Chapter Sixteen #2
I used to think Ivan was arrogant, but when he says something will be awesome, he can craft an entire universe out of words and smiles and pointed little gestures to make sure it’s actually awesome.
“Okay, Richard Avedon. Relax. What’s the story we’re telling right now?”
It’s only now that I notice Ivan hasn’t followed me up to the castle. I’ve crossed a footpath and am two steps up, but when I turn around, he has his phone out and is filming me walking from behind.
“Ivan!” I call to him. “Warn me!”
“No!” he says with a very un-Ivan giggle and slowly moves across the path to keep his camera shot smooth.
I don’t know what’s got him so giddy. Maybe this is what he’s like when he’s got some endorphins in him after performing light cardio.
Maybe Veselka’s pierogies induce mania in those unused to their doughy perfection.
Or maybe he’s … no, is he really having fun?
Am I having fun? The thought stops me in my tracks and I make a confused enough face for Ivan to lower the phone and stop taking video.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” I’m potentially fine. I’m fine.
“That was pretty good up until the end. We can cut that part out, though. Here, look.”
He shows me his phone—ugh, his screen is cracked; that always gives me agita—and taps the video he just took.
From where Ivan was standing, the sunset over the park makes my whole right side glow, and I looked half-golden when I turned around and spotted him filming.
Even without the emphasis of Trieu’s makeup, I can tell my lips aren’t in the annoyed, angry purse I thought I remembered making.
“Ivan! Warn me!” I say in the video, but it sounds different this time.
I don’t recall laughing when I said it a few moments ago, or my laugh being what made Ivan break into a corny snicker behind the camera. But that’s what I’m seeing on-screen.
“Oh, favorite part. Right here,” Ivan says.
The camera moves closer to me, still a bit shaky despite his attempts at being a human Steadicam, and the closer angle makes a lens flare halo around my head.
The fuzzy curls in my four-day-old twist-out catch the light in shimmery C-shapes that dance when I shake my head as Ivan gets closer.
And here comes the part we’re definitely cutting out.
The quick change from my huge, sunlit smile to an immediate frown would be comical if I didn’t remember what I was thinking when it happened.
“That looks … ,” I trail off. I look amazing. Ivan wasn’t kidding.
“Good enough to post,” Ivan replies smugly. He can be smug about that one; he deserves it. “Even on our day off.”
Well, no. That doesn’t make any sense.
“We can’t,” I explain. “You’re barely in it. This video is just about me, and we all know it’s the two of us people care about.”
“Look again.” Ivan cocks his head at me like he’s not taking that for an answer. Fine, I’ll stop being stubborn and watch it again. “But remember who took the video.” He cues it up from the top, and after a few moments I see exactly what he meant.
That video does tell a story with pictures, not with words.
It’s a story about a boy who likes a girl so much he can’t help capturing the little moments that make her extraordinary in his eyes.
When he’s behind the camera, everything she does looks more magical than reality should allow.
She pretends to shy away from his lens because she doesn’t see what he sees, but the way she smiles makes it clear she’s grateful someone notices she’s special.
She’s especially grateful that he’s the one who notices.
It’s a solid, if cheesy, narrative. No wonder the internet likes it. Silly fantasies like that don’t happen in real life, but Ivan and I have gotten miraculously good at making it seem like they can.
“Let’s do one more,” I say. “Another candid, but it’s your turn.”
“Fair is fair.” Ivan hands me his phone and scrambles up a few more steps.
“Rolling!” I call out. “Do something cool, Ivan. Do a flip.”
His laugh is cut short when a dark shadow appears at the top of the screen.
“What is—”
“Shit,” Ivan shouts, careening down the stairs and jumping so far back he nearly goes toppling into a bush. I reach out to grab his outstretched hand just in time to pull him back to safety.
Just as soon as he’s safely on land, the same dark swirl reappears out of the corner of my screen.
Then another, and another. A flock of pigeons storming in to pick at the remains of an abandoned pretzel.
A few feet away, a mom consoles her toddler as the birds chip away at what must be the remains of their dinner.
Another pigeon flies past Ivan’s shoulder, and he doubles over to avoid getting hit by a rogue wing.
He’s practically curled up in the fetal position on the ground, holding there for a beat before lunging out of the pigeon’s hunting ground.
For the second time today, I’m doubled over from laughter, my sides aching from the force of my laugh.
It takes a Herculean effort to straighten myself out enough to chase after him.
A few more birds hop along the ground near him, and he leaps into the air to avoid them like they’re made of toxic waste.
“He’s afraid of birds!” I wheeze, spinning the camera into selfie mode. “Pigeons almost took him out! Tell the world! I’m dead!” Tears brim at the corners of my eyes and threaten to spill down my cheeks as I finally catch up to where he’s collapsed onto a nearby bench.
“Pigeons are flying trash cans!” he says extremely quickly and extremely defensively.
I’m tempted to stand up on behalf of pigeons—which are as iconic to New York City as the Empire State Building—but decide to let Ivan live in his fear without judgment. For now, at least.
“I got that on video!” I wheeze once it seems like we’re in the clear.
The pigeons are distracted by their feast, and Ivan doesn’t look like he’s one wing flap away from passing out.
My arm hovers on the bench behind him, my fingers twitching to reach out and try to console him somehow.
Y’know. Like a good fake girlfriend would.
“Of course you did,” Ivan mutters and runs a hand down his face. He shakes himself off like a dog on the beach, his hair an effortlessly cool mess. Completely unfair. He grabs his phone on his way past me and slaps at the screen until we hear the telltale beep of a stopped recording.
“Play it back, Ivan.”
