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“There are two types of people in this world, Olivia,” I started, as I held the door to the outside world open for her. The light flooded over us as we made our way outside, and I suddenly felt grateful for the sun. “Those who can smell blood and those who can’t.”
Chapter 6 (#ulink_4526bbb8-7115-56f4-8ce2-e443e2c282da)
Olivia (#ulink_4526bbb8-7115-56f4-8ce2-e443e2c282da)
The Village is my favorite area in Manhattan. Cute little boutiques and coffee houses, random cobble-stone streets, and not to mention the high-end shopping on Bleeker. You also see more dogs being walked around there than any other neighborhood. So when Amalia’s first apartment viewing didn’t go very well, I was still secretly enjoying my day. I tried to lift her spirits by taking her to Bosie’s Tea Parlor on Morton Street.
“I know it was disgusting, but I promise the next one will be better!” I said confidently as I led her toward the café. After all, it couldn’t get much worse.
We were walking fast, zipping through a crowd of young girls in black high-low dresses and chunky platform heels. A super-thin red-head then flicked her cigarette on the ground, nearly hitting me by accident.
“Seriously, Olivia, I felt something go through me in that apartment!” she said, dramatically shaking her head back and forth. “How can that guy afford $2,000 a month?”
“I have no idea,” I laughed. A couple of cute guys in suits walked past us. One of them smiled at me and I immediately turned red and looked away. Amalia was too irritated to notice them. I redirected my attention back to her and said, “Maybe the landlord doesn’t know he lives there either.”
“Ugh!” she gasped, jumping in the air and pretending to wipe things off of her clothes. “Okay, I am moving on. How far is this place we’re going to?”
“Just about a five-minute walk,” I said, taking the lead. “Calm yourself.”
I swung my handbag in front of me and dug around for my sunglasses. Realizing I had better savor the last few days of warm weather while I could.
“So, Amalia, you never told me about Brazil,” I dug around for my phone too while I was at it. “How was it?”
“Hot,” she said, slowing down. “Even hotter than today, if you can believe it.”
“Hot?” I raised an eyebrow. “You were gone for nearly three months, and that’s all you have to say to me?”
“I’m sorry,” she came to a stop. Her eyes darted around the city. “You’re right, I’m totally pulling a Cassandra right now.”
“Pulling a what?” I asked, dropping the sunglass case back into my bag and reaching for my cigarettes, suddenly feeling a craving coming on. I grabbed her hand to steer her away from oncoming traffic.
“I’m being evasive. You know, like she always is,” Amalia shrugged. We crossed over to Bleeker and made our way to Morton Street. “Is there food at this place? I’m starving.”
“Yes, there is food,” I said, with fake anger. “But seriously, tell me about Brazil. Did you meet any guys?”
“No, that would be too obvious,” she said with a tight smile. “Little ole me runs away to Brazil, meets some hot guy named Gabriel, and sets up shop in Rio, only to be heard from by the occasional postcard.” She stopped walking again and I took the opportunity to light my cigarette. “Honestly, I spent a lot of time alone, thinking. All of the other time I spent with my cousin who lives there: Julia.”
“But you had a good time, right?” I slowly inhaled my cigarette. The smoke rushed through my lungs, and then out again as I slowly let the air leave my body. The craving leaving with a swift wash of relief.
“Yes”, she said with a smile. “It was fun. It was a vacation.”
“Alright,” I said, deciding to back off the subject for now.
“What about you and Alex?” she brightened up. “Are you officially a couple?”
It was the first time she had really said anything about me and Alex dating. I felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth.
“Yes, officially,” I laughed. “There’s a certificate being printed as we speak.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said through a huge grin.
“I’m really happy with him, Amalia.” Just thinking about Alex made me feel warm inside. Like Amalia, he and I were hiding our relationship. Unlike Amalia we were both single at the time. We kept it a secret because I was worried about too much involvement from out tight-knit group of friends. As much as it had been fun and sexy sneaking around, it felt refreshing to be able to talk about it freely with my friend. I felt my cheeks flush and I dropped my head down in an effort to hide my blushing. “Let me just finish this cigarette and then we’ll go inside. Bosie is right around the corner.”
