♥♥
Orientation day.
What a damned day it had been. She had chucked their friendship away as carelessly as one might discard a thoroughly chewed bone.
Worse actually, for did not a bone often have a scrap of nourishment in it and was therefore to be cherished in another hungry moment?
Tanu wipes away the guilty tears.
Dammit! Jealousy had,for a couple of wild, insane hours,taken over her and she had let the womanly excitement incredibly enter her blood and her brain until she had been incapable of coherent thought.
"But no,regret is not my portion," she decides.
♥♥
Songs for the chapter:
i. Kilometre - Burna Boy
ii. Big Girls Cry - Sia
We are in my room after a very awkward dinner. Rhoda is spending yet another night here, with me. Rhoda and Shawn chat animatedly while I sit there, sad and withdrawn.
Rhoda puts her glass down on my study table and crawls up on the bed so that she is on her hands and knees, with her face just inches from mine.
"My little best friend," she purrs.
My face softens at her intimacy.
"My little love," she whispers. Gently she kisses me on the nose and then the lips. "Don't be a shrew with me," she begs me. "We all know that you are hurt, but be sweet to me, Carla. We'll all be so much happier if you are sweet to me."
Unwillingly, I smile. "You must support me," I warn her.
"I will always be by your side," she promises.
"Then you can come here and I will be sweet to you," I say.
She leans forward and kisses me again. My eyes close and my lips smile then part. Shawn watches as she presses closer and her finger goes to my bare shoulder and strokes my neck. He watches, quite fascinated, quite horrified, as her fingers go into my smooth dark hair and pulls my head back for her kiss.
Then I open my eyes with a little sigh. "Enough." I push her gently off the bed. She returns to her place at the chair beside my study table and we all pretend that it was nothing more than a friendly kiss.
♥♥
The next day at school Tanu is confident as ever. She smiles at Rhoda and I as we walk past her to our first class.
"I would have thought you would have been displeased this day, Carla." Sauda, one of notorious school spies whispers to me.
"Why?" I turn to her.
"The news," Sauda says.
"What news?" Rhoda asks, so that I do not appear curious.
Sauda answers her but watches me. "Tanu is dumping Joe."
I stagger for a moment and go white.
"Oh!" Rhoda cries, to draw the attention to her and from me. "What a scandal! Why would she dump him? What an idea! How very wrong of her."
I recover but Sauda has watched me. "Why," Sauda says, in a voice like silk. "She says there was a precontract. She says that all along he has been promised to you."
My head goes up and I smile at Sauda. "If she is unhappy in her relationship then I am sure that we all grieve for her." There is a little murmur from Rhoda, more like avid curiosity than sympathy.
I walk away from her but some girls hold back, circling Sauda for more scandal.
"Sauda, I am sure you will find gossiping is forbidden in this school," Rhoda says spitefully. "And you happen to be a prefect. I would imagine you have lots of duties."
At once she has to go and the other trail behind her.
Rhoda falls in step beside me. We pick up our pace then break into a ran like schoolgirls to Shawn's class.
♥♥
He is at his desk, though it's still very early in the morning. He is talking to his friends and frowns when I put my head around the door and then motions me in and gestures I should wait.
"What is it?" he asks. "I am busy. You're not in love with her now, are you?" He points at Rhoda.
"It's something else," I say tersely. "But important."
My brother waves his friends from the class room.
"Nahar?" he asks.
"Worse. Tanu is openly dumping Joe on grounds that he was precontracted to me." I say in a rush.
"Damnation," he swears.
"Did you know?"
"Of course I knew she had it in mind. I thought she was going to cause drama one way or the other. I thought we had moved her away from the precontract business though."
"We?"
He scowls at me. "We. Doesn't matter who, does it?"
"No."
"And how does Tanu know," he demands irritably.
"Oh Tanu knows everything. She was listening at your door the other day. And she was my best friend."
"What else does she know?"
"Nothing," I say staunchly.
"Well Nahar is not in class yet. Go to class and study," he says dismissively. Then find him and lie your head off. Open those beautiful of yours and tell lies, baby sister."
"You come and support me." I turn to Rhoda. "Both of you."
