2. Lex
Istared at the silver urn on the pedestal in front of my brother’s portrait, willing myself to cry. I should cry. Over a thousand people crammed into this church and not a dry eye between them. The organ blared, the choir sang, and my mother sobbed.
Me?
Nothing. All I felt was numb.
How could this happen?
I’d talked to him two hours before he went sailing with his friends. I didn’t think to press him for more information. One spontaneous thunderstorm and a capsized boat later, my brother could fit inside a flower vase.
How fucking cruel. All the wild shit I’d done. All the horrible things I’d felt not an ounce of remorse for. And this? This is what fate had in store?
I could see it in my father’s eyes. In my mother’s.
It should have been you, they said.
I know, I wanted to tell them. It should have been me.
It repeated in my head during the entire ceremony. As I stood poker-faced next to my mother and shook thousands of hands. As I listened to the priest bemoan the will of an unknowable God. As I said my final goodbyes to Marcus’s spirit and felt it leave my heart forever.
My mother wanted me to attend the wake and listen to people talk about Marcus like they knew him. They didn’t know shit.
Bunch of fucking sycophants, all of them, I thought, yanking my tie as I stomped toward the Potomac River. Vampires sucking the life from my family.
The Washingtons had generously offered their ancestral family home to us, so we didn’t have to worry about planning such a tragedy. But everyone knew it was so they could show a public sign of unity and smush the Washington and Fairfax names together even more.
Our families had a political alliance going back centuries. There had been three such administrations over the course of America’s two hundred and fifty years, the one belonging to our parents rounding out number four and five, respectively. It went back to the first son of George Washington, Thomas, who’d won the fifth presidency with my ancestor, William Fairfax. Since then, we’ve been close.
I hated that most of all. Which was why I was alone, sitting on this bench, staring at the sunset over the river, and chain-smoking cigarettes until my lungs bled.
“I knew I’d find you here.”
Great. Just what I need.
“What do you want, Ivy?”
“To check on you.”
She sat next to me, reaching for the pack of smokes so she could put one between her lips. I lit it for her. “I didn’t know you picked up my filthy habit.”
She coughed as she exhaled. “I didn’t, but if there ever was a good day to start…”
“I don’t need to be checked on,” I scoffed. “Especially not by you.”
I mostly didn’t care about anyone or anything except for myself. I didn’t care what my parents thought or what the public said. The Puck took pictures of me and called me a delinquent because of my tattoos and sour disposition. I gave them the finger and told them to go fuck themselves. This nonchalant attitude had worked most of my life.
But Ivy?
Something about this stuck-up ginger got under my skin. She made my blood boil. I never had this reaction to anyone else. I shouldn’t care about the things she said or the way she said them, but anytime I was around her, I spewed the most vile shit just to see what she’d say in response.
It had started as a joke, a way to pass the time at those boring political events I had to attend. But now? I hung on her every word. I craved that X on her neck as much as I hated everything else about her.
“Everyone needs to be checked on, even self-centered jerks.” She held out a piece of gum, perhaps in a peace offering—like the one we’d given each other two nights ago, a night spent cuddled together in her bed. It had been entirely G-rated, of course. I hated Ivy as much as she hated me, which was why we’d quickly dissolved that rare act of kindness the following morning and never spoke of it again.
I took the gum and put it in my mouth.
“I’m sorry you lost your brother,” she whispered. “I can’t imagine what that…If I even think about…” She couldn’t finish, and I looked away, not wanting her to see I was a heartless bastard who had not a single tear to shed for his only sibling.
“Sorry your dream boy died,” I said. “Guess you’ll have to rethink your ten-year plan.”
“Can we not?” She winced and cleared her throat, hanging her head between her shoulders. “I’m tired of doing this with you.”
Ivy didn’t itch for a fight the same way I did, not today. Too late. Anger already boiled in my gut—at her, at the world, at whoever had taken my brother out on that boat and didn’t bring him back. Perhaps at my brother most of all, for having the good sense to die and leave me here to deal with this bullshit on my own.
