A Beautiful Fate (17 page)

We arrived back at school late, but unfortunately not late enough. We walked in just in time to find some of the people on the floor getting ready to play pool and Emily instantly noticed our arrival.

“Oh.My.God,” Emily said with a grin. “Where the hell have you two been all weekend?”

“Listen,” Ari said softly, “Ava and I were at a funeral for a friend, that’s all. Do you mind keeping things quiet for a while?”

“Oh…sure, sorry,” she smiled apologetically. The rest of the group stared at us as we walked away down towards our rooms. Ari brought my luggage in and paused in the doorway.

“Thank you, Ari, for everything,” I said.

“No problem, Ava, anything for you; sleep well,” he said before shutting the door behind him.

I let out a breath once the door shut, then took a hot shower to wash the airport grime away and then crashed in bed. I had just slept on the plane but the weekend had left me exhausted.

That night, a new dream appeared. I found myself in a dark room, the walls paneled in wood, the carpet red as blood. A large, round table took up most of the room, and several men were seated at it.

The men were talking in hushed tones but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I was certain the language they spoke was not English. I woke with a jump right after I heard the words σκοτώσει το κορίτσι. I said them over and over again in my head so I wouldn’t forget them. Finally, after stumbling around in the dark, I found the light switch and a pen and scribbled the words down as best as I could on the inside of a book.

I dressed for class and headed to piano. My day passed steadily. I rounded up all the assigned reading I had missed from Monday and headed to the library for an evening’s worth of work. I took a seat at one of the long tables and pulled out my Mac. I was concentrating on calculus when I heard someone from across the table clear their throat. It was Rory.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked looking up across the table.

“Good,” he said with his classic smile, “you mind if I join you?”

“I don’t mind at all, but I am not much fun tonight. I have a ton of work here.”

“Yeah, me too. I can’t believe we’re getting this much homework right before Thanksgiving.”

“Oh, no, Thanksgiving. I completely forgot,” I said with a sigh.

“What! How could you forget about the best holiday ever? I mean seriously all you have to do all day is eat – what can be better than that?”

“Uh, I guess I am just not looking forward to it. Margaux is out of town and she is my only family, so I will just be here all weekend.”

“Ava, how can you even say that? We are your family now; you can spend the holiday with us.”

“Rory, that is really nice of you to offer, but I don’t think so.”

“You have to come, Ava. Everyone loves you there anyway,” he said in a reassuring tone.

Just then, Ari came up from behind Rory and placed his hands on Rory’s shoulder, causing him to jump a little bit. I let out a small laugh and he rolled his eyes at both Ari and me.

“There you are,” Ari said, “what’s going on?”

Rory shrugged his shoulders, “nothing man, just trying to talk Ava in to spending Thanksgiving with us.”

“Oh really? Funny you should mention that.”

“Why’s that?” Rory said with a grunt.

“Well,” Ari turned all of his attention to me, “Ava, my mom and Lauren both called me this morning practically begging me to make sure you are there for Thanksgiving.”

He gave me a wink and mouthed the word “please” and my heart nearly melted. I gave them both a smile and agreed to think about it.

“Great,” he replied, then turned his attention back to Rory.

“Hey man, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Yeah, dude, what?” Rory said without moving.

“No, I mean alone.”

With a heavy sigh, Rory closed his laptop and with great effort pulled himself out of his chair, and followed Ari out of the library.

Chapter 10

Nerves overcame me and I lost all ability to concentrate on any of my work. Thousands of thoughts flooded my mind and a small panic set in. What if Rory said no? I did not stick around to hear the outcome. I certainly did not want to see the two of them fighting, so I left from the rear exit of the library and was able to get back to my room without seeing either of them. I collapsed into my fluffy chair; I had gotten half way through my history assignment when I was interrupted by a light knock. I got up and pulled the door open to find Ari standing in the hall with his hands in his pockets. He was biting down on his bottom lip.

“Hi,” I said softly.

“Hi.”

“So…”

“So, I talked to Rory.”

“And?” I was nearly inaudible.

“Well, he hates me again, but he didn’t break my nose, so it wasn’t too bad.”

“What does that mean?” I asked as the tension built inside me.

Ari walked into my room a little further, took his hands out of his pockets, wrapped them around my waist and pulled me to him, closing the small gap between us, and kissed me. Gentle at first, his soft lips felt so amazing on mine. He lightly shut the door all the way with his foot. His tongue teased my lips in to opening and our kiss grew deeper. The butterflies in my stomach started taking flight and a fire rushed through my body, making me tingle all over. I threw my arms around him and kissed him back; more passion burst between us than I thought possible for two people. Ari cupped his hand behind my head, blinked his eyes open and smiled at me. My cheeks flamed with white-hot heat.

Ari sat down on my armchair, pulled me onto his lap and began to explain what had happened.

“I laid it all out on the table for him; I let Rory know how I feel and how I think you feel. He was a little mad at first but he knew I was speaking the truth. He said he had blown all of his chances with you anyway and he just wanted to see you happy.”

This made my heart smile a little bit. I was sad that I had hurt Rory – he was my friend – but I knew that he and I would get over this part of our relationship and that I would never lose him.

Ari went on, “I know that he still really has feelings for Julia, and I am pretty confident that she is coming around to him, too.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“Not at all. For starters, I have you...and also Rory and Julia are a lot alike.” He brushed my hair away from my cheek, then added, “There is something I want to do.”

“Ok,” I smiled.

“Close your eyes.”

