11. Ivy
Ineeded air and an escape from that stifling room, and all that talk of fairy curses had me feeling like I might throw up. Christ, with the play about the star-crossed lovers and the fact I was in an arranged marriage with my worst enemy, I might as well have been stuck in a nightmare worthy of the Brothers Grimm. I pushed through the doors at the end of the hall, the oxygen outside less heavy than inside, but more humid and sticky.
Fuck.
I ran my hands through my hair and tried to get a hold of myself.
It’ll be okay, I said. I’ll review past litigation and…and…what? It was definitely illegal for our parents to force us into an arranged marriage, and since we were both over the age of eighteen, we could refuse. But that would come at the expense of my family allegiance. If I didn’t do this, if we didn’t do this, we would be cast out—destitute—completely on our own. Maybe that shouldn’t have scared me as much as it did, but so much of my identity and self worth had always been tied up in being a Washington. I didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t in this family. It wasn’t as easy as giving it all up for the sake of love, especially when distribution of power sat at such an imbalance.
Between my parents, both former presidents, and Kellan, soon-to-be president-elect, they could bury us. They could destroy our lives and hide us away forever without the public ever questioning what happened. Money had a lot to do with it, but I didn’t know what would happen if I did find a way out of this, much less if we put it into action.
The logical part of me urged caution, that Evelyn and Kellan were pathological in their quest for power, that they wouldn’t stop just because I protested. This would have to be methodical and precise. We would have to find a way. The more I told myself that, the more I’d believe it. I had to believe it.
But sleeping next to Carter last night had been a challenge. Every time he rolled over and wrapped his arm around my waist, it weighed a thousand pounds. Whenever he told me he loved me and whispered filthy things, I remembered I was going to have to break his heart sometime soon, and I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t want to do it.
I bent over at the waist, my hands on my knees and black spots in my vision. Am I having a panic attack?Oh my God.I am.
“Hey, you okay?” came an Irish accent from my right.
I jumped and stood up straight, taking in the woman leaning against the stone wall and smoking a cigarette. She had dark, shiny hair and kind brown eyes, tattoos of ivy winding from her wrists up her arms and under the sleeves of her black T-shirt.
She terrified me instantly…and yet, I wanted to know everything about her.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I said. “I think so.”
“You look a little anxious.” She took another long inhale, the cherry of her cigarette glowing around her face.
“It’s just…uh…” What was I going to say? I’m just freaking out because I have to marry my boyfriend’s best friend. You know that old pity party. No big deal. No doubt, this stranger had better things to do than listen to me whine.
“Nothing,” I finally said. “Never mind.”
She raked her curious gaze over me, the scan caressing my skin like fingertips. I wore shorts and a tank top, nothing too revealing, but I suddenly felt like I’d been stripped bare and not in a good way. She held out her hand.
“Siobhan Murphy. You have really pretty eyes.”
“Ivy Washington,” I replied, taking her hand and the compliment. “And thank you. Washington Blue, it’s called. Though it’s more like silver, I guess.”
“Ohhhh, it’s you.” She raised an eyebrow. “I’ve heard about you.”
“Yeah? All good things, I hope.”
“What would be the fun in that?” Siobhan grinned, her eyes glittering in an entrancing way, like I could peer into them forever and all my issues would disappear. How is she doing that?
I snorted out a laugh.
“Your mother’s someone important back in the States, yeah?” She stabbed out her cigarette in the ashtray on top of the garbage can and immediately lit another one. She offered one to me. Normally I declined unless it was Lex, but I needed something for my nerves, so I took it, lit it, and inhaled.
“President Evelyn Washington,” I said, letting the head rush soothe me.
“Okay,” she muttered, and that was the most thought she gave it. I expected a barrage of questions. Most people wanted to know what it was like to live in the White House or if I’d ever seen Lincoln’s ghost, but Siobhan only pursed her lips and took a step closer. She genuinely didn’t give a shit who my parents were, and that sort of freedom was liberating. “I run the pub in town. I’m here helping my sister, Ashley.”
“I saw her presentation.” I inhaled deep on the cigarette.
“Don’t believe a word of it,” she said.
I furrowed my eyebrows. “About the fairies or about the people being nice and hospitable.”
“The people, obviously,” she said with another laugh.
I paused, my cigarette halfway to my lips, but when she winked at me, I huffed out a small chuckle at the tease.
“Lighten up, Ivy. Whatever’s bothering you will pass.”
