Page 3 of Tell Me Softly

“Good morning, Miss,” she said. She was being formal because Mom was around. “The usual?” she asked, referring to my breakfast.

“What else?” I answered, rubbing my chin as I watched Prue cut a grapefruit in half and offer it to me along with a cup of coffee. What I wouldn’t give for a plate of those eggs! But Mom said they’d be bad for my figure.

“Kamila, I need you to take Cameron to school, and on the way back, come by the club and help me set up for the tennis club cocktail hour,” my mother said, ignoring my sigh.

“Fine,” I said. But my mind was elsewhere.

Just then, Dad came in. He was tall with a big belly, his dark hair speckled with gray. His smile touched my very soul. He came over and kissed me on top of the head.

“Hello, precious,” he said as he sat down next to me.

My father was everything my mother wasn’t.

If you saw them, you really would believe that old story about how opposites attract.

They must have seen something in each other once to get married and have two kids, but I feel like relationships like that have an expiration date.

One look at them proved it. The only thing that kept them together was that my father was too good to confront her, which meant that this cold, distant woman got to keep running our lives.

I loved my father a lot. He had been as good a father as he could be given the circumstances, and a part of me felt guilty for confessing to him what my innocent eyes had seen on that fateful night eight years back.

Some people say what you don’t know can’t hurt you, and I guess that was my dad’s philosophy.

My dad, who was now sitting next to me wolfing down scrambled eggs as if he didn’t have enough cholesterol in his veins already.

When my brother appeared in the doorway, I was happy to go, to leave behind that kitchen full of tension and unspoken reproaches.

My brother had left all his toys in the bedroom and—thank the Lord—had dressed in the clothes Mom had laid out for him: designer jeans and a polo shirt that would look like a dog had gotten hold of it when he came home.

I could never understand why they’d spend thousands of dollars on a bunch of Ralph Lauren clothes for a kid who was just going to go roll in the dirt on the playground.

On our way to my car—the white Audi convertible my mother had driven until she changed it out for her glimmering red Mercedes—I couldn’t help but look at the moving truck parked next door.

My heart stopped for a moment, then started racing.

“Are we going to have neighbors?” my brother asked, excited.

The house next door had been empty since the renters, a couple in their twenties working remotely, had left after buying a house in the countryside.

My brother was so excited––he thought maybe finally there would be someone in the neighborhood for him to play with.

I should have been excited for him, but instead I was filled with foreboding.

I lowered my sunglasses to see better and felt a tingle in my chest as I watched a motorcycle park in front of the truck. Someone got off and went inside.

It was hard to see who it was from where I stood, but that feeling that had overtaken my entire body could only mean one thing.

“You’re going to be late,” my brother said from behind me. I had frozen as I’d tried to make out that figure and had completely forgotten where we were going.

“Get in,” I told him, opening the passenger door.

“Can we ride with the top down?” he asked, hopping up and down in the seat. I hit the button and the roof folded back, the warm breeze striking us in the face. I was doing everything automatically. I had to. My mind was entirely focused on the person who had gotten off that bike.

I started the engine, and we reversed into the street. We would pass right by the house next door, and I would see who was going to be moving into the house that held so many memories. But I already knew.

In a second, I had confirmed what every cell in my body was telling me was true. He turned toward me, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, and my entire body tensed. The Di Bianco brothers were back. Or at least, one of them was.

***

I listened to my brother’s theories about who our neighbors might be the whole way to school.

I didn’t want to tell him that I already knew who they were and that they definitely didn’t have a child his age.

I let him keep dreaming, and when we got there, I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek goodbye.

He barely let me; he hated me hugging and kissing him—in public, at least.

I drove into the parking lot. Thankfully, my parents’ plot to send me to a private school had never gone anywhere.

My mom had gone to one, but Dad had argued it would give me character if I got to know all kinds of people …

I don’t know exactly what that was supposed to mean, but I’m sure it had something to do with my classmates’ parents’ bank accounts.

This was my last year, and I had sworn to myself things would change, that I would show people who I really was.

I was tired of putting on that perfect face that hid all the turmoil inside me.

This year, everything would be better. But better definitely hadn’t meant running into Thiago Di Bianco in front of my house.

It was hard to reconcile the person I’d seen a half hour before with the kid with messed-up, dirty blond hair and green eyes. Thiago had changed. He was at least as big as his father, which didn’t surprise me. Even when we were younger, he was taller than all the kids his own age.

Why had he returned?

When I got out of my car, everyone turned to look at me.

They’d all expected to find the popular girl I’d effortlessly become.

I knew what they were going to do: stare at my clothes, my hair, my makeup.

And if anything was out of place or I looked slightly less glamorous than what they were used to, the nasty comments would start spreading around the school. Behind my back, of course.

