The Pull of Destiny (86 page)

CHAPTER 35

right back
where we started from
.

Liberty Island. Five years
later.

A lot can happen in five
years. Things (
and people
) fall apart. Hearts get broken, healed slowly,
and then shattered again. People change, some for the better, some for the
worse. Soul mates are found in the most random places. Dreams are chased and,
in some cases, realized. Friends become strangers; enemies become friends, and
sometimes more. Many tears are shed, smiles brighten faces and serial daters
settle down with the one person everyone thought would never last. Most importantly,
life goes on, no matter what.

The years that had passed
since I bade Luke a tearful farewell at JFK International Airport had been
eventful, to say the least.

Shazia, Robyn and I made it a
point to get together at least once a week for dinner and gossip after high
school. I never really had much to contribute to the conversation in regards to
relationship talk (
more on that later
) but that had never hindered us
before. Shazia and I mostly listened to Robyn as she gushed about Todd before
we got a chance to talk about ourselves, but we were used to that, even
expected it.

Robyn surprised us all by
dating Todd for far longer than anyone (
herself included
) could have
imagined. I had been forced to eat my words (
Mr. Interchangeable of the
Month
) and concede that Todd was probably the best thing to happen to flaky
Robyn for a long time. Sure, he
was
staid, overly responsible and
slightly boring (
let’s hope that my opinion doesn’t get back to Robyn
)
but his calmness kept Robyn’s ditzy nature in check. Still, sometimes, (
like
at their fifth anniversary dinner, which me and Shazia were invited to by Robyn
)
Shazia and I would look at each other, clearly wondering what had happened to
our serial dating friend.

“I never thought I would see
the day when Robyn would be having a five year anniversary of
anything
,
let alone a relationship,” Shazia had muttered to me as we watched Robyn and
Todd whisper to each other across the table. But they were crazy in love and
happy, which was all that mattered to us. Trust me; an unhappy Robyn is a force
to be reckoned with.

Todd was successful in his
own right; nobody could accuse him of being a male gold digger, even with the
expensive gifts Robyn showered him with. He went to university on a football
scholarship and got drafted in his freshman year and went on to play for the
New York Giants. Of course, Robyn dragged Shazia and me to several of his games
to ‘support him’. Robyn ended up taking a makeup artistry class after high
school, surprising nobody when she graduated top of her class. If there was one
thing that girl was passionate about, it was makeup. Her reason for taking the
course?

Rolling her eyes when I asked
her, she explained, “So that I can look like a celebrity when I put on my
makeup. Duh!”

Classic Robyn.

Shazia shocked her parents by
choosing to go to university to obtain a bachelor’s degree in Sociology rather
than hang out at home and ‘live like a Kardashian’.

Her words, not mine.

“You don’t
have
to
work, you’re an heiress!” Mrs. El Hamed, trying to reason with her stubborn
daughter, who was immovable.

Shazia wouldn’t hear of it.
“But I want to help people who need my help.”

Finally, after a long and
protracted argument with her parents, (
and grandparents, who didn’t
understand why in the world Shazia would want to pursue higher learning after
she had graduated high school)
Shazia got her way and attended Cornell
University at the behest of her father. Mr. El Hamed might have been reluctant
about Shazia’s future plans, but if she insisted on following her dreams, she
was going to follow them at an Ivy League school. Hell, he definitely could
afford it!

Over dinner the summer before
we started university, Shazia explained to me why she wanted to study Sociology
and have a career when she didn’t need to.

“If I can help just one child
who is in a situation as bad as yours was, Celsi, it would set my heart at
ease,” she admitted to me, the heartfelt emotion on her earnest face bringing
tears to my eyes. “You’re probably my biggest inspiration. I always wanted to
be as brave as you.”

When she was in her second
year at Cornell, Shazia was coming home on the subway one night (
I know,
right? Props to me for finally being allowed to teach her the ins and outs of
subway etiquette
) without her bodyguard (she finally convinced her parents
that she wouldn’t be kidnapped because since the El Hamed’s stayed out of the
newspapers, tabloids included, nobody knew who she was) and her MetroCard
slipped out of her pocket as she walked off the train. A random guy who saw it
happen picked it up from the floor and ran after her. They ended up grabbing a
coffee together and talking until the café they were chatting in had to shut
down for the night. It was, to quote Shazia ‘love at first sight’.

Seeing how Shazia’s eyes lit
up whenever she talked about Craig always brought me back to that conversation
we had back in high school when we talked about our favorite clichés. Shazia
had always been partial to the love at first sight cliché and now she was
living it, which made me smile every time I thought about it.

Lord knows she deserved it.

They were due to get married
in December after over three years of dating and Robyn and I were the
bridesmaids. Unfortunately, Robyn had the most grandiose concepts for the wedding
and she was trying her best to push her ideas onto poor Shazia. So far, Shazia
had yet to crack. Her cousin Aisha (yes, the awful fashion designer) was
already begging to design the wedding dress, she didn’t need to hear about pale
pink unicorn centerpieces too!

But who would have thought
that out of the three of us, my life would turn out to be the one with the most
twists and turns?

Then again, maybe not.

Let me start with the
obvious- me and Luke.

Although we tried our hardest
to make the long distance relationship work, we both decided that it wasn’t
working after a couple of months and decided to let it burn and go our separate
ways.
Yeah, I used ‘let it burn’ in a sentence. I’m proud of myself.
We
broke up on Skype, and the last thing Luke whispered before he cut the video
conferencing call was, “I still love you, though,” tears glimmering in his
eyes.

