Perfect for Me by Claudia Burgoa

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Elliot

She’s a strong cup of coffee in a world that is drunk on the cheap wine of shallow love. —JM Storm

Hazel entersthe café at eight o’clock sharp. She wears a knee-length red dress, and her brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail. The professional, poised look is perfect, but it’s not her. My eyes lower, and I spot her old pair of Converse. That’s the girl I fell in love with so many years ago.

I rise from my seat as she approaches me. Leaning forward, I kiss her cheek.

“Thank you for accepting my invitation.” I pull out the chair next to me and push it slightly after Hazel takes a seat.

“I’m glad you invited me.” She looks at my chocolate cake and licks her lips.

“I want one of those and a hot cocoa,” she says just as the server approaches. “But before that, can you bring me a turkey sandwich, please.”

“Dinner?” I angle my head.

“Yeah. Today’s nourishment was granola bars galore.” She rubs her stomach. “The meal of the future.”

She smiles when I share a forkful of cake with her. Hazel chews a couple of times. “This is so good.”

“How was work?” I inquire, pushing the plate closer to her and giving her a clean fork.

“Busy, but let’s not talk about work.” She smiles, dipping her finger into the frosting of my cake and sucking on it.

Fuck, this woman is going to kill me. I wish we had had oral sex back when we were going out.

“Are you okay?” She touches my arm, sending a surge of electricity through my body. “You look a little flushed.”

“I’m fine,” I close my eyes, feeling like a teenager.

“Good, so tell me, how’s your family? I’ve been in Santa Cruz but haven’t visited your Mom.”

Yeah, let’s not do that anytime soon. She’s not crazy about you.

Mom thinks that Hazel broke my heart. And since I’m not ready to confess what I did to Hazel, I can’t bring her home just yet.

“She’s doing well. Working as a receptionist in a dental office, taking care of her grandchildren.”

Hazel smiles. “How many does she have?”

The waiter brings her food, and while she’s eating, I show her pictures of my sister Dahlia and her three daughters. Then a picture of Mom and my other siblings.

“Dahlia’s daughters are so cute. Teagan is precious,” she states beaming at a selfie of my youngest niece and myself next to the sloth exhibit.

“Yes, she’s amazing—they all are. The best thing is that I get to return them to my sister after we are done babysitting them.”

“Sounds like a sweet deal.” She wipes her mouth. “I always have trouble returning my nephew.”

She sighs, closes her eyes, and smiles. “Charlie.” She opens them as she speaks. “It breaks my heart when Willow and Hunter say I’m back.”

“You miss him?”

She nods, pressing her lips together and twisting them around several times. “I was planning on going this week but…”

“If you wait, maybe I can go with you at the end of April,” I suggest, taking her hand. “I’ve never been there.”

Hazel stares at our linked hands and then at me. “I’d like that, going with you. Though I have to go sooner to see my family.”

“Of course.” I squeeze her hand. “Is this a good time to ask about your life in New York?”

“I think we’ve covered everything.”

“Did you ever fall in love?”

“What?” Hazel’s head snaps, and she stares at me.

I swallow, taking my time as one of the servers refills Hazel’s glass. “You mentioned that you’ve dated. Did you fall for any of them?”

“No,” she answers too fast, her gaze dropping to her food. She grabs her sandwich.

She twists her lips. “My love life is complicated.”

Hazel takes a bite of her sandwich, chews slowly, and then places it back on the plate. She squeezes out some ketchup, takes a fry, dips it, and then looks at me. “How about you?”

“It’s hard to fall for a woman who you sleep with one night and never see again.”

We remain quiet. I watch her, wondering why her mind is wandering. I want to know more about her, and everything that’s happened in the past ten years. Including those years when I was with her, but I was unreachable. We missed so much. How do I convince her to forgive me when I failed her?

“That makes sense. I felt empty every time…”

“I never thought about how I felt. It was just for fun, you know.”

