♥♥
He's a handsome strong guy who's been brought low by a silly emotion that has him in it's grip.
Love. An emotion alien to him,to his nature.
Worse,he has awfully messed up and hurt her -lost her. He hopes she doesn't succumb into a decline she may never upraise from.
She moves about like a shadowed vague ghost who never speaks and only answers tartly when spoken to. Meek. Isolated. Broken. Though she stays elegant - as immaculately toiletted and lovely as she has always been - her apparel hangs on her petite figure. Stooping,grieving from inexplicable betrayal.
She struggles out of a pit of despair into which he has so carelessly dumped her.
♥♥
Songs for the chapter:
i. Falls - Odesza ft Sasha Alex Sloan
ii. All Falls Down - Alan Walker
iii. Anything Can Happen - Ellie Goulding
♥♥
Miss Bella is not in class yet when I get in. Rhoda comes in a moment after me and sits beside me, in Tanu's place. Her brother Joe runs in shortly after and finds a seat behind her sister. I am already offended.
"Rhoda I thought we had an understanding." I say rudely. "Keep your brother from me or we'll stop being friends."
"I didn't call him. Be kind." She says gently and turning to her brother, "what is it with you?"
"I do not care if the bloody if..." I start.
"Carla, shut up for a moment. Let us hear what he has to say."
"I'm in a terror of being seen by my girlfriend," Joe says by way of excuse. "She's been dancing in the music room. Now she's hot. She's all but ordered me to her bed tonight. If she sees me here she'll be wild."
"She's bound to have seen you. She misses nothing that girl." Rhoda offers.
"She should have been a spy. She would love to have been a spy specialising in formication."
I giggle. "Wouldn't take that much skill to track you." I point out. "You're always in your sister's shadow."
"It's the only place I can be myself."
"Not the whorehouse?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "I don't go there anymore. I've lost my taste for it."
"Are you in love?" Rhoda asks cynically.
To my surprise Joe glances away and flushes. "Not I."
"What is it Joe?" I ask.
"Something and nothing. Something I cannot tell you and nothing I dare to do." He says precisely.
"Someone in school?" Rhoda demands, intrigued.
"If I tell you then you must swear to tell no one."
We nod, absolutely unwavering in our determination to know everything.
"More than that you won't even say anything to each other while I'm gone. I don't want your comments behind my back."
This time we hesitate, then curiosity overcomes us. "All right." Says Rhoda, speaking for us both. "We swear."
His young handsome face crumples and he buries his face into the rich sleeve of his jacket. "I'm in love with a boy." He says simply.
Rhoda's face is one of stunned horror. "Does he know?"
He shakes his head still buried among the rich velvet of his embroidered sleeve.
"Does anyone know?"
Again, his brown head shakes. "It's nothing anyway."
"A dangerous nothing," Rhoda says. "A dangerous brace of nothings. Wenching is one thing but you can be expelled for this."
"It's nothing," Joe reiterates. "And it's my own business. I'm sickened by girls, by the constant desire and talk of girls. The endless flirting and empty promises. A boy is so clean and so clear..." He turns away. "It's a whim. I won't regard it."
Then you must never give hint of it, never tell anyone." Rhoda orders. "This must be the first and last time you speak of it to anyone, even us. You must cut him out of your heart and mind and never even look at him again."
He looks up at her. "I know it's hopeless."
But her advice is not for his benefit. "You endanger me," she says. "You will bring shame to me. I will never get a scholarship if my brother is expelled because of cardinal sin."
"Is that it?" He demands in sudden rage. "Is that all that matters? Not that I am in love and tumbled like a fool into sin. Not that I can never be happy, dating a snake and in love with a heartbreaker. But only only Miss Rhoda Issa's reputation to be without blemish!"
At once she flies at him, her hands spread like claws and he catches her wrists before she can rake his face. "Look at me!" she hisses. "This is all your doing. Don't whimper about heartbreak, you murdered your only chance at love and buried it when you left her!" she points at me.
