“You did have a boyfriend, of sorts. You told me that you weren’t in love with him, that you were in lust with him. He took your virginity and used you to get information. And then he tried to kill our best friends and the Prime Minister of Caberra.”
Chapter Eight
“Holy shit,” I breathe, staring at Gavin. “You aren’t joking.”
Gavin shakes his head, his normally cheerful demeanor suddenly very serious.
“I wish I were,” he answers. “But I’m not. Vincent Dranias was your boyfriend. You trusted him. And he screwed you over. He’s in jail now.”
“Jail?” I whisper. My eyes are watery and I’m annoyed by that. Apparently, I’m not supposed to cry. I’m a bad ass. I wipe at my eyes impatiently.
“Jail,” Gavin confirms. “He’s eighteen, so he is being tried as an adult. The whole thing isn’t over…these court cases usually go on forever. But he’s in jail for the duration and I can guess that he will be there forever. You can’t try to assassinate the prime minister and not pay the consequences.”
“And I brought that guy into our lives? So it was my fault?”
I am horrified at this notion, even though I don’t remember Dante or his father or our lives right now. Gavin shakes his head.
“No. You didn’t bring him into our lives. Another one of our friends, Nate Gerraris, did. His father used to be Dante’s father’s Deputy Prime Minister. It was all a plot by Nate to try and get his father promoted to Dimitri’s job. You were collateral damage. They used you to get close to Dante.” He stares at me. “Are you okay?”
I’m not sure.
“Does Dante hate me?” I whisper. I don’t remember Dante, but I certainly don’t want one of my good friends to hate me. And my freaking emotions are going to be the death of me today. Only a lunatic would be paranoid that a friend that she can’t even remember hates her. I’m not in love with myself right now. That much is true.
Gavin grabs my arm and guides me to a bench nearby.
“Of course he doesn’t hate you,” he says firmly as we sit. The wood is hard beneath my thighs, but I welcome it. It’s a nice distraction from the confused mess that my brain has become.
“I know you don’t remember him right now. Or me, either,” Gavin continues. “But I know that you will. One of these days. And until then, just take my word for it when I say that we are your real friends. We have been friends since we were toddlers. No one understands us like we understand each other. Dante would never be mad at you for getting taken advantage of. He was more pissed than anyone that you were used.”
Gavin is fierce now and it seems out of his character. I tug on his arm to get his attention.
“Calm down,” I tell him. “It’s okay. I believe you.”
His face relaxes and he smiles down at me.
“Sorry,” he says. “I get worked up sometimes.”
“I can see that,” I answer. “But that’s good. It means you’re passionate.”
“Oh, baby, you have no idea,” he replies, cocky once again. I pick up his hand and study it, noting his smooth fingers. He doesn’t do manual labor, that much is apparent.
“You don’t stay serious for long, do you?” I ask, glancing back up at his face.
His eyes are serious now, even though he grins. “What is the point in that?” he answers. “There is enough serious shit in the world. I don’t need to be a party to it. We see it around us all of the time. There is no need to take ourselves seriously, too.”
And in this moment, I see something in Gavin that I wonder if I ever saw before, pre-head-injury.
He’s not as cocky or as happy-go-lucky on the inside as he pretends to be. He wants to be, but he isn’t. So he chooses to act like it instead.
Interesting.
“Do we have hard lives?” I ask, instead of pointing out my new revelation. Gavin laughs.
“Seriously? Our fathers are both in the parliamentary cabinet of the prime minister. We want for nothing.”
“That’s not what I asked,” I point out. “Our lives… are they hard?”
Gavin stares at me for just a moment before he shrugs, then looks away.
“It isn’t always easy. But we make it work. We’ve been brought up this way and it is what we know.”
His answer is very telling, as is the very diplomatic way he delivers it.
We’re the children of politicians. It’s can’t be fun but Gavin is so stoic about it, so matter of fact. It’s impressive. So I tell him that.
He shakes his head and helps me to my feet.
“It’s not impressive,” he tells me. “It’s just the way it is, Mi. You’re the same way. Well, you used to be. Although, you’re more of a rebel than I am.”
“So, I’m a bad ass rebel now?” I tease. He nods.
“You always have been. Your latest thing was hilarious.”
We step back into the hospital and immediately I breathe in the sterile air, which makes me want to gag.
“My latest thing?” I repeat as Gavin punches at the elevator button.
He nods. “Yep. You were into wearing black all the time and dying your hair crazy colors. You even had your nose pierced—right before your accident. It was driving your mom insane.”