Hazel nods while she continues eating. Attentive to what I have to say but reserved. “In a way, I’ve been waiting for something.”

“Like a miracle?”

“A sign, an explanation, or just afraid of opening myself up because I’ve been hurt too many times.”

She sucks her lower lip, her eyes focused on the table. Then they find mine, and she speaks. “My parents left. Every time I tried to trust a friend in school, they only stayed around while they needed me. Willow left me.” She inhales slowly. “I understand why she did it, but I was sixteen…alone. I had you and then you—”

“I feel like I messed up your life.” I reach for her hand.

She’s not sad, nor angry, just...absorbed in her words and her thoughts.

“You’re not the bad guy.” She offers me a smile.

“On the contrary, you’re a great guy who had to deal with a big loss. Taking care of your family mattered. There were casualties down the road. You had no idea what I was doing, and my parents damaged me in their wake. Clinging to you as if my life depended on it wasn’t healthy—for either of us.”

“The depression that you mentioned?”

She sighs, nodding slightly.

“How are you doing?”

“I have good days and bad days. I try to hold on to the good, and although I might look crazy and obsessive to some, I don’t care. Taking care of things and managing little details keeps my mind busy enough to handle it. And during the darkest days…”

Her gaze drops, and she takes her hand away. “I have to find other ways to cope.”

“Some days, I feel like I’m drowning,” I confess. “You’re not here, and I feel like this will never be over.”

“But it’s over, Eli.”

How can it be when she’s not with me?

“Maybe we each needed to be alone during the second act of the story,” I suggest as she calls me poison.

“Second act?” She taps her chin. “Perhaps you’re right.”

“My grandfather’s buildings didn’t have any issues until a couple of months ago,” she smiles. “The universe made it happened at the right moment. It aligned the stars, our lives, and brought us together.”

“You think that’s why we’re here?”

She shrugs, “Maybe? I’m not sure. There has to be a reason, right?”

I smile. There she is. The romantic girl I fell in love with when we were teenagers, still believing in love and fairy tales. All those ‘happily ever after’ endings promising a life full of joyful moments.

“What are you saying?” I hold my breath.

“I’m saying that we have a clean slate where you’re Elliot and I’m Hazel. We start from zero, and we find out where we belong.”

My pulse accelerates when I think about the years I’ve faced without her. She seems well adjusted without me.

The uncertainty of what she says, or fear of losing her prickles under my skin. “What if we don’t belong?”

“Fear is our worst enemy. It pushes you to a corner. You live scared, trembling because of what can go wrong instead of enjoying what’s happening to you.”

Hazel looks around and calls the server pointing at my cake.

“I must confess that I’ve feared to trust my heart since our divorce.”

She smiles at the waiter, who delivers the slice of chocolate heaven promptly.

“Can I get a cup of hot chocolate too, please?”

As the server walks away, she turns to me. “I might’ve come across wonderful men, but I’ll never know if they were the one because I let that fear devour my confidence.”

“Are you afraid of me?” Because I’m afraid of what you can do to my heart if you reject me.

“Of course, but I have to find my place.” She takes a bite of cake and moans. “If all else fails, I’ll wait for the storm to end and pick myself up, again.”

I gawk in awe. “That’s something I’ve always admired of you. Your strength.”

She laughs. “I’m also fragile and easy to scare. But I am tired of pushing away my happiness.”

“Clean slate, then?” I lift her hand, kissing her knuckles.

“Yes. We start from the beginning, and work our way up until we find each other again.”

Hazel

I’m working in my childhood bedroom. The rest of the house needs major repairs. I have to delegate them. I just can’t do everything by myself. Either it’s more than a one-person job or I’m not qualified to continue. Like the countertops for the new kitchen, the drywall, and the bathrooms. I should’ve let the experts tear down the walls. I’m just thankful that I didn’t break any pipes while I smashed the walls.

