Chapter 1
Calm. Quiet. Peace.
The three things I wanted in life.
The three things I needed.
Or so I thought.
Enter reality and you get my life and what I actually have:
Disruption. Madness. Chaos.
I thought I escaped them when I moved away from home. I went to college, found my soulmates in friends, lived with them and then moved on my own to pursue my love of pottery.
Happiness. Purpose. Peace.
I thought I was finally going to get them all. I had finally found my path and the sense of belonging was warming up to me, lightning up my soul.
It is funny how everything you thought you knew can easily turn upside down. A butterfly's wings flap away from a hurricane that was my life before. I just didn't know it then.
But now, looking back, I don't miss my old self.
I regret a lot of things.
But not him.
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"Bartholomew!"
Finding my big black cat standing in front of the broken remains of my latest piece of work, wasn't how I was planning to begin my Friday evening.
Especially because today is Girl's Date Night (GDN for short, Elmira's little creation). I'm talking about a mandatory, blood-oath almost weekly meet up, that not even death could get you out of. It would just happen on your funeral instead. I had to get ready quickly, since my shift at the coffee shop took longer than expected and my cat as always isn't helping at all in that regard.
Sighing defeatedly, I go and grab my broom and a trash bag for the broken clay remnants of what used to be a cup. Upon returning to the scene of the crime, I stare at my cat's deep yellow-green eyes and in all seriousness tell her: "If I'm late it's going to be your fault."
But if I'm really being honest, it was my fault that I was so late. In truth I love Trevor and Andre -the owners of the little coffee shop I work at- too much and always end up helping them do some extra chores before closing, while getting caught in a deep fangirling conversation with them (more like a rant) about the latest queer book they have recommended me to read.
"Meow", is the answer I get from Bartholomew, before the little conniving anarchist turns his back on me and saunters away, like a self-righteous king who expects his servant to do his duty and clean up his mess.
I shake my head with a self-deprecating smile. I have gotten used to the role of "a cat-authority abiding peasant" as my friend Elmira so lovingly puts it (spoiler alert she doesn't like cats). Even as I continue to gather the pieces of my latest work and try not to cry about it, while I scream "MY BABY!" in agony in my head, I try to think positively. At least I hadn't gotten around to painting the cup, so not that much work is lost. And I have already delivered all my latest pieces of work to the coffee shop, so they were saved from Bartholomew's sudden decision to choose violence over my work.
I smile, despite the mess and the fact that I'm going to be late (and Elmira will have my head), thinking about Trevor and Andre and how outmost helpful they have been with my work. Immediately when I confided in them that I was thinking of starting my own small business, selling hand-painted, nature inspired pottery, they offered me a stand on their shop to sell my creations and cultivate a clientele.
Honestly most of the time I feel more like they are my queer uncles, rather than my employers, guiding me through life with their helpful advices stemmed from their hard-earned wisdom. Their cute little coffee shop felt like a second home to me almost immediately, when I started going there to study, before they eventually offered me a job. According to them: "You spend more time here, than any of our employees, so we might as well start paying you for it!"
The shop was named after their favorite song and their general personality vibe: "You've got a friend in me". Apparently when asked why this is their favorite song: "Is it because you love the Toy Story movies?" they turn to each other, smile affectionately, looking deeply, helplessly in love and explain in one voice: "It was the song that was playing when we first met". They had met at Trevor's nephew's birthday party, where Andre was hired to do the catering, and the rest is a heartwarming, makes-you-believe-in-love-again type of story.
Nostalgia fills me, as I reminisce that day. They confided in me their love story over hibiscus, red fruit tea and cinnamon heart-shaped glazed cookies, on a slow icy Monday morning. With that memory keeping me company, I throw away the remains of hours of hard work and manage to not tear up at all about it. Small victories, considering that precious minutes where lost and my cat is roaming a free man with no consequences and an appetite for destruction I will have to vanquish the only way I know how. By buying him more toys in an effort to distract him, because I am the sucker for him my friends claim I am and I still, impossibly, love him, flaws and claws and all.
