Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways)

Past

He was here.

Finally.

I could tell by the footsteps. The way they brushed against the limestone. Steady, measured, precise. His knockoff sneakers kissed the floor. I closed my eyes, balancing against a bookshelf in the library, my breath fluttering in my chest like a butterfly.

Ten months. It’s been ten long months. Come find me.

A shot of thrill rolled through my belly. I’d never done this before. Made myself unavailable to Nicholai. No matter how much I wanted to wait for him by the door, like an eager puppy, ready with all the books and stories I wanted to share with him, I didn’t. I wanted to reinvent myself this summer break. To be mysterious and alluring and all the other things I read about in the books that made heroines worth fighting for.

I was in the library, clutching a black-and-white paperback of Atonement by Ian McEwan, wearing a mint-green satin nightgown. I’d read the book in February, after stealing it from the school’s library just to feel what it was like to take what wasn’t mine, and then every month since I’d waited to tell Nicky about it. Even though we lived in the same city, we might as well be living in parallel universes. Our worlds didn’t touch, our lives orbiting around different schools, people, and events. It was only during summer break that we collided. That the universe burst with colors.

Several times throughout the year I’d found myself itching to send him a letter or an email or even pick up the phone and call. Each time, I’d had to talk myself off the ledge. He never sought me out between summers—why should I? Maybe to him we were nothing but a lame version of summer camp. Maybe we weren’t even friends. Just two kids spending the summer in one confined space, carelessly forgotten by the adults who’d made us.

Maybe he had a girlfriend now.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

So I waited. Stewed on the book. Marinated in the feelings it evoked within me. They always brought me back to him. Nicholai. My Nicky.

The footsteps grew louder, closer.

I tucked a flyaway behind my ear, willing my heart to beat slower. I’d been crushing on Nicholai Ivanov since that first day at the cemetery; I’d just never put a name to that feeling I had for him before. Not until this year, when everyone at school had seemed to pair up into couples. Having a boyfriend had somehow switched from a shameful thing only bad girls did to the height of one’s existence overnight, and I’d fallen behind on the trend. None of these couples actually talked to each other during school hours or hung out, but they had the title, and whenever there was an outing or a birthday, the couples would whisper to each other and kiss.

Kissing, too, had become a rite of passage. Something to be checked off a list. There was not one boy at school I wanted to kiss.

The only lips I wanted to feel against mine were Nicholai’s.

I flipped through the pages of Atonement, but the words kept slipping, as if falling from the pages. I was surprised there wasn’t a pile of letters at my feet. It was hopeless. Trying to concentrate on anything that wasn’t him.

And then . . . bliss. Nicholai’s body filled the doorframe in my periphery. Holey shoes, jeans ripped in all the wrong places, and a faded shirt, frayed at the edges. Each year he sharpened into something more beautiful.

I pretended not to notice him.

“Sup.” An unlit cigarette butt was tucked in the corner of his mouth. I pondered what the great Beatrice Roth would think about the fact I wanted to kiss a boy who shoved used cigarettes from the street into his mouth. Probably not much, to be honest. As long as I didn’t bring a disease into the house, she wouldn’t have minded if I sawed my own limbs off as a fashion statement.

I looked up. “Oh. Hey, Nicky.”

His beauty struck me like lightning. He hadn’t been so handsome two years ago. Each summer, his features were honed into something more male. His jaw became sharper, the slash between his eyebrows deeper, his lips redder. His eyes were his best feature, though. The exact, astonishing color of blue topaz. He was tall, smooth, and lithe, and above all, he had that quality that couldn’t be named. The badassness of a kid who knew how to fend for himself. How to fight for his survival. It made me nauseous to think some kids had him two semesters a year. To ogle, to admire, to enjoy.

“You good?” He pushed off the doorframe, waltzing over to me. I noticed that his scrawny arms had filled out over the past year. Veins ran through the muscles. He didn’t stop until our toes touched, and he plucked the book from between my fingers and flipped through it nonchalantly.

He tucked the cigarette behind his ear, his eyebrows knitting together.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello.” He looked up, flashing me a grin, then returned his attention to the book. I couldn’t wait to see him in swimming trunks this summer.

“Have you read it?” I wheezed out the question, my face blazing hot.

He shook his head. “Heard some of it is pretty raunchy, though.”

“Yeah. But, like, that’s not the point of the book.”

“Making out is always the point of everything.” His eyes lifted to meet mine, and he let loose a rakish smirk. He handed me back my book. “Maybe I’ll give it a try one day, if Mr. Van stops giving me Penthouse hand-me-downs.”

