Chapter Two: Broken & Beautiful

Georgie

brOKEN my eyes were another. My contact addiction wasn't going anywhere. For me, it was like putting on the right jewelry with an outfit. I just didn't feel quite ready until I had the right colored lenses in. I had almost every color they made—and some they didn't—thanks to my friends in the fashion world. Like the black ones I rarely wore, and the ones that were almost black but were really a dark, dark blue. The bright green ones I'd put in today were one of my favorites. They were close to my real color but with an extra oomph to them .

I helped Ava bring the food out to the patio, and we placed the bug nets over it all. Even though it was hot and muggy, it still felt good to be out in the summer sunshine with the smell of sea grasses and the sound of the ocean pounding near us. It wasn't the first time I'd vacationed with Ava and Eli since she had graduated and come back to Texas, but it was the first time I'd vacationed without a desperate need to get back to New York and the salon.

As we ate out on the deck, the margaritas kept the banter easy and the mood light. Friends catching up after time apart. It was so different from the meals with my friends in the city. The beauticians who had worked for me, and Jared and my fashion friends, had always hung out at high-profile restaurants and bars where the atmosphere was as close to a high pitch as you could get—as if, one more notch higher, and you'd have to duck your head, shielding your ears. I'd loved it: the pace, the noise, the friendships. But I was also ready for a new pace. A new feel.

After dinner, Ava had to head downtown to the bar she owned. I'd been going with her almost every night since I'd been there, but tonight, I just needed quiet instead of chaos, so I declined. Eli and Mac went with her, and I had the house and the beach to myself.

I brought a blanket, a book, and the last of the margaritas down to the edge of Ava's property where she and Eli had built a firepit in the middle of an octagon-shaped wooden deck that hosted a smattering of Adirondack chairs and lounges. The deck was right at the end of the crushed-shell path, tucked in the sea grass just before it broke into the sand. It was a bit of paradise in Texas .

I read until the stars started to sprinkle the sky like fairy lights being turned on, and then I just sat, staring at the expanse. You never got to see the sky like this in the city. I missed it, and yet, I didn't. Just like I missed my friends in New York, and I didn't. The price to keep the salon and that life would have been too high. Not only the price of the new lease the landlord wanted me to sign, but the price of my own dreams that I had this one last chance to make come true.

As if reading my mood from a continent away, my half-sister, Raisa, texted me.

RAISA: Are you at the beach yet?

ME: I've been here for two days.

RAISA: What happened to going to D.C. to check out an apartment?

ME: I just stayed the one night. The place I got is almost too good to be true.

I hadn't planned on flying to D.C. before coming to Texas, but I'd discovered an ad for a loft in an apartment with two other people that I hadn't wanted to pass up. It was close enough to campus that I could walk, and it wasn't going to break the bank.

I'd met with one of the roommates, Daniella, and felt an instant connection. She was sassy and professional all at the same time. The apartment, with its views of the Capitol building, had still seemed too good to be true, but Daniella had said her family liked to rent the loft as a way of helping college students. I liked her and the loft, so I took it for what it was: a gift. I placed a down payment, got a key, and hoped the other roommate, Daniella's brother, wouldn't be a total schmuck when I finally got to meet him.

RAISA: I am a little jealous. I will be stuck in the dorms for a year.

It wasn't going to be a hardship. She'd been accepted to Stanford University and was going to be staying in the best dorms they had. My stepdad, Petya, wouldn't have any less for his daughter.

ME: While I know you'll have a blast living in the dorms, the thought of me having to experience it again makes me want to vomit.

RAISA: We will both be college students.

It was hard to reconcile the fact that I was going to be in college again. Getting back into law school after the years away had been simultaneously easier and harder than I thought. I was ready to restart the dream I'd put on hold for five years. I was just hoping law school would be different from my first years of college life.

ME: Not the same. You'll have everyone drooling over your Russian accent and pretty blonde hair, whereas I'll be the slightly older woman with her nose in a book.

RAISA: I have almost no accent. My English is impeccable .

ME: Out of all that, you chose to focus on what I said about your accent? What happened to making me feel better about going back to school after all these years?

RAISA: It is you who said age is not a number, it is an attitude.

ME: I wasn't the first person to say it, but it's true.

RAISA: Then, do not worry about other students. Just have lots of attitude.

ME: ** Hair flip GIF **

RAISA: I have to go. Malik is using me as interference with Father again. What will he do when I am in the U.S.?

ME: Learn to stand up for himself.

RAISA: Love you, moy dorogoy.

ME: Love you, too, malyshka.

Raisa and I were ten years apart and lived on different continents, but we were closer than my half-brother and I. Probably because she'd spent the last few summers with me. Malik didn't want anything to do with my tiny apartment above the salon. I was going to miss being with Raisa this summer as we both started new lives.

Shoes crunching on the shell path had me twisting my head. I almost felt the looming shape of Mac before it appeared over the dunes, as if my body had known all along that he'd find me, even after he'd gone downtown with Ava and Eli.

He sank down in the chair next to mine, that force-of-nature pull he had on me instantaneously coming back.

"Were all the single ladies at the bar too smart for your charm?" I asked.

He snorted, leaning his head on the back of the chair, gazing up into the night sky like I had been. His large body filled the space, and with his legs sprawling out toward the unlit firepit, it caused his knees to careen into mine. I pulled away, but he didn't seem to notice.

"It was too exhausting tonight," he responded.

"Must be pretty bad if you're too exhausted to schmooze the fairer sex."

A soft chuckle escaped his chest. "I've just spent two weeks in pretty much solitude on a boat. It takes a little to ease back into the real world."

His voice was deep. Barrel deep? Was that the right description?

"Isn't it dangerous to sail by yourself?"

He finally turned his head to look at me, and even in the dim light from the stars and the moon that had finally started to trek across the sky, I could see the flash of humor and more in those eyes.

"Did Ava tell you to harp on me about it? I swear she's practicing being a parent before they're even pregnant."

"No. Ava and I don't talk about you."

"So, I'm not a ten? "

"Wh-what?"

"A ten. Isn't that what you said?"

"You were spying on us out on the deck." I tried to be offended but couldn't really be with him smiling like that.

He grinned. "You weren't trying to be quiet."

I liked how his grin crinkled the corners of his eyes. I liked too much about him. The fact that we would soon be living in the same city was enough to give me heart palpitations, even if the likelihood of our lives overlapping was slim to none.

"Spying definitely lowers all of your scores by, like, half. So, now you're barely a five," I told him.

He laughed—a full laugh this time—no half-laughs or snorts. And it seemed to fill the night around us. It felt like it could echo in a cavern with the boom of dragons. It felt like it could echo into my hidden away places if I wasn't careful.