Read Online The One by Vivienne Harris-Scott - Free Book Online

her own terms; he compromised by
allowing the change of school.
    Being surrounded by teenage males on a
daily basis for the first time, she found out on her own that her beauty attracted
them. They didn't care that she was smart, only beautiful. She took advantage
of it and started to explore her sexuality. Kevin was the exception. Being
strikingly aesthetically beautiful himself and totally uninterested in his
appearance or hers, he understood her and they connected on a level she had
never experienced before with the opposite sex, including with her own brother.
During their two years there, he protected her, kept encouraging her, and
ultimately, became her first and only male friend. Her best friend.
    At 17, after being accepted at the same
business school, he asked her to move in with him in the empty penthouse his
father owned next to the Trocadero. His parents being divorced, his father
lived in Washington DC where he worked at the World Bank, while his mother
lived in her chateau in Burgundy. He was on his own, and convinced her he could
use her company. For the next eight years, he was her confidant, he saw
her through everything, as she did him. Lovers came and went, years passed,
diplomas were celebrated, jobs taken, and Lily visited every year for a couple
of months at times.
    They all grew into fairly well adjusted
adults, considering the circumstances, promising one another they would always
be there for each other.
    It was 1998. At 25, the world was at their
feet.
     
    ((~~!~~))
     
    You know the Yiddish proverb, ‘ Man plans, God laughs. ’  
    Well, it couldn't have been truer in our
case.
    The first fissure in my friendship with
Kevin happened when he met his first serious girlfriend: Serena. At
25, Kevin had only slept with only a handful of women, -contrary to yours
truly, who had spent a lot of time experimenting -, and he had never been in
love.
    Funnily enough, my brother, Deric, was the
one who made the introduction. He had been modelling since he was 16 years-old,
after quitting high-school, stating it wasn't for him. There were so
many interesting things to do in life, who in their right mind would spend
their days listening to insipid lectures?! My father had been unimpressed but
let it go in face of his success.
    Serena was a 22 years-old blonde beauty
from Italy, and Kevin fell for her. Hard.
    I couldn't stand her. Don't ask me why, I
couldn't answer. Kevin sensed it in the first few months of their relationship
and then knew it for certain when I openly told him right before moving out of
our apartment. I was leaving for Geneva where I would start my internship at
the UN European headquarters while finishing my master degree in international
law, and didn ’ t want to leave things unsaid. From then
on, geographical distance and my inability to force myself to tolerate his
girlfriend created a rift between us.
    At 25, I felt alone, once again.
    Of course, Deric was there with the weekly
phone calls, but it simply wasn't the same. Lily had returned to the US, and
was in her fourth-year of medical school at Harvard; she couldn't visit anymore
in spite of wanting to.
    Working became my best friend.
    Meeting Ethan was like a breath of fresh
air swirling into my life. He was interested in me. Not because I was
beautiful, but because of my spirit, and our chemistry was just indescribable.
It was my turn to fall, hard. When I asked him if he ever dated a black woman
he told me he was color blind, which I found hysterical at the time, not
knowing it was true!
    Too bad his fellow countrymen weren't. But
I would only learn this much later.
    The romance between Ethan and I was
intense from the start, but reached high gear when he asked me to accompany him
back to Australia almost a year prior to today. It was December 1999, we had
known each other less than two months, and he convinced me I would have the
time of my life celebrating the world's entry into the new millennium in
Sydney. He was about done