Clementine had become a wild child. Born in America but raised abroad, she now had little regard for the expectations of high society. But her reckless ways eventually catch up with her when she is kicked out of college in New York City and forced t...
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"He was from Colombia," her mother said nonchalantly.
"What?! How did you meet him?" Clementine was curious, ecstatic to finally get to hear the details she knew were always under the surface, but didn't quite know what it looked like.
"I went to study in Spain, remember? He spoke Spanish and I was learning it, and we went to the same school."
Clementine sat and listened in awe, the pieces slowly coming together.
"He was..enigmatic. Younger than me too," Clementine's mother continued and it just kept getting better. "But more experienced. I was completely pure and he was enigmatic," her eyes were twinkling and she was clearly somewhere far away.
"What happened?" Clementine was trying to memorize every detail.
"We fell in love," her mom smiled.
"Simple as that?"
"Simple as that. Except, we had bad luck. We had a summer vacation romance, perfect at the time but fated to never last forever. He had to go away to his country, and I had to go back to dancing. Then I met your father, had you... the rest is history."
"But, didn't you try to see each other again at least? It wasn't that far." Clementine felt desperate, and she needed some hope to cling on to.
"I'm not saying I didn't want to, but some things are just...not meant to be. We didn't even have cell phones back them. It was atonally different world, and yes I suffered, but then I fell in love again."
"So you never saw each other again?" Clementine asked stubbornly.
"Once," she said sheepishly making Clementine throw her hands up in exasperation. "We took a trip, once, with my family to Colombia. And he was just there...on the street...like he never even left."
"Did you do anything?"
"He told me he wanted to fight for us...but it was too late. I had already met your father."
"And you think you made the right choice?" Clementine felt strange asking her this, considering she was the consequence of that choice.
Her mother looked somewhere in the distance and breathed in as if to say something, then changed her mind.
Finally, she spoke, "there are some things we shouldn't question about how they turned out. You are exactly where you need to be. I'm not going to pretend I know what's happening between you and that boy, but, I think only you can know what to do. You already know. Listen to your coração."
Listen to your heart.
A cliche if she ever heard one, but she instinctively reached for the little gold cross on her chest. Touching it, and feeling as if my osmosis Zico's gold cross, with green jewels on it.
She was listening to her heart but all she could hear was his name.
She wished somebody would tell her what to do, but she knew that ultimately she had to live this one out on her own.
She thought about how her self imposed isolation would be broken only by the need to plan and carry out Mina's wedding. Which, at this point, felt like another minefield to step around.
They didn't speak about this either with Zico, but it must have been pretty evident that he was no longer coming. And the grand introduction pf him -of them - into her own world would never happen.
All for the better, she thought.
But another part of her kicked and screamed, WHY ISN'T HE COMING BACK FOR ME.
Clementine was both naive and cynical. Naive that he would come back, should come back and cynical in that knowing that he probably didn't have that much reason to after she left.
