Chapter Sixteen
I PUT MYSELF under a lot of pressure to understand people’s motives.
It’s how I protect my confused little heart, and that’s the only way I know how to be.
I think of that anxious pressure, the constant second-guessing what people mean versus what they say, as fuel, like steam powering an engine, but the way Ivan describes me, it sounds more like I’m a time bomb.
He is obviously wrong here. Pressure is good.
Pressure makes diamonds. Ivan thinks letting go and surrendering control is freedom.
I know it makes me an easy target for the catastrophe I can’t see coming but need to prevent regardless.
“Have you heard back from Kavi?” I ask after our server sets down our bill and Ivan has tossed down a wad of cash—who carries cash anymore?
—more than enough for the bill and a generous tip.
My phone has dangerously little battery left, so we let Kavi know to text him whenever we’re cleared to return home.
Ivan checks his phone. “Nope, not yet. Give it a few more hours, I guess?”
This time it’s my turn to check my phone. A quick Google search confirms that we have about an hour left until the fireworks start, and who knows how long before Kavi deems us adequately bonded.
“If we leave now we can catch the 6 train that’s coming in five minutes,” I announce, already grabbing my bag and heading for the door.
“Where are we going?” Ivan calls out, nearly tripping over a table leg in his rush to keep up with me.
“I’m gonna take you to my favorite hidden gem in the city.”
Summer in the city is incredible. I mean, yeah, everything smells like hot garbage, and those gross oily puddles that never, ever evaporate show up in every intersection after it rains, but the light is unlike anywhere in the world.
Central Park is full today, of joggers and bikers and tourists milling around to enjoy the Fourth of July outside.
It’s one of those memorably perfect summer nights where the sun does us a solid and sets slowly over the river, like it’s treating us to extra time in the park before the fireflies come out and the open hydrants lose all their water pressure.
And on this evening, glowing gold in the sunset, I bring Ivan to the tower in the center of the map.
“Is this—”
“A legit castle in the middle of Central Park?” I twirl a few steps ahead of Ivan, gesturing to the castle looming above us like I’m a game show host’s assistant presenting a brand-new car. “Yes, it is. Belvedere Castle, to be exact.”
Ivan’s lips quirk into a shy smile. “I know. It’s where the X-Men watched the fireworks with the Teen Titans.”
“Wait, what? When?” My arms drop back down to my sides. I guess it shouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that Ivan is a legitimate nerd on top of playing one on the twenty-first-century equivalent of TV.
“One of the comic runs, I can’t remember. An alternate Earth, but they had a castle just like this one, right here.”
Marvel references aside, Belvedere Castle is still an iconic New York landmark.
It kind of feels like an offense against nature—a grand, old stone castle that looks pulled out of a fairy tale plopped right into the heart of a city that smells like hot dog water.
Squealing kids climb along the rocks at the base of the castle—heads poke out of the castle’s windows to wave at cameras waiting to capture the perfect shot from the ground.
Over the tops of the trees the sun has just started to set, painting the sky the perfect orange-dusted shade of gold.
“You know what else it reminds me of?” Ivan trails off as he blinks up at the castle with what I’m assuming is the same awe I had in my eyes the first time I came here. “The tower from GLR. The one in the—”
“Middle of the map.” I—Yeah. That’s exactly what I wanted him to see.
“Exactly.”
Ivan shifts slightly—something unlocking in his shoulders as he tears his gaze away from the castle to look back at me. “Your favorite starting-position-slash-execution-ground. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
“I’m sorry.” It comes out before I can stop it. “For Wizzcon. Beating you fair and square is one thing, but I let you think you were making a friend and used it against you. And even though I still think you shouldn’t have—”
“Grilled cheese sandwich, I remember.”
“—it was shitty of me. Guardians League Royale is tough enough without adding a psychological metagame.”
“Hear, hear.” Ivan brings his phone out of his pocket to check the time.
“And for what it’s worth, apology accepted.
I’m sorry too, for the whole groupie thing.
I don’t know what I was thinking there; I was trying way too hard to look good and didn’t think about how that would make you feel.
