Translation of Love - By Alice Montalvo-Tribue Page 0,8

He will be leaving town soon and going home to New York. I’ll never see him again and I can go back to my normal routine. I think I can handle spending a couple more hours with him without losing myself.

He gives me the knee melting smile and I swear that I feel my heart beat speed up. “Great, how’s seven o’ clock work for you?”

I return the smile. “Seven o’ clock is good.” He programs my number into his phone and promises to call me with details. Before I can protest, he puts his arms around me pulling me into a hug. He gives me a quick kiss on the cheek and opens my car door for me. He waves goodbye as I drive off into the night. I can still feel his lips on my cheek as I pull into my driveway. His thumb is still tracing circles on the palm of my hand as I lay my head on my pillow and, for the first time in many months, sleep comes easily.

The sound of my phone ringing wakes me up. The distinct ringtone lets me know that it’s Jordan on the other end of the line. Jordan is the opposite of me physically. I am tall for a girl, curvy with naturally brown hair and brown eyes. Jordan is slender and petite with blonde hair and blue eyes. Simply put, she is stunning. Half asleep, I clumsily reach over to my nightstand, grab the phone and touch the screen to answer.

“Hello,” I answer dazedly.

“Rise and shine, pumpkin. Get your ass out of bed and come meet me for breakfast.”

“Mmmm. What time is it?”

“It’s eight am. Get up, take a shower and meet me at Laura’s in an hour.”

I’m all set to argue with her when I hear my stomach growl. “Okay, I’ll meet you there.”

Laura’s Café is the most popular place in town to grab a good, inexpensive breakfast. They are open for lunch and dinner too, but breakfast is where they see the most traffic. During the summer months, when all the tourists are in town, the line to get a table is normally out the door. This morning is busy as usual but luckily we are seated at a table immediately. We had just gotten our coffee and placed our orders when Jordan begins.

“I broke up with Mark yesterday.”

“What? Oh my God, Jordan. Why?”

“I don’t know. It was all getting to be too much, ya know? The constant attention, the phone calls, the text messages. It was all too much.” She picks up her cup of coffee and takes a sip, waiting for me to impart words of wisdom. Clearly, I’m in no position to give relationship advice to anyone but I do know that Mark cares about Jordan.

“That just means that he really likes you. Did you tell him that you maybe needed him to take it down a notch?”

“I tried, I really did but he just said that I was looking for excuses to push him away. Trying to create problems where there weren’t any. Then he asked me to move in with him!”

“He did what? You’re joking right?”

She takes another sip from her cup and shakes her head like a woman possessed. “I wish I was.”

I’ve known Jordan since I was 12 years old. She defended me from a girl that was twice my size who decided that I would be her new punching bag. Jordan had always been petite and, at first glance, looked like she couldn’t hurt a fly, but piss her off and she could go absolutely nuts. It was just the right combination of scary and hilarious and she developed quite the reputation as a fighter over the years. After she saved me from years of misery at the hands of a bully, we became an inseparable pair. She had been with me through the best and worst of times. Her parents divorced when we were in high school and it was an ugly divorce. They fought over everything, including custody of her. After they’d gotten married, her parents had a hard time trying to conceive but after years, and many failed attempts, they finally had Jordan. She was their only child and they doted on her, both wanting her so badly that they put her in the middle of a horrible custody suit. It was clear that she had not fully recovered from the trauma because every time a guy got too close, she would end the