A mop of bright blond curls blocked my view of the gawking students, and a second later, a warm, friendly hug enveloped me.

“Hello, Lady Kamila,” my best friend, Ellie, said. We’d been close since our first year there. Because she’d been a transfer student, she didn’t look at me like some kind of celebrity the way everyone else did.

“Please don’t call me that. You know I hate it,” I said, squeezing her. “Unless I get to call you Elfie .”

She stuck out her tongue at me. She couldn’t stand that name.

It was her parents’ fault. Her full name was Galadriel, like the elf in The Lord of the Rings .

Much to her father’s dismay, she detested the movies, the books, anything to do with Middle Earth, up to and including her own name.

I liked it, though––it meant I could get under her skin whenever I felt the need.

A second later, the rest of my friends showed up to catch up on what we’d done over the summer.

They always wanted to know where I’d gone and what I’d bought.

Carsville was a small town, and it was dull too, so any news was welcome—especially for my classmates, most of whom had spent the three months between their homes and the public pool.

My family’s trips, for them, were like something from a movie.

Little did they know there was nothing about my life worth envying.

Inside the building, everyone said hi to me and smiled.

Half the people I’d known my whole life; the other half were vaguely familiar, like faces in the crowd.

I stopped at my locker to grab a notebook and a pen.

It was the first day of class, and we usually didn’t do anything.

Chloe was talking nonstop with Kate and Marissa about prom and graduation.

We hadn’t even started the year, and they were already thinking about its end.

My focus was on keeping my grades up. I’d need to study if I wanted to get into Yale like my dad. I had to. I had to escape. I’d need to come back to visit my brother, I guess, but that was the least of my concerns.

While my friends chit-chatted away, someone approached me on the right, grabbing my hips and pressing my butt into his crotch. I didn’t need to look to know who it was. I’d recognize that cologne anywhere.

I turned around to look him in the face.

“Hey!” I almost shouted, trying to be enthusiastic and probably overdoing it.

There he was: Danny. Handsome, tall, strong, captain of the basketball team, dark brown hair, blue eyes…I could keep going, and no matter how perfect the image in your head was, it still wouldn’t do him justice. Anyone would kill to have him as their boyfriend. Anyone but me.

“You look amazing,” he said again, pulling me toward him and pressing his lips into mine.

Someone familiar passed by us just then, walking to another locker a few feet away.

My stomach turned.

“Excuse me a sec,” I said in a trance, knowing everyone was watching me as I walked down the row of lockers.

He’d noticed me; that was obvious from the tension in his body, the deep breath he took before he closed the door with a clang and turned the combination lock.

He’d changed. He was older and almost as tall as his brother.

His eyes were the same, but they didn’t shine the way they had when we were little, hanging out and getting into trouble.

I had felt so close to him, so secure in his presence, but that camaraderie had disappeared.

His hair wasn’t blond like his brother’s anymore; it was brown, and he had a tattoo on his neck, a Celtic symbol.

“Hey, Taylor,” I said almost inaudibly. All those memories piled up and rushed through my mind: shared moments, games, laughter…

He glanced at me with surprise. I guess I wasn’t the person he remembered either.

“Hey, Kami,” he said, cold and distant.

That stare made me shrivel up inside.

“You’re back,” I said. It sounded like a question.

“Yeah,” he said, uncomfortable, slinging his backpack over his shoulders.

I had so much I wanted to say to him, so much I wanted to share…

So much had changed since we’d last seen each other.

My life was no longer happy. There was no more laughter, no more adventure, just boring perfection, boring routine.

He had been my confidant, my protector. Taylor and his brother had meant everything to me, and we hadn’t even been able to say goodbye.

Eight years later, he shows up out of nowhere, and this is all he has to say to me?

Sure, my mother had destroyed his family, but she’d destroyed mine too, and I couldn’t understand why he was being so cold with me…I wanted to hug him, for him to like me, for things to be the way they had been in the past.

“I’m really happy to see you,” I said, as bravely as I could. “I missed you. You and your…”

“I gotta go,” he said, interrupting me with so much still left to say.

The bell rang just then. I flinched; it had startled me.

Taylor walked past me and away. That wasn’t the way I’d imagined our reunion.

I’d gone to sleep thousands of times thinking about what it would be like for us all to see each other again, but I never imagined it would be as strange and painful as that moment had been.

I was falling apart. I could tell by the way everyone was looking at me. I put back on the mask I always wore in these halls and restrained the tears that threatened to give me away.

“What are you looking at?” I asked no one in particular, turning on my heels and walking to class. My friends followed me, and I was grateful that none of them said anything—not then, anyway.

My feelings felt like they were about to come roaring out. But the ice princess, like her mother, couldn’t allow such a thing.