Page 5 of Tell Me Softly
Inside the building, everyone said hi to me and smiled. Half the people I’d known my whole life; the other half were vaguely familiar, like faces in the crowd. I stopped at my locker to grab a notebook and a pen. It was the first day of class, and we usually didn’t do anything. Chloe was talking nonstop with Kate and Marissa about prom and graduation. We hadn’t even started the year, and they were already thinking about its end.
My focus was on keeping my grades up. I’d need to study if I wanted to get into Yale like my dad. I had to. I had to escape. I’d need to come back to visit my brother, I guess, but that was the least of my concerns.
While my friends chit-chatted away, someone approached me on the right, grabbing my hips and pressing my butt into his crotch. I didn’t need to look to know who it was. I’d recognize that cologne anywhere.
I turned around to look him in the face.
“Hey!” I almost shouted, trying to be enthusiastic and probably overdoing it.
There he was: Danny. Handsome, tall, strong, captain of the basketball team, dark brown hair, blue eyes…I could keep going, and no matter how perfect the image in your head was, it still wouldn’t do him justice. Anyone would kill to have him as their boyfriend. Anyone but me.
“You look amazing,” he said again, pulling me toward him and pressing his lips into mine.
Someone familiar passed by us just then, walking to another locker a few feet away.
My stomach turned.
“Excuse me a sec,” I said in a trance, knowing everyone was watching me as I walked down the row of lockers.
He’d noticed me; that was obvious from the tension in his body, the deep breath he took before he closed the door with a clang and turned the combination lock.
He’d changed. He was older and almost as tall as his brother. His eyes were the same, but they didn’t shine the way they had when we were little, hanging out and getting into trouble. I had felt so close to him, so secure in his presence, but that camaraderie had disappeared. His hair wasn’t blond like his brother’s anymore; it was brown, and he had a tattoo on his neck, a Celtic symbol.
“Hey, Taylor,” I said almost inaudibly. All those memories piled up and rushed through my mind: shared moments, games, laughter…
He glanced at me with surprise. I guess I wasn’t the person he remembered either.
“Hey, Kami,” he said, cold and distant.
That stare made me shrivel up inside.
“You’re back,” I said. It sounded like a question.
“Yeah,” he said, uncomfortable, slinging his backpack over his shoulders.
I had so much I wanted to say to him, so much I wanted to share… So much had changed since we’d last seen each other. My life was no longer happy. There was no more laughter, no more adventure, just boring perfection, boring routine. He had been my confidant, my protector. Taylor and his brother had meant everything to me, and we hadn’t even been able to say goodbye. Eight years later, he shows up out of nowhere, and this is all he has to say to me?
Sure, my mother had destroyed his family, but she’d destroyed mine too, and I couldn’t understand why he was being so cold with me…I wanted to hug him, for him to like me, for things to be the way they had been in the past.
“I’m really happy to see you,” I said, as bravely as I could. “I missed you. You and your…”
“I gotta go,” he said, interrupting me with so much still left to say.
The bell rang just then. I flinched; it had startled me. Taylor walked past me and away. That wasn’t the way I’d imagined our reunion. I’d gone to sleep thousands of times thinking about what it would be like for us all to see each other again, but I never imagined it would be as strange and painful as that moment had been.
I was falling apart. I could tell by the way everyone was looking at me. I put back on the mask I always wore in these halls and restrained the tears that threatened to give me away.
“What are you looking at?” I asked no one in particular, turning on my heels and walking to class. My friends followed me, and I was grateful that none of them said anything—not then, anyway.
My feelings felt like they were about to come roaring out. But the ice princess, like her mother, couldn’t allow such a thing.
Chapter Two
Thiago
I hadn’t been back even half a day, and her image was already following me. Kam… Shit. Why the hell had seeing her had that effect on me? She didn’t even look like the person I’d known and adored when I was little. She seemed distant, stuck-up, not at all like the little girl with braids who used to make me laugh. I’d only seen her for a second, but it was enough to burn her image into my retinas. She’d grown. Kam was gorgeous, obviously. She always had been, but I didn’t think a single glance would make me long for her like that. Kamila Hamilton wasn’t my friend anymore. She wasn’t the same girl I’d had my first kiss with; she wasn’t the same girl I thought I’d been in love with when I was a little kid. No––the girl I’d just seen was the daughter of the woman who ruined our lives, the woman who had stolen my mother’s smile, the woman who’d caused my father to abandon us. I hated that family with all my strength, and I hated Kamila most of all. If she’d listened to me, if she’d kept her damn mouth shut, nothing would have happened. My mother wouldn’t have gotten depressed, she wouldn’t have changed, she wouldn’t have hooked up with that dickhead who abused her, and I wouldn’t have to be doing a year of probationbecause I’d split his face open. All Kamila had to do was keep her mouth shut.
Seeing her so happy, so radiant in her convertible, surrounded by money and without a care in the world, made my blood boil.
