Chapter 1 Marfil
TWO WEEKS LATER
I looked at the Colombian peso coin I held between my fingers.
As I waited for Liam, I had only one thought: The two sides of that coin made up a whole, but they would never see each other face-to-face.
It seems silly, a coin is just a coin, but I couldn’t help but identify with it.
Did I have two completely opposing sides that would never merge into one?
Sometimes I struggled to understand myself.
If I could view my life from the outside, I’m sure the only thing I would think in most situations is… What the hell are you doing?
My sister, Gabriella, insisted that spending our entire childhood and adolescence at a boarding school four thousand miles from home had scarred us.
Thankfully, I had already left that period of my life behind.
My sister, on the other hand, still had two long years of strict rules and cloudy skies.
She would be sixteen in just a few months, and her biggest concern was that she had never kissed a boy.
She said that if she continued living with all girls for much longer, she was going to end up dating one.
Imagining my father’s face at the mere suggestion made me smile.
Scars… a subject I could talk about for hours.
The deepest one still caused me to wake up in the middle of the night with my heart racing and tears streaming down my cheeks like I was four years old, not twenty.
It was incredible how some memories remained forever engraved on our minds and others disappeared without leaving a trace.
According to Pixar—yes, the animation studio that made the movie Inside Out—our brain erases the memories that no longer serve us and retains those that it considers important.
But I have to ask myself: Does it serve me to remember my mother being killed right in front of me?
Clearly, no matter what Pixar says, the brain does whatever it wants.
As my thoughts wandered aimlessly, I became aware that the group of guys at the bar to my right were staring at me.
Without hesitating, I lifted my head and looked at them, refusing to avert my eyes.
It had been my intention to intimidate them, or at least make them stop staring so shamelessly, but two of them started laughing, and the third, tall with light brown hair, held my gaze unwaveringly.
I hated being the first to look away, no matter who it was.
Only one person on the entire planet could make me lower my head on demand: my father.
But he was far away, and I didn’t have to think about him.
So began the most epic staring contest in all of human history.
Well, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic, I tend to exaggerate, but it felt intense.
The more he looked at me, the more curious I became, and the more I looked at him, the more I could imagine what was going through his mind.
Maybe I could have some fun with this guy.
“Hey, Marfil,” came a deep voice behind me, although it was the feel of his hand on my back that caused me to jump and look away.
Shit! I’d just lost.
My frustration vanished as I turned to see my best friend.
Liam Michaelson was almost six feet two, with hair black as night and bright blue eyes.
His smile was famous for its ability to break hearts, and the worst part was that he knew it.
His eyelashes, long and dark, the envy of every woman, and the hours he spent in the gym working out created the perfect storm.
Women lost their heads over Liam. A real heartthrob.
No, he wasn’t gay, and yes, he truly was my best friend. Stranger things have happened.
“Did I keep you waiting long?” he asked, looking over my head to the guys at the end of the bar.
“Long enough for you to have to buy me a drink.” Legally, I couldn’t drink alcohol, much less buy it, but fake IDs were so readily available that the law seemed ridiculous.
Liam smiled sweetly and called the waitress over. He ordered our usual drinks, which she brought over a few minutes later.
“And to what do I owe the half-hour wait?” I asked, twirling the olives in my martini.
Liam raised his beer to his lips and rolled his eyes. “You don’t want to know.”
“Virginia? Oh, no, wait… Rose?”
“Tessi,” he said.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Tessi? Do you call her that for any reason in particular?”
“That’s what she wants me to call her. Shit, she’s unbearable.”
Liam was a guy that, well… he was a guy.
The end. Guys, as a general rule, just want to have a good time, and generally speaking, we women also want the same, plus a whole lot more, although I don’t include myself in that statement.
But I understood why Virginia, Rose, and…
Tessi wanted something more from my best friend.
He was a great catch, if he could stop hitting on everything that moved, of course.
Liam and I met during my first year of college.
