Come Find Me

Chapter 11

It had been a long week since Aris had left and Aria had returned to her normal life. Some days she still waited for pancakes to wake her up and on others, she would expect to see his room messy as always. She tried to use her daily routine as a distraction from the uneasy emptiness around her.

This somewhat sad routine of hers came to an abrupt stop when she sat down for breakfast. "Hermès," she said from the kitchen. "Could you please turn on the TV?"

In the background, she can hear the TV starting to come to life. She grabbed her bowl of cereal, now that her gourmet chef was out of the house, and sat down for the TV. What surprised her the most was the fact that Hermes had turned on the wrong channel. In all the years you have been always watched one specific channel every morning to get the news today for some reason entirely different one. "Hermes you picked the wrong channel today. Would you please change it to my usual."

Shockingly Hermes said, "No, I think that this channel will be a better option today."

Aria frowned up at the ceiling but decided that she didn't have enough mental energy right now to fight him on this. Huffing she started eating her cereal and watched the host talk about interviewing a new owner of some company. "I'm telling you, Hermes, this is why I don't watch this show. It's all useless-"

She stopped talking. Her spoon clattered back into the bowl and her eyes trained onto the TV with enough ferocity to cut the wall behind it if she tried. On the screen was Aris in a sharp-looking suit talking about his takeover of the family company. Aria was so focused on just watching him that she didn't even notice when they reached the end of the interview.

She started to listen right as the journalist pushed his glasses up on his nose and asked Aris, "Aside from this business talk, I have a quick question." Aris nodded his head with a smile that looked rehearsed to Aria. "You used to be very well known for being a party animal, but for the past two months, there has been complete radio silence from you. Any particular reason why?"

The camera panned over to Aris' face and he seemed frozen. In a split second, he collected himself and this time plastered on a genuine smile. He shrugged to the journalist, "I guess I had a reason to get out of those habits."

The journalist's smile grew and he pushed in hope of a story, "Did you meet someone?"

Aris let out a deep laugh and nodded. He seemed deep within his thoughts when he responded, "There is a girl who I met on an... island vacation and I fell in love with her. I guess partying got boring after that." Aria felt all of her blood rush to her feet. He had said the L-word. Then as soon as she realized what he said she grew angry.

Tuning out the rest of the interview, she started mumbling to herself, "He could have said it in person, he could have made this easier." Finally, her anger got to her and she screamed, "What was he thinking? I love him and he robbed me of the chance of telling him! He robbed me of getting out of here!"

Tears streamed down her face, as she tugged her hair. Suddenly her jaw fell open. Aris had just admitted to loving her in front of her, albeit on another land. "Hermes," her weak voice called. "Does this count as a confession?"

The last thing Aria heard before her world went black was, "It seems so."

~~~~

And so book one ends! This has been a journey and a half...