I subconsciously pull at a tendril of my dark hair. “My hair isn’t dyed now and I don’t have a nose ring.”
“I know,” Gavin answers as he puts a hand on the door to make sure it stays open while everyone steps on. “When I came to visit you for the first time after the accident, your hair color had been changed and the stud in your nose had been taken out. You weren’t even awake yet.”
I stare at him. So that meant that my parents had dyed my hair while I was still in a coma? What the eff? Changing my hair color was a priority for them while the state of my health was still in the air?
Gavin sees my expression and shrugs.
“Political family,” he reminds me.
I think it’s possible that I’m going to hate my new life.
And my old life.
As we get off on my floor, Gavin turns to me.
“Mia, everything is what we make it. You hated all of the pressure placed on you by your father’s job. You railed against it all of the time- but that only put more stress on you than necessary. The hole in your nose has grown closed because it was such a new piercing. It’s like it never happened. So, why not use that to your advantage? If you just go with the flow like I do, everything is so much easier. You don’t need stress right now. You need to relax so that your brain can recover from your injury. Seriously.”
I stare at him. “Are you telling me to fall into the whole rank and file thing and do what everyone tells me?”
He grimaces.
“It sounds bad when you put it that way.” He pulls me to the side, out of the way of the scurrying nurses and orderlies. “All I’m saying is… relax and go with the flow. I want you to get better and your doctor says that you need to relax to do it. My phone number is in your phone. Call me whenever you need to.”
My phone. I had forgotten that I had one. And my mother certainly hadn’t given it to me over the course of the last week. I wonder if it was destroyed in the earthquake?
But instead of saying anything, I just nod.
“Okay. Thank you, Gavin. I feel more normal today than I have since I woke up and I know that it is because of you. Thank you.”
Gavin smiles beatifically and my knees momentarily weaken. He truly is gorgeous. He leans forward and kisses my cheek.
“Anything for you, Mi,” he says. “Seriously.”
And then he’s gone. I’m standing in the middle of the hall by myself, watching his cocky back retreat to the elevators. Yes, even his back is cocky. And strong. I gulp.
He turns before he gets on the elevator and grins one last time. I gulp again before I smile back.
After the elevator doors swallow him up, I truly do feel alone. He knew me. The real me. Not the me that my mother is trying to make me believ
e that I am. Suddenly, all I want is for him to come back, to sit by my bed and hold my hand and make everything okay.
But that’s impossible, because everything isn’t okay.
So with a sigh, I return to my room and find my mother doing a crossword puzzle in her chair. When I enter, she smiles.
“How was your walk, sweetheart?” she asks. “Are you tired now? Would you like to lie down?”
I shake my head. “No, I feel good. The fresh air was nice and it was good to talk with Gavin. Mom, do you have my phone?”
She freezes for a second and I don’t know why. But then she relaxes.
“Of course, sweetie. I’ve kept it in my purse. I didn’t know if you’d be up to looking at your old pictures or whatnot.”
She’s acting strange, but I put it out of my mind. Who am I to say if she’s acting strange? I don’t remember her prior to this week.
She hands me my phone. It’s in a hot pink case with a black and white skull on the back. The skull has a pink bow on its head. That makes me smile.
I power it on, but then am startled by a password screen.
I don’t remember the password, because I don’t remember anything. I look at my mom and she’s already shaking her head.
“I don’t know it, sweetheart. You were always very protective of it. You’re a pretty private person.”
Eff.
I am utterly dejected. Until I remember something. Gavin knows everything about me. Maybe he would know this. So I ask my mother for his number and I use her phone to call him.
“Hello?” he answers.
“Gav,” I reply. “Do you know the password to my cell phone?”
There is a pause.
“Not for sure,” he finally says. “But you usually use your birthdate for everything. I think it’s your debit card pin number and your combination to your locker at school. So you might want to try that.”
“Great,” I mutter. “That would be helpful if I knew my birthday.”
I sigh and Gavin chuckles.
“It’s May 17th, so try 1705,” he tells me. “And you’re seventeen years old.”
I roll my eyes. “I already knew that part.”
Because they’d already told me.
“How much do you actually know about me?” I ask him. I can’t help but smile. It really does feel good to know that at least someone remembers important things about my life. He laughs.
“I pretty much know everything,” he confirms. “And if I don’t know it, then Reece does.”
Reece. The best friend that I can’t remember.
I sigh again, trying to place her face in my head, but failing. I thank Gavin and hang up, picking up my phone once again. I punch in my birthday and Gavin was right. It opens right up.