He holds her away but she is as unstoppable as a Porsche with no brakes. "You are the one who had a fancy for your snake with loose skirts!"
Joe is struggling with her and I grip her from behind, pulling her off him. "Stop it, the both of you! Joe you know your sister is right and you, Rhoda, if you cared so much about your innocence you wouldn't have kissed me, and in public!"
Joe steps back and measures his sister. "You did what?"
"Shut up!" I reply levelly.
Suddenly the fight goes out of them and the three of us stand still, like masquers forming a tableau, me, hugging her waist, him holding her wrists, her stretched hands still inches from his face.
"Good God, what a family you are," I say wonderingly. "What have you come to?"
"It's where we are going that matters," Rhoda says harshly.
Joe meets her gaze and nods slowly, like a man taking an oath. "Yes," he sighs. "I won't forget."
"You'll give up your love," she stipulates. "And never mention of his name."
Again the defeated nod.
"And you'll remember nothing matters more than this, my road to a scholarship."
"I'll remember."
I feel myself shudder and I let go of her waist. There is something in that whispered pledge that feels not like a pact with Rhoda but like a promise to the devil.
"Don't say it like that."
They both look at me, the matching brown dark eyes of the Issas, the long straight noses, that impertinent quirky little mouth.
"It's not worth life itself," I say, trying to make light of it.
Neither of them smiles.
"It is," Rhoda says simply.
♥♥
Miss Bella comes to class half an hour late. I sit absentmindedly through the whole thing, a frown etched on my face.
Tanu keeps raising her hand to answer questions but she never gets picked. Not once. She finally gives up and takes to annoying me.
"Were you talking secrets with my boyfriend and your dull friend?" She tempts me to trouble. I provide her no answer and focus on the assignment Miss Bella gives.
"Carla, really, are you angry with me?" She tries again.
I nod, saying nothing. She shoots me a sideways smile. She waits till Miss Bella leaves the class then she turns to me challengingly: "So?"
"What's going on, best friend?" I ask. "Between you and my boyfriend."
She turns, her clasped hands behind her back, demure as a schoolgirl.
"He's courting me," she says. "Openly."
"Tanu, he was my lover."
Lazily, she shrugs. "You left him just cause he'd kissed another girl."
"Yes, you. My best friend! And it wasn't a kiss, at least not to your upper lips. He was between your legs!" I get up and shove my books in my bag, sling it over my shoulder. I get up and walk to the door when her witty reply comes.
"Well you are not exactly..." She pauses. "Hot enough for him."
"And you are?"
She smiles, as if at some inner jest. "There's a certain heat in the air around me."
I set my teeth on my temper. "When you went out there, you were supposed to keep him interested in me not fling him off course."
She shrugs again. "He's a man. Easier to interest than turn away."
"I am curious about one thing," I say. If words were daggers I would throw them blades first into her self-satisfied, smiling face. "Did you do it despite the fact that he was my acknowledged lover? What is all pre-planned?"
She nods, her satisfaction hangs over her like the warm scent of a stroked cat.
"I can't help it if he desires me," she says insolently, her tone like milk. "I did not entrap or encourage him." She shrugs, all innocent.
"It's me you're talking to, remember, " I say grimly. "Not one of your fools. I know that you encourage everybody."
She gives me that same bland smile.
"What do you hope for, Tanu? To push me out of my place?"
At once the smug joy in her face is replaced by an absorbed thoughtfulness. "Yes, I suppose so. But it's a risk. He easily looses interest."
"I don't find him so. You threw your skirts over your head yet he still comes to me, to confide and complain of you." I score a tremendous point.
"You get nothing but his friendship. I get his love, feel the pulse in his manhood at his urgency to have me." She replies levelly.
I bite my tongue so hard that I can taste the blood in my mouth. "A whore then, that's what you're reduced to. You are the lowest of creatures."