The doorbell rings as I’m about to rip the carpet from my bedroom floor. My heart beats fast thinking maybe it is Scott. But I slump my shoulders when I remember that he’s in London. Well, who else knows that I’m here? I dust off my hands, march toward the door, and open it.

“Hey,” Elliot greets me.

“Hi.” I stare at him.

“Mom mentioned that you’d been here since yesterday. I wanted to make sure you’ve eaten.”

“Your mom knows I’m here?”

“She mentioned someone has been working in the house.” He shrugs. “I imagined it was you. Have you been here since yesterday?”

“I went home last night, and arrived early in the morning. It sounds like I have no social life,” I protest.

Or that I can’t spend quality time with a bowl of popcorn, chocolate, and Netflix.

“I tried to call you earlier, but your phone was off,” he lifts his chin and looks around the house. Then he stares at me as if waiting for something.

“Would you like to come in?” I step aside, letting him come through.

“Is everything okay?”

I nod, fixing my messy hair.

He whistles as he scans the area, then walks toward the kitchen, back to the living room, and toward the bedrooms.

“Do you need help?” he calls from my room.

“Maybe?”

“Remember this?” Elliot walks back to me, holding an old cookie tin.

I close my eyes for a second, scratching my head. “How can I forget?”

We treasured all our firsts in there. I take it from him. Sitting down on the floor, I remove the lid. Our first movie, walking all by ourselves when I was twelve. The tickets for our first concert. The napkin from our first date. A dried rose inside a Ziploc bag. My first timeline.

I open it and find a list, not exactly a timeline.

“A bucket list,” I say as I go through each item. “It seems that when I was thirteen, I planned on surfing all over the world.”

“You did?” He frowns, taking the paper from me. “Australia, Hawaii, Ireland, Mexico, Peru, France, Canary Islands, Philippines…you wanted to be a professional surfer?”

I shrug, taking back my list. “Not really, but I wanted to surf all over the world—at least that was my plan.”

Reading through the list, I find nothing specific about my relationship with Elliot or my life. My only goal was to hit as many waves as I could. I hold my breath as I remember that I’ve been to almost all those places—with Scott. He’s the one who got me back on a surfboard. I taught him how to surf, and we began traveling with Fitz and sometimes Harrison and Luna.

“Have you surfed in any of those places?” He takes the list back.

“Not La Jolla,” I reply immediately, avoiding the list of places I’ve traveled to surf—with Scott.

I’ve been through all the continents. My guys are always up for the challenge. Even Hunter and Willow have joined us a few times.

“We never made it to SoCal,” I say out loud, wondering why we didn’t travel through California.

Elliot’s phone buzzes. He sighs as he reads whatever is on his screen.

“Next weekend,” he offers.

“What about next weekend?”

“We can go to La Jolla. Just the two of us. No phones, no interruptions…” He looks around my house. “And no renovations.”

“Are you planning on helping me?”

He nods. “Tomorrow. Today I have a date.”

“You have a date?” I raise an eyebrow, excited about this new development.

He smiles. “My nieces and I are going to the zoo. Then movies and dinner. Dahlia is working, and Mom has plans with her friend.”

“Sounds like the friend might be a little more.”

He nods. “I think so. Mom just doesn’t want to admit it.”

“Good for her.”

“It’s hard to imagine her with someone other than Dad.” He combs his hair with both hands. “He was the love of her life.”

“You can fall in love more than once and in different ways,” I explain to him, wondering who the mystery guy is.

“She’ll never love anyone the way she loved your father, but her heart was able to see past the pain and open to the possibilities of a new love. A new person to share life with and be happy with. She deserves happiness.”

“They were soul mates, Hazel.” His voice is severe.

We stare at each other for several beats until his phone rings.

“Sorry I have to leave, but maybe I can catch up with you tomorrow.”

He leaves me, and I’m wondering about my oldest timeline. Mostly about soul mates and first loves. Are they the same?