For some strange reason, I wanted to tell her my secret. Maybe I just needed to tell someone.Maybe I just needed to get it off my chest. But what could she do about it? My troubles would become her troubles, and if she knew who I was, she could break it to the press before I wanted anyone else to know.
No.Best keep it to myself.
“Thank you for the cigarette.”
“You’re welcome,” she said.
“Ivy?” Miri’s voice echoed from around the corner and my best friend came into view. “There you are! I’ve been looking for you.”
“I’m here,” I said. “I was just talking to—” But when I turned around, Siobhan had walked away, her hands in the pockets of her jeans.
“Hey, are you all right?” Miri put a hand on my shoulder.
“Yeah, just…tired,” I said. “No big deal.”
“Okay.” She seemed unconvinced and grabbed my free hand the way she used to do when we were at Mount Oberon together. She pulled me over to a concrete bench near the fountain, wrapping an arm over my shoulders, enveloping me in her flowery scent. “You’re my best friend, Ivy. I love you dearly. You can tell me anything.”
Anything except this.
My heart hurt, aching painfully in my chest. I wanted to spill my guts, but once I did, things would change. Once they knew, they could never not know. I wished I didn’t know.
“I don’t want this to be over,” I lied. “I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want—” I cut myself off before I confessed too much.
“It’s not forever, darling. I’ll visit. Carter will visit. It’ll be okay.”
I took a deep breath and nodded, and even though the emotion of the moment nearly overwhelmed me, there was a moment between us where the unnamed tension between us blared to life. Her pouty lips stole my attention, and for a brief moment, I wished I could have married her instead. Maybe, in a different life, we could have run away together after that night at Mount Oberon. We could have changed our names and lived in secret, loving each other until the end of time. Her gaze dropped to my lips and a flicker danced behind her eyes, almost like she had the same thoughts echoing in her mind.
So much went unsaid in those few heartbeats, so much longing and yearning between us.
Then she clenched her eyes shut, glanced away, and pulled me further into a hug, breaking the moment. I sank into that springtime, flowery scent that had always driven me wild. Being in Miri’s arms was always like coming home. I wrapped mine around her waist and fought back the tears, wishing I could tell her the whole truth and wishing she could give me some of that old-soul wisdom. Even though I didn’t ask, she must have sensed I needed it. Because she kissed my temple and said, “My nanny used to tell me good things never last. That’s what makes them so good.”
And I didn’t know if she meant Carter or that quiet moment that passed between us.
* * *
This experience was called an intensive for a reason.
Now that we knew which parts we were playing, we had a week to memorize our lines. Carter and Miri were beside themselves with study. We rehearsed for eight hours a day, four hours in the morning and four hours in the afternoon, with a two-hour break in the middle.
After three days, the heat had gotten to even those of us used to a Virginian summer.
“No, put it over there,” Stephens snapped at one of the stagehands. “Over there. Over there.”
“Jesus.” I fanned myself with my script. We’d stopped at the part where Romeo and Mercutio crashed the Capulet party because Stephens wasn’t sure if he wanted Juliet to be hiding behind the stairwell the first time she sees Romeo or if he wanted her behind the enormous fake spider plant.
“It’s like I’m talking to myself,” Stephens murmured, returning his attention to Miri when the stagehand stalked off. He was sweaty and disheveled. We all were. The auditorium was the coolest place on campus, but even that would be putting it mildly. I hadn’t felt cool since I landed on this side of the Atlantic.
Carter raised his eyebrows and grimaced at Stephens’s outburst.
“Where were we?” Stephens said. “Okay, Miri. Come over here. Carter, stand this way. Now take it from the top, and when he says the line, you move over there.”
I pretended to talk to Piper, who played Juliet’s father, and watched the two of them work. Even though I’d applied to be here, the heat and Stephens’s pissy attitude made me wish I were anywhere else. The afternoon dragged, and by the time we finally reached the end, I could barely stand. I needed an ice bath and a weeklong nap.
“That was fucking brutal.” Carter slung an arm over my shoulder as we walked back to the dorms.
“Stephens needs to get laid,” Lex said.
“Jesus, Lex,” I said. “Not everything is about getting laid.”
“It’s just hot,” Miri cut in. “Everyone’s temperamental when they’re uncomfortable.”
I was about to mention Stephens was a dick most of the time anyway, but my phone rang with an incoming FaceTime from Kit and Jon. I told Carter I’d see him back at the dorm and headed outside for privacy.
“Hey loser,” Kit said after I accepted. “How’s Ireland? See a leprechaun yet?”