I shake my head at myself, watching my cat gleefully licking his guilty paws away over the kitchen's window sill, ignoring me and I go to my bedroom and open my closet in search for the appropriate attire for the night. I have of course already thought it over, in the last few days and have two running winners in mind. A dark, purple colored shirt with pink designs that match my wavy, pink, shoulder-length hair, or a blue noir, body fitting dress with silver threads creating constellations all over my body, that accentuates my light blue eyes making them appear less pale and more alive.
"What do you think?" I ask my curious cat, who has migrated from the kitchen to my room and is looking at me speculatively.
"The one that makes my hair actually look pink and not a washed out version of it, or the one that helps my eyes look refreshed even though I haven't slept well in a long while?"
"Meow", Bartholomew replies decisively and hops on my bed stretching his body languidly.
"Yeah, that's what I thinking as well", I agree with him and put on the night sky dress. I know I can't fool my friends into thinking I am well-rested and not wearing myself thin working on upstarting my business, but at least I can try to decrease their worrying by appearing as alive as possible.
Stepping closer to the mirror I plug in my curling iron and start rounding my side bangs to fall more softly. It would be even better if I managed to make them fall over my eyes and their bags and hide them all together, but I have to settle, instead, for my concealer for the dark circles that have taken permanent residence on my face.
My pale skin (more often than not compared to a vampire's by my loving friends) desperately needs the saving touch of a blush. As for my thin chapped lips; I pull out my savior, my favorite glittery, diaphanous lip gloss. A dark blue eyeliner and blue-silver glittery eyeshadow completed the look of a moon-witch preparing for a night of mystique and intrigue with her coven. Exactly what I was aiming for.
Now I'm finally ready for our weekly GDN.
Not that we didn't meet up almost every other day, of course, mainly through video-chatting, or, on the more rare occasion, outings (given our very tight, impossible-to-align schedules), but that is the recommended dosage just for us to be able to function properly. It is vital, but it is done for trivial matters, just for the sake of each other's company, to gather the strength and support that comes with it.
GDN is our special date night. The night of the week, or, on more tight situations, the night of the month. We gather like the true coven we are, to discuss the problems and the successes of the week or month and collectively decide how to move forward in order to better our lives together. It is a sleepover meeting that officially lasts for an evening, but unofficially, depending on our needs could take up even the whole weekend if our schedules allow it.
I giggle, grabbing my overnight bag, as I remember the time we realized that it was Monday morning and we had missed all our classes and jobs, too caught up on our own little made up land, to even think about the existence of the outside world. It is a special thing that I love, when our date nights occasionally, unexpectedly turn into date weekends. It reminds me of when we all used to live together, back when we were in college, before Lyra and I moved into our own places.
I grab my keys and kissing my half-asleep cat on its fluffy head, I step out of my small, but cozy house, given to me by my dearly beloved late grandmother when she passed away.
'Has it been two years already since that happened?', I question, looking at the night sky.
The crisp October air greets me, eliciting a small shiver by the unexpected bite it has. Putting on my dark burgundy jacket, I walk down the pebbled path, though my front garden onto the driveway, where my bright red, beaten down pickup car is waiting for me. I have also inherited this from my grandmother, who hadn't used it for years before her death. So many memories in this car, it's difficult to keep track of them. It wasn't the first car of the group, but it quickly became the fan favorite by the sheer force of its will to stay alive and also because of the ability it offered, for one to lay town on its back and observe the stars.
Many stargazing trips into the countryside and movie watching dates were planned because of that car, even though upon first seeing it, my friends had laughed their asses off and said I looked like a playboy farmer coming to pick up his girlfriend from college.
Smiling to myself, I climb inside, back out of my driveway and get lost in my thoughts, reminiscing how I came to meet my amazing, crazy, couldn't-be-more-different-than-each-other friends. I let all the memories flood me, like a kaleidoscope of colors, as they usually do when I'm in this nostalgic mode.
