Chapter 55 55
Annabeth's POV:
Mara showed up on a Saturday, three days before Thanksgiving, driving her old car that had a crack running across the entire windshield and a bumper sticker that said "Honk if you love cryptids." She pulled into our driveway at eleven AM and I barely had the front door open before she was out of the car and running at me.
"ANNABETH CLARKE YOU LOOK LIKE SHIT," she yelled, and then she was hugging me so hard I couldn't breathe, her arms around my neck and her face pressed into my shoulder. She smelled like gas station coffee and that vanilla perfume she'd been wearing since sophomore year.
"Thanks," I said. "Really appreciate that."
"No, I mean, you look skinny. Have you been eating? Your face is all..." She pulled back and held me at arm's length, studying me with that look she got when she was trying to figure something out. "You look different. Not just sick-different, like, different-different."
She wasn't wrong. Those weeks training with Marcus twice a day had changed my body. I was leaner, more defined, my arms showing muscle that hadn't been there before. And the fire stuff, all that energy burning through me constantly, had stripped away whatever softness I'd had left. I looked like someone who exercised obsessively, which I guess was technically true even if the exercise involved shooting flames from my hands in a forest clearing.
"I started working out," I said, which was not entirely a lie.
"Working out? You? The girl who said running was only acceptable if something was chasing you?"
"People change."
"In a couple months? What are you doing, CrossFit? P90X? Some kind of military boot camp thing?" She grabbed her bag from the backseat and followed me inside. "You literally have abs now. I can see them through your shirt. That's not normal."
"It's fine, Mara. I just needed something to do and exercise helped."
She looked at me for a second longer than comfortable, that look that meant she was filing this away for later interrogation, and then let it drop. For now.
Aunt Sarah was in the kitchen making sandwiches and Mara went straight to her for a hug. They'd always gotten along, my aunt and my best friend, probably because they were both people who said exactly what they thought without filtering it first.
"Mrs. Clarke, I missed you so much. Nobody else's house smells like lemon cleaning products and love."
"It's Pine-Sol, sweetheart, but I appreciate the sentiment." Aunt Sarah smiled and pushed a plate of sandwiches toward us. "You girls eat. Mara, you look wonderful."
"Thank you! I've gained the freshman fifteen and I'm leaning into it. Embracing my new body. Self-love and all that."
"Good for you."
We sat at the kitchen table eating turkey and Swiss sandwiches on that sourdough bread my aunt liked from the bakery on Second Street, and for about ten minutes everything felt normal. Mara talking about her classes, about her roommate who apparently snored so loud the girls down the hall could hear it, about this guy in her classroom who kept asking her to study together and she couldn't tell if he was hitting on her or if he genuinely needed help.
"He texts me at like eleven PM, Annabeth. That's not a study text. That's a Netflix and chill text disguised as academics."
"Maybe he's just a night owl who procrastinates."
"Nobody texts 'hey wanna go over chapter six?' with a winky face at eleven PM for academic purposes."
I laughed. An actual laugh, the kind that comes from your stomach and surprises you because you forgot your face could do that. Mara grinned at me and for a second it was like nothing had changed, like we were still in high school eating lunch together and gossiping about boys who couldn't take a hint.
Then she asked.
"So." She set down her sandwich and looked at me with that careful expression she used when she was about to bring up something she knew I didn't want to talk about. "Where's the hot literature boy? When do I get to meet him?"
My stomach dropped. I'd been waiting for this since she texted that she was coming, had been rehearsing different versions of this conversation in my head, but none of them felt right.
"We broke up," I said. Too fast, too flat.
Mara blinked. "What?"
"Kaelen and I. We're not together anymore."
"Since when? You were literally gushing about him like three weeks ago. What happened?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Annabeth—"
"I'm serious, Mara. I can't... I just can't talk about it right now. Please."
Something in my voice must've told her I meant it because she backed off. Mara could be pushy about gossip and details but she'd always known when to stop, when the thing she was pushing at was actually something fragile that would break if she pressed too hard.
"Okay," she said quietly. "I'm here if you change your mind."
"I know."
"Did he hurt you? Like, do I need to find him and—"
"No. He didn't... it's complicated. He did something that I can't forgive right now and that's all I want to say about it."
Aunt Sarah was watching us from the counter with that expression she got when she wanted to say something but was choosing not to.
Mara reached across the table and squeezed my hand. "His loss. Whatever happened, his loss."
"Thanks."
"I mean it. You're a catch. You're smart, you're pretty, you can name every bone in the human body, which is honestly terrifying but also impressive."
I almost smiled. "All two hundred and six of them."
"See? Who wouldn't want that?"
We moved on. Or Mara moved on for my sake, steering the conversation to safer topics with the skill of someone who'd been my best friend long enough to know exactly when to push and when to pivot. She told me about her Thanksgiving plans, and about how her mom was already going crazy with the cooking even though it was three days away.
After lunch Mara suggested we go to the mall, do the whole thing, walk around, get coffee, judge people's outfits, maybe buy something if anything caught our eye. Normal stuff. Our stuff. The kind of mindless activity that used to fill our weekends before everything got complicated.
"Yes," I said, probably too fast. "God, yes. Let's do that."
I needed it. Needed to feel like a regular eighteen-year-old for a few hours instead of whatever I was now, a dragon hybrid training for combat with her estranged father while trying not to think about the boy she loved and the organization that wanted to capture her...
Pretty normal, right?