WHEN WE ARRIVED we couldn’t find parking anywhere. We’d left early as Becky suggested, but it wasn’t early enough. Cars poured out of the drive way and onto the street for another two blocks. I couldn’t stop laughing and couldn’t imagine what the inside must look like.
“I don’t think that Longbottoms has ever been this full,” Sammy said.
“Well, I can’t complain.”
Isabel and Lucille laughed. She and Sammy had gotten ready at Lucille’s place and it was fun having all of them there.
Becky, as always, looked stunning. She’d blown out her hair and chosen skinny jeans with a shoulder-cut top and leather jacket with high-heeled boots. Sammy went with tight black pants and flat boots, like me. I had to wear one of my designer jackets over dark blue jeans and a halter neck top. I needed to look like a princess/business woman and Lucille had tied up my hair and done my make up again.
Lucille drove around the block and dropped us off at Longbottoms’ entrance. When one of the parking lot guys saw us, he waved like crazy to get our attention and showed with his arms and hands that there was parking reserved for us.
What can I say, it’s good to be the boss of an awesome club.
Inside was a mess, and flashes overpowered me. This time I smiled and answered questions as best I could until Monique took my hand and told the press that I was needed.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Oh, Jimmy gave all of us the run-down on what it was going to be like when you walked in here.” I laughed as she led me and all of us to the VIP room.
It was packed with the old crowd. Blaze and her friends were also there and she gave me two kisses on the cheek just like last time. I didn’t even go to the opening of this year’s warbel games as we were too busy getting everything ready.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her as Sammy’s eyes grew right next to me. “Aren’t you supposed to be training?”
“We took tonight off to celebrate the opening. Jimmy really had a bad break and you are my favorite princess for helping him out,” she said in her slightly European accent.
“Well, it’s my pleasure.”
She laughed.
“Before I forget, please meet Sammy. She is a huge fan, and she’s that stupid idiotic dragon of mine’s sister.”
She gave me a sad look. “Still no word from him?”
I shook my head. “He’s still pissed off because I kicked his ass.”
She laughed. “Give him time. He’ll come to his senses,” she said and looked at Sammy. “Hi, I’m Blaze, nice to meet you.”
“I know who you are.” She grabbed Blaze around her neck and we just laughed at Blaze’s stiff posture.
“You sure don’t waste any time. Quite the opposite of your brother.”
We all just laughed.
A waiter came around with cocktails on a tray and handed me, Becky, Sammy and Blaze one. I gestured for him to write it on a tab in the air and he nodded. I didn’t know all their names yet, but I was sure I would in the next couple of days. We sat on one of the sofas next to Blaze and started talking.
When the first DJ started we all danced right there in the VIP room.
The night flew by and I couldn’t stop watching the crowd, the bar and everyone just having fun.
You are missing out on so much, you idiot, I thought in my head but I got no reply. How could this have been so easy for him and so difficult for me? I struggled so much trying to feel him, to get a glimpse of where he was.
I blew out air and went to sit on the sofa again.
“Why the long face?” Becky asked and I brought the cocktail glass to my face and shook my head with a soft smile.
“He’s an idiot, Elena. He will regret it one day, and that is all that I can get out of George.”
I laughed. “You asked him?”
She nodded. “I think it’s unfair that we can’t tune into them the way they can to us, and he knew exactly where I was going with all of this.” She tapped on her head. “He told me to tell you that he will regret it one day.”
I doubt it but I didn’t say anything, and instead I gave her a smile.
Blake wasn’t going to regret anything, because he would rather die before he dented.
WE LEFT WHEN the sun came up and the last customer, who was Blaze, left.
Jimmy and Monique smiled. They were both tired, that much we all could tell. “We need to order more stock later today, tonight was a huge success, Elena.”
“I’m over the moon. You guys think you can manage without me today?”
They both laughed. “Go, have fun. Prison is starting soon,” Monique said and I gave her a hug.
“Thanks, I’ll come say bye before I go.”
“You’d better.” She pointed a finger in my face.