Memories like, how we met at the Greek-American night our university was hosting, as part of culture week, in the first semester. For me, my maternal grandfather was from Greece, immigrating to America in his twenties. Here he met and fell in love with my grandmother, also of greek heritage, whose house I currently live in. For the rest of the girls, Lyra's father is from Greece, coming here for university studies and eventually staying, Chresa's paternal grandparents are Greek immigrants as well and Elmira's parents are both from Greece, coming here to do their residency, as doctors, where they met each other and got married, deciding to settle down here.
We clicked instantly that night, sharing stories about our crazy Greek side of the family and its contrasts with the American mentality. We found out that we were all forced to learn Greek as a first language, something that really came in hand later on in our friendship, whenever we wanted to have secret conversations that no one understood around us (joke's on us, turns out many people in the US are in fact Greek) or pretend to be tourists for shits and giggles.
After that memorable night, Elmira propositioned her idea to share a beautiful apartment she had found, but was too expensive to pay for alone. We had almost instantly agreed. It was like this friendship was written in the stars; we couldn't resist it even if we tried. It had fate written all over it (or that's how the romantics among us, meaning Lyra and I, liked to view it).
Thus we fell into a deep kind of friendship that was unshakable to its core, its roots deep within all of us, linking us inescapably for all eternity, like a magic spell that can't be undone. That's how I like to think of it, anyway and it's the reason why I call us the Coven. The best form of sisterhood, bound by magic, sacrifice and trauma, helping each other heal, while being so in tune with each other it can get scary. And the universe seems to be on our side, judging by how we are still opportune enough to be together and have such a rich tapestry of shared experiences.
But of course, since I mentioned how vastly different personalities we truly have, (a truly unique blend of traits that should be catastrophic when put together and yet impossibly that's what makes it work) each of us have a completely, singularly, diverse point of view of our group and appropriately has named it differently.
For Elmira we are like soldiers having each other's back for the everyday battles of life's war, linked by our collective trauma that only we understand and share. An overdramatic and intense view, just like herself.
For Lyra, we are like the meeting of neighboring, very different nations that actually like and respect one another. They recognize that they have the same struggles and actually need the neighboring nations to solve their problems and thus be led to prosperity. An interesting, more practical approach that views us in a more mature, put-together-light.
For Chresa we are like mental asylum patients who got together through their shared mental illnesses and somehow managed to escape and roam the streets freely, surprisingly still managing to keep ourselves alive (unhinged in her cynical, psychoanalyzing ways).
I chuckle as I think I wouldn't have us any other way, while I pull up on the parking lot and kill the engine.
Using my share of the keys, I open the door of the apartment complex and enter the elevator of my used-to-be building. Reaching the 8th floor, I get out of the elevator and find the apartment number 808A. I put in my key to unlock the door and suddenly it opens widely.
"Keira!" Is the first thing I hear before being engulfed -or more like crushed- into a hug. The smell of jasmine, wood, cocoa and lemon invade my nostrils, familiar in their intensity, evoking a flood of memories of summertime. Elmira's house by the beach, drinking cocktails out of bottles, the sand between our toes (and everywhere else), waves crushing into the shore, sea salt in our hair, watching the stars fall huddled together with blankets in two beach chairs to escape the night chill, basking in the sun for a few blissful hours and then getting burned for it, swimming till our skin prunes, reapplying mosquito repellent like our life depends on it (because it does), the bittersweet rides back home with the soundtrack of Lana del Rey and Taylor Swift. Inhaling deeper, I burrow further into her embrace (yes I love perfumes) (my nose is extremely sensitive) (also smell always evokes the strongest memories) (or so I've read in an article somewhere).
"Hello to you too Elmira", I reply chuckling.
"Late as usual" she says, pulling back. She stops and studies my face with her inquisitive big brown eyes, so sharp and observing I feel thay can see right into my soul, reading me like a wide open book. "You look tired, have you been sleeping?" She inquiries, thick black eyebrows furrowed.
Case in point.
