A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow - Laura Taylor Namey Page 0,80
turned her in, but I didn’t. I decided to give her a chance for something new, just like I had.”
He half-turns, then points at me. “You never hurt people or their private property like she did. You didn’t hurt your city.”
“I hurt myself. And how is that any less?”
I spin on the ball of my foot and bolt. Not once do I look back. Fury fills my veins and hurries my steps down the path bordering the Serpentine.
Minutes later, I’m not even sure how far I’ve gone. There’s so much green, so much open space to swallow the enormous rush of me. But now I slow and stop, dropping onto one of the many benches along the water. Why did I think my half-lying plan would be different just because I was genuinely trying to help someone? Today, there was no better choice, no winning door to walk through that leads to prizes.
Help Flora and keep her confidence, and Orion is hurt for my deceit.
Or tell Orion, like he said I should’ve, and Flora is hurt enough to maybe find another version of paint on a brick wall. Hurt enough to be more careful and maybe even more destructive.
And now it’s done. I can’t bake around it or add any more sugar to the sour, beating it into a win for everyone. I have to accept another thing I can’t change. And then I have to go on and remember why I came here.
So I remember: school, skills, my passion. Even if it might not be in my future, one choice I made before even hopping on the train in Winchester, I’m still choosing, for me. I’m going to get across town to Bloomsbury and visit Le Cordon Bleu. I pull out my phone. I can find my own way there and, if necessary, find my own way back to Winchester, too.
“Lila.” The voice behind my bench is full of dust.
Well. I tuck my lips inward, my face bent over the grass.
He sits beside me, farther than he’s ever been.
“I never want to lie to you. I’m sorry,” I say, then measure the next part as carefully as soufflé batter. “Do you think it hasn’t been making me sick to keep Flora’s secret? That it was some whim? Do you think it was easy to just push this away every time I was with you?” Right into his eyes.
Hearts are not meant to be ripped in two, split between seas and skies. Split between two people I care for and…
Orion shifts, only a few inches. “I don’t feel that way. I didn’t, even for a second.” He scrubs his face. “But I’m losing her, Lila. She’s barely around and she doesn’t talk to me anymore. She doesn’t even go to see Mum as often as she used to.”
Losing a sister. Losing a mother.
“But I did some thinking back there,” he adds and flattens his back against the bench. “The other day when I was with Mum and couldn’t run with you, Flora brought home a loaf of fresh bread. She was so proud of it and that means something. I haven’t seen Flora be proud of anything in so long.”
“I know how much you love her. How you want to stay close and reach her. But she’s starting to relax. She’s fun. We have a good time even at the half crack of dawn.”
“I know. And that means something too.” A weighty sigh. “So I’ll promise what you asked. The two of us will share her secret now.”
Air leaks from my lungs in relief. “I’m not trying to fix her. I just wanted to be a safe place for her. Like someone else I know is for me.”
“Safe.” He balls his fist over his mouth, sucks in a rush, nodding. “And yet I said horrible things to you. I try to take this good and right view about my life. But that doesn’t mean I always say the right thing.”
I hold out my hand. He grabs it tightly.
“If you did, you’d be a tea-obsessed, history buff cyborg on a too-loud motorbike. Which sounds more like a comic book character than a person. You know you can be whoever you are with me.”
“I don’t want to be someone who hurts you.”
“Yeah, but you will,” I say. “And I’ll hurt you. But there’s the kind of hurting that happens between… friends that makes you human. You get past those hurts.” I think of Stefanie, the ways we’ve hurt each other. Our future’s