Chapter 15
AMELIE
PLAYLIST: NEVER SAY NEVER – THE FRAY
“What’s going on?” El asks, turning to the side to look at me, as I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling with eyes that won’t close, thoughts that won’t stop, and emotions that chew on my insides.
“It’s the fourth night you stare at that ceiling.”
A voice in me screams. It screams to tell El everything she doesn’t know. All the secrets, the hidden identity, the role I played, the robbed childhood. But I can’t.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Come on, Amy. You know.”
El knows me better than anyone by now. So I give her a half-truth.
“I don’t know who I am,” I say. “All those years, I’ve become everything my father wanted me to be, and now? I don’t know who I am. I don’t even remember who I once was before—” I break off.
El puts her hand on my chest, and I let my head fall to the side, looking at her.
“It doesn’t matter who you were,” she says.
“You’re here now. You have money and free will, hun.
Look at all the other people. They are poor critters, working to live so they can die one day with their shelved dreams. You have the privilege to be whoever you want to be. So, go be whoever you want to be.”
I smile. It’s so El.
“I don’t think I want to be anywhere else right now,” I say, and turn to my side, closer to her.
“See,” she says. “Knowing what you don’t want brings you one step closer to what you want.”
I pull myself as close to her as possible, as I cup her face and kiss.
And that’s all we do.
We kiss.
And kiss.
Until I get so tired that I close my eyes.
My surroundings softly fade away.
“Wake up,” I hear a whisper in my mind. I was just floating weightlessly somewhere in an ocean, dipped in an orange horizon of the sundown.
I open my eyes.
“It’s already 9,” says El. “Don’t you have lectures?”
“Shit,” I say as I turn on my back.
“Whatever,” El says.
“No, not whatever. Jane will freak.”
“You’re not her dog; lectures are optional. Tell her you need a day to figure something out.”
“A day won’t be enough for that.”
“I know,” says El. “But you will come anyway.”
“Come where?” I ask.
“You’ll see,” she says. “Keep an open mind.”
I draw up an eyebrow.
“How open-minded do I have to be?”
“Depends on how deep that stick in your ass is,” she says and sticks out her tongue.
I punch her in her arm, and get a pillow in my face in return. Something I can’t let her get through with, so I take my pillow and smash it at her.
She grasps the next throws it full in my face.
“Girl!” I say, laughing, as I get up to pick up the pillows.
She just laughs and runs.
Oh, I’m so gonna get you, I think to myself as I head after her.
An hour and a pillow fight later, I am showered, dressed, and fed.
“Ready?” she asks.
“I suppose,” I say as she leans onto the kitchen counter.
“Here,” she says and throws a car key next to my cereal bowl.
“What’s that for?”
“You can drive, yes?” she asks, ignoring my questions.
“Yeah, duh,” I say.
It’s this moment, here at the kitchen counter, where I realize how much of El’s vocabulary I have taken on at this point.
But only when I’m with her. The El me differs so much from the me I am with Jane.
But the version I am with El…It makes me feel as young as I made myself out to be on paper.
It is like a second chance to live my young adulthood—exactly what New York was about.
I turn the key to find a golden Porsche emblem on it.
“Come on then,” she says.
We take the elevator downstairs, her bodyguard waiting for us in the black Range Rover, as always. In front of it, a black Porsche parks. It has no type plates, but from the looks of the spoiler, it must be something very powerful.
“Get in,” she says and walks to the passenger seat.
I huff in disbelief as I walk to the driver's side.
I open the door, and the first thing I take in is the scent. Leather, new leather. It’s a distinct scent, one I automatically associate with freedom.
When I sit down, my skin tickles in apprehension.
“Start it,” she says. It takes me a second to find where, but when I press the button—
A grin cracks onto my face as the beast—there is no other word for it—springs to life.
“I knew you’d like it,” she says, grinning,
“Where are we going?” I ask her.
“Wherever you want.”
I look at her because I don’t know where I want to go. I don’t even know the area.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“Just drive,” she says. “You’ll see.”
“But—“
“Follow your gut, hun. Free will, remember?” she says, and I finally understand why she is doing it. “You can drive to Teterboro Airport, for example, where I’d have a plane ready within an hour, and we can go anywhere in the world. Paris—“
Paris. A stitch in my chest as I remember my past with Sophie.
“London. Los Angeles. Hawaii. You’d love Hawaii, it’s freedom. Epic sundowns. Or, we can go here—“ she says and wiggles the phone with maps on it. “It’s freedom, too.”
“I don’t know—“ I say, lost in not being able to decide as my past craws up on me.
“Then just drive, and you will know when you know.”
So, I drive. I drive onto 9th Avenue.
We have to stop at a red light.
“Brake with your left foot,” she says, and presses a button. “Right foot on the gas, let her roar.”
I have a wide grin on my face.
“Let go of the brake,” she says when the light turns green.
Whatever I expected, I was not ready for this. The Porsche accelerates in such a beastly way that my chest compresses, and it feels as if my brain got sucked out of the back of my head.
“Holy shit!” I shout, because within the matter of two seconds, we’re at 60 mph.