"Sleep doesn't get work done", I shrug and ignore her unimpressed look. "You look great, by the way", I exclaim looking her up and down. She looks gorgeous as usual, her athletic figure clad in tight black leather pants with a burgundy flowy V-neck shirt, and a golden snake necklace with emerald eyes resting on her long tan neck. Her black thick hair, with honey brown highlights, is swept behind her back, tucked in her ears to reveal a matching set of golden snake earrings.
"Nice try in deflecting, very smooth going immediately for stroking my ego. I might even consider letting it slide", her full red stained lips quirk up into a smirk.
"Like your ego needs any more stroking Elmira", Chresa's snarky retort is heard all the way from the kitchen. "Leave poor little sleepless Keira alone and come help me. Put those fancy muscles of yours to actual use."
Elmira huffs supposedly fed up by Chresa's and hers constant banter, but her smirk turns into an affectionate, long-suffering smile.
"Because being a stunt double and fighting every day doesn't require their use", she retorts back, while we both turn and head for the kitchen.
"Meh", is Chresa's typical one syllable response, used to showcase how completely beneath her it is to answer a specific question.
Elmira rolls her eyes and turns to me: "Don't think I have forgotten about you miss", she whispers threateningly and I am just glad we have already reached the kitchen and I will not soon be crushed into small dust particles by her scary looking biceps that beat people up on the regular. My couch-potato easily bruised body wouldn't be able to survive it.
"Keiraaa come here and say hello to papa", Chresa says as she turns away from the food, and opens her arms invitingly, wrinkling her dark eyebrows at me.
Her small curvy built is hunched around a steaming pot, her black shiny bob haphazardly put in a small ponytail, strands still falling on her spectacled beautiful eyes, the color of intense hazel, where deep radiant amber hues clash with dark specks of green, framed by ridiculously long, thick eyelashes. Her round cheeks, red from the warmth of the steam, reveal her dimples as she smiles at me with foul, bee stung red lips, unpainted, as is her preference.
She is wearing her usual favorite button-up shirt, the one that's the color of the sea as it crushes to the shore, cerulean blue and washed up turquoise with white, along with dark blue jeans and black athletic shoes. From her ears hung silver, thin hoops and from her neck the white gold necklace we got her as a graduation gift (yes it cost a small fortune). It's our initials carved on the North Pole star (because we will always be her compass guiding her home) (yes very cringey we know).
I laugh as I hug her, letting the smell of old books, fireplaces and caramel, invade my lungs. (Yes I am about to have another smell-induced flashback) Chresa's smell reminds me of winter, trips through snow in mountainous villages, snowflakes tangling in hair and melting in eyelashes, the smell of chimneys in the air, hot tea warming frozen fingers, snowfighting to the point of frostbite and snowman-making (extremely inappropriate ones when Elmira is involved), ice skating with high risk of injury and watching the snowstorm curled up under one blanket, locked in the warmth of our home next to our fireplace.
"What do we have cooking here?", I ask, edging closer to the boiling pot.
"Can't your super nose guess?" Chresa teases while stirring her mysterious concoction.
"Knowing you, I would be surprised if you didn't try to sneak in psychiatric medication."
"Hmmm", she ponders, "not a bad idea at all."
I playfully shove her and get closer to the pot, catching smells of pumpkin and spices.
My eyes widen.
"Are you making your velvet pumpkin soup?" I ask her excitedly.
"Of course. The one that people keep coming back for", she says winking.
"Hopefully without ten litters of pepper this time", murmurs Elmira from behind, ever the troublemaker.
"Watch the pot for a second Keira, I think I found a nice place to shove this wooden spoon in" Chresa says turning around threateningly with her wooden spoon raised.
I give her a serious nod. "I agree violence is definitely excused in the case of an insult against your soup culinary expertise."
Elmira gives me a vicious glare her eyes shining from the betrayal and the promise of retribution, as she starts backing away slowly.
"I will remember this Keira", she promises.
"You won't be able to sit down after I am done with you much less remember this" Chresa says beginning to near her.