I’d just moved to New York after eight years at boarding school abroad, surrounded by all girls and nuns; I only spent a couple of months a year at home in Louisiana.
Liam and I had both been studying economics at Columbia University.
He was three years older than me, which meant he’d been in his senior year.
It took a lot of effort, but I managed to convince my father to let me move to New York City on my own two years ago.
You could say I went a little wild when I first found myself with so much freedom.
All that repression during my teenage years had been very unhealthy, and I lost my head a bit, but I liked to think that that period was behind me now, for the most part.
Liam was my first kiss. I had just turned eighteen and discovered what I was capable of when it came to seducing men. My father had always kept me hidden away from the world as if I were untouchable, although Liam touched me… everywhere.
We didn’t sleep together, but we did other things, until we ultimately realized that we were better off as friends, even as perfect as I might be for him, and as perfect as he might be for me.
After Liam, I had a brief, more serious relationship with a guy named Regan.
But then I learned that he and his friends had bet ten thousand dollars to see which of them could sleep with me first. That’s right, ten thousand dollars.
Pathetic. The fact that my father had been right all those times he told me to never trust men made me more furious than anything.
After that, something changed inside me; I became unrecognizable.
I decided that I would take exactly the type of physical pleasure I wanted from men and give them nothing in return, cut and dry.
“The dude from the bar is coming over,” said Liam, half an hour and three martinis later. “Should I pretend to be your boyfriend?”
“That might be fun, but no,” I said, curious to see what the guy had to say. I sensed someone behind me, but I played it cool.
Liam, on the other hand, turned around to look at him. “Can I help you, man?”
“Actually, I wanted a quick word with your friend here.”
I turned around with a smile. He was very handsome, more handsome than he’d looked from across the bar.
He was tall, with dark blond hair, and he exuded that same confidence that almost all the men I knew carried, a confidence obtained from simply having been born with silver spoons in their mouths.
He blinked a few times. “Fuck… you’re even hotter up close.”
I didn’t have to look at Liam to know he was rolling his eyes.
“Yes?” I asked calmly. Compliments meant nothing to me.
The guy stuttered, then took a business card from his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “I’d love to buy you dinner sometime,” he said, his voice now a bit steadier.
I looked at his card. His name was Harry, and he was an architect. He probably had no idea I was only twenty years old. That’s what I got for going out on Wall Street.
“I’ll think about it,” I answered.
Harry smiled, and I noticed a dimple in his left cheek. I smiled back, and he waved goodbye. He hadn’t even asked for my name. I put the card in my purse and turned back to my friend, who was looking at me with a mixture of amusement and annoyance.
“Sometimes I’m horrified by how similar you are to me.”
I shook my head. “We are nothing alike and you know it.”
Liam sighed. “The guy who finally gets to sleep with you will be one lucky dude.”
I glared at him. “Shh, don’t tell anyone my deep, dark secret.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Do you care that dudes lie about having slept with you?”
Yes, it bothered me.
“If they have to lie to make themselves feel more like men, let them. If anyone wants to know the truth, they can ask me.”
“You’re like a praying mantis. You know that, right?”
“I’ve never eaten anyone; I simply take what I want and discard the rest.”
Liam laughed. “You’re so naive. One day some dude’s going to make you lose your mind, and you’ll have to swallow all those feminist ideas of yours.”
“It has nothing to do with feminism. Men have used women since the beginning of time; they take what they want and move on. What’s wrong with me doing the same thing? I’m not going to let someone else enjoy my body; I want to be the one doing the enjoying.”
Liam looked at me like I was clueless. “Any man on earth would enjoy just looking at you, Marfil. Touching you would be like winning the lottery for them, believe me.”
It’s not like anyone had ever taken me to the point of ecstasy, ever. But Liam didn’t need to know that. No one did.
I fell silent for a couple of minutes, then finally said, “You’re the only person I’d be willing to go further with, because we’re friends.”
Liam choked on his beer. “And that, right there, tells me that you’re drunk. Come on, let’s go; I’ll take you home.”