“No.”
“You gotta.”
“No!”
“For me?”
“Fine.” He cues the second video, and I see his panic morphs into a genuine smile.
Ivan is grinning like a madman at first, silhouetted across the darkening sky like a giant as I call out to him. He looks so pleased to be there, even if I’m teasing him, but his impressive on-screen figure morphs absurdly fast into a panicked blur charging off frame.
Then, pure chaos. Belvedere Castle spins on the horizon behind us as I tried to catch up to Ivan’s movement, until all becomes a whirl of sunset colors.
We hear cooing, squawking, the crash of a boy into a bush.
Cue my face and my uncontrollable laughter.
Despite the massive building shielding us from the sun, the golden hour still manages to cloak me in the softest warm light.
Even without makeup, my skin is lit up like there are a dozen flecks of glitter just beneath the surface. My smile is radiant. Honest. Real.
I can’t tell if it was an accident, or Ivan continuing to attempt to get a candid moment even under duress. But it doesn’t matter. Because it’s perfect.
“I’ll let you post this one,” Ivan says, nudging his shoulder against mine. Before I can protest that we should post one where he’s not just a screaming blob, he’s already texted it to me along with a sunshine emoji. “If you let me post the one of you. Also, buy me a Popsicle.”
Ivan Hunt’s kryptonite revealed to the world and all I have to do is buy a Popsicle? This is the deal of the century.
“Why do you take what I want so seriously?” I finally blurt out the question that’s been weighing on me all week when Ivan gets up from the castle steps to toss our Popsicle sticks in the trash. “To the point of being weirdly cool with pretending to date me?”
Ivan sighs and leans back against the steps like he’s trying to crack his back. When that doesn’t work to calm him down, he settles for another classic Ivan ritual: running his hand through his dark hair.
“I’ve been in situations where being me helped me get away with stuff.
Avoiding consequences. And I know that people like you—don’t look at me like that; you know what I mean—don’t have that to the same degree, I guess.
So if you decided you needed to use me, or what I have, to get ahead … I wasn’t going to stop you.”
“I didn’t need—”
“And maybe I’m kind of using you too? Beyond the algorithm stuff.”
“Oh, I have got to hear this.” I cross my arms and lift a brow. “How? How are you using me outside of the competition?”
“To feel better about myself.” He shrugs. “Helping you because I didn’t help someone else.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeats. “I … don’t know? I have this need to like myself. I want to be the good guy.”
“You want to think you’re the good guy,” I agree. “That’s different from being one.”
“Fair. But yeah, maybe it’s just that. I want people to like me, so I try to be a person people like.”
“Wow,” I say. “As far as I’m concerned, you really shat the bed on that one.”
“I said people, not you.” His tone is light as he nudges his knee against mine. Our bodies are closer together again, like two magnets that can’t resist their pull. “I stopped trying to get you to like me long ago. Talk about a lost cause.”
“I didn’t make it easy for you.” I pause, then make a rewind motion with my finger. “Don’t. I don’t make it easy for you.”
“And yet I persevered. And maybe succeeded.”
“Only when you’re not trying,” I point out.
“Eh.” He shrugs. “That’s what I like most about you. Not having to try when I’m with you. That and how good you look in purple.”
Before I can reply to that very loaded statement, an explosion makes us jolt off the steps in surprise.
We step out from beneath the shadow of the castle to get a better look at the sky.
A crack, then a high-pitched whirring sound, a boom, and a dramatic shimmery clatter that turns the evening light on the East Side bright green for three long seconds. The fireworks.
I read somewhere that the body and the brain don’t always agree on what certain signals mean.
When someone is scared, for instance, their body responds to the situation by pumping them full of adrenaline and getting their heart rate up, but those symptoms don’t go away when the danger does.
Those leftover homemade happy drugs need something to do, so the imperfect machine that is the human brain will start associating them with whatever is nearby.
And that thing—or, sometimes, a person—will start to make them feel happy and safe.
I am not afraid of fireworks, but I do startle easily. My adrenaline is up, that’s for sure.
“Look at that one!” Ivan points up to the sky, where a bolt of red explodes into a shimmering cascade of sky glitter. He looks so cute, with his arm stretched up like a little kid trying to touch the sparkles as they fall.
“You know what?” I turn to Ivan, shouting to be heard. His light eyes reflect each new color in the sky as they burst, crackle, and fade. “I think you might not be the worst thing ever.”
A lull in the fireworks makes that last word too loud, which makes us giggle, which brings us closer together on the steps.
“You sure about that?” Ivan asks. Slowly, dramatically, he pulls out his phone and shows me what’s on his screen. His text messages.
KAVI: Mission complete!! You guys can come back now.
KAVI: Guys???
KAVI: Seriously it’s been like three hours are you dead
KAVI: Did you kill each other??
In the time it takes me to read the texts, Ivan’s body has shifted close enough for me to smell his neck again, and I am this close to … fully collapsing into a puddle, if I’m being honest.
“When did you get these?” I ask, though I can’t seem to get my voice up beyond a whisper.
Ivan shrugs. “Oh, like, halfway through dinner. I was waiting to see how long it took you to notice.”
Above us, the sky explodes in red, blue, and sparkling white.
“You motherfu—”
I think the first time he kisses me it’s to make me stop talking, which works.
The second kiss is because the first one overwhelmed every sense I’ve ever noticed having and has me dragging Ivan closer by his shoulders, his shirt, anything I can do to stay suspended in the center of that perfect, too-much feeling of everything.
The third is just for fun. And, well, with the fireworks and all, let’s say we’ll have a very happy Fourth.