This was my in to tell him what I’d thought about the entire year. What I dreamed about at night.

“Congratulations, you officially became gross.”

He laughed. “I missed you.”

“Yeah. Me too.” I twisted a piece of hair over my index finger, feeling so strange in my body, like it didn’t belong to me. “I’m thinking of taking theater class, now that I’m going to high school.”

I absolutely wasn’t, but I needed a solid background story.

“Cool.” He was already roaming the room, opening drawers, looking for new, shiny things to explore. My house was like a theme park for Nicholai. He liked to use my dad’s lighters, to cross his ankles on the mahogany desks, to pretend to take important calls on the vintage Toscano office phone.

“I thought maybe we could reenact part of the book. You know, as practice, for my audition in September.”

“Reenact what?”

“One of the raunchy scenes. In the book. I need to do something risqué for my audition.”

“Risqué?” he murmured, pulling drawers open, sticking his hands in them.

“Yes. They’re not gonna let me in if I give them something mild.”

What the hell was I talking about? Even I had no clue.

“How raunchy are we talking?” He was too distracted, on his hunt for something to steal.

I grabbed the book and flipped through it before stopping at page 126 and handing it over to him. He stopped rummaging through drawers. His eyes dropped to the text. I held my breath as he read it. When he finished, he passed it back to me, and I tucked it in the library behind me.

“You’re kidding, right?”

I shook my head, my pulse nearly jumping out of my skin.

Nicholai froze. His gaze flew from one of the desk’s drawers to mine, disbelief touching his topaz eyes. There was knowledge in them. Irreverence and annoyance too. I wanted to recreate that scene at the library, where Robbie pins Cecilia against the shelves and kisses her like the world is ending. Because to him, it is.

Every hair on my arms stood on end. I didn’t want to throw up on my own shoes. At the same time, it seemed like I was about to do just that.

“We’ll just kiss,” I clarified, faking a yawn. “None of that other weird stuff, obvs.”

“Just kiss?”

“Hey, you were the one who just told me everything begins and ends with making out.” I raised my hands in surrender.

His lips curled into a slight smirk. My heart free-fell to the floor.

“Have you raided your old man’s liquor cabinet, Ari?” Nicky erased the little space we had between us. He trailed a finger along the shell of my ear. A shiver ran through me. “We can’t kiss. Unless, of course, you want our parents to kill me.”

“You mean us.”

“Nah.” He took the cigarette from behind his ear and chewed on its butt, keeping his hands and mouth busy. “You’ll get away with just about anything under Daddy Conrad’s watch. The blame always lies at the feet of the poor person with the funny-sounding name. Haven’t you noticed a theme in all of the classics we read last summer?”

“I’m not gonna tell anyone.” My throat felt tight. Full of pebbles. Suddenly, rejection had a taste, a scent, a body. It was a living, breathing thing, and the sting of its fist burned my cheeks. I couldn’t even be mad at Nicky. I was a reluctant observer all the times my father, my mother, and Ruslana tossed threats like arrows into the air, aimed at Nicky.

Don’t you dare touch her.

Take a step back, son.

Nicholai, don’t you have to help your mother with the dishes?

“I know; it’s not that I don’t trust you,” Nicky agreed. “It’s that I don’t trust my luck. If they find out somehow, if this place is wired or whatever . . . Ari, you know I can’t.”

It was gentle, but it was final. Subject closed. And while I understood him, I was also angry at him, because he was still levelheaded about us, whereas I was as logical as a truck tire where he was concerned. The bile in my throat rolled an inch forward toward my mouth. But I wasn’t that kind of girl. I prided myself in being exactly what Nicky wanted me to be. I watched action flicks and played wall ball and said dude at least fifteen times a day.

“Hey, we going down for a swim or what?” Nicky wrapped his fingers around a small crystal ball on the shelf behind me and pocketed it. He did that a lot, and I never minded. Maybe because I knew he’d never take something that was dear to me. “I practiced at the YMCA pool all year. Prepare to be crushed, silver-spooned girl.”

The sharp bite behind my eyes told me that I had three seconds, maybe five, before the tears began to fall.

“Dude.” I snorted. “Who’s being high now? I’m going to end you. Let me put my swimsuit on.”

“Meet you at the door in five.”

I turned around and walked away, closing my bedroom door behind me, then fished for my swimsuit in my drawer, nicking my thumb in the process. I was bleeding but couldn’t feel a thing.

I sucked on the blood, looking in the mirror and practicing my best, brightest smile.

That was my first lesson of adolescence.