She slowly nodded at me then and turned her gaze toward the ground. Amalia stared at an old piece of gum stuck on the floor for a few seconds and then shook her head. She looked downcast and I worried I had said something wrong. Her blonde curls tousled around her face for a moment until she wiped her eyes, causing her hair to fall behind her ears. I faintly heard her nose sniff, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Amalia, are you alright?” I started, but her eyes were no longer on me. Her attention was caught by a young woman walking toward us. She looked sort of familiar, like maybe I had seen her picture before. She had very long, very dark, brown hair. Her skin was alabaster white, and as she got closer I could see she was a few years younger than us, most likely twenty or twenty-one years old. Amalia cocked her head to the side and lowered her eyebrows. I could tell she was searching too. Trying to figure out where she knew this girl from.
“Excuse me?” the girl shouted from halfway down the block. Her brown eyes were narrowed and fixed on Amalia.
“Yes?” Amalia and I both said in unison.
The girl made her way up to us and stood about a foot away from Amalia’s face. She was short, about five foot one or so. She wore plain, light-wash jeans and a brown T-shirt. Nothing spectacular. Minimal make-up except for black kohl liner on the inside of her bottom lids. Her pin-straight hair was tucked behind her ears in a child-like way. I noticed she was wearing a gold necklace with a single ruby floating in the middle of her neck. She looked like an average girl. If she hadn’t been darting towards us at high speed, we probably wouldn’t have noticed her.
Amalia looked at me for help, but I didn’t know what to do.
“Do you need directions?” Amalia offered.
The girl ignored her question and looked Amalia up and down. A scowl permanently fixed on her face.
Amalia anxiously started to look around, and then back down at the sidewalk.
“Is your name Amalia?” the girl advanced to her, raising her chin to meet Amalia’s gaze.
“Yes?” Amalia answered, her voice rising at the end.
“Do you know who I am?” the girl said, not backing down.
“No?” Amalia recoiled, her eyes widening.
Apparently, that was the wrong answer because the next thing I knew the mystery girl pulled back her right arm and slapped Amalia’s left cheek. Hard.
“Oh, my God!” I cried. I reached to grab the girl, but Amalia held up her hand to stop me.
Amalia quickly took a step back and grabbed her face. She winced from the pain, but didn’t walk away. She just stood still, unnerved.
The girl shook her head and gave Amalia one final stare-down. Her brown eyes were still narrowed, and I wondered if she was going to hit Amalia again. A moment later, she composed herself and quickly walked away. I turned to say something to the mystery girl, but it was too late. She had turned the corner.
“Holy crap, are you alright?” I asked, rushing to Amalia’s side. She slowly removed her hand from her face and tested her jaw. She didn’t appear to be injured, just stunned.
Amalia brought her hand back up and rubbed her cheek. She swallowed hard, then blinked heavily a few times. She followed it up with a long sigh. I couldn’t tell if she was in pain or in shock.
“I think I’m alright,” she shook her head and then rolled it around on her shoulders. “That kind of hurt.”
“It hurt to watch,” I said, linking my arms with hers.
“Olivia, do you have an extra cigarette? I think I might need one.”
“What? Why?” I asked, still in disbelief at what happened. “Do you have any idea who that girl was?”
“Because,” she started to say, as she began walking again. “I’m pretty sure that girl was Marge.”
Chapter 7 (#ulink_3e824b1f-a578-5c3e-8b46-a7e6e859e357)
Amalia (#ulink_3e824b1f-a578-5c3e-8b46-a7e6e859e357)
“Let me get this straight,” Cassandra said, in a tone that resembled utter disbelief. “She just walked right up to you and slapped you?”
Later that day, after telling Olivia I was too upset to get tea and macaroons, we went back to her apartment to veg out. Olivia understood when I called the realtor and moved the last two appointments to tomorrow. Feeling the need to vent, I sent Cassie a ton of text messages until she finally called me back. Usually it only took one or two messages to get her full attention, but ever since I got back from Brazil she had been acting distant. I tried to put all of that on the back burner as I regaled her with my story.
