Dante’s Girl (The Paradise Diaries #1)(22)
Author: Courtney Cole

She starts crying and my heart breaks a little.

“Becca, please.  Don’t cry.  I didn’t mean to hurt you.  I promise. I would rather die than hurt you.  You’re my best friend and that’s why I didn’t tell you. It’s because I didn’t want to hurt you.  I promise, I don’t even like Quinn anymore so you don’t have anything to worry about.  I met someone here and he’s amazing.  And so you don’t have to worry about me and Quinn.  I promise.”

“Your promises don’t mean much,” she snaps.  “And I’m not worried about you and Quinn. There is no you and Quinn.  Just like there’s no you and me.  Not anymore.”

I start to answer but realize that the line is dead.  For the first time ever, in the history of our relationship, Becca has hung up on me.  I think she probably hates me.  And I can hardly bear it.

“Are you okay?” Mia asks in concern.

Mia’s thick black eyeliner is smearing in the heat and I realize that she’s been standing there all along. I was so caught up in my dramatic phone call that I hadn’t even realized it. Just like I hadn’t realized that Elena and her cronies had stopped and were staring at me.  And listening to me.  Elena’s emerald green eyes glimmered dangerously as they met mine and I know that she heard every word.

“So,” Elena says icily, flipping her perfect hair over her perfect shoulder.  “Just who did you meet here in Caberra, Reece?  I know you’re not talking about Dante.  Because I will happily claw your pathetic, hick-a-billy eyes out before you ever dream of making a move on Dante.  Do you understand me?  Dante is mine.  He will always be mine.  You don’t stand a chance, farm girl.”

I nod silently because I’m not sure what else to do.  Because I don’t have it in me to argue or fight.  My best friend had just yanked my guts out through my cell phone.

“I’m glad we understand each other,” Elena says, then turns a perfect high heel on me and walks away.

Complete.  And utter. Bitch.

Chapter Eleven

“Come on,” Mia tells me, yanking my arm and dragging me behind her.  I follow limply.  I don’t really care where we go.  My insides feel smashed.

She leads me to a little coffee vendor on the sidewalk where she speaks fast Caberran and the dark-haired barista (Is that what they call them here?) quickly makes two dark, foaming cups of something.  He hands one to me and Mia pays and I sniff at it.  It smells strong.

“Drink it,” Mia advises.  “You need it.”

“Is there alcohol in here?” I ask suspiciously, because Mia is in the midst of a full-blown rebellion against her parents and I wouldn’t put it past her to drink a coffee-tini for breakfast.  She laughs and shakes her head.

“No, but there should be.  You need it.  But this will have to do.”

I sip at it and it burns my lip, but in a very delicious way.  “What is it?”

“It’s our version of Italian Espresso,” she tells me as she closes her eyes and takes a long gulp. “It’s my version of heaven.”

She looks around.  “You need one more thing,” she muses. “Follow me.”

She leads me to another vendor- they have so many here with cute little fold-up carts- and this time, she buys chocolates from an ancient white haired lady with cloudy, scary eyes.  The old lady has a bright red silk scarf wrapped around her head and even though it looks like she is blind, she still looks at people straight in the eye.  It’s unnerving.

“All will work out for you, young one,” she tells me, looking at me with her creepy eyes.  Her fingers are gnarled and they dart out to grab my hand.  She feels my palm and slides her wrinkled fingers up to my wrist, where they press against my pulse-point.

“You are strong,” she says, closing her eyes.  “Strong enough.”

Mia and I look at each other wide-eyed and I pull my hand away as politely as I can.  I can still feel exactly where the old woman’s claw-like fingers were grasping me and I rub at the spot.

“Strong enough for what?” I ask hesitantly as Mia hands me the chocolate that she had just bought from the old woman.

The old lady nods.  “Strong enough to protect your heart.”

She closes her eyes and begins humming, oblivious to us now.

Mia looks at me and makes a circle next to her temples with her fingers.

Cuckoo, she mouths to me. 

I nod.  That’s the only thing that makes any sense.  This old lady has lost her marbles.  If she ever had them in the first place, which is highly, highly debatable.

We sit on a nearby bench underneath a tree with weeping branches and I decide that it’s the perfect place for me to sit.  Poetically perfect because I feel like weeping too.

“Get your chin up,” Mia demands.  “I’m serious.  Did you screw over your friend?  Maybe.  But can you do anything about it from thousands of miles away?  No.  You’ve got to live in the here and now.  You’ll fix it when you are able to.  You’re a nice person, I can tell.  You didn’t purposely hurt anyone.  Your friend is being a dumbass.”

I stare at her.

“Was that supposed to be a pep talk?”

Mia laughs.  “I’m not that good at pep talks,” she admits with a shrug.  “I’m more of a ‘walk it off’ type of person.  I don’t dwell on things.  Especially things I can’t change.”

“I didn’t screw over Becca,” I tell her.  “I had a crush on her boyfriend. I can’t help that, can I?  I never acted on it. I never told him. And I don’t have a crush on him anymore.  That means something, right?”

Mia nods in agreement as she takes a bite out of her little chocolate mountain.  I’m not sure exactly what our candies are, but they look like tiny volcanoes.

“No. You can’t help that.  And as far as I’m concerned, you didn’t do anything wrong. Americans are so uptight,” she observes.   “You get your panties in a wad over the slightest little thing.”

“You wouldn’t be mad if your best friend had a crush on your boyfriend?” I ask dubiously.  Because I don’t believe it.  Anyone would be mad, American, British, Caberran, whatever.