The Pull of Destiny (8 page)

“Wow.
That was amazing. You’re really good.”

Jolted
(literally) out of my reverie, (I was playing Sydney Music Hall) I screamed,
high and loud, and tumbled to the ground as my chair tipped over. My heart was
thumping as I lay on my back, eyes searching to find the speaker. I froze as my
eyes met a pair of dark green ones.

Luke.

Still
scared out of my wits, I shrieked, “Will you stop creeping up behind me?!”

Stepping
closer to me, he grinned. “I didn’t creep up behind you,” he explained. “I
walked. I even waited till you were finished playing before I said anything.
It’s not my fault you’re so jumpy.”

Sounded
reasonable, but I wasn’t in the mood to be reasonable. Not when I was being
assailed by the fresh, clean scent of soap.

“I’m
not jumpy,” I muttered, trying to hoist myself up. What was he doing here,
ruining my good time?
Probably wants to use the room to entertain his flock
of fan girls with his stupid guitar.
Great. Just great. Well, I wasn’t
going to keep him waiting.

He
stretched out a hand. “You need my help getting up?”

A
small smile played around his lips, making me fume.
He’s laughing at me!

“I
can get up myself,” I replied in a haughty voice, awkwardly pushing myself to
my feet and dusting off my pants.
Thank goodness I didn’t end up wearing a
skirt today.

Luke
withdrew his hand and stood there looking at me as I picked up my bag.
So
much for the piano playing.

“Where
you going?” he asked as I closed the piano lid and started sidling around him
to get to the door and run. I noticed that he was empty handed, guitar-less and
his rabid fans were nowhere to be seen or heard.
What the-?

Still,
I indifferently tossed my head in his direction, swinging my bag onto my
shoulder. “It’s all yours. I was just leaving,” I said coolly.

“No,
wait,” Luke said, moving so that he was standing in front of me and directly
blocking my exit. “I’m actually kinda glad I ran into you.”

He
smiled at me, all perfect white teeth and-
focus!

Staring
down my nose at him (which was quite hard seeing as he was several inches
taller than me) I mustered the snootiest voice I could. “Were you really. Why?”

He
shook his hair out of his eyes again and I bit my lip to stop myself from
yelling ‘get a freaking haircut if it annoys you so much!’ I really hoped he
wouldn’t, though. Get a haircut, I mean. His hair suited him to perfection.
Well, come to think of it, he could carry off any hairstyle. He was definitely
cute enough.
And he’s a jerk.
Remember that, dummy?
Right. And he
was a jerk.

“I
uh- I wanted to talk to you,” he said slowly, his hands pulling on the sleeve
of his Iron Maiden t-shirt.
He’s nervous! About talking to me! That’s so
cute!
Then I gave myself a mental slap, remembering Shazia's words-
‘if
he apologizes for the first time, play hard to get.’

If
he was indeed here to apologize, (and it certainly seemed like it, if the
guilty look in his eyes was anything to go by,) I wasn’t going to make it easy
for him.

“Nothing
you could say could make me want to stay here and talk to you,” I said with
feeling. Cute or not, he had been way out of line yesterday. I was still
smarting over his comments and I intended to let him know.

He
leaned against the door and it clicked shut as he crossed his arms across his
chest and grinned smugly at me.
Crap. Alone in a room with Luke Astor. Bad
things tend to happen.
“I love you,” he said suddenly. I snapped my head in
his direction, staring at him wildly.
Did he just-?
“Will you marry me?”

Somebody
pinch me.
My
mouth hung open as I stared at his cute, deadly serious face.

“Wh-
what?” I managed to whisper, my voice sounding like it was coming from far
away.

“Ha!
See? That worked! You’re still here! So,” he said, grinning cheerfully at me,
his hands stuffed into the pocket of his jeans, “am I good or what?”

Belatedly,
I realized that Luke Astor didn’t really want to marry me, and that was just a
tactic to show- what, exactly? What was he trying to prove? That I did want to
hear what he had to say? Or was it just a callous way to toy with me? I decided
on the former.

Shaking
my head, I looked up into his self-satisfied face.
Did I really almost say
yes to his fake proposal? I must be light headed with hunger
.

“I
gotta go to lunch, so if you’ll excuse me-,” I said, trying to push past him
whilst trying to ignore the heat rising from his body (damn hormones). It
didn’t work and I couldn’t ignore it.
Dammit.

The
hairs on my arms stood to attention as he grasped my upper arm to stop me and
turned me towards him. I swallowed, trying to look as though I was disgusted
with him touching me, when in reality the feel of his warm hand on my bare arm
felt rather nice, actually.

“Five
minutes of your time,” he said softly in his husky voice. “That’s all I need.”

He
didn’t let go of my arm and I felt nervous about just yanking it away. I took a
deep breath. “Look, Luke-,” I started wearily, trying to sound rational while
lying that if I didn’t have my lunch, I was going to collapse with hunger so I
needed him to move and let me get out of this room.

He
grinned wider and I groaned silently.
A dimple? He has a dimple? That’s not
fair! How the hell am I supposed to concentrate knowing that he has a dimple?

“Yeah,
CiCi?”

“I-
CiCi?” I leaned back, giving him a mystified look. “Why are you calling me
CiCi?”

He
ran his free hand through his hair, shrugging. “You started it! You said ‘Luke,
Luke’, so I thought it was only fair that I should think up a pet name for you
too. CiCi.”

