The Fates (Book I) - 2014 Watty Award Winner!

2.5 - Floater Fate

Dear Readers: Back to Commencement Day at Veriton - a scene with Cloe and her college bestie!  Thanks so much for reading! :)

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Scene 5: Floater Fate

A.D. 2015

“It would be such a dream.”

As soon as she had said it, Cloe remembered that Miss Primor, the pristine platinum princess, had described the travel-writing summer prospect with those very words this morning.

Something about Prof’s fiancée had seeped into her bloodstream. A powerful, pervasive presence from which she couldn’t pull away…

“It would. It definitely was for me,” Tom cheerfully recalled, of his past summer spent writing for the same travel guide in Italy.

His voice brought her back down to earth—for now, at least. Earth was a pretty pleasant place right now, by the picturesque brick red facade of Pampelune, beneath the shade of the cafe’s big daffodil yellow umbrellas. The two friends sat at their favorite patio table sipping strawberry French sodas. It felt just like her freshman year.

So much had changed; so many things were just the same.

“And Greece would be perfect for you,” Tom noted. “The cradle of the classics and humanities… so much culture, such rich history…”

Cloe smiled, stirring the scarlet syrup sinking to the bottom of her glass, swirling the straw around the creamy foam on top.

“It’d be so much better than that Goldman Sachs legal intern gig,” he reckoned. “But no worries about that; you’ll get the Greece job.”

She sighed and humbly shook her head. “Now you’re sounding like Prof Mason. Always too confident in me.”

“You can’t really blame us—especially when it comes to anything involving writing. You were born to write.”

“Every literary agent in America begs to differ.”

“Screw that,” he huffed. “Half of them don’t even read what they receive, from people without connections in the publishing world.”

She raised a skeptic brow. “And the other half?”

Tom took a swig of soda. “Probably aren’t looking for the next literary classic. That’s a hard genre to market in these times.”

“But classics are timeless, by definition,” she contended. “So it looks like you can’t call my novel that.”

“Well excuse me, smart-ass, but I’ll call it whatever I want,” he retorted with a playful grin. “And remember it’s a trilogy, not just a novel. Anyway. Stop being so idiotically self-deprecating.”

She chuckled bashfully. “It isn’t idiotic if the world agrees…”

“False. The world is full of effing idiots,” Tom refuted. “Seriously, though—classic or not, whatever that means, it is really damn good.”

Cloe looked up to meet his gaze; the robin’s egg blue very nearly convinced her. Even if not, it brought a smile to her face. Like always.

Tom leaned back in his seat, lopsided grin still glued onto his lips. “Don’t you give my critical opinion any credit?”

“Of course I do,” she answered honestly. Of all the students she had met at Veriton, she respected Tom’s mind the most. A fellow philosophy major, he was extremely bright, in all the ways that Cloe most admired—ingenious intuitions, appreciation of the profound, reasoning based on valid logic rather than eloquent rubbish.