At their nodding in agreement, Rhoda and I walk hastily to class.
♥♥
Rhoda and Shawn find me by the tennis court at lunch break. I am talking earnestly to Nahar and he is inclined towards me as if he cannot risk missing a single word. I glance up when I see them approaching.
"Rhoda can tell you," I say. "She is Joe's sister and when I went over to their house she was always my bedfellow."
Nahar looks up at her and Rhoda sees the hurt in his face.
"It's Tanu," I explain. "Spreading slander about me to save herself from a relationship that she has grown tired of."
"What can she be saying?" Rhoda feigns ignorance.
"The old scandal. That Joe Issa was in love with me."
Rhoda smiles at Nahar with all the warmth and confidence she can muster.
"Of course he was, Nahar. Don't you remember what it was like when Carla first came to school? Everyone was in love with her. My brother Joe among them."
"There was talk of a betrothal," Nahar says.
"There was nothing." I say quickly. "A boy, a girl, a poem and few words. Nothing at all."
"He wrote three poems to my girlfriend also!" Shawn chimes in. "He was the most idle boy in the school. He was always writing poems to everyone. What a shame he is dating a girl with no sense of humor. But thank God she has no love for poetry or she would have run away even sooner!"
We all laugh but we cannot turn Nahar off his course.
"She says there was precontract," he persists. "That you and he were betrothed."
"I have told you we were not." I contradict him with a little edge to my voice.
"But why should she say it if it is not so?" Nahar demands.
"To rid herself of her boyfriend." I snap. "To shame me!"
"But why choose that lie, rather than another. Why not say he was precontracted to Shawn's girlfriend if she had his poems too?"
"I expect she will," Shawn says wildly, hoping to delay the explosion from me. But my temper is rising up in me and I can not stop it. I pull my hand from the crook of his arm.
"What are you suggesting?" I demand. "What are you saying of me? Are you calling me unchaste? When I stand here and swear to you that I have never, ever looked at another man? And now you, of all people in the world, accuse me of being precontracted? You! Who made a promise to me eleven days ago and are now planning to fly back to India. You who might possibly get married to one of your cousins there!"
"Well that is not known for sure!" Nahar shouts back at me.
"And you know for sure that Joe slept with me? How can you attest to that? I am a virgin. Ask Mother or my brother here. Ask Sister Sonia, she made it official. I am an attested official sworn-to-it virgin. The Principal himself says I am a virgin. You can't be more of a virgin than me!"
"Before God!" he swears. "Will you listen to me?"
"No!" I scream, quite beyond control. "For you are a fool and I am in love with a fool and the more fool me. I will not listen to you but you will listen to every spiteful worm that would spit poison in your ear!"
"Carla!"
"No" I cried and fling myself from him.
In two swift strides he is after me and has caught me to him. I lash out at him and hit him on the six packs of his chest. Nahar grabs my hands and slams them behind my back, holding me so that my face is as close to him as if we are making love, my body pressed to his. His mouth is close enough to bite or to kiss. I see the look of avid lust that spreads over him the moment he has me close.
"Carla," he says again in a quite different voice.
"No," I repeat, but I am smiling.
"Carla."
I close my eyes and tip back my head and let him kiss my eyes and my lips.
"Yes," I whisper.
I turn in his arms and we walk together, hip to hip, his arm around my shoulders, my arm around his waist. We look as if we wish we are walking to a bedroom instead of walking by the tennis court. Our faces are alight with desire and satisfaction, as if the quarrel has been a storm like the storm of love making.
♥♥
"Good God," Shawn says in my ear as we walk home at the end of the day. "Is that how you play him?"
I nod. "Always with the rage and then making up." I say with a smile.
"Yes," Rhoda says. "Instead of the rage of making love, don't you think? They both get to shout and cry and then end up quietly in each other's arms."
"He must adore you, Carla," Shawn says. "You fly at him and then you nestle. My God, I've never seen it so clearly. You are a passionate whore, aren't you? I am your brother and I'd have you there and then. You could drive a man crazed."
I give a small laugh at that and hold my head with the confidence of a queen.
Rhoda nods. "She always gives in; but always at least two minutes too late. She always pushes it to the very limit and beyond."