We enter a tunnel, and I let the car roar by, downshifting, then launch it to 120 mph.
“I think we lost the watchdog,” I say, because there is no Range Rover in sight.
“He’ll catch up,” she says.
“Take the right turn, and airport it is. The unknown to the left,” she says. What will it be?
I look at her, biting my bottom lip, before I turn left.
She grins.
I turn left too quickly, causing us to drift around the corner.
I giggle. I wouldn’t describe myself as a great driver, but the Porsche is doing the rest.
“Follow,” she says.
Three hours later, we drive past a sign spelling Sagaponack, and I grin like a child at Christmas. That car is the most epic thing I have ever done, and I have done some crazy shit with my father.
“Hamptons,” I say.
“Uh-huh.”
I just roll with it.
“Here,” she says, “Pull into that driveway.”
The gate opens for us, and we drive down a gravel path to a house so big it would fit six normal houses.
I am speechless.
We drive by a tennis field and a golf course, and my mouth drops open when I see a stable come into view.
“Horses?”
“You like them?”
“Love them, took riding lessons as a kid.” Horses have been my safe places over the years. They didn’t ask who I am or was.
She smiles and unlocks the phone in her hand to make a call.
“Yeah, it’s me. Get us Liberty and Onyx ready, we’re here.”
“You are kidding, right?” I ask because I can’t believe my ears.
“No,” she says. “Free will. We’re using our free will.”
I smile so broadly it should be forbidden.
When we park the gurgling Porsche and get out, I breathe in the fresh air. The countryside is so different from Manhattan. My lungs fill with the air, and I gaze into the green nature I am in. Goosebumps spread on my arms. I love Manhattan, but this here is like an island of peace.
El opens the door to the house. I enter into an entrance hall that must be 30 feet high. I have never seen anything that big. Growing up in London, pretending to be a normal, mediocre family, we had a small townhouse, and this here makes my mouth drop open.
“Follow me,” says El, and walks me to a bedroom with an en-suite bathroom and a walk-in closet that is as big as my entire studio.
She gets some clothes from the closet and I glance around. The room is as clean as it can get, except for a spot on the desk where a green turtle sits.
“Here, that should fit you,” she says and throws riding pants and a pullover towards me, I catch it last minute.
The pullover’s material in my hand is so soft, probably wool, and I never want to let go of it.
“Those should fit you, too,” she says, then hands me a pair of riding boots with diamond applications.
I just gape at her as she undresses in front of me and puts on riding pants and boots, too.
I huff out a chuckle and switch into the riding gear.
When I look at myself in the mirror, I have never felt more out of place, even though I am so comfortable in it.
The boots are a bit tight, the pants a bit long, but it works.
“Hot,” says El as she looks at me. “Let’s go.”
She walks me to the stable, where a young man is waiting with two horses.
Not just any horses. They look like something from a catalog.
Perfectly trimmed, shimmering fur with glitter on their flanks.
One is the blackest back, tall, muscular, and stands tall with its immaculate, clean black saddle and bridle.
The other draws my immediate attention. A dark chestnut mare. She is muscular, too, but has a wilder mane and cheek in her eyes. Her brown saddle and bridle fit her color perfectly.
I walk over to her and hold out my flat hand for her to check me out.
“I knew she’d be yours,” says El as she takes the black horse from the man.
“Her name is Liberty. She is my heart and soul. You will love her. I can see she likes you.” El snuggles Liberty for a moment, and as I just stand there, I see how much different El is with the horses.
The distance, the no-emotions—it is gone.
Here, as she leans her head against Liberty’s forehead, she feels. It is such a beautiful moment that goosebumps appear on my arms.
I smile as I store the image in my mind.
“She is beautiful,” I say. “Just like you.”
El chuckles silently. “Let’s ride.”
The man brings us a mounting block, and El holds Liberty until I am on her and have the stirrups set right.
Sitting on her feels like magic. She has this aura around her. Like magic.
And without even riding one bit, just being on her, feels like freedom. It feels like me.
I shed a tear.
El sits on the other horse. He has a temperament, and I believe he must be a stallion.
“El,” I say as she looks at me. I hold out my hand, and she takes it. “Thank you.”
At this point, I can’t keep more tears from rolling down my cheeks.
“Stop crying,” she says. “Or I’ll cry with you.”
“It’s just—“ I say, hesitate, but then say it anyway. “It feels like you gave me back a part of me I had lost.”
El sucks in her lips as she squeezes my hand, and her eyes glitter in the sun from getting watery.
These blue eyes.
“Let’s ride,” she says and lets go of my hand. She squeezes her legs, and Onyx walks majestically. I watch them from behind, as warmth spreads through my chest.
El turns on her horse, leaning with one hand on Onyx’s back.
“Are you coming or not?” she asks, laughing. This beautiful laugh. With her long blonde hair falling down her back.
It is the moment I realize that I am happy. So happy my chest feels like bursting.
This here, right now, with her, that’s it.
“Coming,” I shout after her, and Liberty energetically trots after her.
It feels like I am coming home.
Home.