did not want to lose him. Not quite.
He’s so insufferable that I’ll miss not getting angry with him every hour!
I wonder whether he would be willing to an email exchange or to some Skype calls and messages every now and then!
More cheerful, but just a little bit melancholic, she switched off the laptop and lied down on the bed.
She stayed there for long time, leaving her thoughts flow freely in her mind.
T
he image of Marc was constantly there.
She always liked him for his talent and beauty, but now she risked to appreciate him for what he really was, which terrorized her, because that aspect was the only one capable to get to her heart. That kiss was just the first cannon shot that had breached the impassable wall she was building between herself and the world.
She was still thinking about him and the mess in which she was about to be if she had fallen in love with such man, when she heard the door handle creak.
She had a look at it and saw the door open slowly and Marc creep in.
Caught off her guard, she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, lying down on her side on the bed.
She heard him get closer and call her in a low voice.
No reaction from her .
She heard the mattress buckle under Marc’s weight.
Still, no reaction from her.
She heard his hand run down her side and give her the usual pinch.
She did not react, even if it was very hard.
“Berry, are you sleeping?”
Berry went on standing still.
“If you’re really sleeping, then you won’t mind if I take advantage of the situation.”
She hardly forced herself not to move.
“Well, silence gives consent, so…” he whispered in her ear, making himself comfortable next to her, along her body, in a spoon position.
Berenice was happy to have her face half-covered by the hair that hid her blush, but he moved it aside.
“ Who knows what you’re dreaming about… Your cheeks are blushing. Surely it deals with a dissolute dream. I’ve always thought you’re a depraved girl deep down,” teased Marc, running his hand down her hair, shoulder and arm.
Berenice had to refrain from planting a kick on his tibia.
“You’re a terrible actress! You aren’t even good at pretending to sleep,” he reproached her.
She went on with her farce since was too embarrassed to admit the truth, but then he started to tickle her on the stomach, where she hated to be touched, and she could not resist any longer.
A Star in My Life Page 6