Heartbreaks were dealt with discreetly. In the back alleys of your soul. On the outside, I was strong. But inside—I cracked.

After the swimming competition—in which Nicky indeed annihilated me—I avoided him the entire first week of summer break.

I did it casually. Made plans to go to Saks with some friends one day, went to the library on another. I even went as far as joining my mother and her boring friends for brunch.

But Nicky still came every day and had the determined, stoic expression of someone who wanted to make our friendship work. And each day, I came up with something else to do. Something that didn’t include him in my plans.

I knew I was punishing him for not kissing me, even if in a roundabout way. Ruslana made him help her around the house to keep him busy. She allowed him a few breaks each day, which he took on the living room balcony, which adjoined my bedroom terrace. Hopping between the balconies was doable but risky. The glass barrier was too tall, so you had to go over the rails and hang on the edge of the skyscraper for three feet until you made it to the other side.

One time during that first week, when Ruslana had taken out the trash and I’d just come back from another pointless outing to avoid him, Nicky hurried to the glass window between us, pressing his hands against it. I did the same, instantly drawn to him like a magnet.

“Are you punishing me?” he asked, no hint of anger in his voice.

I laughed incredulously. “Now, why would I do that?”

“You know exactly why.”

“Wow, Nicky. Inflated ego much?”

He studied me expressionlessly. I felt like the world’s biggest jerk. He tried another tactic. “Are we still friends?”

I gave him a pitying look I hated. The kind of look popular girls gave me at school when I said something nerdy or uncool. “It’s okay if I don’t want to spend all summer with you, you know.”

“Guess so.” He was watching me so closely I felt like he was undressing me of my lies, one item at a time. “But it looks like you don’t want to spend one minute with me.”

“I do. I’ll swim with you tomorrow. Oh, wait.” I snapped my fingers. “I promised Dad I would go to his office and help his secretaries to do some filing.”

“I’m losing to filing?” His eyes flared.

“Whatever, Nicky. It’s work experience. We should both be thinking about getting summer jobs next year, anyway. We’re getting too old for this.”

He narrowed his eyes, glancing between the railing and me. I shook my head. I didn’t want him to die. I mean, okay, maybe just a little, because he’d rejected me and it hurt, but I knew I wouldn’t survive if something happened to him.

“Don’t cross the barrier,” I warned. I had a feeling we were talking about much more than just the banisters.

He made a move, though. About to cross. I gasped.

His mother called him to come back. He smiled.

“For you, Arya, I just might.”

And he did.

After nine excruciating days, punctuated by a weekend full of screaming into my pillow. I was lacing my sneakers, getting ready for an afternoon of wandering around Manhattan aimlessly to avoid him. Ruslana was out, getting groceries, and my parents were at work and at a tennis lesson respectively. The house was quiet save for Fifi, a shih tzu, who was barking up a storm at a new statue Beatrice had won in an auction over the weekend. That dog had infinite amounts of cuteness and stupidity.

In my periphery, I noticed movement on my terrace, and when I turned my head to get a better look, I saw Nicky hanging between life and death.

I shot up from my bed and ran to the balcony.

“You jerk!” I cried, my heart beating five thousand times a minute.

But Nicky was lithe and athletic, and he jumped to safety and was dusting his hands off before I unlocked the balcony door.

“You could’ve died!” I pushed him into my room, railing.

“No such luck, silver-spooned princess.”

I loathed and enjoyed this nickname in equal measures. The dig was annoying, but he did call me a princess.

“Well, I could’ve been naked!”

“I could’ve been lucky,” he responded smoothly, closing the door behind us and sloping against a credenza, his ankles crossed. His face looked soft yet intense. Like an oil painting. I wanted to cry. It wasn’t fair that he wasn’t mine. And it wasn’t fair that even if he could be, we’d always have to keep it a secret. “We need to talk, pal.”

The way he said the word pal told me he did not consider me one anymore.

“Be quick about it. I’m seeing friends in half an hour.”

“No, you’re not.”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I was already on the defensive. I felt foolish. Up until now, Nicky and I had been kindred spirits. Tangled together by an invisible bond. Two forgotten kids in a big city. Even though we came from different backgrounds, we had so much in common. Now, it all felt wrong. He had the upper hand. He knew I liked him like that. The balance had shifted.

“Look.” He rubbed the back of his obsidian hair. “I freaked out, okay? It’s not that I didn’t want to kiss you. It’s just that I would really like my balls to be intact by the time I go to high school, and . . . well . . .”

“You cannot guarantee that’d happen if my dad catches us together,” I finished for him.

