A Beautiful Fate (29 page)

I noted a slight bit of attitude as he framed his expectation that my work be done in French – we were, after all, in England – and an infinitesimal smirk came to my face. I nodded, confirming that I had understood what he expected of me.

“
Splendide
,” he said as he clapped his hands and rubbed them together. He handed me a book...well, he tried to hand me a book but I refused to extend my hand so after a slight hesitation, he ended up placing it next to me on the couch. He then began a lecture about the Thirty Years War.

The lecture went on for an hour and during that time; August never consulted a book or notes. He recited names and dates as if he had been present for the war himself. At one point, he got up and, still talking, put on the tea. When he finished for the day, August assigned my reading – the first four chapters of each book he had brought over – then stood up and, at exactly 2 p.m., opened the front door and left for the day.

I spent my evening reading and was I thankful for the work; it took my mind off the heartache. Eventually, I made my way under my blankets. That night, I dreamed of Ari. We were caught in an embrace and he twirled a strand of my hair around his fingers. When I woke, my cheeks were wet and my eyes were swollen.

Nora came in at her appointed time. We did a quick workout for my shoulder. The exercises still hurt like hell, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut to keep the tears away. My shoulder started to bleed and ooze but Nora assured me that I would start to see improvement in the next couple of weeks. I tried to swallow my angst and put on a nice face.

“Ava, I don’t want to offend you, but the workouts would be easier if you took your medication,” Nora said with concern in her voice.

The doctors had given me a script for painkillers and anti-anxiety medicine before I left the hospital, but I had taken the scribbled note Dr. Phillips handed me, crumpled it up, and thrown it in the garbage can. He saw no humor in my actions whatsoever, wrote out another one, and gave it to Margaux, then left without another word.

“You are probably right, Nora, but pain is something I can deal with; it is the only thing that is real. Pain is a comfort to me right now.”

She quickly changed the subject and started to open up about herself. She told me about her boyfriend, her family and how she was thinking about training for a marathon but did not know how to get started.

“Well, I can help you if you’d like,” I said. “I mean, when I can get back out there that is. I run…quite a bit actually. I have done the Chicago Marathon a few times and I used to train with…well with a friend back home.”

“Really?!” Nora asked excitedly. “I mean, that would be super.”

“Yeah sure, as long as you can get my shoulder to work again, I’d be happy to have someone to run with.”

When she left, I felt a little bit better so I began to pick up the flat. I washed a week’s work of coffee cups that were in the sink and picked up all of my stray belongings that I had strewn about the floors and furniture. I took the first shower since I had left the hospital and put on the first fresh pair of clothes.

Ari had actually packed my belongings for me, and that thought alone made me sad. In the corner of my suitcase, folded up under a stack of my jeans, was a gray hooded sweatshirt. It was his. He knew I loved it since I was always grabbing it out of his closet to lounge in. I pulled it out and held it to me. Breathing him in, it was the single most delightful thing I had done since the last time we kissed. I hugged the sweatshirt to me and then got up and shoved it into the closet. I could not allow myself to be weak any longer. I went back to my luggage and opted for a pair of jeans and a loose fitting sweater that wouldn’t hurt to put on. As soon as I was dressed and ready, the only thing I felt like doing was crawling back in bed. I didn’t want to face the day. I took to my perch in my window with a cup of plantation mint tea and began to close my eyes.

Shortly after, I heard the door creak open. I turned and August came in. I rolled my eyes at him and then turned back around and continued gazing, half-asleep, out the window.

“
Salut Ava, C’est aujourd’hui le jeudi et il faut parler en francais.”

I turned back to him, giving him my best ‘I hate you face’ and I put my pointer finger up to my eye.

“
Mon oeil
,” I said in a nasty tone.

August apparently thought I was being facetious and threw his head back and laughed. I moved over to my spot on the couch and August began asking me questions in French about what I had read the night before. I grudgingly answered him with the shortest replies I could muster. He didn’t give up and continued down his list. Once we finally wrapped that up, he stood up and announced that we would be going to see Damien Hirst’s work at the Saatchi Gallery.

The trip was my first time to leave the flat since I had arrived. London was cold and the sun was nowhere in sight. I am sure, under different circumstances, I would have enjoyed being here and would have been more receptive, but the fact that the whole look, feel and smell of the city were the very opposite of what I had experienced in California only made me even more homesick.

We walked around and viewed several pieces of art that included dead animals in formaldehyde. The sight of the animals suspended sideways or upside down in various containers, with open but unseeing dead eyes staring at nothing was weird but morbidly interesting. I didn’t admit to August though that discussing art with him was almost fun.

I had learned during the course of the week that, despite August’s somewhat punk-rock look, he was pretty intelligent. On our walk through the gallery, he told me,
en francais bien sur
, that he had been traveling all across the world with his parents since he was little. They were both bio engineers and their work took them to all the corners of the globe. On his own for the first time, August had recently moved to London, but as I could already tell, he was originally from Paris.

He was a Parisian through and through. He spoke fast and with flare. He was arrogant and a bit supercilious. August could speak six languages more or less fluently, and even though he didn’t tell me so, I was fairly confident that he had a photographic memory. He clearly had a daring personality and my nasty and abrasive attitude had not daunted him a bit. I think, rather, that he viewed me as a challenge, something like an engaging science experiment.

As the weeks began to pass, I fell into a routine. I sobbed and cried each night and woke up to blood-shot, puffy, red eyes. My diet consisted of dry toast and tea. My days were filled with arguments with August; he was unrelenting with his stupid homework. All I needed to do was graduate. That was it. Margaux had sent August a copy of my school transcripts. He took one look at my marks and decided to take it upon himself to see me graduate at the top of my class.