So yeah. I’m sorry. Really sorry, actually. ”
My heart stutters the same way it did when he asked me if our dinner at Veselka was a date. I seriously need to get that checked out. For all we know I could be dying of some rare heart fluttering disease. Very dangerous.
“But, if you think about it, Frank should have known I was bluffing.” The smirk is back. I prepare my eyes for rolling at whatever ridiculous joke he’s about to come out with. “You’re clearly out of my league.”
“There it is!” I have been mentally working on my post-Veselka fake girlfriend homework by reflecting on what my problem with Ivan is, and that is the perfect segue. “That’s what bothers me.”
“That you’re out of my league?” Ivan asks, confused.
“That you say all these super nice things all the time. I guess it’s to get people to like you?
And since you’re always saying whatever you think they want to hear, it’s impossible to tell if you’re just lying to get your way.
And since I can’t tell—I’m autistic, by the way—I kind of …
think you’re full of shit and that you’re making fun of me all the time. ”
“Jesus.” Ivan’s eyes are wide with concern. “I don’t know what to say to that.” Good. That means he’s already incorporating the feedback. “But, Zora, I’m not making fun of you.”
“How am I supposed to know?” I say softly, my eyes trained on the broad stone facade of the castle.
“Because I take you seriously. I take what you want seriously. I always have.”
He’s got a point there. Ivan may have gone about it in the most boneheaded way possible, but the day he met me, he only interfered because he thought he was helping me get what I wanted. The back of my neck suddenly feels warmer than it should in the shadow of the castle.
“Thank you for doing that,” I mutter.
Based on the way Ivan is gazing dreamily at the sunset, it’s unclear whether he heard my response.
I can’t help but linger on the look of him like this, bathed in fading sunshine.
I’m able to shift my attention to a very intriguing rock beside my foot when he whips around suddenly, an overeager smile on his face that just screams trouble.
“Let’s take something to post on WiTch,” he suggests, already pulling his phone out of his pocket.
In a blink, the dreamy moment is gone and I remember what we’re doing here in the first place.
Getting to know each other outside the game so we can pretend to be into each other later.
For an audience. To beat an algorithm. Now is actually the perfect time to post something on WiTch.
“What are you thinking?” I ask, resigning myself to striking some poses and grimacing for another camera.
“Let’s do a few selfies. Extra cute, extra gross?” he responds with a raised brow.
I bite my lip as I run my hands along my smooth, bare arms. “I’m not in my Kavi-and-Trieu-approved Zora Face,” I explain, tossing my arms into the air and letting them fall limply back at my sides.
Another key aspect of social media: you only ever post when you look your best. And from what I saw in the reflection of the subway door a few minutes ago, the humidity hasn’t been especially kind to me.
“You still look great,” Ivan says so easily, even though it knocks me back like a shove. I’m able to keep my ground, but just barely. Since when does Ivan Hunt—and not the Ivan Hunt who’s actively pretending to date me—think I look great?
“But—”
“You look like you,” he adds before I can protest that my hair is not a fan of the moisture level in the air. “It’s perfect.”
I’m not sure if he means that me in all my messy hair and makeup-free glory is perfect, or if the facade is.
That we can still be the happy, beautiful, adoring couple even when I’m not wearing enough makeup to make me feel like I have a second skin on.
But my heart doesn’t care about the difference.
It kicks into hyper speed, beating so fast and loud I’m sure everyone within a five-mile radius can probably hear it.
Before I can decipher the who, what, and how of my heart palpitations, Ivan’s hand is in mine, tugging me toward the edge of the castle.
The world is a blur as we weave through crowds of sweaty tourists until we reach a free patch of grass right in front of the rockface along the side of the castle.
The perfect angle that when Ivan holds up his phone, we can capture both the castle and the lake at the base of it in frame.
“Try to not look like hanging out with me gives you chest pains,” he says as he quickly fluffs his hair.
I hear the click of a camera shutter seconds after I laugh, my cheeks flushing as I whip around to look at the camera. “I wasn’t ready yet!” I protest, attempting to fix my hair as quickly as possible.
Ivan pockets his phone and makes a little rectangle out of his fingers and peers through it to frame the landscape around the castle. “Now let’s do a video, wait—I got this. Let’s tell a little story. It’s going to be awesome. Can you walk toward the castle’s stairs?”