The Pull of Destiny (82 page)

He’d offered
her me.

“No. I won’t
hate you, Luke.”

I gasped as mom
walked through my room’s open door, her hair flowing down her shoulders.

“Mom, I don’t
want to go. Don’t do this,” I pleaded, starting to get to my feet and groaning
with pain as my head pounded. With a grunt of frustration, I sat back down, my
hands clenched into fists. “Don’t give up your life for me.”

I knew I sounded
as melodramatic as a soapie actor but I couldn’t help myself.

Mom smiled
serenely as she sat down next to me. “I’m not. Well, I am, but it’s for the
best.” She stroked my forehead as she went on. “I’d rather practice medicine in
and office in Surrey and have you near me than be out in New Orleans knowing
that you’re here. Your dad has had you to himself for all these years. Now it’s
my turn and if I have to go into private practice to have you, then go into
private practice I will.”

“There you go,
everything’s settled,” dad exclaimed, a mock hearty note in his voice as he
clapped his hands. “Get some sleep and read up on your new school in the
morning. I pulled a lot of strings to get you into Charterhouse and I don’t
want you to mess it up.”

I knew full
well what that look on his face meant. Case closed, class dismissed. That could
only mean one thing. I was going to the UK in two weeks’ time. How the hell was
I going to break it to CiCi?

Dropping a kiss
on my cheek, mom whispered, “Goodnight, Luke. I’ll be here bright and early to
explain more.”

***

Making things
right with a specific ex friend was only part of my preparations to leave NYC.
The bigger and most important part was telling CiCi I was leaving. I still
hadn’t done that yet (I know, I’m a horrible person). My flight was just over a
week away and I still couldn’t muster up enough courage to tell her I would be
gone for a year. That’s right, I would rather apologize to Ahmed for punching
him than tell CiCi I had to leave due to my own stupidity. My one-way trip had
only started to sink in when I had to explain to Faith why people were packing
up my stuff at home. I was only taking a couple of cases of stuff with me, the
rest was going into storage. Having to hold Faith as she cried wasn’t something
I ever wanted to go through again.

“But I need
you,” she kept wailing, as I soothingly whispered in her ear, wanting to cry
myself. “You can’t leave me, Luke! I need my big brother!”

Yeah, that was
tough.

Ahmed picked up
on the second ring, sounding disoriented. Oops. Guess I shouldn’t have called
him at 7am on a Saturday. Ahmed wasn’t a morning person.

“Yeah?” he
said, his voice raspy.

Swallowing
nervously, I said, “Hey, Ahmed, it’s me. Luke.”

There was a
short silence and for a moment I thought he had hung up on me. “Astor?”

I grinned at
the familiar nickname. Nobody but Ahmed called me Astor. “Yeah.”

“What the hell,
dude? What happened to you? You just disappeared off of the face of the world
and- is it true that you’re in hospital?”

“Yeah,” I said
slowly.

Ahmed sucked in
a breath. “What happened, dude?”

Pointedly, I
replied, “If you’d really wanted to know I think you would’ve found out by
now.”

Okay, so I
wasn’t calling him to start something else, but I couldn’t help feeling
slighted that I had been MIA for two and a half weeks and nobody knew what had
happened to me. Even though we’d been fighting, it still rankled to know that
my so-called friends didn’t really care enough to find out why I’d been
hospitalized.

“I tried, man,”
Ahmed said slightly petulantly. “We all tried to find out what was up, but you
know how the grapevine at school is! Can’t trust it. Robyn wasn’t talking, so I
couldn’t get the scoop from her. I called your cell phone a couple hundred
times- nothing.”

“Why didn’t you
ask Celsi?”

I couldn’t help
feeling heartened by hearing that Ahmed
had
tried to find out where I
had gone and what had happened.

