Chapter 14
The night had only just begun, and it was already shaping up to be the worst night of Bilal Button’s life.
Okay, maybe not the worst, but definitely a contender in the top five.
It had all started an hour ago, when the Button siblings had arrived in the Hamptons, and the first of what would be a short series of very, very unfortunate events occurred.
His imminent peril should have been obvious the moment he’d stepped out of the car and felt both the rain and hailstones pelting down on them all. The weather reports had not prepared them for it. Though when was the weather reporting in New York ever reliable?
It was like a sort of bad omen—the weather’s way of warning him about the shitstorm to come.
The rain meant that the red-carpeted path leading to their father’s ostentatiously large yacht had been unusually wet and thus very slippery. The walk to the boat was not helped by the fact that his cast was made from plastic, which made the already-slick walkway even more slippery.
This of course resulted in Bilal’s rather dramatic tumble from the harbor and right into the Atlantic Ocean.
Many guests had already arrived at that point, shielded under umbrellas as they waited in line to pass through the security checks at the yacht’s doors. Meaning there were plenty of witnesses to Bilal’s ocean dive.
Unfortunately for Bilal, he hadn’t been spared from his public humiliation by drowning, and had instead been instantly rescued by one of their security team before the sea could take him (which he would have much preferred).
He was instead forced to face the crowd of pitying bystanders head-on, drenched in seawater and looking very much like a Brooklyn sewer rat.
This was a first for Bilal. He’d never missed a step in his life. After all, missing a step was not something a fencer could ever afford to do; a misstep was the difference between hitting your opponent and winning the match or losing control of your blade altogether and losing your title.
Bilal had tried his best to ignore the stares, the amused chatter, and the not-so-subtle snickers (the latter had mostly been from his siblings) as security escorted him, dripping wet, on board the boat.
After ocean-gate, as his siblings were now calling it—who all, by the way, thought his accidental dive into the sea was the funniest thing ever—Henry had taken Bilal down to one of the yacht’s many cabins on the lower deck.
Of the four decks, the lower deck was thankfully the one that was restricted from public access, meaning Bilal could hide for a little while from the guests who’d seen his embarrassing fall.
Honestly, he’d prefer to hide away down here for the rest of the night, but he knew his father would never allow it.
Though Bilal had stayed on his father’s yacht for holidays and celebrations, it still remained a maze to him.
It was, in Bilal’s opinion, larger than any boat ever needed to be, and was predominately filled with unnecessary rooms—an indoor theater, an indoor pool, countless gaming suites, including a foosball room.
But then again, his father loved extravagant displays of his wealth. Much like the Prodigy Ball itself.
Bilal finally found his way through the cabins to an extended dressing room that seemed to have everything from diving equipment to formal attire, though not, it appeared, any spare suits that would fit a boy of six five.
Henry handed Bilal a towel and then presented him with a vintage Christmas sweater and a pair of raggy old pants.
He had to wear this abomination while they waited for someone to deliver a new suit to the yacht, which wouldn’t be until midway through the night, it seemed.
Despite the change in clothes into what was available in the yacht’s lost and found, Bilal still resembled (and probably smelled like) a human-sized sewer rat.
He couldn’t, at this point, imagine the night getting even worse than that.
But of course, misfortune was the universe’s kryptonite.
The second bout of ill fate came only five minutes later.
The Prodigy Ball had finally begun, the guests all accounted for and spread out across the main deck as the large boat cruised away from the shore.
Everyone from world-leading experts and reporters to genius teenagers joined by their guardians was mingling on the deck, while waiters seamlessly wove between both the guests and the garish ice sculptures of Greek gods his father had installed onto the main deck for who knew what reason.
The real gods were the waiters who managed to carry colorful drinks and groaning trays of appetizers in their white-gloved hands without bumping into the ridiculous carved ice statuettes.
Having made his way back into the throng, Bilal had just found a comfortable spot away from the action on a slightly raised platform that overlooked the cold, dark sea, when he saw the thing that would unquestionably ruin his entire evening in a way the ocean hadn’t yet.
Across the main deck he could see two painfully familiar figures.