I fell asleep in the car with my head on Becky’s shoulder. At home I slumped to my room which I shared with Sammy and crashed onto my bed.
Sleep came fast and when I opened my eyes again the sun had started to set.
Isabel and Lucille made us breakfast at six o’clock in the evening the next day.
The rest of the evening we spent with face masks and painting our toe nails in front of the T.V. Lucille and Isabel were right next to us enjoying a little mother-daughter time. I wondered that if my mom had been alive, if I would have ever known these people. But then my father and Sir Robert flashed into my head and it answered my question. Isabel and Sammy would’ve been here, and this would’ve probably been back in the castle of Etan. Still, not knowing if Becky would’ve been in my future? I couldn’t imagine not being friends with her.
I’d laughed at her earlier before when she’d chased George away as she just wanted some ‘alone’ time with the girls.
To my surprise he’d obliged and didn’t even pull a face which Becky hated, as she knew sending him away would not change the fact that he would still be able to be with her through their connection. At least he wants to be with her.
You got that right, the voice in my head said as I started to paint my big toe’s nail.
I looked up, froze slightly but shook my head as my jaw muscles jumped. Just get out of my head. I’m not forcing you to do anything. I’m not going to be bullied by you, idiot.
He laughed. Glad you haven’t changed.
Bite me, I thought with as much poison as I could.
“Elena, you okay?”
“Yes,” I snapped at Becky.
She gave me a knowing look. “Tell him to fuck off.”
“Becky!” Lucille scolded.
“Mom!” Becky mocked her. “You have no idea how annoying they can be.”
“Tell him to come home before I lose my temper and drag his ass back,” Isabel said and I giggled. Of course she knew and by that admiring look on her face, it confirmed it.
“He’s gone, hopefully,” I replied.
“You know where he is?” Isabel asked.
“No, I’m not so tuned in to him, and thank goodness for that too.”
You know that’s not true, Elena.
Shut up, it’s really annoying.
Oh, come on Princess, you can’t hide things from me.
Princess, what is wrong with you?
“He’s still speaking to you?” Becky nudged me slightly.
“Yes, and I wish he would just stop.”
He chuckled. You don’t mean that. I tell you what, why don’t you come and find me and we can play a little game of hide and seek, he said in his seductive voice.
I started to laugh out loud. You’re drunk, aren’t you?
Maybe.
Well idiot, Elena is not in right now, so leave a message at the beep,. He didn’t reply.
“What was that all about?”
“He’s drunk, you guys know how he suddenly changes toward me when he’s drunk. Well I’m not that type of girl and he better not try coming here tonight or I will roast his ass.” Even though I didn’t have my abilities anymore, I’d find a way.
All of them laughed except the voice inside my head.
Blake must have passed out or something because he didn’t bother me with any of his crap or show up as I thought he would. I hated it when he was drunk as he made me so confused.
I fell asleep around eleven and woke up around eight.
Today was our last day. Tomorrow it was back to Dragonia.
A part of me wanted to go back as we started a new year but a part of me really felt at home with Becky and Sammy.
Another thing I dreaded was wondering if I would see his sorry ass back at the Academy or not.
Lucille took us shopping at ten and we spent the entire day buying new clothes—I couldn’t go to class in my designer outfits made for meetings—and things for the new year.
I had to get a potion set because we were going to start brewing some this year. I really was looking forward to that.
That night I read my mom’s journal to Becky and Sammy again.
My mother had been red and confused when she’d told Margerite about spending time with my father. A part of her still hated everything he stood for but a part of her had fallen in love with the things she didn’t know about him. Maybe he was nothing like them, she’d written.
In the next couple of pages she’d written about telling her parents and how they hadn’t shared in Margerite’s enthusiasm. She was a commoner and he was royalty. My grandfather’s advice was to never tell him who she was, as it could end badly for their family and the best was to just forget about him. She had agreed with an ache in her heart.
I felt bad for her. It couldn’t have been easy for her.
