Chapter 9 Johnny
JOHNNY
The dialogue in this movie is a crime against humanity.
“Nobody talks like that!” I gesture at the screen where Keanu Reeves is delivering another line with the emotional range of a park bench. “I may not remember much, but I know that not a single human being on this planet has ever said those words in that order.”
Natalia pulls her knees up on the couch, the popcorn bowl between us. “It was the nineties. Everybody talked like that.”
“The entire decade talked like a bad fortune cookie?”
She throws a piece of popcorn at my face. It bounces off my cheek and lands on the cushion, and she grins at me with zero apology while I flick it back at her.
I could do this all night. Just sit here with this girl and this terrible movie and not care that most of my brain is still a locked room.
A week of scattered fragments, a brother’s name, a dog I can almost picture.
Not enough to build a life on. But right now, on this couch, it doesn’t feel like it matters.
Outside, the wind has picked up. I can hear the screen door rattling in its frame and the surf pounding harder than it has all week.
The windows are black mirrors now, reflecting the two of us back at ourselves, and the beach house feels smaller at night.
Cozier. The kind of small that makes you hyperaware of the six inches of couch cushion separating your thigh from hers.
“You need to retire the nickname,” I tell her, reaching for more popcorn. “Immediately. Now that I’ve seen this movie, I can’t take it seriously. The man’s name is Johnny Utah. That’s not a real name. That’s what a nine-year-old names his action figure.”
“Too late.” She doesn’t even look at me. Eyes on the screen, butter on her fingers, zero remorse. “Johnny is locked in. Non-negotiable.”
“He’s the worst undercover agent in FBI history. He just surfs and does skydiving and hangs out. That’s not police work. That’s a vacation.”
“You’re just mad because he’s better looking than you.”
“Is he, though?”
She tilts her head, eyes flicking between me and Keanu on the screen. Takes her time with it, which I’m choosing to find flattering.
“Okay, there might be a slight resemblance. Around the eyes. And the hair.” She holds up her thumb and forefinger, barely a gap between them. “Slight.”
“So you named me after him because I’m handsome. Just say that.”
“I named you after him because you washed up confused and useless. Don’t flatter yourself.”
I bark out a laugh. On screen, another explosion. Another insane stunt. But I stopped tracking the plot twenty minutes ago because Natalia laughed during the skydiving scene and the sound rewired something in my brain.
Now all I can think about is the kitchen.
Her mouth on mine four days ago, the soft noise she made before guilt dragged her away from me.
And everything since then, the way my hand found hers on our beach walk yesterday and neither of us let go, the way we keep orbiting closer even though we both know better.
Four days, and I can still taste her.
She shifts on the couch, reaching for the remote, and her knee grazes mine through the blanket. The contact is nothing. Accidental. But my blood registers it like a five-alarm fire, heat climbing up my neck and parking itself right behind my ribs.
“I’m making more popcorn.” She holds up the empty bowl. “Want anything?”
Yeah. You. Underneath me. Begging me not to stop.
“I’m good.”
Natalia pads to the kitchen. I keep my eyes on the frozen frame of Patrick Swayze’s face for approximately three seconds before I turn to watch her.
Those sleep shorts are criminal. That’s the only word.
She bends to dig through the fridge and the hem rides up the backs of her thighs, and whatever intelligent thought I had left in this skull just vacates the premises completely.
She straightens, reaches up for a glass, and the kitchen light catches the pale skin behind her knees, the curve of muscle in her calves from all those morning beach walks.
I should look away.
I’m not going to look away.
The microwave hums to life and kernels start popping, filling the quiet house with little detonations that match the ones happening behind my ribs.
Natalia leans against the counter, pouring that cranberry ginger ale she goes through by the gallon, completely unaware that I’m sitting here losing a war with my own self-control.
I’m on my feet before I’ve made a conscious decision to stand. My body just moves, crossing the space between the couch and the kitchen island, drawn by something deeper than logic. My body knowing something before my brain signs off on it. That keeps happening around her.
