Free A Beautiful Fate by Unknown Page A

him and snuggled my face up close to his chest. I could hear the soft beat of his heart.
    “Ari, I….I think we need to talk.”
    “Ok,” he nodded his head. My fingers accidentally brushed up against his hand and he grabbed on and locked his around mine. He wrapped one of his legs around me too and held me tight and close to his body. My mind raced as I thought of what it was I wanted to say. I felt the tiniest kiss on the top of my head. My eyes closed with a flutter, and I was whisked away to a very happy place in my dreams.
    Ari woke with a jolt. We were completely knotted up in each other. Our fingers were still intertwined and my other hand was covering his face. Our legs were like pretzels. He jumped up, knocking my hand off his face and I gasped. He threw his free hand over my mouth to quiet me. Someone was pounding on his bathroom door. Ari wiggled our knotted fingers free with force.
    “Dude, what the hell? Let me in.” It was Rory, he and Ari were suite mates.
    “Leave now!” Ari said to me through clenched teeth. I could feel a tiny sting of tears in my eyes. Rory pounded on the bathroom door again and Ari grabbed my arm and pulled me across his room to his door. He threw it open and nearly pushed me out in the hallway. I stood outside the door confused and hurt. I heard him unlock and open his bathroom door.
    “What do you want?” He snapped at Rory.
    “Nothing, relax. I was just wondering if you had seen Ava this morning. Her friend is looking for her.”
    “I just woke up, Rory, so what do you think?”
    “Dude, you’re such a jerk. It’s ten o’clock in the morning. Learn to wake up at a reasonable hour like the rest of us.” I heard Ari’s bathroom door slam and I rushed the two steps to my room and closed the door behind me. Mia rushed to my side and engulfed me in a hug.
    “Where were you?”
    Pointing at the wall, I indicated that I was with Ari. “I am such an idiot.”
    I told her how I went with him to his room the night before and planned to end it but instead I curled up with him in bed and when he kissed my head, I melted and lost all my nerve and couldn’t go through with the breakup – or whatever it would have been.
    “He kicked me out this morning. I have never felt so rejected in all my life.”
    Mia let go of me and stormed out of the room. She slammed my door and threw open Ari’s.
    “Can I help you?” I heard him say.
    “Yeah, leave her the hell alone. She’s too good for you. You are nothing but a piece of shit.”
    She slammed his door and came back in a matter of seconds. I was in shock.
    “Don’t let him get to you, Ava. Clearly he is messed up.”
    I nodded. Something definitely was up with Ari.
    “I can’t believe you did that, Mia!”
    “Ava,” she sighed, “it needed to be done… you should have seen him, though.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, I stormed in there and caught him completely by surprise and…”
    “Oh, God, Mia, please tell me he was still dressed.”
    She giggled. “If he hadn’t been, Ava, I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did. He was sitting in his bed with his head in his hands. He looked… I don’t know, he looked so devastated.”
    “Well, that makes two of us.”
    “Oh, honey, don’t worry. This will work out, but you can’t allow him to treat you that way.”
    Mia and I spent the day at a spa for her birthday. I treated both of us to a pedicure, facial and massage. Sitting back while someone attended to me was relaxing and helped keep my mind from thinking of Ari. My anxiety had been building over the last couple of weeks and now all of it had hit home. Ari was not good for me. It was time to move on from the relationship - or whatever it may have been.
    Our floor had all planned a big dinner together at a restaurant in town. Half the people piled up in my car and the other half in Ari’s. When we got there, I sat between Mia and Rory. Ari sat across from me down and down a seat. I refused to look at him.