Love's Fate (Love Trilogy #1) (10 page)

I had been told that students mostly occupied this building due to its close proximity to the Art Institute. The only reason I was able to get an apartment this time of year was because some guy had dropped out.

I was relieved that we had been able to get all the furniture over in one trip. One more would probably get all the boxes. My mood was beginning to brighten as I realized this might not take all day.

My lighter mood quickly darkened when I saw the Out of Order sign hung across the elevator doors. My apartment was on the 3rd floor!

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Charlie muttered noting the sign.

“Maybe we should just leave the furniture down here and run back to get the boxes.” He suggested.

“Do you think anyone would mind?” I didn’t want to make a bad first impression with my new neighbors.

“It’ll be fine” he assured me. “Looks like that old hallway over there is just a dead end, we can leave the stuff there and it shouldn’t be in anybody’s way. Besides we won’t be long”

I looked down the short hallway and saw that there were no doors. The hallway did continue around a bend but I couldn’t imagine anyone’s room being down there. So we moved everything into the hallway and went back for the load of boxes.

When we got back with the truck full of boxes we began lugging them up the stairs first. After 5 trips up the three flights of stairs the boxes finally filled my new apartment. I was already exhausted and dreaded the long trip with the larger pieces of furniture.

“How about we just get the bed up here tonight?”  Charlie suggested mirroring my thoughts.

“Works for me” I panted trying to catch my breath.

We moved the bed upstairs with great effort and I gladly collapsed on it as soon as it hit the floor.

“I’m almost tempted to move the couch up here just so I can crash on it and not have to drive home. I’m exhausted!” Charlie exclaimed.

I laughed but didn’t move from my position face down on the bed. He promised to come back in the morning to help me with the rest. I was asleep before he was out the door.

Charlie woke me early the next morning and my muscles protested as I pulled myself out of bed. I was practically sleep walking as I followed Charlie down the stairs.

“Oops, I guess someone did mind”

Charlie’s strange comment woke me from my stupor and I looked up to see a handwritten sign attached to my easel.

Move your stuff

I stared at the piece of paper and thought: So much for neighborly hospitality. It’s not like my “stuff” was actually blocking anything, it was just sitting in some abandoned back hallway. I began to bristle at how rude it was for someone to put a note on my things assuming I was some degenerate that would just leave my furniture there and forget about it. I tore the paper off my easel and crumpled it up throwing it to the floor.

“Come on” I grumbled to Charlie as I grabbed one end of the couch.

He picked up his end and we moved silently to the staircase. We were just about to the second floor when I heard some girls coming down the stairs. I couldn’t see them because the couch obstructed my view.

“Excuse me.” I heard one of them say sounding a little annoyed.

“Where do you want me to go? I’m holding a couch!”  Charlie retorted, clearly annoyed himself.

I strained to look around the couch but couldn’t see anything. I could tell Charlie had stopped moving so I just stood there holding one end of the heavy couch wondering what the hold up was.

Finally I realized we were standing still to allow the girls to slide past us. They were carrying some large box and both were moving extremely slowly like the box held some very fragile cargo. I was tired and annoyed with their slow pace. Could they not see we were holding a couch? As the girls passed I tried to catch a glimpse of them. One was blonde and the other brunette, both with matching cropped hairstyles.

“Must be our considerate new neighbor.” The brunette mumbled as they passed.

I wondered if she was the one who had left the note.

“You know you could have used the freight elevator instead of blocking it!” She called over her shoulder as they rounded the corner.

I turned to ask her what she meant but they were already gone from sight.

We finally got the couch to the apartment and sat down for a few minutes to recover before we headed back down to get the easel and dresser. When we got back down stairs I saw the same crumpled paper straightened back out and re-attached to my easel. This time it had a new message

Look down the hall

I did, and was embarrassed to find a freight elevator just around the bend. The trip up with the remaining furniture was much easier in the elevator.

I thought about the brunette girl from the stairs and wasn’t exactly sure what to think of her. Her first note and behavior on the stairs was rude, but I was grateful that she had taken the time to update her note and alert me to the existence of the extra elevator. If I saw her again I would thank her.

I thanked Charlie for his help and he assured me that it would be re-paid once he and Claire had saved up enough for their first house.

After he left, the image of the girl I had seen on the stairs nagged at me. Her brunette hair had been short, but it had been the exact same color, and she had been tall and slender. I wished I had seen her face. Surely it couldn’t be her. I shouldn’t get my hopes up. But the curiosity was planted. I hoped I would bump into her again. That shouldn’t be too hard, I thought, since it seemed we lived in the same building.

I didn’t see Jared again after that night that I’d run from him and left him standing in my apartment. I felt guilty, but also relieved that he hadn’t called.

I had exactly what I needed: a fresh start. A new school, a new apartment, a new look. A new me. I had asked Amy to cut my hair in a style similar to hers. At first she protested, but finally agreed. It was strange having short hair, but I liked it. I felt like a new person.

I absolutely loved the culinary program at the Art Institute. I knew I had found my calling. I wasn’t so thrilled, however, with my apartment near campus. It had been quiet the summer I had spent there alone, but as soon as the fall semester started the building had filled up. We lived on the second floor and the guy who lived directly above us was apparently a musician and he played the tuba all night long.

He played the creepiest music. It was like living in some sort of really long drawn out scary movie. At first it was unnerving to
lie
in bed hearing the strange tunes wafting through the walls in the middle of the night. It sounded like the kind of music you heard in horror movies right before the crazed serial killer attacks the unsuspecting victims.

