Opposites

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Oliver

The fresh and smooth air of the Californian night was swept away suddenly as soon as we approached the entrance of the brotherhood’s house.

We were overwhelmed by a tide of suffocating heat, thick with humidity, and by bass frequencies so powerful and pulsating that they made the very foundations of the building tremble and rumble in the rib cage.

The brotherhood’s house was an open construction site of purple and blue strobe lights, hundreds of red plastic cups scattered on the lawn and groups of students swarming in and out carrying aluminum baskets loaded with ice and cheap beer.

I was voluntarily on the sidelines, my hands planted at the bottom of the pockets of my black jeans and my back firmly resting on a support pillar.

I felt deeply and hopelessly out of place.

The pungent smell of cheap alcohol, the thick smoke of cigarettes and joints hovering in the air, the unsgraced screams of people dancing piled up in the main hall were the exact and polar opposite of my usual routine made of silence and obsessive study.

Damien, on the contrary, took his first steps inside that chaos with a disarming naturalness, as if he had been the landlord or a guest of honor awaited for weeks.

In less than ten minutes he had already greeted with warm handshakes half a dozen people he had never seen before, snatched a winking smile from two sophomore girls sitting on the armrest of a sofa and had even managed to be offered a shot of tequila by the president of the brotherhood.

He had that kind of innate and elegant charisma that attracted the eyes of anyone without the slightest effort.

“See, Lee?” Damien shouted in my ear to be heard above the deafening volume of trap music, approaching with two red glasses of beer in his hands and a cheeky smile printed on his face “It’s called basic social interaction! It doesn’t kill you, it doesn’t make you lose points on average and doesn’t infect you, I swear on my ancestors!”

“I’m already evaluating the fastest escape routes to get back to our room” I replied dryly, taking the glass just to avoid looking even more rigid and antisocial than I already was in the eyes of those who passed by.

“You are a desperate case of youthful rigidity” he laughed, nodding his head to a blonde girl who smiled at him from the improvised alcohol counter in the kitchen “Relax for an hour. For just once in your life, try to look like a normal twenty-year-old boy and not an old pensioner who hates human beings”

“It’s absolutely impossible to relax with this volume and this concentration of people” I muttered, sliding my gaze distracted and bored towards the large double-leaf front door.

And it was exactly at that precise moment that I saw her.

Céleste crossed the threshold of the house escorted by her friends.

In that chaotic, vulgar and messy environment, her figure stood out from the rest of the crowd with almost annoying clarity.

She no longer wore the silk suits and rigid jackets of Paris: she wore a perfectly tight-fitting black top with a linear neckline that left her shoulders and collarbones uncovered, a pair of dark high-waisted jeans that marked her slender shapes and a pair of low-heeled leather ankle boots.

Her hair of an intense copper fell over her shoulders in soft shiny waves and, for the first time since I had crossed her, her lips were not tightened in a rigid line of tension.

She was laughing heartily at something one of her friends had just whispered in her ear.

I stood completely still for a few seconds too long, with the plastic cup halfway towards my mouth, unable to take my eyes off that vision.

“Oh-oh” Damien murmured at my side, his voice suddenly steeped in a shameless amusement “Look who decided to honor us with her presence. Your favorite classmate, the princess of Paris”

I immediately looked away abruptly, staring at the foam of my beer.

“She’s just a glue of nerves that has the misfortune of attending the same courses as me”

“Of course, Lee. And I’m a Benedictine monk of cloistered” Damien chuckled, giving me a good-natured elbow on the ribs.

The three girls cut diagonally through the room heading towards the drinks counter.

Passing less than two meters from us, Céleste inevitably met my gaze.

Her relaxed, sunny and carefree expression faded instantly, covering herself with that usual mask of subtle distrust and cold superiority that I saw on her every holy morning in the auditorium.

“Look” I said in a loud enough voice to overcome the buzz of the music, leaning slightly towards her as she passed “The princess decided to come down from her apartments to mingle with the people. Did you ask your parents for a written release to go out after the return time?”

Céleste stopped suddenly, blocking her friends too, and crossed her arms over her chest.

Her green eyes sparkled intensely under the purple and stroboscopic lights of the room.

“And you asked for written permission from your pathological anatomy manual to breathe air that is not sterilized, Lee? I’m even surprised that you know the meaning of the word ‘party’”

“I’m here simply to make sure no one snatches that famous leather notebook from your hands while you’re having fun” I retored with a smile of pure provocation, leveraging her weak point.

She pursed her lips until they became thin, a small flash of burning and pulsating anger that colored her cheeks a bright red.

