Page 64 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
She squeezes her eyes closed and buries her face against my chest. “How do you do it?” she asks.
“Do what?”
“Go on.”
I shake my head, although she can’t see it. The honest answer is, I don’t know. I go on because I have no choice.
Does it help that Juliet always comes back? Some, but not much. Her return never takes away the pain of losing her previous incarnation. I live with festering wounds that never heal, because the half-life of grief is forever.
However, that’s not important tonight. What matters is Helene and how she’s dealing with the revelations of our past. I’ve carried the knowledge of the curse for a long, long time. She’s known about it for less than twenty-four hours.
“Are you okay?” I ask, even though I know there’s no way anyone could be.
She murmurs something, but it gets lost against my shirt.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“Two days,” Helene whispers. “Sometimes I die intwo days.”
Zlata. Poor, innocent Zlata.
“Or two years,” I counter, as if that’s much better. In 1682, I fell for a self-proclaimed sorceress, Cosmina, when she showed up at my castle door. Cosmina lived for two whole years afterward, the longest of my loves.
But still the time is never enough.
“Do you think we might be different?” Helene asks. It comes out meek, like a hope that’s crushed before it’s even conceived.
“Because you remembered our pasts, via the stories you wrote? Maybe,” I say. I don’t tell her that I doubt it means we’re free of the curse, that this is just another way for it to torture us, to make us suffer.
“And all the journals…” she says. “We always meet on July tenth. But I came to Alaska in January. That’s different, too.”
I hesitate. “Actually…I saw you before. On the tenth of July, ten years ago. In Claremont, California.”
She jerks upright. “At Pomona College?”
I nod.
“Where was I on campus? Specifically.” Her eyes are wide, and I wonder if she might remember that day, too.
“On a picnic blanket on the grass,” I say. “You were with friends, and you were wearing—”
“A honey-colored sundress,” Helene finishes for me. “It was new, the first time I’d worn it, and I remember the strangest thing happened to me that afternoon. I was just lounging on the lawn when suddenly I thought I tasted honey on my tongue. I laughed because it matched the color of the dress. And every time I wore it afterward, I waited to see if it would happen again, like some kind of sweet magic, but it never did. But now I realize, it wasn’t the dress. It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I say softly. “It was me.Us.”
“Ten years. That’s a lot longer than two—something else that’s different from the other Romeos and Juliets. Why didn’t you come introduce yourself then?”
My chest tightens and I feel a little ill, knowing now what I know about Avery and what happens when I leave Juliet alone. “I didn’t introduce myself because you looked happy, and I couldn’t bring myself to steal that from you. I had…a theory. That perhaps the curse only starts the clock when we fall in love with each other. I’d left the previous version of Juliet alone, and she went on to live a significant life. So when I saw you…I walked away.”
“That’s the reason why you were horrible to me when we met at The Frosty Otter, wasn’t it?” Helene asks. “You wanted to make me leave.”
I wince but the accusation is fair. “Yes.”
“And now…” Helene says. “We haven’t fallen for each other yet. We could still go our separate ways. Is that what you want?”
“No.” It slips out before I can think better of it, before I can remind myself that this should be her choice, not mine.
But yearning swells in my chest like a dam about to burst. I should let her go, but I’m beginning to think there’s no such thingas free will, at least not when it concerns me and her. Perhaps soulmates are inevitable. Perhaps we can’t outmaneuver fate.
