From Lukov with Love by Mariana Zapata
I made a face at my food before looking at him and bringing the middle finger closest to Jonathan up to my face and pretending to rub at my inner eye with it.
The only member of my family that sort of looked like me with his kind of tan skin, black hair, and dark eyes, stuck his tongue out. Thirty-two years old and he stuck his tongue out at me. What a little bitch.
“We might have believed you if you hadn’t said ‘nothing.’ Now we know you’re lying,” our mom egged him on. “You not telling us when something is bothering you?” She pretty much snorted, her attention down on the chicken she was cutting into pieces. “Ha! Since when have you done that?”
This was what I got for making them my best friends over the years. Other than Karina, who I spoke to less and less over the last few years, and a couple of other people I didn’t mind, my family was it for me. My mom said I had serious trust issues, but honestly, the more people I met, the more I didn’t want to meet more.
“You okay, Jas?” James, my brother’s much better half for the last ten-ish years, give or take, asked, his tone worried.
Moving my fork tines in the noodles some more, I looked over at the most handsome man I had ever seen in my life and nodded my head. With dark hair, the clearest hazel eyes, and his skin color a shade of honey brown that didn’t give anyone a single clue about his heritage, he could have dated anyone. Anyone. Literally. I’d seen straight men check him out countless times. If he had decided to be a model, it would have been over for every other male model in the world. Even my sister, who was all about women 24/7, three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year, had said before she’d marry him if he asked. I would marry him even if he didn’t ask. He was the nicest man, good looking, successful, and down-to-earth. We all loved him.
He loved us back, but not the same way he loved my brother Jojo.
People liked to say love was blind, but there was no way love could be that blind. I’d stopped trying to figure out my brother Jonathan and James’s relationship a long time ago. How he’d ended up with the biggest idiot in the family, I didn’t get. My brother had giant Dumbo ears and a gap between his two front teeth that my mom had claimed was so adorable his whole life, he’d never bothered getting braces. I’d had a little bit of an overbite and ended up with braces for three years.
Not that I was hung up over it or anything.
“I’m good. Don’t listen to them,” I said to James, sounding distracted enough that I knew I was messing up again. So I tried to change the subject and chose the most obvious one: my mom’s husband, who should have been at the table with us… but wasn’t. “Where’s Ben at, Mom?”
“He’s out with his friends,” the redheaded woman who had given birth to me, explained quickly before raising her gaze and aiming her fork in my direction. “Don’t change the subject. What’s wrong with you?”
Of course that didn’t work.
I just barely held back a groan as I shoveled a piece of chicken into my mouth and chewed slowly before answering, “I’m fine. I’m just… thinking about stuff, and it’s putting me in a bad mood.”
My brother snickered beside me. “You? In a bad mood? No.”
I reached over before he knew what was happening and pinched him on the puny thing he called a biceps.
“Oww,” he cried, yanking his arm away and cradling it.
I tried to do it again, but he flailed his elbow to keep me from being able to.
“Mom! Look at her!” my brother whined, gesturing toward me like there was someone else attacking him. “James, help me!”
“Snitch,” I whispered, still trying to pinch him. “Bitch.”
His husband laughed but didn’t choose sides. No wonder I liked him so much.
“Quit hurting your brother,” Mom said for probably the thousandth time in my entire life.
When he moved his hands to block me around the area of his waist, I reached up, quick, quick, quick and flicked him on the neck before he turned his mouth to try and bite me. “Momma’s boy,” I whispered, snatching my hand back.
He tipped his head from side to side with a smirk, mocking me like he always had when Mom took his side. She always did. The suck-up was her favorite, even though she’d never admit it, but the rest of us knew the truth. I loved both my brothers, but I got why my mom loved him the most. If you ignored the similarities between him and Pluto, he always put a smile on someone’s face. Those giant ears had that effect on people.
“Baby girl, even I know something’s up with you just from the way you’re talking. What’s wrong?” my brother’s husband asked, leaning forward over the table with an expression so full of concern, it made me feel guiltier than anything my mom or Jojo could have said.
I wanted to tell them.
But…
I could, and probably always would, clearly remember how my brother had cried angry tears when we first found out I’d been left without a partner. My mom would never admit she’d been devastated, but I knew her too well to not see the signs. I’d seen the same signs after every marriage before her current one had failed, when she knew her life was changed forever and there was no going back to the way things were before.
Right after I’d quit training to compete—because you couldn’t exactly practice a lot of elements in pairs skating by yourself, and I’d been totally aware of how slim my hopes were in women’s singles—I had emotionally turned into myself majorly. The right term might have been depression, but I didn’t want to think about it. It wasn’t the first time it had happened; I was a sore loser.
It hadn’t been a secret how heartsick seeing my dream slipping away had made me… how angry and hurt and upset I’d been. How angry and hurt and upset I still was. Honestly, part of me worried I would never get over it. I held grudges like a motherfucker. But my family had all ridden this ride with me, year after year, one up and five downs, over and over again.