“Har har.” The tension in my chest eased at the sight of my siblings. We didn’t always get along, but they had survived the same shitty upbringing as me, so we were trauma-bonded for life. “Ireland is hotter than the sun.”
“Yeah, you look melted,” Jon said. Like me, he had the fairer coloring of our father. The strawberry-blond hair and the gray eyes. When we were little, Jon and I used to be mistaken for each other. It didn’t help that we were only eighteen months apart. Now, the only people who could tell who was who in baby pictures were him and me.
“I need your advice,” Kit said. “Mother is urging me to consider majoring in cybersecurity, but we all know that’s a fucking boring-ass way to rot in corporate hell.”
I snorted a laugh. My dear little sister never minced words.
“I’m thinking about doing the hacking thing and not telling her. What do you think?”
“I told her,” Jon said, “that she should just do what she wants. She’s an adult now, right? Evelyn has to cut the umbilical cord at some point.”
Kit scratched her fingers over her forehead. “You’d think that having five children would mean the ones in the middle sort of blurred together. I should have freedom through anonymity.”
“Not with Evelyn Washington,” Jon said.
They had a laugh together, but then focused their attention on me.
“Well?” Kit said. “What do you think?”
A month ago, I would have told her she had to toe the family line. A Washington is a Washington. This was the price we paid to live the life we did, and all that other cliché nonsense my mother had spoon-fed me since I was a child. But now?
I needed to protect Kit and Jon from falling into this trap the way I had. I’d done everything that woman had ever asked me. I did the poli-sci/theater double major. I’d gotten into law school. I was going to be the next Washington president. None of it mattered. She still had me by the throat.
If they could assert some level of independence now, they should.
“I think Jon’s right,” I said. “Do what you want.”
“Wait, what?” Jon said.
“Are you high?” Kit raised her dark eyebrows. “I called you to be the voice of reason.”
“What happened to everything you do now reflects on your future self?” Jon lit a cigarette and took a deep inhale.
I didn’t have a good answer, short of telling them what was really going on, and I didn’t know if I wanted to do that. If I kept it to myself, it was almost like it wasn’t happening. If I didn’t speak it out loud, it wasn’t true, right? I’d pressed pause. Lex and I had both pressed pause.
Then again, they were the only ones who could commiserate. They were the only ones, aside from Lex, who would understand. Better to tell them than some random stranger. So I did. I spilled the beans about brunch and how Kellan Fairfax was running for election now that sufficient time had passed since Marcus’s death.
“They did it to me; they’ll do it to you,” I said. “To you both. So if you can get some measure of freedom now, take it.”
Kit’s mouth hung open, the messy bun on the top of her head messier from having run her hands through it while I talked. Jon had stabbed out his smoke and lit another. Neither had spoken since I started my story.
“They can’t do that,” Kit finally said. “Ivy, they can’t do that.”
“I know. When I get home from Ireland, I’m going to figure something out. There has to be a way out of this.” I shook my head and sighed. “They control our trust. They can cut me off. They can do a lot worse…but it’s the twenty-first century. I’m not their political pawn.”
“Let me do some research,” Kit ran her hand over her face, giving me a look of pure sympathy, a rare thing for her stoic personality. “I’ll see if I can dig anything up.”
“Jesus, you and Lex?” Jon sighed, but then started laughing, and once he started, Kit joined in.
“Stop it,” I whined, clenching my eyes shut at the humiliation burning through my throat and into my chest. “It’s not funny.”
“Oh, come on,” Jon said. “It’s hilarious. The only two people who hate each other more than our parents are you two. Now you have to get married?”
“Fifty says she kills him first,” Kit said.
“Oh, I’ll take that action,” Jon said. “Lex has been plotting her demise since he was twelve.”
“Not helpful.” I rubbed my forehead, the onset of a migraine brewing behind my eyes. “Do you two idiots need anything else?”
Kit shook her head and wiped at her eyes while Jon clutched at his chest, throwing his head back to chortle to himself.
“I’m hanging up now. I hate you both.”
“Hate you more,” Kit managed to say before I hung up.
Pissed at almost everyone in my family, I shoved my phone in my back pocket and turned to go find my friends. At least Kit had offered to help before razzing me about it, and I’d never be able to repay her for that. When I glanced up, I saw Siobhan standing a few yards away, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette. Panic sliced through me, nearly stealing my breath, and I paused. She was close enough for me to recognize her…did that mean she could hear me, too?
Oh shit.
She wiggled her fingers in a friendly wave before her sister, Ashley, got her attention and she walked back inside the school.