I
wrinkled my brow in thought, then closed my eyes and shook my head as
understanding dawned. Looking back up at him I told him “I didn’t say ‘Luke,
Luke’. I said
look
, Luke. L-o-o-k. As in, look over there, it’s-.”

Luke
chuckled. “Okay, I get it. Anyway. I just wanted to say sorry for yesterday.
I’ve been looking for you around the whole school. I didn’t even have any
lunch,” he said.
Oh, right, blame that on me.

“Then
by all means, go and eat. I, on the other hand, must go.”

Once
again I tried to circumvent him and get to the door; once again he stopped me,
this time with a hand on my shoulder.

Looking
down at his hand I said, “Can you stop touching me, please,” as coolly as I
could.

He
flushed, immediately removing his hands and putting them behind his back.
“Sorry. But-don’t you want to hear me out?”

Remember
what Shazia said
became my mantra. I wanted to hear him out and accept his apology, but then
Shazia would be furious and say I should have made him work for it. Well, I
didn’t want to be evil, but I knew I should make him work for it. I wasn’t
weak. I didn’t deserve all the crap I got.

“Not
in particular,” I said breezily. “Now, come on. Move. Step aside. I want to get
out of here.”

He
stared at me in perplexed amusement. “I’m trying to apologize here, though,” he
said, starting to sound slightly petulant. I could picture him stamping his
foot and pouting.
How adorable.

“Save
it for someone who cares,” I said brusquely.

“Well,
what can I do to show you how sorry I am?” he asked persistently. I stood
there, one finger on my cheek, my head cocked to one side like I was thinking
really hard.

“Oh,
I got it. Why don’t you return every single pencil I ever lent you, and I’ll
think about it,” I said finally.

I
wasn’t expecting him to smile and reach into his jeans pocket. I took a step
back as paranoia kicked in. Maybe he was pulling out a gun! Or something...

With
a flourish, he held up my blue polar bear pencil, looking as good as new.

“That’s
my-,” I started, staring at it but making no move to touch it.

“Yeah.
Your lucky pencil,” Luke said softly, smiling as he handed it to me.

I
took it, feeling like I was dreaming.
My pencil!
You guys probably think
I’m stupid, going gaga over a little pencil, but it held sentimental value to
me. My three year old niece (Nate’s baby girl) had won it at the West Indian
Carnival last year and she had given it to me as a ‘pwesent’. Two days later,
she was dead. She suffocated in her sleep and I was the one who found her.

Unwanted
tears filled my eyes as I looked up at Luke, who frowned at me slightly.

“I
thought you said you lost it,” was all I could think of to say.

“I
looked all over my room till I found it. How about that? Did I rock your socks
or what?” he asked. “Looks like I did- are you crying?”

“No,”
I said stoically, blinking back tears. “I really have to go. Thanks for
bringing the pencil back to me.”

Luke
scratched his head. “So...apology accepted?” he asked, looking confused as he
stepped away from the door.
Finally.

I
opened it before he could try anything else. “Nope,” I said, my body half out
of the room. “But keep trying.”

And,
like magic, I was gone.

CHAPTER 5

reality biites.

Celsi’s
Point of View

For two hours a
day, twice a week, I volunteer at Mount Sinai Medical Centre’s daycare. Are you
wondering why any sane person would even want to work with a babble of rowdy
kids if they had the choice? So does Robyn, and I tell her the exact same thing
I’m gonna tell you- I need to fill in my quota of community service hours
before I graduate and I actually
like
working with kids. Sure, they get
loud, hyper and they never listen to reason, but I happen to think they’re
hilarious. My supervisor, Miss Campbell, well-she’s another story. I don’t even
think she likes kids.
If she does, she hides it well.
After working full
time at the daycare for 6 years, you’d think she would be immune to the
constant ‘I don’t want a pink juice box, I want an orange one’, ‘that’s mine!’
and ‘I want my mommy’ cries.

Yeah
freaking right.

She was the
most frazzled person I had ever had the misfortune to run into, constantly
pulling at her straw blonde hair, massaging her reddened temples and sometimes
even screaming back at the kids. I often thought the hospital would fire her,
and stamped on her termination papers would be the words ‘does not work well
under pressure.’

But so far,
she’d been lucky in that respect, even though she was on her third stress ball
this year at least she had me coming in to help her out every few days,
alleviating some of her stress.

“Put that down,
Helen! William, don’t touch that- stop poking me, Jerome!”

Or not.

I looked up
from the quiet corner I was sitting in, surrounded by a small group of
enthralled children who listened avidly as I regaled them with the story of
Harry Potter. Miss Campbell was also surrounded, but the kids who were clamoring
for her attention weren’t as well behaved as mine were.

“One at a time!
William, get away from that table, those snacks are for later!”

I groaned to
myself as her voice cracked. Sure sign of an impending meltdown, which meant
that I had to step in and do something, and fast.

“Stop yelling
at me! Use your inside voices! One at a- William! Get away from there!”

There were
three difficult children at the daycare (for some strange reason, every class
has a bunch of troublemakers. Imagine how boring the world would be if they
didn’t). Helen, whose mother was a nurse at the hospital; Jerome, whose father
was on dialysis; and William, whose brother was terminally ill.

William was the
ringleader. He knew exactly how and when to push Miss Campbell’s buttons and
she hated dealing with him. Because all she did was yell at him to stop and
there isn’t a kid in the world that’ll stop doing something just because you
tell him/her to.

Closing my
book, I got to my feet and the magical spell that Harry Potter wove around the
kids was broken. They groaned, looking up at me with upset expressions on their
little faces.