Most importantly, they had all been there for me in the aftermath of me slowly trying to build up this new life I had outside of the rink, from forcing me to do little things like eating dinner with my family while all I wanted was to hole up in my room alone, to threatening me into going out with them, and guilt-tripping me into doing things I hadn’t made time for before. They had done that over and over again until it had begun to feel like second nature. All those things I hadn’t done enough of in the past, but could once I told my mom she wasn’t going to have to keep paying the astronomical fees that came with coaching because I didn’t have one anymore. He had ditched me too.
It was one thing for me to be sad and heartbroken, but I didn’t want them to feel that way too. Never again. Not if I could prevent it.
And I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do.
The selfish part of me wanted to do it. Duh.
But the other part of me, that tiny part that didn’t want to be a selfish shit, didn’t want to let these people down by turning into the person I’d been before. The one who was never around. The one who everyone thought didn’t care… probably because I hadn’t cared enough to.
Then there was the whole part of me not being sure I could handle things not working out… as much as that made me a pussy.
And the whole it-being-Ivan this deal was with.
Ivan. Ugh. I wanted it that bad that I wasn’t immediately saying no to the possibility of spending most of my days with him of all people. This was what my life had come to. Possibly spending time with that arrogant dipshit.
I really had no idea what to do, damn it.
So, for that moment… I lied. “I think it’s just my period on the way.”
“Ahh,” was Jonathan’s response, because girls being on their periods was old news after sharing a bathroom with three sisters for the first eighteen years of his life.
My mom, on the other hand, squinted a little, watching me for two moments too long. So long that I thought she was going to call me out on my shit, but right as I assumed that, she shrugged and then dropped another bomb. “
I blinked, not sure why I was surprised.
She always knew everyone’s business. Someway, somehow.
It was James, my brother’s husband, who sucked in a loud breath first. That’s how long he’d been with Jonathan, that the name meant something. I could remember a time, many, many years ago when James hadn’t known a single thing about figure skating. But now he’d been a member of the family long enough that he knew more about the sport than I’d bet he’d ever imagined he would.
“He got rid of his partner?” Jonathan perked up, shoving his glasses up his nose, like this was the best gossip he’d heard in a while.
Mom raised her eyebrows and nodded. “From what I heard, it happened a few days ago.”
I made sure to shove a big piece of chicken into my mouth so that I wouldn’t make a face that said that’s not what happened.
Luckily, my nosey-ass brother gasped. “Hadn’t they just paired up a few years ago?” Jojo asked, aiming the question at our mom because he knew she had all the gossip.
“Uh-huh. The partner before her fell twice at the Major Prix final. They won a bronze, but with this girl he won a national title and worlds with.”
The Major Prix. Worlds. Nationals. They were three of the most prestigious competitions in the figure skating world, and only he could screw up that much in a competition and still win something. That should have reassured me that I’d be making a good choice if I accepted his offer, but all it did was make me resentful toward myself for fucking up so much that I had nothing.
“Karina didn’t tell you anything about it?” My mom turned her attention to me.
I made sure I still had chicken in my mouth while I shook my head and said with a mouthful, “She’s still in Mexico.” They knew she was in school.
“E-mail her and find out,” she urged.
I frowned. “You e-mail her and ask.”
Mom snorted like bring it on. “I will.”
“I always forget Karina is his sister,” James noted, leaning across the table. “Is he just as good looking up close, in person?”
I snickered. “No.”
Jojo snorted out, “Uh-huh,” but the tone put me on edge and had me glancing in his direction to find him leaning into James’s shoulder. He pretended like he was trying to whisper, but the idiot looked right at me as he added, “Jasmine used to always flirt with him. You should have seen it.”
I gagged on the chicken I hadn’t swallowed yet before coughing out, “The hell did you just say?”
His “ha!” made me get my middle finger ready. “Don’t even pretend. You used to always come home talking about him,” the five-foot-seven-inch man who had always been a perfect balance between a supportive older brother and an annoying pain in the ass with boundary issues claimed. “You had a thing for him. We all knew.” He looked at James and raised his eyebrows. “We knew.”
Was he fucking with me? He was fucking with me, wasn’t he? Me flirting with Ivan? Ivan?
“No,” I told him calmly, only because if I said it too aggressively they would cry bullshit. I knew how they worked. “I did not flirt with him.” And just so James knew, I emphasized it. “Ever.”
Mom made a noise that basically said, “Well.”
I swung my gaze toward her and shook my head. “No. No, I didn’t. He’s all right looking”—I only said that because, if I said he wasn’t my type, they would assume I was trying to hide something, and I wasn’t. “—but it was never like that. Not even a little bit. He’s kind of a jerk. His sister and I are friends. That’s it.”
“He wasn’t a jerk,” my mom interjected. “He’s always very polite. He’s very good with his fans. He seems like a very nice boy.” She slid me a look. “And you did like him.”
A nice boy? What the hell were they on?
Yeah, everyone did love him, and they all thought the world of him. Handsome, talented Ivan Lukov, who had won the world over as a cute, winking, cocky teenager. He knew how to play the game. I would give him that. But I had never liked him. Not ever. “Nope, no I didn’t,” I argued, shaking my head in disbelief they would be trying to claim that kind of crap. Were they for real? “You’re imagining shit. We say a sentence to each other once a month, and it’s always sarcastic and a little mean.”