In the next couple of pages, I could tell she really had tried hard but she couldn’t stop thinking about him, about his lips on hers and how her stomach would flutter every time she thought about that.
I knew that feeling. After Lucian and I crossed that line, I still got flutters in my stomach when I thought about it, but always followed by a hollow painful ache afterwards. I missed him so much.
The one thing my grandparents didn’t bet on was my father’s determination to find this girl. My mother wrote about the day she had to pack the inventory in the store and how my grandmother had shrieked, like she would when a rat ran across the floor. Then she’d said the words:
Good morning, Your Majesty, what brings you to this side of the world?
She described how my father chuckled and how it had stirred her blood. “I believe my fiancée purchased some goods here and forgot to pay.”
Her mother giggled, and mine absolutely hated that he’d said fiancée. That the woman he was supposed to marry didn’t deserve him.
He’d paid the bill and said goodbye. My mom was so close, all she had to do was step out of that space and he would have seen, he would know that it was her.
She hadn’t heard the bell of the door yet, and knew he was still inside the shop but her feet couldn’t move, she couldn’t disobey her father’s wishes and she wouldn’t do that to her family. She remembered what the king’s father had done to the king’s true love when they’d found out she wasn’t human. They’d beheaded her and there was nothing the prince could’ve done. Her father was not a man making up stories for his own health.
“This,” the journal read. “What is in here?”
“I make that myself. It’s a scented water with lavender and vanilla fragrance,” my grandmother had said.
“I would like to buy one, the smell has become my favorite over the past few days and I struggled to find it,” My father had said and the butterflies in my mother’s stomach grew wild.
“Oh,” my grandmother said. “How so?”
My father didn’t say anything. Her mother was going to know she’d pinched a little of hers and she would get into a lot of trouble. “Let’s just say I met an angel, smelling exactly like lavender and vanilla.”
“An angel?” her mother said softly and cleared her throat. “Well, then I’m glad we could be of service in finding that, Your Highness.”
“Thank you,” He’d said kindly and my mother knew her mother was writing out a proof of payment slip.
“Have a good day, ma’am.”
“Same to you, Your Highness.”
The bell rang and my mother found herself sitting on the floor.
She’d gotten into trouble for pinching some of my grandmother’s stash but she said there lingered a worried look on her mother’s face over the next couple of days.
My father didn’t return but there was a notice a week and a half later, one that reduced the tax and one that made her family happy.
At least something had gotten through to him, was my mother’s last entry on that day’s page.
“Damn, your mother sure knew how to write in a journal,” Becky said clutching a pillow in her lap.
“It’s so sad and yet so amazing, what they managed to do together. I can’t wait to hear how he convinced the king to break off the engagement to the snob and let him marry your mother.”
“Guess it’s something similar to me and Lucian. They saw the changes in my father and knew it came from her.”
“They don’t make love like that anymore,” Becky said. “Now it’s just, hey here’s a dragon that will feel your every need.”
She stayed quiet for a while. “I know it’s not like that, but it feels like that,” she said softly. I didn’t know if she answered George or us.
“How did you find out that George could feel you?”
“He just blurted it out like it was nothing. I was excited at first but knowing that he knows everything going on inside my head, it’s not so cool anymore.”
“He loves you, Becky. You guys can make it work.”
“I know, it’s just hard to get used to that’s all.” She sighed, climbed off my bed and said goodnight to Sammy and me.
I shut off the lights and lay next to Sammy.
It was quiet for a while. “I never thought about it that way. I was so envious when Becky told me what it is they can do, but now I’m glad that Dean and I aren’t like that.”
“I don’t think it’s that bad, especially if the dragon cares about the other person. I just wish it was the other way around too.”
“Yeah, that does suck a bit.”
I giggled softly and closed my eyes, thinking about my mom and how badly I wished for her to appear in my dreams again. I was sure she could’ve told me her version of this whole dent connection thing. She would’ve made it sound like the best thing there was, she could’ve explained it to me better. But she didn’t come anymore, and I had to deal with all of this on my own.