“Yes!” I cried into the phone. “I just stood there, shocked.” I was pacing around Olivia’s bedroom, replaying the events of today over and over again in my head. “I mean, the girl must have figured out Michael was cheating on her with me somehow, hence the slap.”
Cassandra let out a deep sigh on the other end and then muttered something in Italian. Cassandra’s grandparents had insisted she learn Italian, so ever since we were younger she would spit out Italian phrases from time to time.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with this Marge chick?” she said loudly. I winced and held the phone away from my ear for a second. “Who just goes around walking up to people on the streets of New York, slapping them?”
I took a deep breath and collapsed onto Olivia’s bed. She was in the living room talking to Alex on the phone, so I took the opportunity for some privacy and ducked into her bedroom.
“Someone who was being cheated on?” I asked rhetorically.
“Yeah,” Cassandra agreed. “I guess that’s who.”
“I mean I totally deserved it,” I started. “Even though he was evasive about the details of his and Marge’s relationship, I shouldn’t have taken that as an open invitation to start something with Michael.” Suddenly images of Michael flooded my mind. The scent of sandalwood, the taste of his kiss, the way my heart would race whenever he would run his fingers through my hair. He had always kept his relationship with Marge to himself, to the point that there were times where I wondered if they had broken up. She lived halfway across the country, so at the time it felt easy to justify what we were doing. I finally came to terms with the fact that I was the “other woman” when he didn’t come out for our group’s New Year’s Eve plans, but instead caught a flight to visit Marge. As the memories swirled around in my mind, I felt a flush of emotion that I had locked away for the past few months. I immediately hated myself for it.
“I wouldn’t go that far, Amy,” she said. I could hear her moving around in her apartment, her high heels clacking against the fake-hardwood floors. “The girl essentially assaulted you on the sidewalk.”
“No, I’m fine,” I said, suddenly wondering why I was defending this girl. “It didn’t hurt that much. Besides, if her relationship with Michael was anything like mine, then he left her more than a little upset. Does it suck that she took it out on me? Sure. But at the same token, if Nicholas had been cheating on me I’d probably want to slap someone too.”
I had known Nicholas for years before we started dating. We met at Rutgers University and after we graduated he professed his love for me one evening. Apprehensively, I gave it a chance. It didn’t take long for his admiration to win me over. On my twenty-third birthday, we got into an argument and he stormed out of a surprise party that Cassandra had thrown for me. A few days later he broke up with me, leaving me absolutely destroyed.
“Have you seen him since you’ve been back?” Cassandra asked.
“Who, Nicholas?” I asked. “Or Michael?”
“Michael.”
“No, I haven’t. But luckily for me classes start back up tomorrow, so I’m sure I’ll see him around,” I said, feeling exhausted by the thought of having to begin studying and writing papers again. “We’ll most likely have at least one class together. There aren’t that many students in our program.” I sat up straight in Olivia’s bed and noticed a framed picture of her and Alex displayed on her nightstand. From what I could tell, the picture was recent. They both still had a tan and Olivia was wearing a coral-colored maxi dress. Alex had on a white polo shirt and aviator sunglasses. His arm was wrapped around Olivia’s waist. Olivia was turned toward Alex and she was laughing. I picked up the frame and smiled, then almost immediately after felt a pang of sadness and put down the frame. “As for Nicholas, I honestly hope I never see him again.” After Nick and I tried to get back together months after our break-up, I realized we had both changed and it could never work. The person he had turned into was someone I could never be friends with. Pretentious, arrogant, and self-important.
“What if you saw him out one night?” Cassandra asked, her voice even. “If we were out to dinner at Nobu and he just happened to be seated a few tables away?”
“Then I would ignore him,” I said, declaratively. “Or if I really felt uncomfortable, I would leave.”
I heard Cassandra open her fridge and pour herself a glass of something. She paused for a few seconds and then loudly swallowed.
