Love Turns With Twisted Fates 2 by Caleigh Hernandez Page B

depends on how you want the
ladies to look.
    She’s struggling with the band right in the middle of my
room. “Let me help,” taking the band from her. “Under or across?”
    “Across? I don’t see how this doesn’t ruin the vision,” she
pouts out.
    “Hush. Now turn.” I’m wrapping the band around her and into
place. “Grab the shirt and I’ll show you how this ‘doesn’t ruin the vision.’ ”
    With the shirt in place, I adjust the band by separating the
layers and rolling them to imitate the cutouts in the shirt in a crisscross
pattern, effectively creating an almost woven look.
    “Holy shit, Iz! That’s hot!” Mazzy’s checking herself out in
my full-length mirror.
    I give her a nod, slipping on my white low cut Chucks.
They’re as close to athletic as I’ve got. With all the things, I don’t know
about game attire etiquette, I do know that my preference for heels is highly
frowned upon.
    “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” I declare, giving myself one
last inspection in the mirror as Mazzy leaves the room.
    “Let me put on my Chucks and we can go.” Our shoe game is
the same. Between the two of us, we have fifteen to twenty pairs of Chucks in
different colors and styles. Tragically, she wears a size eight and I’m a tiny
size six. We can borrow and share our clothes, but the shoes are a no go. I remember
our dorm freshman year, we looked like we bought an entire shoe department with
walls of shoes because the tiny closet wasn’t enough to contain our shoe
obsession. Fate really does work in mysterious ways. Mazzy would not have been
someone I picked out of the crowd to be friends with, but the fates knew
better.
    “Again, Izzy?”
    “Be quiet, you. I was actually thinking about how much I
love you.”
    She’s traded her white short shorts for some skintight blood
red denim capris. I quirk up my eyebrow at her in question. As part of her
typical answer, she shrugs, “I wasn’t feeling the shorts. And you were thinking
about how much you loved me?”
    I nod, giving her a smile.
    "How much do you love me, Izzy?"
    "More than my shoes!"
    The confession has us throwing our heads back and laughing.
"Well, seems like Diego's fate is already decided if you love me more than
your shoes. Can't imagine you loving him more than me."
    "Sheesh. What's with the talk about love and fate?
That's a bit premature, Mazz."
    Okay, that shrug is getting old right now. She's clearly
trying to push some buttons. Probably thinks she's holding a mirror to
something I'm not ready to admit to myself. "I see those wheels turning,
Izzy."
    "For fuck's sake, Mazzy," shaking my head as if it
can remove me from the path my thoughts are travelling down. "I wasn't
thinking about love. It's been a few weeks..."
    "Izabella, I know you. And while I've never seen you in
love, it's practically written all over you face. You're lost in daydreams. You
go gooey," she says the word like it's 'icky,’ "when you see his
number pop up on the caller id. Hell," she gestures to my outfit,
"you're even wearing school colors? Babe, you've got it bad."
    "Whatever. Can we go now?"
    She chuckles at me. I know there's some validity to what
she's saying, but I'm not ready to go there. Since, Mom and Dad died, love is
the furthest thing from my mind. They loved each other with every ounce of
their beings and that didn't save them from fate ripping both of them from me
just days after Dad was declared cancer free. I'm not jaded, but I can no
longer subscribe to the notion that everything happens for a reason. I can't
see the reason behind me losing one parent. Losing both has me wondering if
love is worth losing everything. Okay. So I'm a little jaded. Who wouldn't be?
    "Izzy," I can hear the sternness in Mazzy's voice,
"snap out of it, babe. We've got some hot soccer players to ogle."
The look on her face says she knows I've gone to the dark side and she's not
having it. She's been down all these roads with me. She was there when I got
the news