“You are absolutely unbearable”

“And you are incredibly predictable, Garcia”

Damien watched us from the corner with a very happy expression, enjoying the scene as if he were witnessing an exchange of blows at the Wimbledon final.

Before the discussion could degenerate further, one of Cèleste’s friends grabbed her arm.

“Come on, Céleste, leave Mr. Zero Degrees Fun alone and come take a shot with us”

The girls dragged her away to the kitchen.

I watched her walk away towards the crowded corridor, convinced that my disturbing moment of the evening was finally over and that I could ask Damien to go back to the dorm.

“Game of beer pong! Who the f**k is under to challenge the champions?” shouted one of the brotherhood boys in the middle of the living room, banging his fists on a long table.

Damien pulled me hard by the sleeve of my jacket.

“Absolutely yes. We have a reputation and a title to defend tonight”

We approached the long green table.

On the other side, pushed and incited by her friends, there was Céleste.

She had a red glass in her hand and an air of open and proud challenge printed on her face.

“Look who’s at the opponent’s table” said Damien “Shall we play with a formal bet?”

Céleste stared me straight in the eyes from across the table.

“I’m in. Whoever loses the game pays a penance decided directly by the winner before the end of the evening”

“Deal, Garcia” I said, holding the first ping pong ball with my right hand “I just hope you know how to lose with a minimum of Parisian elegance”

The game was an electrifying succession of twists, close shots and continuous provocations.

Céleste deliberately tried to distract me every time I was about to pull —pretending to cough hard, moving her bare arms or throwing me looks of pure defiance.

When she managed to stick a ball into my glass with a perfect and clean archery, she exploded in an exclamation of spontaneous victory, hitting her friends high five and laughing heartily with her head thrown back.

It was a point-blank blow for me.

It wasn’t a face smile or the usual drawn expression she showed during the courses.

It was a sincere, crystalline, sunny laugh, which lit up her entire face and made the corners of her eyes wrinkle in a delicious way.

At that precise moment, the contrast with the cold, detached and calculating girl of the auditorium was so powerful and disarming that I was paralyzed for a second too much with the ball in my hand staring at her.

“It’s your turn, Lee! Wake up!” Damien called me out loud, giving me a push.

I immediately pulled myself back, took aim with fierce concentration and stuck the last ball into the girls’ final glass.

“Victory for us!” Damien rejoiced, raising his hands to the ceiling to the applause of the spectators.

I expected Céleste to make a pout, make a scene or leave pissed off.

Instead, she rested both hands on the edge of the wooden table and shook her head, letting out a laugh.

“Okay, you won, Lee. Damn lucky one”

As the hours passed and a few glasses of beer in the body, the rigid and defensive air between us began inexorably to melt.

The music from the loudspeakers in the house had become softer, less pounding, and most of the crowd had moved to the backyard around a bonfire.

I found myself sitting alone on an old worn leather sofa arranged under the covered veranda.

A few seconds later, the glass door opened and Céleste sat extremely cautiously on the other end of the same sofa, clutching her almost empty plastic cup in her hands.

Her pace was slightly uncertain, a clear sign that alcohol had done its duty by breaking down her rigid barriers.

For the first time, there was no tension or resentment in the air.

Just a strange silence, thick, but incredibly less heavy.

“What are you really doing here tonight, Garcia?” I asked, breaking the ice first and leaning my head back against the leather backrest “You don’t seem at all the type of brotherhood parties and cheap beer”

“Audrey and Dominique practically dragged me out of the room by my hair” she admitted, letting go of a small tired sigh and looking up at the starry sky above us “Dominique argues that I spend far too much time staring at the void, feeling sick or studying things that don’t interest me at all”

I barely smiled, bringing the glass to my lips.

“She’s not entirely wrong, judging by how you behave in class”

“And you?” she grumbled, slowly turning her head towards me, her green eyes illuminated by the dim light of the streetlights “Why are you always so frighteningly angry with the whole world? I’ve never seen you smile once since we’ve been sitting at the same desk”

“I’m not angry” I replied flat “I’m just busy surviving”

The tone of the conversation slowly slid towards something denser, more intimate and dangerous.

I turned to look at her profile, noticing the soft and delicate line of her bare neck and the way her tapered fingers nervously played with the edge of her glass.

“Did you really want to study Medicine, Céleste?” I asked suddenly.

The question came out of my mouth spontaneously, crude, devoid of any filter.

Céleste froze petrified.

The slight smile that had remained imprinted on her face gradually disappeared, replaced by a shadow of melancholy.

