Her response to him that day at the wedding only made things worse.
Soon, their rivalry at the school became quite legendary among their peers. They were smart, of course. Teachers were never the wiser, and therefore neither were their parents.
And then one thing happened that she had not seen coming at all. Her mother marrying Giuseppe really did increase her popularity. And soon it felt as if lines were drawn through their school. Who sided with Romeo, and who sided with Heather?
There were no high roads taken.
She wasn’t the underdog anymore, and she refused to be treated like she was. She invited a group of friends to the house for a pool party over the summer—and given that their school was in another country, it was a weeklong affair. Having access to that sort of luxury was a dizzying drug. She had a lovely home to invite her friends back to, places for them to stay. And an indulgent stepfather who lived to make her happy, particularly since he couldn’t seem to make his own son happy no matter what he did.
Heather was happy to step into the role. She’d never known her father. And Giuseppe was wonderful to her.
He wanted to spoil her, and Heather wanted to be spoiled.
The entire pool area was transformed for them. Cabana set up with lavish fruit trays, glorious flower displays, various grottoes for them to take pictures to put up on social media.
Everything was going well, until Romeo prowled to the pool area, wearing an open white shirt. At seventeen, his body was more muscular than it had been when she had first met him. She despised herself for noticing. She despised herself for still finding him beautiful at all, because certainly his behavior should have transformed him into precisely what he was. Someone who was dark and ugly on the inside. And yet he remained stubbornly beautiful.
“Good afternoon,” he said, resting his forearms on the gate that separated the pool from the rest of the estate.
Her friends exchanged glances, and giggles. They knew that the official stance was that they hated Romeo, but they also weren’t blind. The trouble with Romeo was that he was charming. He had a reputation for being an exceptionally good kisser, and she suspected more. Though, no one was foolish enough to breathe such a thing in front of her.
“What is it that you want?”
“Shocking,cara. I come to say hello and you greet me with venom.”
“I don’t think you find that shocking at all,” she said, standing up from where she was on her lounge chair, wearing the bright pink bikini that she had just bought for the occasion. And that was when she saw it. His eyes flickered over her body, and his reaction wasn’t neutral.
He had made a mistake. He had just made a mistake.
He’dnoticedher.
He noticed her body, the same way that she noticed his.
And he had let her see it.
He might hate her—she believed fully that he did—but he was not immune to her. And that was an incredibly interesting piece of information. She walked closer to him, not looking away from his gaze. “What is it exactly that you wish to offer?”
“Oh, I live to serve,” he said, not breaking eye contact.
“Do you? Are you here to play the part of pool boy?”
“Oh no,cara, only one of us is from the servant class.”
“What a pity that I will never serve you,” she said.
His eyes flickered over her again. “Someday perhaps I will have you on your knees.” He didn’t say it loudly enough for anyone else to hear, only her. That first time he had looked at her that gaze had been lethal. Cutting. This cut her somewhere different. And didn’t leave her feeling cold. Rather she felt altogether too warm.
“I think you should leave,” she said.
He grinned. “If you need me to.”
That left her questioning everything. Perhaps nothing that he’d said had been real, but all designed to antagonize her. But the interaction echoed inside of her.
Finally, in her senior year, she was free of him. He graduated, and went on to university, and was never at home, never at school. Being an Accardi—even if by marriage—had made her essentially the most popular girl in school. And the only regret that she had was that Romeo wasn’t there to witness the ascent. And maybe that was because his absence was necessary. Without his influence, no one knew they were supposed to dislike her. They forgot. As if it had never happened.
For graduation, Giuseppe and her mom were allowing her to use their London estate for a party. The money and detail that had gone into it was extraordinary, and Heather distantly remembered the girl that she was, grateful for everything—even for a tangerine in the corner of the kitchen—and she wondered if she had lost herself somewhere. What was wrong with enjoying all of this? Surely nothing.
She did pause to feel gratitude, rather than entitlement. But the entitlement was what buoyed her, often. Because Romeo was so intent on acting like she didn’t deserve it, radicalizing those around her into believing she didn’t deserve it either, so she had begun to walk around with armor suggesting that she did.