“I know he’s a jerk, but you’d really just cut someone out of your life like that?” she asked. “The two of you have so much history together, you don’t think one day you’d be able to be friends?”
I wasn’t sure why, but Cassandra suggesting I should be friends with Nick suddenly made me question her loyalty. Whose side was she on, anyway?
“Whether or not we could be friends one day is not even a thought in my mind,” I said, my blood pressure rising at the mention of having to see him again. “He hurt me, Cass. Worse than anyone ever has, at least yet. I don’t want to be friends with someone who could treat me like that. The idea of being around him makes me feel sick.”
“You won’t always feel that way,” she offered.
“Hopefully not,” I said. “Hopefully I will get to a point when someone mentions him to me I could honestly say I don’t give a shit about him one way or another. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I am still pining for the guy. I am completely over him. I’m just not completely over the way he made me feel about myself.”
“How did he make you feel?” she asked, the ice cubes in her cup clanking against the glass.
I took a long pause and stared back up at Olivia’s ceiling. I could feel myself getting emotional, the tears forming behind my eyes. But the emotion wasn’t brought on by losing Nicholas, it was from allowing him to treat me how he did for so long.
“Pathetic,” I said, steadying my voice. “He made me feel pathetic. And no one who can make me feel that way deserves to be my friend.”
Cassandra went silent for a few seconds. I took the opportunity to quietly let out a few tears. I glanced around Olivia’s room. I couldn’t help but be thankful for her. In the past year she had become a great friend. I had only ever been in here one other time; the day she, Michael and I were studying for exams. The walls were painted a fresh, light-gray color, and the furniture was dark brown. Not rustic-looking, but definitely antique. There was a framed Dashboard Confessional set list on the dresser, which was dated May 31st, 2009. I assumed it was most likely left over from her emo days in college. The bedspread I had now made a mess out of consisted of an off-white, eye-lit comforter with a burgundy quilt folded at the foot of the bed. The room felt very warm, cozy. Downright comfortable for Brooklyn, at least. The only problem, as with most New York City apartments, was the hideous HVAC wall unit that stuck out of the only window. Adding a certain sterile feeling to the room. Even with the curtains she had carefully hung, an obvious attempt to hide the eyesore, the fact that it was there would mean this room would never really feel like home.
“Amalia? You still there?”
“Yes” I said, suddenly remembering I was still on the phone. “I’m here. Sorry.”
“So how’s it going over at Olivia’s?”
“Actually, earlier today before the slap incident, we started apartment-hunting,” I said.
“For the both of you?” she asked.
“No, just for me,” I answered quickly. “I never want another roommate again. Not that Olivia would be a bad roommate. I just think it’s time for me to get comfortable living alone.”
“Did you see anything worth living in?” she asked. I heard her typing on a computer in the background.
“Not today,” I said, reliving the hell that was that apartment. “But I have two lined up for tomorrow after class. One in Murray Hill and one in Hell’s Kitchen.”
“Nice, keep me posted.”
“I will”, I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. The thought of seeing two more apartments didn’t exactly fill me with hope, but it was something that I had to get done. “Hey, what happened with that guy Brandon? Did you end up going out?”
“Yeah, we had brunch at Morandi.”
“Well?” I said, raising the energy in my voice. “Do you like him? Did you kiss? Cassandra! Where are my details?”
“Yes, I like him.” Cassandra let out a soft laugh. “And yes we did kiss.”
“Nice!” I opened my mouth to say more, but she quickly cut me off.
“But listen, I have to go,” she said suddenly. “I just got an email from my boss and he wants me to take care of something.”
I looked at my watch. 8:00 pm.
“Oh okay,” I said, not pushing the subject. “But hey, let’s talk tomorrow and you can tell me more about your new man!”
“Sure, I’ll shoot you a text,” she said quickly, more typing in the background. Followed by a soft sigh.
“Okay. Bye Cassie.” I let out a sigh after I hung up, and wondered how much longer Cassandra was going to be distant.