She was silent for several seconds, so much so that for a moment I thought she would ignore me or insult me for meddling.

“No” she finally said, with a voice that was little more than a breath, a broken whisper “I never wanted it. Not even for a single second of my life”

“So why the f**k are you here, nine thousand kilometers from your house?”

“Because my parents decided for me that it was the only right thing to do” she replied, looking down at her fingers “My father is a very famous neurosurgeon, my mother an internationally renowned heart surgeon. For my family Medicine is the only form of dignity. My only true passion has always been music...I’ve been writing and singing since I was a child. But for them it’s just a waste of time. A ridiculous hobby for a spoiled girl. They filled out the registration for this campus on my behalf, packed my bags and sent me to Los Angeles to keep me away from any ‘artistic distraction’”

I listened to every single word without interrupting her.

The mental image of the spoiled, superficial and devoid of real problems girl that I had built on her began to crumble piece by piece, revealing an invisible but steel prison.

“You should do what you want” I said dry, rough “It’s your life, not theirs. No one should live someone else’s life”

Céleste let go of a bitter and joyless laugh.

“It’s easy for you to talk like that, Lee. You don’t know what it means to have your entire existence planned, calculated and financed from the day you were born. You don’t know what it means to disappoint the only people you depend on”

I stared at the few milliliters of beer left in my glass.

“What about you instead?” she asked, turning completely towards me on the couch, staring at me with a curiosity suddenly devoid of defenses “Why do you do Medicine with this obsessive fury? To make your parents happy?”

The atmosphere around us seemed to freeze instantly.

I never talked about my personal story with anyone.

Not even with Damien I went into the details of my past.

But the alcohol in my blood and the raw vulnerability that Céleste had just thrown on that couch broke my usual, impregnable barrier of protection.

“My mother died of cancer when I was just eight years old” I said, in a flat, surgical voice “We didn’t have the money to pay for the best treatments or private luminaries. She died in a public hospital after months of frightening agony”

Céleste widened her green eyes, remaining completely motionless on the couch.

“After her death there was no other relative willing to take care of me” I continued, keeping my gaze fixed in front of me “I ended up in a state orphanage. I’ve spent ten years of my life doing the most humble and tiring jobs to pay for my school textbooks and put every single penny aside. I’m here in Los Angeles because I won a total merit scholarship that I have to keep at all costs. If I miss a single exam or if my average collapses, I lose the funds and literally get back on the road”

I looked her straight in the eyes.

“I’m not here to make a career, for vanity or to please someone. I’m here because I want to become the kind of trained doctor who could have saved my mother. That’s all I have”

The silence that followed was deep, almost solemn.

Céleste stared at me as if she saw me for the very first time.

The anger, distrust and smugness with which she had treated me in the previous days dissolved completely.

“I’m so sorry, Oliver...” she said softly, and for the first time since I’ve known her she pronounced my baptismal name without the shadow of her usual sarcasm.

“It happened a long time ago” I minimized, shrugging my shoulders to shake off that emotional weight.

But my fingers squeezing the plastic cup tightly betrayed me, trembling slightly.

“I...I feel terribly like crap” murmured Céleste, resting her elbows on her knees and hiding her face in her hands for a moment “I have everything. I have unlimited money, a wealthy family that pays for my studies, my road is completely smoothed...and I spend all my time complaining and playing the victim because I can’t study Music. You had to fight with your nails for every single thing and I behave like a capricious little girl”

“Having money doesn’t mean having an easy or happy life at all, Garcia” I told her, surprised by myself as I genuinely tried to reassure her “A golden cage is still a locked cage. If you can’t choose who you really are, what difference does it make how big your parents’ bank account is?”

She slowly raised her head, meeting my gaze.

“And you? Having to fight for everything doesn’t mean you have to punish yourself and deprive yourself of everything forever. You destroy yourself with work, you don’t enjoy a single moment, you treat yourself as if you never deserved even a second of break or happiness”

We stared at eather in silence.

At that precise moment, on the worn couch of an ordinary university party, we really understood each other for the first time.

From inside the house came the melody of an acoustic song played with a guitar, diffused by the speakers.

Céleste raised her head instinctively, recognizing the first notes of the track.

On her lips, almost without realizing it, she began to follow the melody.

Her voice was low, a warm, velvety and incredibly tuned whisper that overlapped the guitar.

Her voice was beautiful, so beautiful it sent a cold shiver down my spine and on my arms.

I stayed listening to her completely enchanted, hypnotized.

After a few verses, she realized that I was staring at her with my mouth open.

She froze instantly, her cheeks tinged with a bright red under the dim light of the veranda.