“Forget something?” She turns with the glass in her hand and nearly walks into my chest.
I’m close. Too close. Close enough to count the freckles across the bridge of her nose. Close enough to see the exact moment her breath changes.
“Yeah.” My eyes drop to her mouth before I can stop them. “Something like that.”
She doesn’t step back. That’s the thing. She could sidestep me, put the island between us, do any of the smart things she’s supposed to do. Instead she stays right where she is, glass suspended halfway to her mouth, bottom lip caught between her teeth.
I take the glass from her hand and set it on the counter without breaking eye contact. The microwave beeps. Neither of us moves toward it.
“Johnny.” It’s barely a whisper. A warning that doesn’t sound like one.
I don’t touch her. Not yet. I just stand there, one hand braced on the counter behind her, close enough that her breath hits the hollow of my throat in warm little bursts.
Close enough to smell that vanilla lotion she keeps on the bathroom counter, the one I’ve become borderline addicted to without meaning to.
Her fingers hover near my chest, not quite landing.
The space between us is maybe two inches, and every single one of them is killing me.
She tilts her chin up. I watch her gaze drop to my mouth and drag back up, slow. Like she’s daring herself.
That’s all it takes.
I lower my head to the crook of her neck, and the sound she makes when my lips find her pulse point, this quiet, shaky inhale, turns the last of my restraint to ash. Her pulse hammers under my mouth. Frantic and wild and proof that whatever this is, I’m not the only one drowning in it.
Her hand comes up to my pecs, fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt like she’s holding on and holding back at the same time.
“We shouldn’t do this.” Her voice has no spine behind it. None. And the way her weight settles into me, hips tilting forward, breath going ragged against my ear, makes the words sound like they belong to someone who left the room days ago.
“Probably not.” I drag my mouth along her collarbone, tasting salt and heat. Her fingers tighten in my shirt. “And yet.”
She makes a sound, quiet and involuntary, somewhere between a sigh and a surrender, and her back arches off the counter just enough to press the full length of her body against mine.
The friction alone nearly takes my knees out. I wrap my hand around her hip and pull her into me, and whatever wall she built after that kitchen kiss four days ago just crumbled to dust between us.
Her phone screams from the coffee table.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
Natalia jerks away from me, crossing the room in two steps and snatching the phone with shaking hands. I’m left gripping the counter, teeth clenched, blood pounding. Second time her phone has killed a moment between us. I’m starting to take it personally.
Cold air fills the space where she was. The microwave starts beeping again, insistent, forgotten.
“Hello?” Her voice is all wrong. The warmth is gone, replaced by something brittle and polite. “I didn’t. No, I know you are. I—”
She’s been cut off. I can hear a male voice on the other end, clipped and aggressive, but I can’t make out the words.
What I can make out is the way Natalia’s posture changes.
Shoulders curling inward. Head dropping.
I’ve seen her do this before, that first morning on the beach after a phone call.
The same shrinking. The same disappearing act, like she’s trying to fold herself into someone who doesn’t have opinions or needs or a voice worth raising.
“Tomorrow? I thought—” Cut off again. Her free hand presses flat against her stomach, fingers splayed. “Yes, Nikolai. Of course. I’ll be ready.”
The line goes dead. She stands there holding the phone against her thigh, staring at nothing. Then she drops onto the couch and presses her palms against her eyes.
“Everything okay?”
“My brother.” She says it the way you’d say root canal. “He was supposed to come next week. To check on me. Now it’s tomorrow.”
I lean against the kitchen counter, watching her. The girl who was throwing popcorn at my face five minutes ago is gone. In her place is someone smaller, someone defeated, and I don’t like the trade.
“What’s his deal? You two close?”
She lifts her head and looks at me, and her expression is tired in a way that has nothing to do with the hour.
“No.”
One word. Flat and final, saying everything she didn’t put in it.
Something uneasy turns over in my gut.
“Is he giving you trouble?”