“We tried but
she blew up at us.” Ahmed let out a shaky sounding laugh. “It was scary, dude.
She went all super saiyan on us. Called us fake and phony.” He laughed again
and I chuckled, imagining it in my mind’s eye. You did
not
want to get
on CiCi’s bad side. I had found that out the hard way. “It was pretty
impressive, but yeah. What happened with you?”

“I had an
aneurysm and it ruptured.”

“No way!” Ahmed
sounded shocked.

I nodded
sagely, even though he couldn’t see me on the other end. “Yup.”

“And- and
you’re okay now?”

“All things
considered, yeah. I’m pretty good.”

His voice was
tinged with awe as he said, “Wow. That’s incred- you’re incredible, dude.”

“Thanks,
Ahmed.”

“Jeeze, I had
no idea!”

“Yeah, I’ve had
the aneurysm for a while now. That’s why I was getting all those headaches,” I
explained.

“Why didn’t you
tell us?” Ahmed asked.

I sighed.
“Ahmed.”

“I guess we
would have been jerks about it, huh?” Ahmed answered sheepishly.

Tugging a hand
through my bed head hair, I replied, “That’s what I thought.” Hesitantly, I
continued. “Speaking of jerks, I- I wanted to say sorry for the whole fight
club incident. I’m sorry, dude.”

“You mean the
battle royale?” Ahmed laughed. “That was my fault. I shouldn’t have baited
you.”

“I shouldn’t
have swung at you.”

“But I should
have tried to tell the truth to Principal Herman,” Ahmed protested.

I snickered
loudly. “Dude, you told so many lies that I thought your nose was going shoot
off!”

“I’m sorry,
bro.”

“It’s all
good.”

And just like
that, it was all forgotten.

“I guess I was
pissed coz you were changing,” Ahmed said slowly.

I raised my
eyebrows. “I was?”

“Yeah, man. You
know we only started hanging out and becoming tight right before Shane’s
accident, when you were the badass, pissing off daddy dearest left right and
center.”

Nodding, I
said, “Yeah.”

I remembered
those days with a pang of regret. If I had done things differently, who knows
where I would have ended up?

“Shane and I
didn’t get along coz he was such a good guy when we started hanging out. You
were more like me, selfish, inconsiderate, and stuck-up.”

I sighed. “I
remember that.”

Boy, did I!

“When you
started hanging out with Celsi you started changing just like Shane did. You
reminded me of him.”

That gave me a
jolt. “I did?”

Ahmed chuckled.
“Yeah. And it pissed me off coz you were changing for the better and everybody
noticed.” He sighed as I listened intently. “I wanted you to stay the same as
me. Party all night, drink all day, and never mind what the haters say. But you
started to care and you started to blow us off for Celsi and it made me mad coz
I was jealous. I envied you, Luke. I envied how you could just change for the
better without looking back.”

“So that’s why
you tried to cock block me,” I said lightly.

“I didn’t want
you to be happy, I guess. Especially with my little sisters best friend. I was
a hater, Luke. But now- I’m over it. I’m happy for you. Seriously.”

My mind reeling
from Ahmed’s revelation, I said, “I don’t have much time to be happy with her,
though.”

“What? Why?”

Briefly, I told
him about my dad’s plan for me to finish school in Surrey, of all places.

“When do you
leave?”

“Next week.”

A sharp intake
of breath. “Shit.”

“I know.”

Hesitantly,
like he was sure I would say hell no, Ahmed asked, “Can I come visit you before
you leave? I have a sudden desire to hear you say ‘pound it’ one more time.”

“Anytime, man.”

Celsi’s
Point of View

The weekend
found me at the El Hamed’s penthouse hanging out with Shazia and Robyn as we
watched a couple of sappy movies.
Ah, there’s nothing quite like a girls
night out.
We were trying to get in our fair share of bonding in
preparation for my trip to Los Angeles. I was starting to get excited about it
myself, even though I couldn’t help being nervous. I’d never travelled outside
New York and now I was going all the way across the country to stay with the
father I had just met and his fiancé. I was scared.
What if she doesn’t like
me? What if I don’t like L. A
.? But I tried to keep all the negativity in
check because I had no idea what was in store for me.
The power of positive
thinking is a force to be reckoned with.

