Chapter Five
__________
Anya
“Tell us about your first love.”
The other shoe dropped, and there she was, on the softest love sofa with a glass of pineapple-watermelon sparkling juice that she didn’t want.
Anya appreciated the setup for the confessional interview: a cozy chair to settle into, soft lighting that created an intimate atmosphere, a blanket draped over her legs, and the glass of what could only be described as a dubious concoction to remind her not to get too comfortable.
The interviewer smiled kindly, her excitement poorly masked, and Anya doubted she even tried to hide it.
Viewers had already latched onto the idea of her and Alessio being an item, and the director was clearly ready to milk the moment for a bombshell exclusive that would leave the paparazzi gnawing on their SD cards.
Maybe she saw it as a free therapy session, she thought with a weak chuckle. Or perhaps a chance for a cathartic trauma dump.
But when she conveniently remembered the contract, which said double pay for additional changes from the director, Anya felt encouraged to tell her story and let Alessio know they were not perfect together.
She was as damaged as he was perfect.
* * *
FIVE
The first time Anya saw Alessio was on television. It was summer, the air sticky with oppressive heat, and hideous seagulls hovered nearby, eyeing her melting ice cream cone.
His parents were interviewed while he stayed between their legs. He looked like a prickly sea urchin with a bow tie, from his untamed dark hair to the nastiest little scowl on his face. His mother placed a hand on his head to smooth over the stubborn strands, but Anya hoped she’d pluck him up like a parsnip.
A seagull dove to snatch her melted ice cream, but it kindly left the cone crushed between her pudgy fingers.
Her parents, dressed in price-tagged summer hats and sunglasses, swirled around from inside the boardwalk shop.
She pointed at the boy on the small TV and blamed him for her missing snack. It was her fifth birthday, so she was allowed to lie.
They were not having any of that, but they still bought her a cup of ice cream.
* * *
FIFTEEN
She saw him on TV again. He was taller and still supported the same scowl, but he was meaner.
His hair was brushed and looked presentable—though not hospitable.
She learned his name was Alessio, and he was from a wealthy but humble family.
A microphone was shoved under his nose after an archery match, asking how he felt about the trophy that stuck out from the trash bin just an inch before the screen cutoff.
She wondered what he ate to grow that tall and searched online for his diet. There were guesses and knockoff meal plans based on previous athletes in similar fields.
Anya’s heart sank as she saw the bleak plate of chicken breast and waterlogged vegetables. She accepted she would not grow to be a six-foot supermodel.
Alessio smacked away the microphone. Behind him, competitors exchanged wary glances, but the journalist pressed on, either bold or oblivious.
They prodded about his parents’ latest investments, his training regimen, rumors of a sprained muscle, and even his love life.
He disregarded them like they were a forgotten pencil behind a desk.
He spoke to them with the calmest and most condemnatory insults she had ever heard from anyone.
A fur-bristling cat was her second impression of him.
He mocked their work ethics, and then he went after their lack of successful recognition and meaningful contribution.
She laughed, cranking the volume higher as she tried to figure out how he could keep such a neutral face.
It drowned out the screaming from downstairs.
* * *
SEVENTEEN
What was a tax bracket ten times higher than hers doing at a university campus tour?
He was a walking advertisement board, dollar signs in the carbon dioxide residuals, and the crushed cement particles under his shoes seemed like refined gold dust.
The dean nearly folded himself in half, with his back bent so far as to cater to a universally respectful worship pose. The other administrators weren’t much better at pretending to save their dignity yet bowing intuitively to someone with more influence.
She leaned on the windowsill, her hand under her chin as she stared at them through the tip of her nose. Her tailbone pinched in pain from the distressing posture.
The group she was in for the tour had a bunch of rowdy boys roughhousing every chance they had, so when she saw a purple soda can propelling out the window, it didn’t register in her mind that anything too awful could happen.
It did and bounced off Alessio’s head.
Anya felt her breath catch as he lifted his gaze. Her brain was already conjuring up her obituary, and he glared like a soul burdened with centuries-old vengeance.
Spring caressed the distance between them, the crisp raindrops dripped from plump green leaves, and her heartbeat bloomed more beautifully than the hyacinths by his side.
It felt lovely but also frightening.
She dodged his scathing stare and found two of her classmates cowering under the windowsill. They frantically gestured for her to turn around and admit to being the culprit.
Even though he saw her, she still dropped to her knees and sneered at the boys.
“Why am I the scapegoat?”
“You were right there!” one of them defended.
“Take one for the team.” The other pumped his fist as reinforcement.
“I will sacrifice you,” Anya hissed as they sheepishly laughed.