“Why?” I snapped. “Afraid I’ll hurt your feelings?”
“Yes,” she said. “You’re grieving. And so am I.” She pushed to her feet, balling her hands into fists.
There it is—that rosy-pink X on the side of her neck, the splotchy proof of her fury and racing heart. I itched to wrap my hand around it and squeeze.
“I wanted to tell you I was here if you needed anything,” she said. “But I can see you’re back to your old self. So, I’ll just fuck off.”
A tiny sting of disappointment pierced my heart when she gave up so easily and turned away from me. She was my best combatant. She had razor-sharp claws to match my razor-sharp tongue.
Come back.
“Wait,” I said.
She turned and crossed her arms over her chest.
I’d never know why I did what I did next. Maybe it was that night between us, when we’d held each other until we fell asleep. Maybe I needed to feel something. Maybe I needed her to react the way I knew she would.
I grabbed her shoulders and collided my lips with hers.
God, they were so soft and warm, unfurling tension in my chest as the heavy weight of my pathetic existence dissipated for one euphoric second. Things changed in that moment on the banks of the Potomac River, and even if I couldn’t name it at the time, a fundamental part of my soul had been altered.
She stiffened and shoved at my shoulders, squealing like a trapped rabbit. The sound made me stop, and I pushed her back, gasping for air as reality sank in.
I’d kissed Ivy Washington. I kissed?—
A sharp burst of agony thwacked through my cheek, into my jaw, and down my neck before my brain caught up.
She slapped me…hard.
“The next time you kiss a girl,” she huffed, her hair pluming around her face, “it had better be because she wants you to. Not because you’re pissed at the world.”
She left me there. Alone and shaking and furious. But the feel of her palm colliding with my face burst through a mental barrier I hadn’t realized I’d put up. I looked out over the river, the sky a brilliant array of blushes and violets matching the mark on Ivy’s skin.
The tears finally came.
And I let them.
* * *
I didn’t handle Marcus’s death well. I’d like to say I learned from his lesson and stayed away from any behavior that could result in my untimely death. But instead, I became more self-destructive. I did a bunch of shit I wasn’t proud of, and thankfully, I never got caught. By the end of that summer, my parents were done with me.
“You need discipline.” My father sat at the head of our dining room table, his hands crossed over his dinner. I’d been avoiding my family for weeks, but he’d cornered me tonight. And now, here we were. “You need someone to get you into shape.”
For what? part of me wanted to ask.
“You need space to heal, baby,”my mother said in Russian, sipping a glass of wine. Was that her fourth or fifth tonight? She’d been slurring her words since dessert. And they wondered where I got it from?
Fucking hypocrites.
“Space to heal,” I repeated. Whatever the fuck that meant.
I met my father’s stern, unyielding gaze as he said, “I won’t have you be a disappointment to this family any longer.”
He meant the drugs and the tattoos and the photographs with different people every night. I’d taken a bad situation and made it worse by acting out. They’d decided the best way to deal with that was to send me to some shithole boarding school in London for my senior year, hoping the change of scenery would do me good.
“I’m sorry it wasn’t me,” I told him. “I know you wish you had Marcus back. Believe me when I say we all do.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ.” My father groaned and shook his head. “This again? It’s nonsense, Alexei. You’re a Fairfax. Start acting like it.” Done with the conversation, and apparently my bullshit, he stood and stalked away, leaving me with my drunken, depressed mother.
I lit a cigarette and glanced back at her, and she ran a finger under her eye.
Did she see shame or apathy when she looked at me?
“I promise you,” she said, “I won’t let him do to you what my parents did to me. Turn eighteen and you’re free.”
Born the great-granddaughter of the Tsarina Anastasia Romanov, Grand Duchess Anna married my father as part of a political alliance, a way to seal some stupid trade agreement. I wanted to believe she meant her promise, and even if something smelled foul, I took her at her word.
What a fucking idiot I was.