1
“He- he left me, Taz,” she wailed, her dark blue eyes spilling a waterfall of tears.
“What?”
Deep down, Taz was relieved, but she was definitely surprised. That low down scumbag had the nerve to dump her best friend? After all he’d done?
“Well,” Athena Kourikopolis started, “I’m technically the one who ‘left’ but...” her voice trailed off as her emotions got the best of her and she started crying again.
Taz, her red haired best friend was already a man-hater but even she still couldn’t understand why anyone would leave this delicate dark-haired beauty with the most amazing eyes and the innocence of a child. It didn’t help that Athena was so upset that she wasn’t making sense anymore.
“What happened then, Athena?” Taz insisted, her initial outrage quickly fading.
She listened as Athena wept over the details of her involuntary break from the biggest asshole in her life so far. It is almost always the same stupid excuses from men, she thought cynically. And it’s just a pity that not all women could see that it isn’t worth the grief. Love’s so blind that it can’t even see when it isn’t loved in return. Or when it isn’t even love at all.
“And then,” Athena now gulped, “he said something a bit... strange.”
“What did he say?”
“He said- he said I’d never get another man or be with anyone else.” She looked away from her friend’s increasingly incredulous expression.
“But he dumped you!”
“Well, not really,” Athena corrected her friend, unconsciously defending the man in question, “but I just don’t get it… why would he say something like that when he doesn’t really want me?” Saying those words out loud made her feel like such a failure.
After a moment Athena looked up, with shining eyes. “Do you think he actually wants to be with me?” she asked softly, almost to herself.
No. Taz did not think so.
Athena’s friend actually shivered and shrugged off images of stalkers and blood-spattered axes. All she said was, “What you need is a change of scenery. Look around and all you see is memories of Jason, Victor or Walter.”
Athena winced at that brusque reference to the first two men who had broken her heart in college. She was weeks away from graduation now but that didn’t mean she would be able to forget them when she went back to New York. It seemed that she was the fragile kind of lover who took everything personally.
Each time it didn’t work out, she felt so deeply wounded that she doubted she’d forget the man who caused the pain. She just hoped Taz was right and that romantic disaster wouldn’t follow her back to the city.
Thinking of moving back to New York made her think of her parents, wistfully.
It was days like today when she wished Daddy’s money could fix everything, and that was funny because, in all honesty, she wasn’t the typical spoiled girl who thought that it could. Her friends often acted like it could, but she was a bit more down to earth than that... or perhaps she was just used to her lifestyle. Her parents had never been unkind with her allowances and meeting her needs. They were never happy when she was miserable. No; all her discomfort was at the hands of handsome men who crushed her little heart the moment she handed it over.
Walter had always blamed her mistakes on her and her rich upbringing.
But he wasn’t coming to New York with her. And that was what she would focus on.
Athena knew that she should forget him. The man had come into her life and turned it upside down. He had made her feel like several different things... it hadn’t always been easy and it definitely hadn’t all been great. It wouldn’t do her any good to remember or hold onto to what they had, no matter how much she loved him.
Taz watched Athena considering the bit of advice she had just shared. She knew the moment her thoughts wandered off topic and distracted her broken heart. Athena’s face was so expressive that Taz could see the pain she was feeling warring with the regret and the slight sliver of hope. The redhead gave Athena a hug and encouraged her to ‘forget the asshole’ because that was all he was.
•
Lord knows she tried but the only reason Athena was able to smile on graduation day was that she saw her parents seated next to the dean of sciences, looking very much the wealthy Greek couple bursting with pride over their only child’s achievements.
The smile faded, though, as the ceremony carried on because listening to students make speeches about their own experiences at Sacramento U made her realize just how unfortunate her own had been. The people standing up to speak sounded genuinely happy to have spent so much time away from home, learning and making new friends. Several of the attempts she had made to get out there and be a social butterfly on campus had led her right into the arms of men who had hurt her and now her fragile soul was badly bruised.
Her lips turned up wryly, however, when she conceded to herself that they weren’t likely to share about heart breaks and failed relationships in front of a thousand people at this academic celebration. She’d honestly had an easy time assimilating into varsity life. Maybe she was the one who was weird. The only one thinking about why she didn’t mind not being at SU?
She couldn’t be the only one, she finally concluded, but now wasn’t the time to recall such a sad season in her life.
In an attempt to shake it off, Athena shrugged and turned her attention back to the man who was starting to call out the undergraduate degrees. She knew there was a twenty minute window before he called out her degree won with a first class distinction and honors, but she tried to listen out for any of her friends. She smiled as the captain of the basketball team stood up to get his degree. Nearly their whole class broke into applause and the team’s war cry. He had done them all proud and soon he would be going to play in Los Angeles. Not for the first time, Athena wondered what she was going to do with herself.
Before it even registered, the graduation ceremony was over and everyone started going their separate ways. After saying her final goodbyes to Taz and some of her close friends, Athena’s parents whisked her away, taking her back to New York. She watched the runway roll past her and she wordlessly wished Sacramento a final, painful farewell.
•
Once back at home, it didn’t take long for her mother to notice something was amiss with her only child. Athena’s mother, with the help of her husband, convinced Athena to take as much of the year off before joining one of the family businesses.
“Go to Rome. Or go see your grandmother in Athens,” they urged her.
At first Athena flat out denied that anything was wrong with her. She spent two weeks at home, allowing herself to be pampered and waited on at every turn, telling everyone she was just relaxing after the hectic final semester.
After a while, however, she felt stifled. They hardly gave her time to herself between social lunches and family visits. It was only then that she realized how much more freedom there was in being a student on campus, thousands of miles away from parental influence and interference. She didn’t think she would do well to stick around much longer. She wasn’t the outgoing sprite they were used to having around anymore. She just wanted to crawl within herself and be quiet.
The more time she spent with her family, the more they pried, trying to figure out what had taken the light out of her eyes and the spring out of her step. It was getting much harder to pretend.
“It must have been a man,” she heard her cousin say to her one day over coffee. “Why else would you be so dull around the edges? So listless?”
In her attempt to laugh it off, tears filled her eyes and her aunt- her mother’s sister- narrowed her eyes to take a closer look at her young niece. She was clearly concerned now. “I knew you should have gone to school here in New York, agape mou. You have always been the fragile one and with looks like yours, men were bound to trip over themselves to fool your heart right out of your chest!”
Athena blinked the threatening tears away, stifling a miserable sigh.
Her aunt was just like her mother and they both knew her too well. Their anxiety and curiosity would soon become a cause for family discussion and Athena didn’t want to be there to explain the past she had just left behind. It made her look stupid... a word she’d gotten used to hearing so often that she didn’t want any reminders.
It was true that she wasn’t herself. She was incredibly sensitive to criticism and always on the brink of tears or cringing at loud noises. She was edgy and more inclined to be withdrawn. Athena knew that something had to change and it had to be done quickly.
So within a few hours, she’d bought a ticket to London and promised to keep her parents posted on her progress across Europe. She was ready to leave the following morning.