One more glare at them before she turned away and crab-crawled toward the stairs, thankful for the free roaming period just after lunch, and Anya made a run down the steps.
His mop of dark hair appeared near the corner of the staircase, and she forced her legs to halt before she collided with him. Her hair whipped into his face as she hid her face into her shoulder and hobbled around to escape.
“You can’t outrun me.”
His curse broke her shoelace and tripped her on the curved staircase edges. She hissed, rubbing her chin as the throbbing resisted her soothing massages.
There, she sat on the dirty staircase like she was a persecuted maiden and held her breath to bring tears.
“Don’t slander me,” he retorted frostily.
“Now you’re slandering me,” she argued, indignant.
She wasn’t afraid because she knew he had no proof of her crime.
“What’s your name?” His voice had no courtesy, only a demand with fading patience.
“Sir Reginald Pendulum Cornelius Appleton, the Undoubtedly Important,” she jeered pompously.
“Okay,” he snarked with a mean curl at the corner of his lips. “Anya.”
His eyes fell on her name tag pinned onto her shirt. She slapped her hand over it and went quiet, debating if fainting or hurling herself down the stairs could get her more compensation money.
“I’m Alessio,” he said.
She wiped the dust off her pants as she stood. “Didn’t ask.”
“You know now.”
They weren’t remotely on the same wavelength.
* * *
EIGHTEEN
The world was small, way too small to fit that abominable snowman.
She was stuck on the icy floor after falling, and every part of her body screamed in pain. Her backpack took the majority of the impact, but the laptop—
Teary eyes glared at the sky, silently cursing the school for not salting that part of the ground, and she sighed in defeat. She needed a moment of silence to grieve for the broken laptop after she heard a distinctive crack, which was not a bag of chips.
Then he showed up like a fairy prince. His hair was dusted white with snowflakes, and his black coat was chic. Snow fell from his head onto her face as he leaned down. The coat he wore undoubtedly cost more than her laptop.
“You can’t be here,” she mumbled, her eyes closing as the snow slowly melted and slithered down her cheeks.
“I go here,” he refuted.
“Don’t you have Ivy League admissions?”
She researched him after the staircase incident, and it seemed safe to say he was over ten times the tax bracket from her lifestyle. He wasn’t crazily dubbed as an academic or athletic genius, but talent came naturally to him.
Probably to experience commoner life , she thought.
He extended his hand just as she opened her eyes, and her heart fluttered at the princely gesture. Alessio ruined that by grabbing a fistful of her front coat and hauling her to her feet like a mop.
“Do you even know how to be normal?” Anya questioned, genuinely concerned about his moral character.
“Date me.”
There it was again, talking past each other. It was impossible to say when it all went off course, but somehow, she had ended up on a track that was bound for trouble.
“You don’t know me,” she explained slowly.
“But I like you.”
“Do you?”
He nodded. “Probably.”
Anya bit back a groan. She’d lose her sanity before their signals ever connected.
Alessio’s communication skills were abysmal, and she couldn’t afford to be tricked into some honeypot scheme.
“I will spend money on you,” he interrupted promptly, likely seeing the deadpan madness on her face.
Well, he couldn’t be that bad.
“Okay, boyfriend.”
He nodded and took out his phone to order a new laptop in front of her. He was an action-orientated young man, and Anya greatly approved of it.
“How do you know what I use?”
He glanced up briefly. “I watched you.”
So creepy but so rich.
“For a year.”
Alright, he was just creepy now. Handsome but disturbing.
“So, what do you do in your free time?” she began.
If he was going to be her boyfriend, she needed to know more about him. The icebreaker was awkward, but it would do.
She kicked the icy spot that made her fall, then rubbed it with the shoe tip as an apology because it indirectly gifted her a rich and handsome boyfriend.
“Maybe swapping houses like trading cards, out-bidding other millionaires for gold-leaf toilet paper, or collecting exotic animals on your private island that you conveniently forgot about?”
Alessio stared for a long time, so long that she became self-conscious and wondered if there was a toothpaste stain on her chin.
He replied with a curt, “Shut up, you idiot.”
It was affectionate, void of his usual terse and cruel undertone.
He added with crippling insistence in every letter, “I keep my properties, it’s normal toilet paper, and I hate animals.”
Before she could mention the pseudo-study about psychopaths and animal hatred, he beat her to it.
“I don’t golf, either.”
* * *
NINETEEN
It surprised her that they lasted a year, and he still had no intention of breaking up with her. She thought he dated her for the experience or to pass the time, but his actions spoke otherwise.
She learned a lot about him. He wasn’t as bad as everyone said he was, just a bit inexperienced when dealing with people, but he was as perfect as a boyfriend could get.