“Sorry...” she said, clearly embarrassed, running a nervous hand through her copper hair “I did it again without thinking”

“You’re good” I said.

My voice came out much deeper and more emotional than expected.

“You’re really incredibly good, Céleste”

She was completely stunned by that sincere compliment.

She opened her mouth to answer, but no sound came out.

“Hey! Did you two open a private poetry club out here?”

The glass door of the veranda opened wide with a sharp blow and Damien made his triumphal entrance with a smile from ear to ear and a bottle of liquor halfway through.

The intimate and electric atmosphere that had been created between me and Céleste broke in a millisecond.

I immediately composed myself, straightening my back and summarizing my usual neutral and distant expression.

“We were just getting some fresh air”

Céleste hinted at a slightly amused little smile at Damien.

Damien shifted his gaze from me to her, noticing our extreme proximity on the couch and the strange way we were looking at each other.

His smile became even more mischievous, but he wisely decided not to rage at the moment.

“The party is emptying fast, Lee. We have to move if we don’t want the guardians to close the main gates of the campus”

We left the house together.

The dry cold of the Californian night was immediately felt and Céleste gasped, hugging her bare arms to cover herself.

I noticed that her pace was rather uncertain because of the alcohol in circulation and the heels of her boots.

“I’ll take you to your dorm” I said dryly, flanking her while Damien walked quickly a few meters ahead to talk on the phone.

“There is no need, I can walk very well on my own” she protested weakly, trying to maintain her usual royal posture.

“Instead, you definitely need it. You’re horsod and you walk crooked on your heels, Garcia. Move and don’t protest”

We walked slowly along the tree-lined and deserted avenues of the campus.

There were no more clashes or poisonous darts.

We talked about the meticulous strangeness of the teachers, Damien’s absurd social habits and the difficulty of adapting to life in Los Angeles.

We even laughed together for a couple of jokes.

“Maybe you’re not as unbearable as I thought the first morning” she said suddenly, giving me a light and playful push with her shoulder against mine.

“And maybe you’re not so spoiled and superficial” I retorted, giving her back the push with an almost imperceptible smile.

We finally stopped in front of the large entrance door of the women’s dormitory.

The lights in the atrium illuminated the stone staircase.

She turned to me.

For a few long and interminable seconds we remained silent, incredibly close.

The air between the two of us was loaded with a completely different tension than the one felt in the auditorium.

There was no trace of anger.

There was a subtle attraction, a strange and powerful electricity that pushed me to take a step forward towards her.

Under the yellow light of the street lamp, her green eyes looked huge, deep.

For a moment I seriously thought about leaning over, undoing those few centimeters that separated us and touching her face.

But I froze.

Gritting my teeth hard, I took a step back, brutally pushing down that irrational impulse.

I couldn’t afford distractions.

“Good night, Garcia” I said dryly, restoring my wall.

Céleste hesitated for a moment, as if she was waiting for something else that had not arrived, then she hinted at a small nod with her head.

“Good night, Oliver”

She turned her back and entered the building.

I stared at the glass door until her figure disappeared completely into the hallway.

On the way back to our dorm, Damien walked beside me in silence for a good five minutes, before letting go of an amused giggle.

“You like her” he said simply, without preambles.

“I don’t like her at all” I replied immediately, without even turning to look at him “She’s just a classmate with whom I shared a moment of respite”

“Yes, of course. And I am the Pope himself” Damien chuckled “I saw it very well how you looked at her on the veranda while she was talking, Lee. You’ve never looked at any girl like that since I met you”

“You’re wandering like usual, Damien. Shut up and walk, it’s late”

Once back in the room, I undressed in silence and slipped under the covers.

The room was dark and quiet.

I grabbed my old phone on the bedside table to set the alarm for 5:30 A.M. in the morning.

On the illuminated screen there was a new text notification.

Céleste: Thank you for taking me to the dorm. And thank you for listening to me tonight.

I stared at the text for several seconds in the darkness of the room.

Unintentionally, a small genuine smile rippled the corners of my lips.

I typed fast on the cracked keyboard.

Oliver: You’re welcome, Garcia. Now try to sleep, tomorrow Physiology won’t forgive.

I put the phone on the bedside table.

I closed my eyes, but for the first time since I arrived in Los Angeles, my mind wasn’t occupied by distressing calculations on taxes or anatomy reviews.

I thought of that wonderful voice singing softly in the night and the way her green eyes had shone when she laughed heartily.

She was no longer just the rich and distant girl of the auditorium.

I desperately wanted to find out what was hiding behind that beautiful silk barrier.