A dark-skinned girl with long braided hair was laughing and chatting it up with the perfect, smiling brown-skinned boy whose face still haunted Bilal’s dreams and, occasionally, his nightmares.
Bilal felt himself grow warm, his chest tightening, constricting to an unbearable level, and for a moment, he was convinced he was about to have a heart attack at the ripe age of seventeen and three quarters.
Because of course the twisted sicko that controlled the universe’s chessboard would give him a freaking heart attack after the day, no, the year he’d had.
It wasn’t enough that his career was probably over; he’d now probably drop dead in front of everyone, wearing the world’s most hideous sweater too. It was just his luck.
At least the rain had stopped.
After a further three minutes and twenty-one seconds of holding his breath, it became clear to Bilal that it was not a heart attack that was causing his discomfort, but instead a classic cocktail of heartbreak and a guilty conscience.
He looked back over at the pair, Evelyn—Evie—Gray and Anwar Shah, feeling like he’d stepped into some kind of alternate dimension where all of his demons resided.
He wondered how Anwar even knew Evie. He felt sick to his stomach at the thought that the two might be in cahoots somehow, or worse yet … friends. He really hoped they weren’t, and this was just another coincidental twisted maneuver by the universe.
Bilal almost jumped overboard (again) when Anwar suddenly shifted his focus from Evie, his eyes dancing around the deck a little before fixing squarely on Bilal.
When they locked eyes, Bilal felt his entire body freeze, cold rattling through him as though he had been plunged into an ice bath.
Then Anwar did something perilously unexpected: He smiled at Bilal.
Anwar actually smiled at him.
The metaphorical knife still lodged in Bilal’s chest plunged farther in and twisted, cutting through flesh and bone, blood dribbling out of the open wound in his heart.
Bilal did not smile back. He couldn’t bring himself to—or rather, the shock was preventing him from doing anything but stare.
It turns out Kelly Clarkson was wrong. What doesn’t kill you shows up to your father’s yacht parties.
It was his fault, really, for not thinking ahead about the likely possibility of Anwar being here tonight. His ex-boyfriend was a prodigy, after all; he always got invited to these things.
Bilal quickly tore his eyes away. He needed a drink.
He turned to the waiter stationed next to him and picked up two glasses from the tray.
The champagne would help dull the pain of seeing Anwar for the first time in eight months, and also hopefully dull the pain from his shattered bones.
“Having fun without me?” The smooth sound of his sister Perdita’s voice interrupted his thoughts as she walked up to him. Bilal glanced at her sideways, feeling a little ridiculous next to his sister, who was dressed in a blue ball gown, while he was wearing what felt like a clown costume.
“Yes, I’m having a fucking blast, Dee,” he replied, his voice sounding slightly raspy, as he was still recovering from the injury of being smiled at.
“Incorrect. Your answer should be that you only ever have fun with me,” she said, nudging him softly.
“Apologies,” he replied unfeelingly, as he took a large swig from one of the flutes.
Perdita raised a curious eyebrow at him. “That bad, huh?” she asked.
“What’s that bad?” he replied, staring at her as he took another sip.
“Whatever the mysterious thing weighing you down is. Must be real bad,” she said, moving some of her dark curls from her face.
“Well, I don’t know if you somehow missed it, but I fell into the ocean earlier, so I don’t know, maybe it could be that,” he snapped, immediately regretting it.
Out of all his siblings, Perdita was probably the one he was closest to and kept in contact most regularly with, despite the fact that they both no longer actively lived at the Manor.
If this hadn’t been one of the worst nights of his life, he might’ve been less frosty. But he couldn’t help it.
She blinked up at him. “Well, on the bright side, your hair looks really good,” she said, unaffected by his sour attitude. That was one thing he always appreciated about his youngest sister; she never returned the malice the world force-fed her.
Bilal knew he looked like an unkept rodent and rolled his eyes. “Shut up.”
“I mean it! Curly hair suits you,” she said, her smile earnest.
“Whatever,” he muttered, leaning over the railing, downing the dregs of each of his drinks and then tossing the glasses into the sea.
A more sober Bilal might have cared about the environmental implications of his actions, but in his current state he didn’t want to care about anything.
He just wanted to get through the evening without losing his mind.