They moved in together before sophomore year, which her parents heavily voted against because they hadn’t met him, but she was determined to leave their suffocating roof.
Though there were no threats of financial cutoffs or no-contact ultimatums, their fights worsened over time, blaming whoever was more at fault.
My fault . Anya used to think constantly.
What went wrong with their love?
When Alessio extended the olive branch and asked her to move in with him, she accepted it like a life vest—not enough to save her, but good for keeping her head above water.
Moments with him temporarily made her forget, and a prideful part of her loved the convenient distraction he was.
Initially, he refused to charge her rent since he owned the house, but she insisted on paying rent for equal rights and protection. He fought to negotiate the lowest market deal for her.
The conversation finished in five minutes, and his stubbornness reminded her of the petulant cat she saw at fifteen.
However, Alessio absolutely needed to learn life skills.
One was separating whites from colors before starting the washer. His red shirt stained her white pants pink, and he didn’t look guilty for a moment because his shirt shrunk.
“We’ll go shopping for clothes on Sunday,” Anya said, with no hope that the rest made it safely in the wash cycle.
“And no online shopping,” she rejected the obvious thought in his mind. “It’s better to feel the quality before buying.”
“Mine were fine,” he groused.
“The cheapest you had were two-hundred-dollar socks.”
“They were nice,” he argued and bundled the red shirt into his hand. “Soft.”
“You can get five pairs of soft socks for twenty dollars with cartoons on them.”
He looked down at her yellow baby chick socks, then back up in her triumphant eyes and firmly said no.
“You’re only going to class anyways,” she chirped and rubbed his back to soothe his knotted brow as he scrutinized the lump of red shirt with animosity.
“I’m not taking you on dates in cotton ,” Alessio grumbled. “You get rashes.”
She didn’t, but he was just being salty because his favorite cotton, red shirt shrunk.
“Silk isn’t going to make me less attracted to you than cotton ,” she uttered that horrible word with tiny laughs between choked breaths.
“I don’t wear silk.”
“Okay, okay,” she said as she nudged her forehead on his arm.
It was better to stop before some wires disconnected his brain and capsized his flow of thoughts.
Then, there was his culinary skills.
He cooked the toughest skinless chicken once, and she didn’t have the heart to tell him she booked a dental appointment for the next day.
That man was thriving at the expense of her being a genuine pig.
It was fine since he was making progress—until he watered her small cacti daily and left her with a flabby lump.
“I’ll get you a new one,” was all he said before putting the plant under direct sunlight to hope the water evaporated quicker.
One thing he did that always made her knees weak was dealing with the financial part of their relationship.
He handled the billing for the house, paid their tuition in a single transaction, and even took the time to sit her down and explain where and how he was investing his money.
Their financial expenses were open book; he hid nothing from her, and she could trace each transaction to one of his bank accounts.
Yes, he had more than one. Five, to be exact.
He explained they were for different purposes, and she believed him. Alessio, however, didn’t believe her. She supported a suspicious glint in her eyes, so he plopped her on the kitchen chair and detailed which account did what.
“Everything is legal,” he said. “What could I possibly scam from you?”
That was rude, and she told him so, albeit playfully.
“My organs are valuable,” she quipped before planting a big smooch on his lips.
“You don’t exercise,” he pointed out as he chased after the kiss. “Their value would go up if you did.”
Anya hummed in response.
She skimmed her fingers up his forearm, feeling the muscles coiling as they tensed. She squeezed his biceps in revenge. She just wanted to feel his muscles, that was all.
Shame had no place in her desire for him.
Elusive wariness did.
Anya was happy with Alessio; he treated her better than she did herself, and there was more than enough love in his eyes to share with her.
She should be happy, and she was at her happiest, but since forever ago, a foreboding emotion just sat at the last rhythm of her heartbeat.
A subconscious part of her was aware, but it was never discernible to raise concern, like a subtle leak somewhere in the house that neither noticed.
But when his smile widened for an infinitesimal fraction, the feeling would be gone for months.
It’s okay , she thought. We’re fine.
* * *
First Love . The embossed words rubbed against her fingertips as she traced the letters on the card.
Her tongue felt weak, the weakest she had been in a while, and her heart broke the trail of thundering beats in her ears.
The interviewer said something incoherent, but Anya could only trace the words gently on the card. It was her anchor to the waves of memories.
“He sounds lovely,” the interviewer replied, breaching the tedious tension.
“He is,” Anya agreed, looking to the side monitor for comments—anything to take her mind off the moment when everything changed.
The comments were mundane, just common swooning and guesses on why a happy couple would break up.
Dearly Beloved , her mind whispered as she traced those words, was closure .