"What does your criminal psychology have to say for this behavior towards your dear friend Chresa?" Elmira yells while she breaks off running away from the kitchen.
"That's an interesting question. Once I am done with you I will make sure to find out."
Their bickering ends with the sound of the door clicking open.
While I'm still steering the pot, I can hear the crack of Lyra's bones as they are crushed in a bear hug (most definitely Elmira's).
"Lyraaa! Baby girl it's been so long!" Elmira whines loudly.
"It's been about a week", Lyra replies, the sound still muffled, indicating she hasn't yet managed to escape Elmira's hug.
"Ughh, don't remind me", Elmira groans.
"Let her go you brute! I also want to hug our little hoe", Chresa chastises.
"You have to go and ruin our tender moment", Elmira sighs mock- exasperated.
"You mean I have to go and save what little of Lyra's bones have remained intact by your chokehold of a hug."
"Relax my friends you can all have a piece of me", Lyra placates them.
"And that's why you are and will forever remain our beautiful little slut", Chresa concludes.
Lowering the heat on the pot and making sure it's good, I exit the kitchen.
"Is there a room for a fourth in this threesome?" I ask teasingly, while entering the living room.
"Nope", Elmira replies.
Lyra laughs. "Of course my friend.
"Did you just leave my pot unsupervised?" Chresa asks scandalised and before I can reply, she power-walks to the kitchen, murmuring under her breath: "You cannot trust anybody these days."
Lyra smiles, ignoring Chresa and envelops me in a warm hug. I'm immediately pleasantly overwhelmed by the feast of smells that usually accompanies her presence. She has a perfume of flowers, vanilla and coconut that fills my lungs, as well as a special hair oil of strawberries and red fruits and a body mist of cardamom and cinnamon. It is her usual heady combination, impossible to discern from her natural smell, that reminds me of spring, car trips on mountains, grassy hills and flower filled fields, the air blowing on our hair, picnics and festivals, the sound of fireworks in the distance, running through a field of flowers, the pollen sticking in our skin, Elmira sneezing while refusing to take her allergy medication, too-sweet candies and homemade baked goods staining our fingers, clear water from the mountains sources stone faucets flowing in our fingers.
I blink away the onslaught of sensations and memories, my gaze focusing on my friend's face.
Lyra has the kind of face that animators base Disney princesses on. Her eyes are big and round, their color that of dark green olives speckled with honey-brown dots and framed by long chestnut brown eyelashes. Thick eyebrows of the same color are carefully gelled to perfection, upon a pale freckled face with high cheekbones. Even though the concentration of freckles mainly covers her rose colored cheeks, some of them even cover her bright pink painted heart-shaped lips. Her face is framed by her long chestnut red locks, more dark red than brown, held up by golden pins with glittering colorful gems. Small golden hoops adorn her ears and an emerald sweater shows off the freckles on her shoulders. Her short height is overcomed by high heeled, red, faux snake-skin like boots and a short white skirt shows off her lithe yoga figure.
Despite her usual fashionable attire and perfectly arranged hair and makeup, I can almost make out the dark circles she is trying to hide and the frenetic energy in her eyes caused by one too many coffees and energy drinks.
"How are you my friend?" I ask her gently.
She smiles ruefully, not bothering to hide her feelings.
"You know the usual. Work, bills, my parents..."
"And the anniversary?" I continue for her once she trails off.
"And the anniversary", she agrees with a heavy sigh, eyes trailing off to look somewhere in the distance, immersed in the painful field of memories.
I nod sadly and hug her again. It is the reason this Girls Night is more special than any other during the year and the one that usually lasts the longest. Without ever saying it out loud we know that the week of the Anniversary our friend needs us the most, even though she never asks for it. She is a very private person, preferring to never burden us or anyone else with her problems, choosing instead to bottle them up. She is usually a ray of sunshine, her character bright and fierce always smiling, ever the optimist, the only one in our friend group to be described as such. Though she isn't oblivious neither naive. It's just that nothing used to falter her optimism, radiant happiness and passionate energy.
Nothing ever did until the accident.