“Some people might consider that foreplay—” my brother started to say before I cut him off.
I made a horrible noise again, still shaking my head. “Hell no—”
Jonathan burst out laughing. “Why’s your face turning red then, Jas?” he asked, slapping his palm over the top of my head and giving it a shake before I could jerk it out of the way.
“Shut your mouth,” I said to Jojo, thinking of a dozen different comebacks and knowing I couldn’t use any of them because they would all come out way too defensive and make me look guilty. Or, worse, I’d tell them about the offer I’d been given that morning. “I didn’t like him though. I don’t know why you two would ever even think that.”
Mom snickered. “It’s okay to admit you used to have a crush on him. There are plenty of girls around the world who have. I might have even had a little crush on him back in the day—”
Forgetting we were on opposite teams, Jojo and I both gagged.
Mom groaned. “Oh, stop. I didn’t even mean it like that!”
Of course the woman who was married to a man not even ten years older than me would have to clarify that comment. Mom wasn’t just a cougar, she was The Cougar. All other cougars hailed to her.
“I’m going to pretend you just didn’t say that so I can sleep tonight, Ma,” Jojo muttered with a borderline sick look on his face before he physically shook it off. Then he elbowed me. “You did used to talk about him a lot, Jas.”
I blinked. “I was like seventeen, and it was only because he’d been an asshole.“
Mom opened her mouth, but I kept going.
“No, no. He was. I swear he was. Y’all never heard him, but it happened, he just made sure not to ever get caught. Karina knows.”
“What did he do to you?” James asked, the only one who seemed to still be on my side. At least because he wasn’t denying my claim and sounded interested to actually hear the facts.
I was going to give them too, because the last thing I wanted was for Mom and Jonathan to keep assuming that crazy shit. Especially with what might happen. Maybe. Possibly.
So, I told them.
Shit hit the fan the day Ivan Lukov wore the ugliest costume I’d ever seen in my life up to that point.
I had been sixteen back then, and Ivan had just turned twenty. I remembered that because it had always amazed me that he wasn’t even four years older than me but already so much further ahead in his career. He had already won multiple championships as a junior with his longtime partner before going into the senior level at seventeen. At twenty, people had already been shitting themselves all over him for years. Little did I know, nothing would change over the next decade.
By that point, his sister and I had already been friends for a few years. I’d already spent the night at her house more than a handful of times. She had already spent the night at my house more than a handful of times. Ivan had just been that family member I saw on her birthdays and randomly at her house when he’d drop by to visit. He’d never really said anything to me directly up until then, apart from shooting me reluctant expressions that existed because his parents expected him to have good manners.
So, on that day years ago, when he’d skated out on the ice as I was stretching on the floor, I hadn’t been able to hide my horror, and I didn’t even bother trying. What he had been wearing resembled something the Chiquita Banana lady would have worn. Frills, yellow, red, green… there’d even been a flower somewhere in there, and these awful yellow pants that made his legs look like genuine bananas in his boy-man body back then.
That costume was the worst. The absolute worst. I’d worn some leotards my sister had made me that had been… e
But what I wore had nothing on what the hell he’d been wearing that day.
Ivan had then started skating with his partner, some girl that he’d skated with for years before then but hadn’t lasted much longer after that. Bethany something. Whatever she had been wearing hadn’t been anywhere near as bad as his costume though. I’d seen their program in bits and pieces when I wasn’t busy; I’d heard the music that would go along with it too, obviously. But I hadn’t seen the costumes until then. It was like watching someone break dance to Mozart. It didn’t make sense. And in my mind, the train wreck he’d been wearing had taken away from the piece he and his partner were performing, which wasn’t exactly a mambo.
I’d blame that for being the reason I opened my big mouth that day. I thought he’d be doing a disservice to his routine. So, I thought I was doing him a solid by saying something.
I know for sure I hadn’t thought about what I was doing before I went up to him as he’d been getting off the ice following the end of his practice, clipping his skate guards on to the blade below his black boots. And in that moment, I told the boy-man who had said zero to me before that, “You should really change your costume.”
He hadn’t even blinked as he’d turned his head to look at me and asked, in the one and only polite sentence that he had ever and would ever direct at me, “Excuse me?”
Maybe I could blame my mom or even my siblings for not stressing enough that I needed to shut up and keep my opinions to myself. Because of all the things I could have said to soften my words, I didn’t pick any of them. “It’s ugly,” was exactly what had come out of my mouth.
Not “It takes away from your lines and the height in your jumps.” Not “It’s a little too bright.”
I didn’t say any of those things to make my comment less asshole-ish.
Then to let him know that it wasn’t just horrific, I’d added, “It’s butt ugly.”
And everything changed after that.
The twenty-year-old had blinked at me like it was his first time seeing me, which it wasn’t, and then reared back. He spit out in a low, low voice from that boy-man body, “It’s not my costume you should be worried about.”