The Fates (Book I) - 2014 Watty Award Winner!

4.10 - Wait

Dear Readers: Back on the roof of the Mega Bretania...

Oh, by the way - I hope you'll like the soundtrack, if you're able to give it a listen! One of my very favorite songs, aptly entitled "Wait" by M83 :)

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Scene 10: Wait

A.D. 2015

He was gone.

Eldor was gone. And everything inside of her somehow knew that he wasn’t coming back.

She stood in silence by the table for an endless second. Stared down at the unfinished entrées, in the wake of the unfinished date that should never have started. Unable to comprehend anything now.

“Excuse me, Miss…” a benevolent voice broke in beside her, from the neighboring table. The man with the potbelly—the unfortunate date of that skinny strawberry blonde who had been enviously ogling Eldor all night—Cloe realized as she mutely raised her head. “…Your date wanted us to tell you not to leave, just yet.”

She blinked. All words failed her miserably at the moment. “Hm?”

The man cleared his throat. “I’m not sure what he meant—he left in quite a rush, and quickly asked us to advise you to stay put…”

Cloe furrowed her brow in bemusement. “Stay put?”

The gingery-haired twig chimed in, with what was most likely meant as a whisper for her date’s ears alone; if so, it had been several decibels too loud. “He’s probably just… trying to let her down easy…”

Didn’t the bitch know that she was within painfully close earshot? Cloe gaped. She almost thought she read the same appalled thought process on the portly man’s face, flashing in his eyes but then hidden behind a polite smile. “I’m sure your date meant well,” he reassured the abandoned damsel. “He’d just taken a call, and it seemed urgent…”

“Looks like he didn’t even pay the bill,” his lady friend butted in, lowering her voice a tad bit with her next words. “We should cover for her, hun—it’d be a nice gesture, given what she’s going through.”

Cloe’s gape became a glare. Was it this she-devil’s goal in life to shit all over other girls’ dignity? Go figure, even a witch like her could land a guy. A date who didn’t ditch. “Um, no thank you,” she declined.

The woman had already taken out her purse. She shrugged her bony shoulders in a snobbish show of suit yourself, tucking away her designer wallet stuffed with countless pieces of plastic. Cloe reached for her own, jingling with loose Euro coins and a few folded bills.

The man spoke up again. No doubt sheer pity had stirred his tongue. “Why don’t you just… give it a few minutes, at least.”

Despite her dignity’s screams in protest, Cloe reluctantly agreed to wait awhile.

Instead of sitting down at the deserted table, she braced her elbows on the rooftop balustrade nearby. Looked out across the city, all the lights of which had seemed to dim with Eldor’s disappearance, and with the loveless lifetime’s worth of disappointments that it brought to mind. This was all part of the pattern that had plagued her for forever. Hopes dashed upon the harsh rocks of reality, time and time again, shattering like so many glass slippers from all the princes who had never and would never come. She should’ve known better than to think she might deserve one in the first place.

On a blind instinct, she then fumbled through her bag, fingers searching for something, and feeling at peace when they found it: the campion. The pink blossom given to her at the garden, now pressed with care between twin squares of transparent tape. It’d been her mother’s idea, to make a portable keepsake of the precious thing. For Silvia had noticed the effect the campion had upon her daughter’s heart—for whatever reason, or for no reason at all, the little thing somehow meant everything.

Cloe rolled it between her fingers. Reflected on just how retarded she was, to have pressed it like this, and worse yet to be secretly carrying it everywhere she went. Her hopeless heart was now the laughingstock of the cold chorus of voices in her own head. The voice of reason, the voice of self-ridicule—one in the same, tonight.

Amidst her wallowing, another voice chimed in on an entirely different note: a whimsical impulse she couldn’t control. Against her better judgment, against everything, she reached again into her bag and removed a crumpled napkin. And right under her first fateful scrawl of the day, she scribbled another. If she had been a fool to try it once, no harm in trying it again. Besides, perhaps the supposed superpower had just derived from Miss Primor’s silver pen. In which case, of course, this new decree—scratched down in blunt pencil—wouldn’t come true.

As soon as the words were written, Cloe tucked the napkin back into her bag and leant over the balustrade again. Campion in hand. Held it out over the rail, in its cradle of crystal clear tape, the precious pink poised between thumb and forefinger for just a moment more…

She then let go, breathless to see the blossom set sail on a breeze into the starlit sky. And bade her heart goodbye.

“Miss?”

Cloe turned to see a sharply dressed maître d’, who promptly told her that her table’s bill was taken care of and that a limo had been arranged to drive her home. “So sorry to have kept you waiting for a while,” he expressed, extending toward her a pristine white paper bag. “The pastry chef prepared dessert as fast as possible.”

Dessert? Eldor had decided that they’d have to get dessert, upon learning about her sweet tooth, she recalled. But that was before he had ditched. Cloe could not begin to process this.

Apparently, it showed. The maître d’ cleared his throat to explain. “The gentleman ordered it for you, before he rushed off.”

Cloe numbly accepted the offering and mumbled a thank you.

“Is this a joke…” she heard a whiny voice mutter behind her as the maître d’ escorted her away. Miss Strawberry Shitcake just wouldn’t shut up…

And then she heard the she-devil’s potbellied partner’s voice, raised to a breakup-level volume. “You’re a real twat, you know that?”

His words provided Cloe with a gratifying inward chuckle, for a second, on this bizarre night that’d been anything but gratifying otherwise. The couple’s bickering receded into the inaudible distance as she was ushered to the elevator, through the lobby, to a slick black limousine, and sped from the marble doorstep of the Mega Bretania safely back to the humble stoop of the Scholar & Journeyer’s Inn.

The resident parrot greeted her with several friendly squawks as she passed through the courtyard to get to her room. She smiled at the sound; she still found the thing too cute to hate. Then again, it was only her first night here—she wondered how many cacophonous nights she could take before all her affection turned into annoyance.

After washing up, slipping into pajamas, and settling in her upper bunk, she checked her cell phone. Eldor hadn’t called. Of course he hadn’t. And of course he would’ve called, or texted or whatever, if he hadn’t meant to ditch her. She had given him her number, after all.

The sweet dessert, the fancy ride—this all was just a parting gift. A show of pity for having abandoned her, a chivalrous attempt at softening the blow. To let her down easy, just as the strawberry blonde she-devil had surmised. Right? Right? That had to be it. Right? Even the continuous squawks from the courtyard, audible all throughout the hostel, seemed to her to be affirming it…

Cloe sighed, realizing that she could not trust her mind to reach reasonable conclusions about anything right now. So she strove to shut off her thoughts, to find sleep on this night that’d been a waking dream. Tried to set her thundering heart at peace.

And as her heartbeat finally slowed to a slumberous pace, her mind’s eye was flooded with two hues: a soft, precious pink and a deep bay-blue.

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Any thoughts? Feels? :/

Any guesses what Cloe wrote down on the napkin this time? ;)

Next scene, we'll head back to the Campions' honeymoon suite, to pick up where we left off on the first night of their married life... And if you liked this one, please don't forget to vote! :)