Nora kept to our schedule, and my shoulder started to heal, just as she had promised. We began to run outside, despite the cold, and I started to get her ready for the Virgin London Marathon slated for the coming spring. I had not talked to Ari since that dark day in the hospital. Occasionally, I got a text or two from Emily, but that was all. She told me Ari had moved out of the dorms, back home, and that he refused to talk about me to anyone. I didn’t know how to interpret this news, but I knew how it made me feel, and I sat and cried in my little window seat.

I slept as little as humanly possible, not to avoid my nightmares, but because my bed was cold and lonely. Ari and I had had a hard time staying away from each other from the very beginning of our relationship. In London, during my first night away from California, and Ari, I proved to myself that I am pathetic and weak. I couldn’t even find comfort in the fact that we were sleeping under the same sky. My nights were his days. If I looked at the moon, there was no hope that he was looking at it too. I woke up most nights to my arms and legs rooting through the sheets looking for him. It was beyond depressing.

Despite our constant bickering, August was actually beginning to grow on me. He had a very dry sense of humor and we both shared the same view – that sarcasm should be treated as an art form. I began to warm up to him slightly and in return, he started to lighten up around me, pushing our friendship a little bit further each day. I think that maybe he had planned to do so all along.

Valentine’s Day approached. I sent texts to Nora and August, letting them know that I was not feeling well and they should just take a day off. Nora texted me back right away, wishing me well, and August texted back ‘eye roll’ for his only response.

I am not a Valentine’s Day type of person by any means. I have never been a romantic at heart, but the weight of missing Ari was bearing down on me so hard that I felt like my chest might cave in. Thirty-nine days had passed since Ari and I had last spoken, and I was thinking any semblance of composure I might have was about to crack...

I spent the entire day in bed, wrapped up in my blankets, fighting off tears. Finally, around midnight, I broke down and called Rory.

“Ava! What’s up, Baby? I miss you,” he said, picking up after the first ring.

“Hi, Rory,” I said sheepishly. “I was just calling to see how things are.”

“Yeah, things are ok… you know same ol’ stuff.”

“So…” I continued. “How are things with Julia?”

“Really good, actually taking her out tonight for Valentine’s Day, and by the way Happy Valentine’s Day to you!”

“Yeah, sure, so how is Lauren; is she ok?”

“Lauren is fine, Ava. She misses you; we all miss you. Ari misses you. He is a mess, Ava; you should be calling him right now, not me.”

“I can’t, Roar.”
Great, now I am crying
. “Listen I need to get going, I hope you have a nice time tonight and um… please don’t tell him I called.”

“You know I can’t do that Ava Baby; he’s worried about you. I can’t keep something like this from him; he’d kill me.”

I hung up; I couldn’t hear any more. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands and stared down at my phone. After an hour of looking at the little black screen, I opened a text box. My fingers were shaking. I typed in “X” and then quickly hit “send” to Ari’s number before I could talk myself out of it. No less than a second later, I got a text back and all it said was “O.”

Hugging my phone to me like a security blanket, I sobbed the rest of the night.

By the time August arrived in the morning, I was not in a very pleasant mood. We sat on the couch side by side and stared defiantly at each other for a good fifteen minutes. Then August pulled up his shirtsleeve, unintentionally revealing an arm full of tattoos.

I jumped up out of my seat and grabbed his arm.

“What the hell, Ava,” he snapped. “Back off.”

Ignoring his request, I grabbed his other arm, and pulled the sleeve up, uncovering another arm full of beautifully done tattoos.

“Who did these tattoos for you?” I demanded.

“Well…” he began to answer, “I have had them done by different artists all over the place, but most recently I have been going to this guy Jake, just up the street from here.”

“Will you take me there?” I asked in a more friendly tone.

“What the hell for, Ava?”

“For those,” I said as I pointed to his arm. “I want those.”

“No way, Ava. You’re only seventeen. If your grandmother found out, I would be fired in no time.”

I shook my head and gave him a very slow, determined smile.

“If you don’t take me there now, I will see that you are fired in no time.”

“Fine,” he said pulling his shirtsleeves back down. “You are something of a psycho, you know that?”

I ignored his comment, grabbed a handful of cash and followed August out the door. We walked in silence to Jake’s place. It was an old building; and the exterior was covered in chipped black paint. We entered through a back door and went down a flight of steps into a basement. Jake was working on a guy’s shoulder when we walked in. From the looks of it, he was finishing a skull with snakes coming out of the eye sockets.

Jake stood up and stretched. “Alright, Auggie? You ‘ere for more work? Don’t really have a lot a room lef, do ya?”

August rubbed the back of his head.

“Actually Jake, this is Ava. I guess she wants something done.”

Jake looked me up and down and chewed on the inside of his cheek.

“Right, Ava, take a seat; I’ll be with chew in a bit.”

We sat down on an old couch in an adjoining room. On a table by the couch I found some paper, a pencil and some design books. I drew out what I wanted and then patiently waited. I found myself in good spirits and didn’t feel even the least bit nervous. August began to calm down and told me he forgave me for being so hardheaded. He perfected my sketch, making it look just how I had pictured it in my mind, and then he helped me with the best placement and coloring.

When the skull guy was gone, Jake came in and pointed at me. “Listen” he said, “I know you ain’t eighteen, but Auggie ‘ere’s a good chap, so I’ll do it for ‘im, but if you rat me out, your ass is mine.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” I said with a shrug.

“Right din.”

Several hours later, I had a flock of birds taking flight up my right arm. They varied in size and their wings were positioned in different stages of flying. Four stood out among the flock. They were especially beautiful and they symbolized Perry, my mother, my father and Mia. The tattoo was my way of finally letting them go while keeping them with me at the same time.