After a year and a half of trying to move on from the what-ifs, the tides have pulled Alexandra Rivera and Zachariah Kim back together again.
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In the h...
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"Can you imagine having such bomb sex with someone that they write a song about you called Sex on Fire? I wish I had a musician to fool around with."
"Musicians are overrated." I exhale a final puff of smoke out of the window, watching as the gray swirls race past my nostrils and dissipate into streams of warm autumn breeze. "And I don't think that song is what you think it's about."
This bad habit I've acquired since knowing him lingers like a scar amongst the other memories I've spent the past couple of years trying to forget, and tonight grips hold of me too firmly to allow such wishes to become reality.
Katerina's apartment provides a calm backdrop to my inner turmoil over attending the party tonight. With the sun hanging low in the sky, bathing Hawai'i Kai in the warmest hue of orange, the two of us listen as Cardiac Arrest by Bad Suns plays in the background while we get ready. It took some convincing on her part to get me to agree, but there are only so many times Katerina can flash me her doe-eyed smile before I cave. She's a difficult woman to refuse.
Quite frankly, the last thing I want to do is attend this party. Not because I don't want to support my friend—Calum is the only reason I'm going—but a party is about the least appealing pain I can think of, and the fact that it's in a town I consider his makes it less so.
Her slender frame juts out into the opening of her small bathroom door as she huffs, regarding me with frustration. "Alex, don't hate on my kinky musician fantasies just because your tryst never worked out. Dreaming of being an artist's muse is a rite of passage."
I tiptoe around the piles of rejected clothes like I'm navigating a minefield, easing my way into the bathroom in which Katerina is putting on her makeup. While she delicately balances a pair of false lashes between tweezers in one hand, she uses the other to spritz Miss Dior perfume along her chest. I perch myself on the lid of the toilet seat and the chill of the smooth surface nips at my skin in her near glacial air-conditioned apartment.
"We don't speak of him anymore," I warn, "remember?"
A foggy glance ricochets back through the reflection in the mirror, her features dripping with concern. "Sorry, but it's kind of inevitable, right? We are going to a party at his best friend's house."
"No," I interrupt with more snark than I mean to. "They're friends but they were never best friends. And Calum is my friend, too. I can hang out with him without Zach being part of the equation."
The only person Zachariah has ever called his best friend is me, and we both know how that ended.
"I know and you're right, but that doesn't mean his name won't come up."
Although I understand Katerina is simply doing her best to prepare me for an unwanted but possible outcome, it's hard not to let the irritation prickle at my resolve. Some truths never want to be heard, even if they need to be felt.