The breakup hurt us both, if
the long phone conversations we had with each other after the fact were
anything to go by. I never actually talked about our dating fail after that,
going to great lengths to skirt around it and act like Luke hadn’t been the
center of my world for a few all too short months. By ignoring it and burying
the hurt and pain I endured thanks to us breaking up, I assumed that people
wouldn’t realize how deeply losing Luke as a boyfriend affected me. My plan
worked for a while, and then he moved on after a few months and started dating
a girl from his school called Seiko.

Can you say ‘devastation’?

Thanks to the staunch support
of my friends, (
and poor Aunt Kelly, who had to comfort me during a couple
of ‘why me’ speeches
) who provided ice cream, sappy rom-coms and Kleenex
whenever I needed to wallow, I managed to pull through, despite being crushed
by his betrayal. Okay, so
maybe
I was being a drama queen since we
hadn’t been dating for months before he hooked up with Seiko, but can you blame
me? Although I put on a front, telling him that I was happy for him and Seiko,
it wasn’t easy for me to deal with it.

Living by the motto
‘If
you love somebody, set them free. If they return, they were always yours. If
they don’t, they never were’
, I left everything relationship-wise up to
fate and immersed myself in my studies, becoming the proverbial bookworm. My
studying and extracurricular activities (piano recitals, yearbook editor, and
toy drive for ‘my daycare’) paid off majorly. I graduated from Dalton in the
top 3 of my class, proud recipient of the Gates Millennium Scholarship and I
was accepted to Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. Aunt
Kelly, Enrique and his fiancée, Raquel, Pastor Weeks and Officer Rodriquez were
on hand at my graduation ceremony.

 As I walked across the
stage, praying that my heels didn’t catch on my robe, I saw Aunt Kelly breaking
down in her seat near the front. She later told me how proud she was of me,
saying I was the classic example of someone who had nothing to believe in
turning the world on its head and taking everything I was owed. When I told her
that I owed every single one of my accomplishments to her, she cried even
harder.

After his graduation from
Charterhouse, Luke visited his family for a week, Seiko in tow. I kept coming
up with excuses to avoid him, not wanting to open myself up to the hurt that I
knew seeing him with another girl would cause. But when the El Hamed’s invited
us all to dinner at their house the day before Luke was to leave, I couldn’t
hide any longer. Seiko turned out to be a really sweet Japanese girl with an
adorable British accent. Luke- he hadn’t changed a bit. The evening wasn’t half
as bad as I expected and when I left to go home, I promised to keep in touch
with Luke. Encouraged by his mother’s revamped humanitarian efforts, Luke and
Seiko headed to Japan to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. It was as though,
now that he had the freedom to travel wherever and whenever he chose, he didn’t
want to come back to New York City. I saw him twice after that, first when he
flew back to watch Faith’s 1
^st
grade play, and again when his father
passed away. I attended Mr. Astor's funeral to pay my respects and Luke and I
had a long talk at the repast after the burial service.

“I’m just glad we sorted out
everything before this happened,” he told me wistfully, staring at a blown up
picture of a laughing Mr. Astor, a cigar in his mouth. “At least I’m not bitter
about anything that happened in the past.” He shot a crooked grin my way which
threatened to release butterflies in my stomach. “I guess I have you to thank
for that.”

My eyes bulged at his cryptic
sounding voice. “What- what do you mean? I didn’t have anything to do with-
anything!”

Of course I knew that he was
talking about my heart-to-heart with Mr. Astor the day I accompanied Luke to
Shane’s grave, but Luke couldn’t prove that I had anything to do with his father’s
little 180, could he?

Another grin, just as Seiko
walked up, balancing a tray of sandwiches precariously with one hand while
texting with the other. “
Sure
you didn’t.”

Case closed.

My relationship with Enrique
and Raquel kept getting stronger with time. When I visited them during the
summer of that dramatic year, his entire family embraced me into the fold. My
new grandparents simply adored me and Tia Mariela, Enrique’s sister, was
enthralled by how much we looked alike. When Enrique and Raquel got married, I
was a bridesmaid at their wedding.

I still volunteered at the
Mount Sinai daycare two days a week. Miss Campbell finally quit before the kids
turned her hair white (
I was still surprised as to how she lasted so long
without snapping
) and Vanessa Ruiz, her replacement was far more children
friendly. I also found time to mentor William though the Big Sister program. He
was the only little boy who had a female mentor and he claimed it was
‘awesome’!

With my busy life, I didn’t
have much time for romance. My track record backed me up, because since
breaking up with Luke, I had only had two relationships. One was little more
than a winter fling with an exchange student during my freshman year at Eastman
but it fizzled into nothing. He went back to Australia and I moved on easily.

The other relationship was
with Ahmed.

It wasn’t premeditated at
all, far from it. In fact, I hadn’t seen Ahmed for months when I bumped into
him (
literally
) outside the El Hamed’s building during my second year at
Eastman. We exchanged numbers; he called me and took me out for coffee. The
next thing I knew, he was sitting across from me at our little corner table,
telling me how much he’d always liked me and that know-it-all voice in my head
was going ‘I knew it!’

I had to ask for Shazia’s
approval before we started dating but she was cool with it because according to
her, “He’s been a totally different person since he ran into you again.”