“They’re almost here. Come on; I’ll make you a hot chocolate.”
I stayed behind, lit up a cigarette, and made my way to the front of the house, determined not to let Nadia lock herself in her bedroom without talking to me first.
Less than five minutes later, Nadia’s brand new, white Audi A1 parked next to Nick’s Range Rover. Mel jumped out of the passengers’ seat, rushing toward me, bags with shopping dangling from her wrists.
“Hey, sorry, we lost track of time.” She pecked my cheek as a form of pause. “Where’s my little model?”
“She’s inside with Nick, probably putting flowers in his hair.”
Mel chuckled. “He’s such a softie. Maya could easily convince him to play dress-up.”
I looked over her shoulder, watching Nadia struggle to take out a large canvas out of the boot.
“How is she?”
“Why don’t you ask her?” Mel pecked my cheek again and walked inside to braid a crown on Maya’s head.
Nadia approached with the canvas in hand, holding it the other way around so I couldn’t see. She looked better, the bruises invisible under the concealer, but the sadness in her eyes was somehow clearer.
“You cut your hair.”
“Sometimes, a little change makes a big impact. I thought it might be easier to change how I feel if I changed how I look.” She propped the canvas against her legs to take a cigarette out of the packet. “Have you found the answer to my riddle yet?”
“Not yet, why?”
“I have one more.”
She turned the canvas over and fell silent, giving me time to take it in. The left side was dark, creepy, full of harsh lines and what looked like haunted faces carved in the tall, sharp rocks which surrounded a small clearing. A dark silhouette of a man stood there; his hand outstretched forward.
The right side was soft and bright, with a beautiful waterfall and white, polished pebbles. A rope bridge stretched across, but most of the planks were either broken or missing. In the middle of the bridge, on one of the few stable planks, stood a girl in a white dress.
She looked down, facing the bright side, and the remnants of ropes that used to tie her to the puppeteers’ hand shimmered in the air, kissed by the wind, reaching half-way toward the man waiting in the darkness.
She was taking a step forward, her hand outstretched toward the light, but the next safe plank was too far to reach. There were enough undamaged planks on the bright side for someone to walk across and reach out, to take her hand and help her cross, but no one waited on the polished pebbles. She was alone; darkness reached further than light.
God, how many more ways would that girl find to break me?
“I thought long and hard whether to give this to you.” Nadia broke the silence, butting the cigarette on the driveway. “Especially after I saw you with Chrissy…”
I took a step forward, then another, and one more, until I stood less than two feet away. The smell of her perfumes lingered in the air, doing weird things to my mental state.
“About that. Chrissy is…”
“Gorgeous,” Nadia cut in, surprising me with a genuine smile. “Cute and happy, and the way she looks at you? That’s what I wanted for you all along. We’re scarred and bruised in our own special way, but you deserve to behappymore than anyone. Chrissy can make that happen.”
She handed me the canvas and rose on her toes to peck my cheek, rendering me speechless. The softness of her full lips on my skin filled my insides with something warm, thick and sweet.
“Letting you go was the best thing I could’ve done for you. You don’t need more pain and suffering.”
My jaw worked; the warm sweetness gone. “You had no right to choose what’s best for me.”
“No, I didn’t. But I chose not to be the worst.”
She walked away, cutting the conversation short. We were nowhere near done airing our dirty laundry, but with Maya around, it wasn’t a good moment to talk, and I let Nadia walk away.
I glanced at the canvas again, at the girl in a white dress making her way across the destroyed rope bridge toward light; towardme.
She hesitated and lost her way.