Page 57 of The Ring
As I stroll through, I quickly spot Annabelle talking to a group of girls, none of whom are Cornelia. Lucian and Nate huddle in the corner, chatting with each other. Anthony is talking to two men nearby. Vivienne is sitting at a table with some woman her age. Lana, Miranda, and Roland are in another corner, deep in conversation. Everyone Cornelia would usually be with is accounted for. But she has to be somewhere around here. She wouldn’t just vanish, not without one of them. She’s probably surrounded by people, and I just missed her, or maybe she went to the loo.
I do one more lap around, and when I still don’t find her, I head to the coat check to grab my light—I left it in my coat. Might as well do what I actually said I was going to do and then continue my search.
Smoking is a habit I’ve recently picked up again. Cornelia hates the smell of it, and when we started dating, I stopped. Occasionally, if I was mad at her and wanted to annoy her—she looks so cute when she’s a little annoyed—I’d light one up. But those times were rare, too infrequent to call it a habit.
I reach the coat check, but the concierge isn’t in sight, so I step inside to look for it myself. As I walk in, I catch a glimpse of what seems to be the silver train of Cornelia’s dress. I know that sometimes, in crowded places, she likes to find a quiet spot to retreat and unwind when she feels overwhelmed, so it’s not unusual to find her here.
I’m still a little mad at her after our last conversation and think about saying something sharp to irritate her, like,“Not enough gifts for the princess?”But as I get closer, I hear quiet sniffles, like she’s crying, and all my anger evaporates.
I move closer to see her, and as I suspected from the sniffles, she’s sitting on the floor, crying.
She notices me and quickly wipes away her tears, but then stops, realising it’s pointless—I’ve already seen her cry.
I don’t say anything, and neither does she. I sit beside her on the floor. She doesn’t pull away like I expect; instead, she leans her head against my shoulder, like she used to do. It feels wonderful to be this close to her—it just sucks that the reason is that she’s sad.
As time goes by, she begins to compose herself, bit by bit.
“They both forgot,” Cornelia murmurs in explanation.
I don’t need her to explain further. I know exactly who she is referring to—her parents. It isn’t the first time they’ve forgotten her birthday. In fact, it’s rare for both of them to remember it, but this is the first time they’ve both forgotten. Or at least, the first time she’s aware of it. I’m fairly certain Anthony used to send Cornelia gifts pretending they were from one of her parents. He stopped as she got older, realising he couldn’t fool her anymore.
Throughout all of our relationship, I despised them for being such shitty parents. But it shouldn’t have been that way. They should have been the ones disapproving of me, thinking I wasn’t good enough for their daughter, not the other way around.
“It’s still your birthday.” I glance at my watch. “For another forty minutes—they could still remember.”
“If they were going to, they’d have done it by now.” Cornelia’s voice is almost indifferent, though I can hear a faint tinge of sadness she’s trying to hide. It’s breaking my heart. She tends to act like she doesn’t care about her parents, but I know she does.
I wish I could fix this for her. I wish she never had to experience anything other than pure happiness.
“Maybe they sent you a present, and it’s buried beneath all the others,” I offer as an option. I don’t believe it, and I doubtshe does either, but if I catch even the slightest hint that she thinks it’s possible, I’ll order something online with express shipping in their names the moment I get home.
She gives me a little fake smile. “I know they didn’t,” she says firmly, with no hint of doubt in her voice.
Fuck. I wish there was.
I try to think of something else to say to make her feel better, but I come out blank, so I mutter, “Parentes sugent.” It’s kind of a code word. To make all of the hours we spent in Latin lectures at Edelweiss a little less pointless, we all came up with a few code phrases in Latin. This one we’d say when one of our parents did something awful, and we didn’t know what else to say. It’s fair to say most of our parents suck to some degree. The best parents don’t tend to ship off their kids to boarding school when they’re eleven.
Cornelia stifles a laugh. “I haven’t heard that in a while; that used to be my second most-heard phrase in Latin.”
“And what is the first one?”
She tilts her head at me. “You know.”
I know.
I smirk as I say, “Te carissime amo.” I used to wait for her outside her Latin classroom from time to time, trying not to be noticed, then slip close and whisper that phrase in her ear. She loved it, even though she claimed it was too cheeky.
She nods and smiles at me. This time, it’s a real smile as it reaches her eyes. She seems a little more upbeat now, though her breathing is still a bit unsteady.
“Do you want to head back?” I ask her, nodding towards the party.
She looks towards the door, considering it for a moment, but ends up shaking her head. “No. I want to go home.”
I’m about to ask if she’d like me to find Anthony or her driver, but then she asks, “Could you take me home?”
It catches me off guard. I never expected her to ask me that. It’s the most exciting thing that has happened to me in months. She’s asking to spend time alone with me, without any ulterior motives or being forced into it.
I must have taken longer than she wanted because Cornelia begins, “I came with Annabelle, and I gave my driver the day off because he’s sick. She seems to be having fun, and I don’t want to bother her. But if you can’t, don’t worry. I could ask her, or Anthony, or someon?—”
