Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller

bearing down on my brain. “Not really the direction I was hoping this would
go.”
I haven’t stopped long enough to really think about the reality of
everything that happened, and when Kal showed up at the theater last night, I
let jealousy and hurt cloud my judgment. Let him fuck me in a public place,
where my entire family could hear.
And, judging by the blush painting my sisters’ cheeks when I arrived at
the diner this afternoon, they definitely did hear.
“Hey,” Ari says, pointing a crinkle-cut fry at me. “Beggars can’t be
choosers. Either you drive the conversation, or other people pick the topics.
Those are the rules of society.”
Stella snorts. “Who made the rules?”
“I did. Just now.” Ariana pulls her phone out, scrolling silently for a few
moments, before turning the screen around to face me. A news article is
pulled up, timestamped for this morning. SOCIALITE RETURNS TO
BOSTON AFTER FAKING KIDNAPPING; FATHER’S COMPANY
ANNOUNCES PERSONNEL CHANGES, NEW INVESTMENTS. “Would
you rather talk about that?”
The headline makes my blood boil, amplifying my simmering anger
toward my parents, burrowing it even deeper. I haven’t seen them since I left
the house yesterday; rather than stay in the penthouse like I had been, I went
uptown to Nonna’s Millennium Tower apartment, confident in the fact that
Kal wouldn’t come find me there.
Not that he couldn’t, but that he would choose not to.
And he never did.
Even though it meant he got my message loud and clear, I still couldn’t
help the little seedling of hope that embedded itself in my psyche, wishing
he’d come after me again.
That there would be no limit to the number of times he’d chase me to the
ends of the earth, no matter how many times I pushed him away.
Clearly, that’s not the case.
My parents never reached out, either, although after leaving my phone in
the theater, I suppose I effectively cut off communication with them. Of
course, neither of them know I’m aware of Nonna’s apartment, which means
they’d never come looking for me here.
I only discovered it after her last New Year’s bender, when she refused to
take a cab from a hotel bar down the street, noting she had a secret apartment