Chapter Eight
“THIS IS TIARA, ICELLE’S best friend, and...just between you and me, she’s Arkane’s girlfriend as well.”
Laugh, laugh, laugh from whoever it is Joy is currently talking to.
“I’m not really your son’s girlfriend.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Well, no—”
“Then trust me, you are.”
“So I’m his girlfriend because he says I’m not his girlfriend?”
“You don’t always have to say something with words, my dear. And you’ll soon know with that son of mine, that’s truer than most.”
Joy’s expression turns rather wistful and nostalgic as she looks out over the sunlit veranda we’re standing on.
The luncheon is being hosted by one of her charity friends, at an estate that one of said friends owns, and even though they’re all that type—the type that owns estates, not homes—everyone’s just so casual and nice, and not one of them, like, seriously, not one of them looks at me like I was out of place even though I’m still wearing Mom’s hand-me-down dress.
“Do you know—I never planned to call him Arkane.”
Joy’s voice has softened, pulling me back from my thoughts, and she smiles at me when I look at her.
“His name simply came out, like something from my soul prompted it.”
Is she saying she believes in ghosts and stuff like that?
Joy suddenly laughs. “I love how expressive your face is, and no, my dear. Not a ghost. But I know now it was Someone.”
Oh, she means...God.
And the moment I realized that—she believes in God—my whole world goes still for a moment.
Very arcane, right?
And after the 7th or 8th person she’s talked to, it also started feeling very possible. Not real, not true just yet, but...possible?
Could it be like Joy says?
I mean, the things that son of her says so easily are the things I know I would end up choking on.
You’re mine.
I’m yours.
Can those translate to me being his girlfriend?
Joy squeezes my elbow, and then she’s already moving, called away by someone across the veranda.
A woman in a cream blouse drifts over almost immediately, cup in hand, and plants herself at the railing beside me.
“So you’re the one.”
“Um—”
“Oh, don’t worry.” She waves a hand. “Everyone’s already talking about you, it’s quite sweet. Arkane, like all of Joy and Aldrich’s sons, is very sought after, you know.”
Her friend, who’s materialized on the other side, nods. “Very sought after.”
Nod, nod, nod from a third woman who’s come up behind us.
“But it’s fine, my dear.” The cream-blouse woman pats my arm. “He’s no womanizer. I believe he’s only had one ex-girlfriend—”
“Oh, hush, don’t gossip.”
The third woman swats at her elbow, and cream-blouse puts her teacup down with a small huff.
And here’s the thing.
My mind knows gossip is wrong. My mind knows the right move is to smile politely and change the subject and be above this, the way a billionaire’s girlfriend is probably supposed to be above this. My mind knows all of that.
My heart, on the other hand, is screaming internally: keep going, keep going, keep going—what was her name, why did they break up, do you have a picture.
I bite the inside of my lip so hard I can taste it.
I do not, for the record, get to hear anything else about her, because the third woman has successfully steered the conversation onto safer ground—something about the weather, I think, I’m not really processing—and the ex-girlfriend vaporizes back into the unknown where she came from.
One.
Just one.
One is better than many. One is worse than none. That’s all I’ve got.
“You have such an open face, dear.”
This from yet another woman, who’s arrived at my elbow the way these women seem to arrive—with a fresh cup of tea and a bright smile.
“Um—thank you?”
“It’s the perfect complement to Arkane’s.”
I blink. “His...face?”
“Mm.” She sips her tea. “His is so closed, you know. Always has been, even as a boy. And yours—yours is all weather. I could tell from across the room exactly what you were thinking about those pastries.”
I was, in fact, thinking about the pastries. There’s a tiny one with raspberry on top that I’ve been plotting a route toward for the last fifteen minutes.
The women around her laugh.
And because I don’t know what to do with any of this—an older woman telling me my face and Arkane’s are a matching set, after a month of trying to figure out what his face is doing at any given moment—I fall back on default.
Smile, smile, smile.
And what do you know, they have their own default, too.
Laugh, laugh, laugh.
And surprisingly, none of us is faking it.
The luncheon lasts well into early afternoon.
Joy’s friends are all in their late forties and fifties, but honestly, they all have so much energy talking about their next plans for this orphanage and that shelter, their fundraising goals for this account and that—I feel overwhelmed just listening to them, and it just makes me start thinking. ..
Is it because I need more exercise?
Or is it because I need more purpose in life?
When we get back home—
Whoa.
How in the world did I end up thinking of Icelle’s place as home?
—Icelle takes one look at me and nods slowly like she always does when she’s realized something profound (and usually annoyingly true, for whoever it is she’s talking to, which unfortunately in this case is me).
“The women got you thinking.”
I join her at the table. We’re in their home library, and it’s an actual library with shelf ladders and dark wood shelves that go all the way up, and normally I’d love to see all the titles they have in high fantasy because those are the only kind of books that can make me forget how unfantasy-like my real life is—
In a normal day, I’d do that, but now?
“I think I wasted my life away,” I whisper.
She shakes her head, which for Icelle is equivalent to her telling me not to be an idiot—
“You were just afraid to hope.”
Because she thinks it’s something else.
That I was afraid to hope.
But can it really be just that?
Can it really be that when—
“I know it’s bad to hate your own parents...”
—I find myself wringing my hands because otherwise, I’d be forced to admit that it’s someone else’s neck I want to wring.
“But she just makes me feel so angry.”
Icelle shakes her head at me again, and well, I guess, I’m being stupid again?
“She makes you feel helpless.”
How matter-of-fact she says this.
“And that’s what makes you angry.”
And because it’s Icelle who’s saying these things—
“No one wants to feel helpless, not in this world.”
I don’t even feel like I have the right to argue, not when Icelle’s own mom is one of the few women who’s even worse than mine.
“You...you r-really believe that?” I hate how my voice is shaking.
“I do.”
But I just can’t help it.
Because what she’s saying...
“Joy and those women...they were so happy.”
Oh God, I’m already crying.
And the more I think about Joy and all those other women, that’s when it becomes clear—
What’s making me cry these stupid tears is seeing all of them, knowing that they’re all mothers, and that they’re good.
That there are good mothers in this world still, but mine isn’t one of them, and I hate how that’s making me want to cry and rage because it feels so, so unfair.
I turn to Icelle, and her face...makes me laugh. It’s still that kind of face. Beautiful, blank, and bitchy with a capital B. But those blue eyes of hers, I see what Icelle wants to say—
It’s okay to hope.
It’s okay to believe there are good people, too.
It’s okay even if it means sometimes, we get it wrong, and sometimes that means getting hurt all over again.
Icelle slowly nods.
It’s okay, her eyes say.
My mom sucks, too.
Well, okay, I made that one up.
What her eyes are saying is much nicer (it goes along the lines of ‘my mom isn’t good either, and it’s fine) because she’s much nicer than me, and because it is Icelle telling me all these things, and I know what she’s has to overcome—
It has 99% of my heart ready to make that leap of faith.
99%.
Because 1% part of me is still scared, and it just wants to stay in the dark and turn away from the light. Because darkness at least is safe and familiar. It doesn’t hurt when it’s the only thing you’ve known your entire life.
And that 1%?
It’s what makes me squeeze my eyes shut later that night when I hear someone knock on my door.
Once. Twice. A third time.
I don’t let myself think who that someone is, not even when my tears start to fall as I hear that person’s footsteps fade as they walk away.
It’s okay, I tell myself.
It’s okay.
It’s okay.