He smiled, a smile that told me he didn’t give a rat’s ass about what my dad thought about him, only about the consequences that might follow if he crossed him. “In a nutshell, yeah.”

I took a step forward, letting my arms fall at my sides. “I know my dad is overprotective of me. It’s an Aaron thing—”

“No,” Nicky said flatly. “It’s a rich-man-poor-boy thing.”

“Dad’s not like that,” I protested.

“He’s exactly like that, and a half. Honestly? If you were my daughter, I wouldn’t want you anywhere near me either.”

His conviction told me there was little point in trying to convince him otherwise.

“Anyway, I never would have offered if I thought we’d get caught. I’m sorry. I was being stupid. And reckless. And—”

“Arya?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not done talking.”

“Oh.” An invisible ribbon tightened around my neck. “Sorry. Um, continue.”

“As I said, if you were my daughter, I wouldn’t want you anywhere near me.” He paused. “But since you’re not my daughter, I decided your theater-class thingy is worth the risk. Not because I want to kiss you”—he lifted a finger in warning—“but because I wouldn’t want to deprive the world of the next Meryl Streep.”

Everything in my body shuddered. “Hey, I don’t want to kiss you either. But I want to become an actress.”

I should’ve felt worse than I did about the lie. After all, my desire to become an actress was akin to my desire to become a circus clown. As in, not quite. Or not at all. But somehow, I told myself the end justified the means.

“I expect two tickets to whatever film you star in when you grow up. And a limo waiting outside my house to take me there.” Nicky was still wagging his finger.

“Limos are a little outdated.”

“My balls, my rules.”

“What else?”

“It better not be a bad movie. If you pull a Demi Moore in Nothing but Trouble, I swear to God, Ari, I’m washing my hands of you forever.”

A canned laugh escaped me. “Fine.” I pushed stray locks of hair from my face. “I’ll send a limo and make you proud if you promise to bring a girl no prettier than I am as a date.”

“First of all, this is not a negotiation. I’m the one taking all the risk here. Second, easy peasy.” He rocked on the balls of his feet, a little embarrassed. “I don’t really know anyone as pretty as you.”

The silence between us felt heavy all of a sudden. Full of things we were too afraid to say. He cleared his throat.

“Also, if you don’t give me some company, my mother is going to make me scrub your ceiling clean. So you better haul ass outside this room, or this whole deal is off.”

Breathless hysteria took over my body. It was happening. Nicholai Ivanov was going to kiss me.

“Wait for me in the library,” I instructed.

“’Kay, ballbuster.” He turned to leave.

“Oh, and Nicky?”

He stopped but didn’t turn around.

“If you skip over the rails again, you don’t have to worry about falling. I will kill you myself.”

His back was to me when I entered the library.

Something compelled me to stop on the threshold and soak in the view of this boy that I loved, watching New York sprawled in front of him, hands clasped behind his back, stance straight, looking no less powerful than the city that devoured dreams and hopes on a daily basis.

It was suddenly terrifyingly clear to me that Nicholai was going to go places, and wherever they were, he wasn’t going to take me with him. He couldn’t afford baggage. His last stop wasn’t Hunts Point.

“Is your dad here yet?” Nicky asked, his back still to me.

I stepped inside, clicking the door shut softly. “He has a fundraising event tonight. Said he won’t be back until after dinnertime. Coast’s clear.”

My knees felt like jelly. I’d checked the time before I’d gotten here. It was four in the afternoon. My mother was on another yoga retreat, an ocean away. Ruslana might come back from grocery shopping, but she always made herself known whenever she knew we were together. Banging pans, vacuuming the hallway, talking on the phone loudly. She didn’t want to catch us in case we were doing something wrong. Knowledge came with liability.

Nicky spun on his heel, his face both grave and determined, like he was about to walk death row. I knew he was doing this for me. A part of him—most of him, I assumed—dreaded kissing me. I could call the whole thing off. Spare him the discomfort.

But I wasn’t good enough.

Virtuous enough.

Dad said scruples were a beggar’s jewels. That I shouldn’t bother myself with morals. “We pay too much tax to be good,” he’d once laughed out.

I glided toward one of the floor-to-ceiling shelves, pressing my back against it and closing my eyes. I felt like I was acting, so at least that part wasn’t a lie. Not in that moment. The sound of his footsteps echoed behind my rib cage. The heat of his body told me he was near. When he stopped right in front of me, my eyes opened. He was so close I couldn’t take his entire face in. Just those turquoise eyes that twinkled like an excavated part of the ocean. I wondered if I looked as lost as he was. He looked so scared. So . . . not sexy.