She pauses for a moment. "I am a far greater thing, I'll show you that."
"If you were you wouldn't be trying to hold him by offering other girls to keep him hot. Even more scandalous yet, you've offered him a boy!" I hit.
She is across the room in two great strides. She snatches both of my wrists, her fingernails digging in. "You never speak of that again," she hisses. "Never!"
I wrench my hands away and grab her by the shoulders. "I'll say what I want to you, just as you say what you want to me. You're accursed, Tanu, you took my boyfriend and now you want to ruin my new found love too. You want anything that's not yours. You've always wanted anything that is mine."
She pulls out of my grip, her eyes wide like trenches. "Because you have everything I have wished for."
My smile is shamelessly triumphant.
Joe comes up behind her and drops to his knees.
"This is too much drama even for you two." I say simultaneously to Tanu's "what do you think you're doing Joe!"
He ignores her, keeping his gaze locked to mine. Tanu throws her hands in defeat and walks out, leaving her boyfriend on his knees before me.
"I betrayed you," he confesses baldly. "She came out and for a moment I thought it was you. If she hadn't come to me, I would never have glanced at her."
I glance at his bowed head. It really doesn't matter much now. "I don't know any other man who would have done different," I observe. "You be on your knees to your God, not to me, Joe."
He does not rise. "I want to beg your pardon." He says. "Yes, I betrayed you but it was never my intention."
"If you had not been tempted you would not have fallen. Oh please! If it was not in your interests to betray me then you would have been loyal. Go away, Joe Issa, you are no better than your new girlfriend Tanu who pursues her own ends like a weasel and never looks to one side or the other. I know that you are with her now. However much you love me, however much I loved you, when my heart knew not of heartbreak, I know that you are choosing her over me. "
"She is my girlfriend," he says passionately.
"As I was." I say, like ice.
I know his knees ache on the floor but he does not move. She gives me cover with..."
"Go away," I repeat. "I do not wish to hear one more word out of your foul."
He rises to his feet just as Tanu walks back in rage. Joe backs away. He does not show me his face which is wet with tears. He bows in shame. Tanu grabs his hand and drags him out.
I am about to yell at their backs when I feel the lightest of touches at my waist and a warm voice in my ear that says: "Do not stoop to their level."
I turn around to see Nahar. I am almost in his arms. We are so close that if he moves forward half an inch we will touch all down to the tips of our bodies. I close my eyes for a moment in desire at the scent of him and when I open them I see his eyes dark with lust for me.
"For God's sake, step back," I say shakily.
Unwillingly he releases one hand and steps half a pace back from me. "Before God, I must have you." He says. "Carla, I am beyond myself. I have never been like this in my life before. I cannot go another moment without holding you."
"Shh, we are in class, Nahar!" I whisper. "Miss Bella can walk in anytime."
"Yes, but do you not desire me as much as I do you?" He asks stubbornly.
"I don't want to talk of that here with your cousin the witch eavesdropping."
He laughs, his brown eyes gleaming at me. "Now she's a witch? I thought you were loyal to your friends."
"Not at this price." I say shortly, turn and walk away from him.
I have barely gone half a dozen steps before he is beside me. "Tell me, d'you ever look for me?"
I hesitate. "Of course I don't look for you."
He falls into step beside me again. "Of course you do." He says with sudden earnestness. " I think we quite like each other.
"You think wrong," I say ungraciously. "I cannot play these games with you. It will end in chaos and I have lived my fair share of drama. I have no appetite for more of it.
I see the light die from his eyes. "So you never think of me?"
"Never." I say flatly and leave him standing there, humiliated in front of the whole class.
A/N:
Welcome back to more scandal, my dearest readers.
Has Carla just sabotaged another beautiful relationship? Will she and Nahar ever have a shot? Leave your comments about this chapter.
If you loved what you just read then click on the little start and vote, then share this book to your friends.
Updates in 24 hours, or even earlier.
Receive my love.