After a couple of months, I was praying for the serial killer to just show up already. I was so relieved when I saw him moving out mid-semester. Anyone would be better than him.

The apartment was not vacant for long. One Sunday shortly after the tuba player had moved out I noticed somebody had left a bunch of furniture stacked in the hallway leading to the freight elevator. I was a little annoyed because the passenger elevator was out of order and I couldn’t get around the furniture to get to the only other elevator down the blocked hall. But I figured it wouldn’t kill me to walk up the two flights of stairs to my apartment. I was sure the person was just in the process of moving their stuff and it would be gone in the morning.

That next morning I had a very important presentation to give in one of my baking classes and I had stayed up all night working on my project. It was a specialty cake that I had designed myself. I stacked several layers of flat rounds to create a pillar. Then I carved a perfect sphere out of angel food cake to top it off. I iced the globe an iridescent blue so that it resembled a crystal ball. The bottom layers were iced with a dark chocolate to mimic a wooden podium holding the crystal ball. It had taken me four tries to get that crystal ball just right, but sometime around sunrise I had finished and it was perfect. The instructor had simply told us to create something original, and I had allowed my imagination to run wild. It had been exhilarating and I couldn’t wait to make my presentation.

The cake stood nearly two feet tall with a rather narrow base, so I knew moving it from my second floor apartment and across the street to campus was not going to be an easy feat. I carefully loaded my cake into a box and took it down the freight elevator, only when I got to the lobby I found that the furniture was still blocking the hallway and I had no way to maneuver around it. I had never been so irritated.

I hadn’t slept all night. I was anxious, exhausted and terrified that my work of art was going to be destroyed on the short trip to the school. Now after having successfully gotten my cake downstairs I was going to have to take my cake back up the elevator and carry it down two flights of stairs.

I was so annoyed with how inconsiderate this person had been to leave their furniture blocking the one working elevator in the building. I couldn’t resist, I had to express my anger at them so that they knew their thoughtless behavior had not gone unnoticed. I scribbled a quick note and attached it to the easel. An artist, go figure. Probably some self-indulgent, narcissistic type.

I then went back to my apartment and asked Amy if she could help me carry the cake downstairs. As we delicately balanced the box and slowly made our way down the stairs an inch at a time we suddenly came to a standstill. I was behind the box and I wasn’t sure what was holding us up, then I heard Amy talking abruptly with someone.

When we finally started moving again I saw a couple of guys were trying to carry a couch up the stairs. My anger flared as I realized these must be the careless newcomers that had blocked the elevator. Obviously they didn’t know it existed since they were carrying their couch up the stairs and I hoped it made them feel really stupid when I told them about it.

However, by the time I made it down the stairs I felt bad for having been rude even though they had deserved it after having so rudely blocked the elevator. Of course, I reasoned with myself, if they didn’t know it was there I guess it wasn’t intentional. I cooled down and decided to leave another note, this time telling them how to find the elevator.

It wasn’t like me to snap at someone the way I had on the stairwell. I was exhausted and annoyed, but that was no excuse. For a few weeks I was anxious about running into my new neighbors again. But I didn’t really get a good look at either one of them so I wasn’t sure if I ever saw them again. As I had hoped, they were much quieter than their predecessor and so I didn’t give them much more thought.

Time was passing quickly again. It was easy to lose myself in my culinary studies. When I wasn’t at school I was at work. I spent most of my waking hours in a kitchen, and loved every minute of it. The head chef at my restaurant was impressed with the dessert selections I created and asked me to run a nightly dessert special.

I developed a bit of a reputation in the surrounding neighborhoods. People would come to the restaurant just to try that night’s dessert special. It was encouraging to know that people liked my creations and it helped me decide what I was going to do once I finished school. Graduation was right around the corner
again
and it was time to figure out my next step. I couldn’t stay a student forever.

Dan proposed to Amy the night she graduated from the Fashion Institute. I was happy for both of them, but seeing how happy they were together forced me to think about how alone I was.

Most of the time it was easy not to think about my life outside of work. I was a hard worker and focused on my career goals, most of the time. But sometimes, when I lay in bed at night unable to sleep I would realize how lonely I was. I tried to push those thoughts to the back of my mind during the daylight hours. It was easier then. I had enough to do to keep my mind busy during the day. It was the nights that were the hardest.

Amy and Dan had a beautiful summer wedding on the beach. Amy absolutely glowed she was so happy. Everything went perfectly. It was a small ceremony, just Amy and Dan’s immediate family and some close friends. Jared was there. I was the maid of honor and he was the best man.

We stood on opposite sides of the altar trying not to look at each other. Our eyes met once and I smiled at him, but he just looked down at his feet. He actually looked like he was trying not to cry and that made me feel so guilty that I avoided looking at him the rest of the day.

I was relieved when the ceremony was over because I was catering the reception, so that allowed me to remain busy and avoid any uncomfortable conversations with Jared. Everyone complimented the food, especially the cake. Many people approached me and commented that I should start catering weddings for a living. It was funny to hear my private thoughts spoken allowed. I had been giving a lot of thought to what I would do next and I had considered starting my own catering service. However it wasn’t the food that I enjoyed cooking the most, it was the cake.

Amy and Dan honeymooned in Cancun, and Dan surprised Amy when they returned by already having secured a small house for them to move into to. She was happier than I had ever seen her and I couldn’t help but be happy for her.