“It’s my first kiss.” My voice came out syrupy and apologetic. Foreign to my ears.

“Mine too.” He gnawed at his lower lip. The pink hue on his cheeks made everything more precious. I wanted to devour this moment like it was a juicy peach. To feel the sweet, sticky juices of it on my chin.

“Oh, good. I’m pretty sure I’m going to suck at this.” I giggled.

“Impossible,” he said gravely, and for some reason, I believed him.

He leaned over to kiss me and missed. Our foreheads bumped clumsily. We drew away and chuckled. He tried again, this time palming the sides of my neck and guiding his mouth to mine. His lips were hot and soft and tasted of tobacco and ice cubes and boy. We both kept our eyes open.

“This all right with you?” he murmured into my mouth. There was a thin line of hair above his upper lip, wetted by saliva. He still hadn’t had his first shave. My heart drummed in my chest. I hoped he would always remember this. The girl who’d kissed him before everyone else.

I nodded, catching his lips in mine. “Mm-hmm.”

“Good,” he whispered. “Shit, you’re pretty.”

“You said I was ugly. Years ago.” We were kissing. Talking. Holding each other.

“Lies.” He shook his head, his lips still exploring mine. “You are and always will be beautiful.”

My heart soared. He kissed me again, lacing his fingers through mine from both sides. It was still awkward, but I shoved the feeling of self-consciousness aside. The euphoria of being kissed nearly made me nauseous. It wasn’t the sensation that I liked but the fact I was experiencing it with him. The knowledge of how much he was risking for me set my soul aflame. There was an ache in my chest that unfurled like a small piece of paper. Expanding and expanding with each second that passed.

“Get your dirty hands off my daughter!”

The next few things happened fast. One second, Nicky’s body was pressed against mine, and the next, he was on the floor, huddled in a nest of thick, hardcover books, my father’s figure crouching above him, fisting the collar of his shirt.

There was a thwack—the sound of skin slapping skin. My vision blurred around the edges.

“I should’ve known . . . you little shi—”

I didn’t let Dad finish the sentence. I launched myself at him, yanking him away from Nicky by the arm. “Daddy! Please!”

“—will ruin your life.” Dad dragged him upright from the floor now by his collar, smashing Nicholai’s back against the shelves. More books rained on both of them, but neither of them paid attention. Dad’s face was red, almost purple, while Nicky looked defiant, his expression passive. He didn’t try to deny or explain what had happened. Didn’t chicken out. He was going to see this one through, the way he had everything else in his life.

Another jab sent Nicky’s face flying, and this time, by the crack, I knew my father had broken his nose.

Ruslana blasted through the library door holding a broomstick. I tried jumping between Dad and Nicky, prying Dad’s fingers from his throat. I was confused, upset, and sick to my stomach. I’d never seen my father being violent. He’d always been gentle and loving with me, making up for all the things my mother wasn’t.

“What’s happening here?” Ruslana shrieked. When she saw her son’s purple face staring back at my dad, she jumped between them, poking Dad away with the broom in her hands.

“Off! Get off him!” she roared. “You’ll kill him, and then I’ll be the one who needs to answer the authorities.”

This was what she cared about right now? Really?

“Your filthy, stupid son touched my Arya. I got back home early to grab a new tie before the fundraiser and . . .”

“Mercy!” Ruslana cried, turning to her son, who was nothing but a heap of jumbled limbs, blood, and swollen flesh in that moment. “Is this true? I told you not to touch her!”

Nicky jerked his chin up boldly.

“Say something!” she demanded.

Nicky turned to my father, smiling. His gums were bleeding. “She tasted good, sir.”

My father slapped him with the back of his hand, using his fraternity ring to draw more blood. Nicky’s face flew to the other side. His cheek banged against the shelf. This was all on me. My fault. I wanted to do so many things.

To tell him I was sorry.

To say I hadn’t known Dad would come.

To help him out.

To explain everything to Dad, to Ruslana. I needed to salvage this. To protect him.

But the words got stuck in my throat. Like a ball of puke, blocking my air pipes. My mouth fell open, but nothing came out.

It’s not his fault.

“Go to your room, Arya,” my father snarled, marching to the open door and tilting his head in the hallway’s direction. I didn’t move at first. “Go, God dammit!”

And then I thought about how my life would change if Dad decided to be like Mom. To neglect me, look the other way, treat me like I was another piece of furniture.

Shockingly—disgracefully—I moved, my legs heavy as lead.

I could still feel Nicholai’s eyes on my back. The heat of the betrayal. The burn of knowing I would never be forgiven.

That things would never be the same again.

That I’d lost my best friend.