"It's a damned dangerous game to play with a boy of absolute arrogance."
"What else can she do?" Rhoda asks him. "She has to hold him somehow. She has to be a castle that he besieges over and over again. She has to keep the excitement somehow."
Shawn slips Rhoda's into his arm and Rhoda takes my hand. We walk in a line of three deceivers and constant plotters.
"And what of Tanu?" Shawn asks. "She will never get her separation on the grounds Joe was precontracted to Carla?"
"She might as well wait for Joe to publicly come out. " Rhoda says crudely and we all break into a laugh.
We get to the school gate and part ways since Rhoda will be spending the night at her home. Shawn decides to follow his friends to cause trouble somewhere and I am left to walk home alone. I run into Tanu and her boyfriend Joe just a few blocks away.
"They tell me you have won and that my star shall never rise again." Tanu says to me, her eyes heavy with tears.
"I am," I reply, a little chilled by the indifference of her tone.
"So now you can soak in this moment. A moment where I am fallen next to nothing and you are in the highest of favor."
I bite my tongue and bow my head. "I am sorry if you are offended, Tanu." I say kindly.
"You know I had thought I'd be great," she says bitterly. "Having a piece of your life. I hoped I'd be something like you; a girl who sees the whole picture of the scene, informed, loved and head in high favour. But no, here I am, coals burning the remnants of my reputation to ashes."
I keep my silence and my eyes down. When I look up she is smiling at me, her ironical half sad crooked smile. "Ah little best friend," she says gently. "I wonder if it was ever worth it to throw away what we had."
"Stop Tanu. You will only inflate her ego." Her boyfriend, dearest Joe chimes in.
"I forgave you for taking my boyfriend," I lie sweetly. "What I can't comprehend is why you would go ahead and stir rumours about me. Rumours about..."
"Oh I know Carla," Joe cuts me off. "We did not have much time together, did we? We did not bed very well nor very often. We did not learn tenderness or even desire. We only had a little time."
"You know whose fault that is but I am sorry for that too," I say softly.
"Sorry that we did not bed?"
"Joe?" I say, genuinely confused by the sudden sharpness in his voice.
"It has been suggested, very politely by your brother, that perhaps I had dreamed it all and we did not touch at all. Is that your wish? That I deny ever having had even a kiss from you?"
I am startled. "No! You know it is not my wishes that are consulted in these matters. If am ruined, my brother is ruined. So he will say whatever needs to be said so we have not even a thread of blemish."
"And has he told you to tell your little prince that I was imponent on our first night and thereafter?"
I shake my head. "Why would I say such a thing?"
He smiles. "To get our relationship set aside," he suggests. "So that you are the Virgin Mary herself."
There is a silence. I find that I am staring blankly at him, my cheeks blazing, but I keep my mouth shut. He looks at me for a moment and I see the anger drain from his face and be replaced with a sort of weary compassion.
"Say what you have to say," he recommends me. "Whatever your brother orders you. If he presses you to say that on our bedding night I juggled with silver pomanders all night and never lay between your legs, you can say that. Swear if you have to, you will have to. If you are not pure as the Pope you are going to face the scrutiny of The Principal and the hatred of all of the school. I shall spare you mine."
We look at each other very steadily for a moment.
"Is that all?" I ask acidly.
He smiles at me, his wolfish smile. "Yes, now go on then and prepare for your judgement tomorrow," he concedes grudgingly. "The Devil beckons you. "
"If I refuse?" I ask, my voice very thin.
"You don't," he says simply. "The world's not changed that much yet. Men still rule."
He looks at me in the face and I feel the weight of his hatred like a thumb pressed on my forehead. I search my soul for courage or a witty reply but find none.
He gives me his most cynical smile that leaves his eyes as cold as wet coals. "Luck be on your side," he says. "For if this overthrows you then you will be named, without contradiction, as a whore, a pretty little whore."
A/N:
Hey you pretty humans.
This took and I'm sorry. I had so many fashion projects but school is about to close so you'll be getting daily updates.
Let me know your thoughts on this one and what you'd wish happens in the next. Leave your comments, loves.
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See you soon loves.