Kemora Archives 2: Just the Wrong Kind of Girl
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Humi
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Chapter 1
ASHER
“Hot chocolate?” The barista repeats my order like I just shattered all her wet dreams. Her eyes roll over me, taking in my crumpled tee and faded jeans.
“Hang on, Ramis…” I tear the cell phone from my ear and answer her instead. “Yes.”
“You sure you don’t want a coffee or something stronger?”
“Hot chocolate is fine.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
She doesn’t move, just stands there with her palms plastered over the counter. I run a hand through my already tousled hair and her eyes shoot to the heartbeat tattoo on the outer part of my left forearm and then slide to the chunky leather bracelet on my wrist. I place my right hand above the counter and her gaze follows, taking in the ring on my middle finger before traveling back to my face and taking in my scruff.
I get it.
I look and smell like a caveman. Although, the barista’s expression doesn’t say she hates it. But in my defense, I was up all night completing my paper on the impact of organizational behavior on business whatever the fuck and it had come down to either running like crazy to submit it in person to Dr. Dale—because he gets off by torturing me like that—or taking a shower.
Clearly, my grade mattered more than dolling up. And it’s hot chocolate that takes the edge off gruesome times more than anything else in the world. It’s sweet and hot and wakes me the hell up.
So, yes, please. Hot chocolate. I give the barista a look.
“Coming right up,” she sighs.
“Thanks.” I smile at her and get back to my phone, stepping aside for the next person in line to place their order. “What’s the plan, Ramis?”
“Order me a slice of cheesecake,” he says then yells something about practice and gym to someone shouting in the background. “Idiots think I’ll have a calorie crash on the field.”
“You might,” I say, scanning the space around me. “And I’ve already ordered so you do yours when you get here.”
The coffee shop is teeming with Kemora University students at this hour. There isn’t a vacant table in sight. As I meander through in search, heads turn in my direction, and smiles grace pretty faces as more than a few hands wave to invite me over to sit with them.
Nope.
It’s too early for me to socialize and I want a table all to myself.
“Vir with you?” I lean against a wall, eyes on the barista, willing her to call my order anytime now so I can get out of there and find a place to sit elsewhere and mope about this one grade that keeps dipping no matter what I do.
“No,” Ramis sighs in my ear. “He’s helping Zara achieve her drama goals.”
I can hear him rolling his eyes and that makes me chuckle. “Vir is wasting his time. She will never let them be anything more than friends.”
“You can’t fault a guy for trying.”
Or a girl.
Like the one frantically waving at me. Her smile is cracking her face in two. The boy sitting next to her looks like he’s planning to breathe fire in my direction while she ignores him.
“Ash!” she hollers and scoots over her tiny bench to make room for me. “Join us.”
I pretend not to listen and walk right past her table.
Honestly, I’m doing her a favor. She needs to move past our date last spring that literally went nowhere. During dinner, she suffocated me with endearments, and by dessert, I knew we’d be sending out save-the-date emails if I didn’t end the evening at her doorstep with a swift goodbye while keeping her at arm’s length.
Ramis is saying something, but my brain mutes him as my gaze locks on an empty chair. I dash forward. The vacant table is inches away and my hand is already stretched out to mark the territory when the chair is suddenly wrenched from my sight. Dragged back and a body slips in, a backpack drops to the floor and two arms wrapped in black sleeves rest across the tabletop, fingers clicking away at a cell phone.
“Excuse me.” I knock on the laminate surface with my knuckles, a thick frown creasing my forehead. “I was going to sit here.”
She looks up.
And the universe misses a beat.
Ocean-blue eyes fringed with thick lashes for miles and arched brows that look like someone took personal care in drawing them, luscious lips made to kiss some lucky bastard senseless and a glossy mass of dark honey-gold layers pulled back in a thick ponytail. A few wayward strands escape framing her face.
Is there a photo shoot on campus I don’t know about?
She’s the kind of beauty that belongs on the cover of a swimsuit edition featuring insanely hot babes. And she’s looking at me as if I’m nothing more than a pesky bug bothering her.
“What?” She gives her head a slight shake to nuance her annoyance.
I clear my throat. “You’re in my seat.”
“I don’t see your name on it.”
“I don’t see yours either.”
Childish comeback. But my brain isn’t kicking on all cylinders. I need an energy boost. I need to think things through. I need that chair and, preferably, this goddess’s phone number. Before more words can escape my lips, metal scrapes against the stone floor and a pair of shapely legs swing over the tabletop—miles of gleaming ivory skin stretched over long limbs.
My brain drops further south of my navel.
Apparently, I’m not the only one to notice because spontaneous gasps and hoots fill the air all around us.
“Legs off the table!” a barista yells from her spot behind the counter.
Mystery Girl ignores her and keeps staring at me with a blank face. I arch a brow, but her expression doesn’t change. She isn’t exactly challenging me and yet, she is.