“He’s my brother. It’s complicated.” She pulls the blanket over her lap, fingers picking at a loose thread.
She’s doing it again. Smoothing the edges off something sharp, packing it down tight so it fits inside a sentence that sounds like nothing. Like if she keeps her voice steady enough, I won’t notice what she’s actually saying.
“Nat.”
“It’s fine. I can handle him for one day.”
The way she says handle makes my jaw tighten. “What does ‘handle him’ mean?”
“It means what it means.” She meets my eyes. “I let him say what he says, I don’t argue, and he leaves.”
My fingers curl against my thigh. The anger is building, but it’s not the blind-rage kind. It’s the cold kind. The kind that settles into your bones and waits.
“He doesn’t get to come into your space and make you feel like that.”
She sighs, resigned. “It’s not that simple.”
“You said that on the beach, too.” I don’t let up. “But you shouldn’t have to just absorb it because it’s what he’s always done.”
“Johnny, please.” There’s an edge to it now. Not anger. Fatigue. The kind that comes from explaining a thing so many times that the words have gone meaningless and smooth, like river stones. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” I push off the counter and cross to the couch, settling onto the opposite end.
Giving her space, but not the whole room anymore.
“Because every time I ask, you hand me the safe version.” I keep my voice level, but I hold her stare.
“That was before I watched you fold in half from a sixty-second phone call. So I’m asking again. What is this, really?”
She looks away. Toward the window, toward the black water outside. Her throat works once, twice. The silence stretches long enough that I think she’s going to shut me out entirely, rebuild the wall and plaster over the cracks.
Then something shifts. Not a dramatic collapse. Just a loosening. Her shoulders drop half an inch. Her fingers stop shredding the blanket thread. And when she speaks, her voice is quiet. Careful in a different way now, like she’s choosing each word knowing she can’t take it back.
“Nikolai isn’t just difficult.” She’s not looking at me. She’s looking at her own hands. “He’s cruel. He has been since we were kids. He enjoys it, the way some people enjoy crossword puzzles or golf. It’s recreational for him.”
My back teeth grind together. I can feel the muscles in my forearms tighten, readying for action. I don’t even know this guy, and I already want to break something that belongs to him.
She pauses. Her mouth opens, closes. Whatever she’s chewing on, she’s not done with it yet. So I keep my mouth shut and let her get there.
“But Nikolai isn’t the problem. He’s just the one who shows up.” Her mouth thins. “My father is the reason I can’t do anything about it. He doesn’t just control things. He hurts people. It’s what he does, it’s what he’s good at, and he doesn’t make exceptions for family.”
The beach house feels less cozy now. More like what it actually is: a box on stilts at the edge of the continent, miles from anything, with a girl inside it who’s been put here by people who hurt her.
“Jesus, Nat. That’s not a family. That’s a prison.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. Then she exhales, slow and deliberate, like she’s letting go of something she’s been white-knuckling for years.
“My father’s in a business where people don’t get to leave. Where the things he does to strangers, he’ll do to his own blood if it serves him. He runs things in Las Vegas. The kind of things that don’t show up on tax returns.”
Las Vegas. My skin prickles. A faint pressure builds at the base of my skull, like a door straining against a lock.
“What kind of things?”
She holds my stare. The blanket is bunched in her fists now, knuckles white.
“My father runs the Russian mafia in Las Vegas.” Her voice is toneless. Almost eerily so. “And my brother is his right hand, and tomorrow he’s coming here, and I need you to understand that these are not people you stand up to.” Her voice drops to almost nothing. “These are people you survive.”
Russian mafia. Las Vegas.
The words detonate somewhere behind my eyes.
Bright lights. Noise, so much noise. The smell of gunpowder and something metallic and wrong. My head splits open and the room lurches sideways.
My knees hit the floor. I’m gripping my skull with both hands, and somewhere far away Natalia is saying my name, the borrowed one, and the only thing I know for certain is that whatever I am, whatever I was, it’s nothing good.
She has no idea what she dragged off that beach.