Anyway, I
really didn’t have anything to be stressed over right now. My face was almost
back to normal, people had stopped looking at me like I was Rihanna V2 and my
boyfriend was awake.
What more can a girl ask for?

Shazia sank
onto a body pillow with a bag of popcorn in her hands. She glanced at Robyn,
who was busy texting on her new cell phone.

“Who are you
texting?” she exclaimed, thumping her fist on the floor.

Robyn glanced
up and stuck her tongue out at Shazia before resuming her textathon with
furious concentration. “Todd,” she replied, the ‘duh’ tone in her voice cracking
me up.

“I can’t
believe it,” I giggled, reaching forward to grab a handful of popcorn from
Shazia’s bag. “You two have been dating for almost four months!”

Shazia’s lips
curled up in a teasing grin. “Are you going to dump him soon?”

Don’t judge us;
we just weren’t used to seeing Robyn stick with one guy for more than two
weeks. And Todd had seemed so generic from the get-go.
Forgive me for
thinking that he wouldn’t last long.
Obviously, the guy had something
special going for him.

“I don’t think
so.” Robyn shook her head, finally letting her phone slip from her hands. She
beamed. “He’s just- he’s Todd, you know?”

Um, not
really.

“He’s got that
good good?” I asked, dropping a large, theatrical wink in her direction.

Throwing a
cushion at me, (it missed and bounced off Shazia’s head) Robyn snorted
playfully. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Celsi! We haven’t bumped uglies
yet!”

Ahmed snorted
with laughter as he strolled into the lounge, very shirtless.

Is it bad
that I’m ogling Ahmed’s chest even though I have a boyfriend? He
does
have a very nice
chest. Well defined stomach muscles. Stop it, mind
.

“Bumped uglies?
Nice one, Robyn,” he chuckled, plopping himself right in between me and Shazia.
Oh, Lord, all that naked flesh right next to me? Why?!
Swiping the
popcorn bag from Shazia, he took a handful, grinning friendlily at me. “Hey,
Celsi.”

Uncertainly, I
smiled back. “Hi.”

Ahmed had
resumed being nice to me since I yelled at him and his cronies that fateful
day. He had actually walked up to me the day after and asked me if I wanted him
to rough up the guy who had beaten me up. When I told him that he was in
prison, he said that was where he belonged. Sure, it was a nice change, having
Ahmed being really nice to me all the time, but with him there was always a
catch. His sudden spurts of niceness never lasted for long.

Let’s see
how long he can keep it going this time.

“So, I hear
you’re going to L. A. this summer?” he asked me, a curious look in his brown
eyes.

I nodded.
“Yeah, I am.”

“That’s good,”
he said, hiding a yawn behind his hand. “At least you won’t have much of a
chance to miss Luke while he’s in The UK.”

For a few
seconds after Ahmed spoke, his words didn’t register. Then all of a sudden it
hit.

Say what
now?

“What?” I
asked, whipping my head around to face him. Quailing under the look I had fixed
him with, (
my eye was twitching and my nostrils were flared. Pure madwoman
)
Ahmed bit his lip tensely as he realized that he had let slip something I
didn’t know.

“Uh oh,” Robyn
said, looking up from her vibrating phone long enough to notice the rising
tension in the room.

Ahmed ran a
hand over his face. “Oh, shit. He didn’t tell you yet.”

It wasn’t a
question.

I pushed back
my hair with both hands as I frowned. “What did you mean, when Luke is in the UK?”
I asked slowly, my mind whirling.

“If he hasn’t
told you yet then I don’t think I should be-,” Ahmed started, sounding like he
was getting some tips in how to be diplomatic from Shazia, who was watching the
show with her mouth wide open.