The hollering gets even louder.
“I’d like to taste that!” A boy leers and several others laugh saying something just as tasteless.
“Go fuck your mother,” Mystery Girl says without missing a beat, her eyes still on me.
If she wasn’t loud enough for those idiots to catch her words and shut up, I’d be sure the insult was meant for me. And if it were for me I’d be angry, not bothered like a horny teen by this slow burn sizzling in my veins. This girl is coloring me hard.
“Who are you?” I ask, fully aware of how my gaze rolls over her as if a moment spent not drinking in her beauty is a moment wasted.
“Not—”
A sharp whistle interrupts her, and we both swivel our heads to see my best friend smirking down at Mystery Girl.
“Hello, Legs.” His tone is strong with familiarity.
She frowns. “Oh look, another one.”
“Are you on the menu, Nuri?”
“At least come up with a better line, Ramses.”
He chuckles. “It’s Ramis. But you can call me whatever…” he winks, “…whenever.”
The hell?
I don’t even realize I’m glaring at him when in one swift motion, she is on her feet and standing almost toe to toe with Ramis. He goes still like a statue, but she simply rolls her eyes, picks up her backpack, and before any of us can catch a breath, she’s gone.
“Who is she?” I throw the question out into the universe as my eyes flick to the big window to track her into the street, her hips swaying with a natural gait and the island sun raining down glitter over her entire form.
“It doesn’t hurt to watch her, does it?” Ramis is still smiling. “That’s Nuri Pasha. Freshman.”
Ah!
No wonder she isn’t on my radar. She’s new and this being my final year, there isn’t much time to meet new people. I have to get into Harvard. Like Dad. And Yanni, my older brother. It’s a matter of family tradition. It cannot be taken lightly.
But this girl though…
“How do you know her?” I ask Ramis.
“Met her at a party, asked her to dance, and was promptly put in my place.”
That pleases me. “Mind if I try?”
“Not at all. But she isn’t your type.”
That makes me tear my gaze off Nuri to land on him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He takes a deep breath and nods toward the street beyond the window we’ve both been staring at. “For one thing, she’s friends with him.”
I look back to find Nuri standing on tiptoe to give Jackson Sakya—the one man I’d gladly escort off a cliff if it didn’t count as murder—a kiss. On the cheek, mind you, but still a kiss. And then he has the audacity to envelop her in a hug, his thick arms not only swallowing her but lifting her off her feet too. She looks completely at ease.
“They together?”
“They claim to be just friends but…” Ramis tilts his head toward me, a corner of his mouth curving upward, “…I mean, look at her. You’d have to be either blind or in a committed relationship to just be friends with her. And Jackson is neither.”
“No, he isn’t.”
“And she’s not your type.”
That again?
Before I can demand an explanation, he cuts me off with how much he’s starving and saunters off to the register to place his order. I go back to staring beyond the window glass to catch Jackson walking away with Nuri.
Great.
My mood just got a notch shittier.
***
NURI
The road from our campus meanders through the district of dorms and student housing before branching into numerous capillaries that split into a network of streets. These streets connect our university grounds to the rest of the island country of Kemora and its two smaller islands, Manari and Geet, floating in the vast Indian Ocean.
Manari Isle is my home but not a place I plan on ever going back to. The barely-above-poverty-line community of Frere dulls in comparison to the more fun and freer life of Kemora Mainland. Not to mention richer.
That’s an opinion Jackson shares with me. We both want a life better than the one handed down to us. So, after high school, when I called him up about shipping myself to the same college he was in, his first question was, “What time do I pick you up?”
That was in stark contrast to Pappy’s, “Why?” He eventually agreed but only after I enrolled in a business program instead of fine arts to become a music major like Jackson. A pipe dream anyway. After the way life treated Mom, there is no chance in hell Pappy would ever let me go down that same route just because I believe things will be different for me.
Biking through streets rich in foliage—the fragrance of mangos and coconuts, of sweet jasmine and bursts of flaming bougainvillea, an Equatorial sun in a generous sky, and a salty sea breeze blowing through my hair—Kemora is paradise on earth. I should be in class right now, but my bike is headed south to where a rich forest preserve lies stretched all the way to the horizon. It doesn’t take too long to get there but if I’d taken a bus, it would have been quicker.
The forest is alive with chirps and sunlight and it’s better to walk on the cobbled street rather than bike through it. A few steps more and a sparkling one-story building comes into view. Built through trees, it’s as though this structure of cement and glass grew out of the ground. Heavy brass doors flaunt the entrance and a bold sign in black with gold letters spelling Euphoria hangs above them. The cobbled street loops around the building and leads to a vast parking lot in the back.
I padlock the bike in the stand and go inside.