I closed my eyes as Ari asked and a moment later I felt his soft lips kiss the tiny, dark freckle I had right above my lip.

“I have wanted to do that since the moment I first laid eyes on you.”

“Really?”

“Mmm hmm.
Badly
.”

“Well, there’s something I have wanted to do, too.”

Ari’s eyes lit up. “Oh? What would that be?”

I slowly ran my fingers through his thick, dark and unruly hair. His eyes closed at my touch. When he opened them up again, he had an amused look on his face.

“What?” I asked with a giggle.

“Ava, you do that all the time.”

“I have never done that.”

Ari’s smile was so large it lit up my room.

“Maybe not when you’re awake, but you have very bold and curious hands and fingers while you sleep. You are a very controlled and disciplined person, Ava…until you sleep. I love it when you wrap your body around mine and when you snuggle your face in tight to my chest.” His smile got bigger. “Your toes get cold and you tangle our legs up together, you knot your fingers tightly in my hair.”

He paused for a second and his smile faded. “I am so sorry that I didn’t do this sooner. I was selfish and I didn’t consider your feelings the way I should have. That night when I brought you to my room and you said we needed to talk, I knew what was coming. You were going to end whatever we had. I panicked and held on to you for dear life. I watched you sleep all night long and thought of how on Earth I was going to make our relationship work. I decided right then to do whatever it would take to have you for myself. I didn’t want to stay away from you any longer and I didn’t want to sneak around. I wanted everyone to know how I felt about you. I just had to get to Rory before he saw us. Then he knocked on the door and I blew it. You stopped talking to me for the next few weeks. It was as though to you I had never existed. Mia was right for chewing me out. You are too good for me.”

I knew what he was saying. I had turned my emotions off when he was near. I refused to feel anything. Doing so was unbelievably hard and I hoped never to have to do it again.

Ari continued talking. “When I saw Rory in his room with Julia on the night of his party, I knew he had screwed up any chance he might have had to try for you again. That was one of the happiest days of my life.”

“He was with Julia?”

“Uh yeah, I thought you walked in on them.”

“I did, but I was too shocked to see who he was with.”

“Oh, yes, he was with Julia. They were using each other to get back at me. It blew up in Rory’s face and couldn’t have worked out better for me.”

He kissed me again, softly on the lips, my stomach did more flips, and my body began to tingle all over again.

“Do you forgive me?”

“Yes, of course. I actually liked our little talks at night. I just wish I could have had you more in the day time too and now I will.”

“Yes, you will,” he agreed, and licked his bottom lip. My pulse picked up a beat. Ari pointed to my freckle. “Do you have any more of these little things that I should know about? This one here has the ability of making me forget my own name.”

Oh, pure wow.

“If you play your cards right and look hard enough, you might find a couple more.”

His jaw dropped. I loved that I could get such a strong reaction out of Ari. He was the most poised and composed person I had ever met. I felt very powerful at the moment.

“Mmm. I am going to begin my search right now,” Ari whispered, and started kissing me behind my ears and on my neck. He stopped to ask me a question about myself from time to time, and each time, I thought a moment before answering. When I did finally answer, the kissing began again.

Ari and I hung around my room doing more of the same for a while. Suddenly I spied my book on the floor near my bed. There was a pen sitting on top of it and I recalled the words I had heard in my dream. I got up, walked over to the notebook and picked it up, trying to remember how the letters I had scribbled earlier this morning had sounded.

“Hey Ari, what does ‘σκοτώσει το κορίτσι’ mean?”

“I don’t know... I don’t speak Greek. Why are you asking me that?”

“Well…” I started, and then I told him about my dream and how a few men had been discussing something I could not understand and how one of them kept saying, “σκοτώσει το κορίτσι” over and over again.

Ari’s face went pale. “How many men were there?”

“I think six; why?”

“What did they look like?”

“I don’t really know… they all kind of looked the same – dark short hair, well built, brown eyes...kind of Mediterranean.”

He quickly stood up, pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, and started dialing. He grabbed my keys off the desk and waved for me to follow him. Ari was on the phone with his dad by the time we exited my room. I followed him quickly through the commons.

Ari pushed the call button on the elevator while he spoke to his father. He looked at the closed elevator doors, then to me, then back to the doors again.

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, we climbed in.

“I’ll call you right back, Dad.” Ari hung up the phone, grabbed me in his arms and pushed me against the elevator wall. He pushed his body and lips against mine and kissed me fervently, his fingers knotting in my hair. I hardly had time to respond – but I knew liked it.

By the time we arrived at the ground floor, I was breathless and left wanting more. Ari winked at me and hit “send” on his cell again. We got down to my car and he tossed me the keys. I climbed into the driver’s side. He mouthed “my house” and I drove off towards the Alexander’s beach home.

We arrived at Ari’s parent’s house the same time that Andrew did, the two of them, father and son, quickly made their way through the house and into Andy’s study. I followed along, not sure how to take the hurry and the secrecy.

“Ava,” Andy said, “tell me exactly what you dreamed.”

I went through the dream again and repeated what I had heard. Ari and Andrew quickly started talking about it. After a bit, feeling increasingly anxious, I snapped, “Would someone just tell me what the hell it means?”

Andy looked at me with fear in his eyes.

“Uh, Ava,” he said, trying to stall and failing, “actually the phrase means ‘kill the girl.’”

My shoulders dropped. “Oh. Ok. So. I mean I already knew that someone wanted me dead. That’s nothing new.”