A picture of me and a blonde girl stares back at me from my screensaver. Her slender arm is wrapped around my shoulders. My hair is two shades darker than it is right now and there are bright pink stripes threaded through it. The blonde girl is gorgeous with white blonde high-lights and sparkling blue eyes. We’re both holding up the “rock on” signal with our hands and grinning into the camera. I don’t know who took the picture and in fact, I don’t remember taking the picture at all.
Because this is the story of my life now.
I’m perpetually clueless.
I turn the phone towards my mom.
“Is this Reece?”
My mother almost flinches before she nods.
“You don’t like Reece?” I ask curiously. My mother shakes her head.
“It’s not that. Reece is a charming girl. I just don’t think that she understands what it’s like to be you. I worry about the influence she has on you. You should be around kids who understand.”
I am confused.
“Kids who understand what?”
“Kids who understand what it is like to be you,” she says firmly but still vaguely. “An important member of Caberran society.”
My mom sure does think a lot of herself and our family. Important members of society? I sigh.
“So it’s not okay to have friends that aren’t from here?”
My mother practically grits her teeth.
“That’s not what I said, Mia. I just said that I prefer it when you hang around with kids who understand you. Like Dante or Gavin.”
“Dante’s not here,” I remind her. “Are you saying that you only want me to hang around with Gavin?”
It’s my mother’s turn to sigh.
“No. Stop putting words in my mouth. I’d like it if you hung around with Elena Kontou, also, but you don’t seem to want to. I don’t know why. She’s a lovely girl who knows what it’s like to be a girl in your position. Plus, you really should mend fences with her.”
I stare at her. “Mend fences?”
“Vincent Dranias, that boy who you snuck around with and dated, is the reason her face was scarred. You’ve never apologized for that.”
I suck in a breath.
“Gavin told me that it wasn’t my fault. That Vincent completely deceived me. Why then, would I need to apologize? I’m honestly asking—because I don’t remember anything. And was she badly hurt in that explosion?”
My mother pats my hand.
“No, it wasn’t your fault. But Elena seems to think that you brought that boy into everyone’s lives. You really should take the time to explain that you didn’t. That you were deceived along with everyone else. And no, she wasn’t seriously injured, but her cheek was scarred. And she is a beautiful girl. She’s taking it hard. In fact, I believe she’s here in the hospital right now. She’s undergoing a series of surgeries to repair the scar.”
I am quiet. “I would like to talk to her and to apologize for any hand that I had in the whole mess. But the problem is, I don’t remember any of it. How can I apologize for something that I don’t remember?”
My mom offers me a little smile. A tight, tight smile.
“I don’t know, Mia,” she sighs. “But maybe you should try talking to her and just see what happens. We can get her room number from the nurse.”
I nod and she leaves the room, presumably to talk with the nurse. I continue looking through my phone. I have hundreds of pictures. Reece and I are in many of them. We’re on a boat, we’re by the beach, we’re in a bedroom. In one, we’re dressed in green matching shirts, presumably from work. Gavin told me that I work for Dante’s father. It looks like we are great friends.
There are pictures of Gavin. There are pictures of Gavin and I together. And there are pictures of us with another boy. A really, really handsome blonde boy who has to be Dante.
Dante Giliberti.
I look at the handsome face smiling at me from my phone and I wonder how I could possibly not remember him. He’s movie star handsome. I should remember him. But I don’t.
I scroll through the other faces in the pictures and I don’t remember any of them, either. Charming Reece Ellis. Cocky Gavin Ariastasis. Gorgeous Dante Giliberti. I should know them. I should have their faces memorized.
But I don’t.
And it is oh-so-frustrating.
I am practically growling when my mom returns.
“Room 402,” she tells me. “Elena’s on the fourth floor. She’s here only for today and then she’ll be gone. So you should go see her now while you have the chance.”
I am hesitant, but my mom is insistent.
“Mia,” she says patiently. “You have known Elena since you were children. You shouldn’t let a misunderstanding like this ruin things. Just go and speak with her. I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
I am still unsure, but I go anyway. How can I not? I have to make sense out of my life somehow. I should begin by piecing it back together.
I creep out into the hall and take a big mouthful of the medicinal hospital smell. It smells like iodine and alcohol and plastic. I hate it. But I timidly make my way through the bustling corridors and sterile halls until I find myself standing in front of room 402.
> I stand there for a few minutes, trying to get my courage up.
You can do this.