Cool gusts of air-conditioned air greet me and riding on them is the sweet scent of Akira’s concoctions. He stands behind the counter as always, dressed impeccably in his bartending outfit against a backdrop of shimmering mirrors and lights, spritzing a customer’s drink when he hears the squeak of my sneakers on his shiny dark wood floors and looks up. He easily looks like an anime character that I have had a crush on forever.
“So, you’re sure about this?” he asks before I reach the expansive bar. Direct. No prelude. That’s Akira for you.
“It appears I need the money,” I say, settling on one of the stools and eyeing an assortment of colorful bottles on one shelf. “I want to try one of these.”
“Are you old enough?” he jokes, then pours me a tall glass of something blue, complete with a salted rim and cute umbrella. “No alcohol in this.”
I sip at my straw long enough for his smile to bloom into a chuckle.
“Good?” His eyes are animated.
“Brain freeze.” I thump my forehead but honestly, I could bathe in that blueberry taste forever. “I’d let you pay me in drinks, but I do need cash.”
He nods, wiping a flute clean and replacing it on the rack. “You can start today. Sue can see how much you need to learn, and we can take it from there.”
“Okay, but I’ll come back later. I’m skipping class and if Jacks finds out I’m not on campus, he’d go crazy looking for me.”
Akira’s brow ruffles. “You have to tell him soon. I can’t have him tearing down my club.”
“I will.” It’s not Jackson anyone should worry about, it’s Pappy. But no need to divulge that information just yet. “After six?”
“Make it eight if that’s easier.” He places both hands on the gleaming counter. “It’s a night business here anyway.”
I look at the empty stage and the overhead balcony, the spiraling stairway spilling dramatically into the main hall, and birdcages large enough to hold a human as tall as nine feet. Then, of course, there are the two floor-to-ceiling poles stabbed into the heart of the dais.
“Why would you ever build a place like this?”
I could never get enough of this glass and mirror and wood décor since the first time I set foot here. All thanks to Jackson, by the way. If he wasn’t bartending here, I’d never have come looking for him and met Akira and been asked to join his team.
“I didn’t build it,” Akira says, following my gaze around his establishment. “I bought it and never changed the interior. Except for adding some space for dining.”
“And it works? The place must be bursting at its seams.”
“Not as much as I’d like.”
That is odd because the whole vibe is so inviting, and it smells refreshing. The tables and booths aren’t full right now but have such a refined, expensive feel to them.
“Does it have anything to do with…” I point to the stage, and he lets out another chuckle.
“I hope not.”
“You can’t really make it family-friendly with all that.” I glance over at the cages.
“I’m not changing a thing. Take it or leave it.”
“You’re very shrewd about that.”
He shrugs.
“What if I fail?”
“You’re a ballerina, right?” he asks, filling up another order for a shake. “You already are in form.”
“Except I’m not.” I bite the corner of my straw. “A ballerina anymore, that is. I used to be but that was…” I stop to recall exactly how long it has been but decide it’s okay if I can’t remember exactly, “…years ago.”
Before Mom died.
That stings and my eyes search for anything else to focus on. I don’t even realize I’m staring at the poles until Akira points it out.
“You don’t have to do those,” he says.
Thankful for the distraction, I smile. “Don’t you expect it?”
“You’re only expected to have fun and that’s what I’ll pay you for.”
“But I want to be the best.” I eye the toughened lines of his arms contoured under white sleeves. “Teach me a few self-defense moves? Like a ninja.”
He throws back his head and laughs when I strike a pose. “What, Frere didn’t teach you how to throw a punch? I’m sure I never want to be in the way of your left hook.”
I giggle. “Doesn’t hurt to learn something new.”
“And I suppose you’d like to carry weapons too?”
He is still chuckling when his eyes shift from my face to something behind me and his eyes light up. I follow his gaze, already knowing whom I’ll find.
There’s a goddess with raven hair falling straight to her waist, draped in a tiny black dress and sashaying down the stairway. Everything about her seems to sparkle but then it’s probably the way Akira looks at her that makes her shine.
“Sue does those too,” Akira says, “the ninja moves.”
His gaze never leaves her face as she comes and fits into his embrace like candy in its wrapper. He gives her a soft kiss on the lips before releasing her and attending to a fresh inflow of customers.
“You dazzle me.” Resting my elbow on the counter, I cup my face in my palm and take in her beauty. “I want to be you when I grow up.”
“You need to be in school right now, Nuri,” her polite reprimand is like rain.
I raise my glass to toast her words of wisdom then drain it. “I should go. The first lecture today is always such a snooze fest. The professor sleeps through it half the time, which is why I’m here.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.” She draws close and dishes out a motherly frown. “But the first rule of taking up a job here is your grades shouldn’t suffer.”
“Yes ma’am.”
She grins and gives me a kiss on my forehead. The warmth of that tiny peck brands my skin with such ferocity, I have to suck in a breath to dilute the sting behind my eyes.
She smells like kindness.
I turn away with a smile and a nod and don’t stop until I’m securely riding my bike back to campus.
