From Lukov with Love

by Mariana Zapata

  “It’s just….” He scrunched up his nose as he drove and even shook his head. “I don’t know.” He glanced at me and shook his head again.

  I knew what he meant. It’s what my mom and everyone had always said about me. Physically, I looked younger than Ruby, who still had a baby face like my mom’s. But I had an old, grumpy grandma soul. “I get what you’re trying to say.”

  From the way he was contorting his face, it was like he was still in denial. “You’re really that much younger than her?”

  Sliding my hands under my thighs, I held back a sigh as I leaned my head against the seat. “Yup. She had a heart condition for a long time. We were all really overprotective of her.”

  “I didn’t know that. She’s cute,” he threw out suddenly, and my head did something straight out of the Exorcist. I swear to God my neck swiveled effortlessly, without a hitch, as I turned to glare at him.

  “Don’t look at my sister. She’s married.”

  Ivan snickered. “I know. I’ve met her husband how many times now? All I said was that she’s cute, not that I want to take her out on a date or anything.”

  “Great, she’s too good for you,” I threw back out, still staring at him.

  That had him go, “Ha!”

  “She is,” I told him slowly, not letting his laugh get to me.

  “You know, there’s a lot of people in the world that would think I’m too good for them,” he said, his tone sounding… off.

  I rolled my eyes and settled into the seat, crossing my arms over my chest. “Probably. But you wouldn’t be good enough for my sister, hot shit. So reel the ego in a little.”

  “If I was interested in your sister like that—and I’m not, all I said was that she’s cute, but there’s a ton of cute girls in the world—”

  “My sister is the prettiest. Both of them are. Don’t compare them to the rest of the world’s women.”

  Ivan snickered. “All right. Jesus. All I’m trying to say is that, if I was interested in one of your sisters—and I’m not, listen to me—you really wouldn’t let me date them?”

  This weird feeling I wasn’t about to mull over made my stomach uncomfortable, but I ignored it. “Hell no.”

  His snicker made me smile from how insulted he was. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah,” I emphasized.

  “Why?”

  “Where do you want me to start?”

  There was a pause. “I’m a catch.”

  “A catch and release.”

  He groaned, and I couldn’t help but look at him out of the corner of my eye. “Plenty of women would want to go out on a date with me. Do you know how many messages I get on Picuregram a week?”

  “Teenagers who haven’t grown up yet to realize how dumb they are don’t count, and neither do elderly women with bad eyesight,” I let him know.

  Apparently, he was going to ignore my stipulations because he kept going. “I’m rich.”

  “So?”

  “I’m not ugly.”

  “To your eyes.”

  Ivan snorted, and if the corner of his mouth tilted up into a partial smile, I was going to ignore. “I have two gold medals.”

  I made a “pfft” noise as I angled my hips and upper body to watch Ivan. “One of those is a team gold, and what’s-his-face has like twenty.”

  This man opened his mouth for a moment, on the verge of saying something, and then closed it before shrugging those shoulders he seemed to hold me above half the day. Lean, strong shoulders, so much stronger than anyone ever gave them credit for. I wasn’t exactly light as a feather. I was heavy for my size, but it was all muscle. I was sure I did weigh more than most girls did in a smaller frame, and he always lifted me like it didn’t matter.

  His head ticked to the side, and his hands flexed on the steering wheel. And then he smirked, even though he was facing forward. “You’ve got a point,” he conceded, not exactly sounding happy about it. “But how many do you have?”

  What happened next, I would never have been able to predict. But it happened.

  We both went “OOOOOOOOH” at the bullshit that came out of his mouth like we were in fifth grade and had made a really good “yo mama” joke.

  We went “OOOOOOOOH” so deep and into it, totally unexpected, that it lasted maybe three seconds before we both burst out laughing, my head crying no at the movement and my back aching, but I did it anyway.

  Was it fucked up of him to point out that I hadn’t won any gold medals even fully aware it really chafed me? Duh. But this was Ivan. What the hell else would I expect?

  Plus, it wasn’t like I wouldn’t have said the same exact thing if we were in opposite positions.

  But it made me laugh. And it made him laugh.

  And I still muttered, “Asshole,” even as I laughed to myself, head pounding and all that mess, but smiling. “Eat shit.”

  “Got you,” he chuckled, that mouth of his split wide into a smile so big it was like his face couldn’t handle it.

  “Shut up,” I responded, shaking my head. “You’re a pain in the ass.”

  He laughed. “That’ll never get old.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “No thanks.”

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed again, and then Ivan did too, but I caught him sneaking glances over in my direction twice, a smile pasted on that pale pink mouth. He did it again. Then again.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked him, unsure why he kept glancing over and not liking it.

  The smile on his face didn’t go anywhere as he replied, “You.”

  “Why?” He looked at me every day.

  “Because.”

  Was there something wrong with my face? “Because what?”

  “It’s rare you laugh.”

  If there had been any semblance of a smile left on my face, I wiped it clean. “I laugh.”

  “I’ve only seen it happen a few times.”

  I tried not to huff, but it still happened. He wasn’t the first person to ever tell me that. “I don’t laugh unless I find something funny, but I do. I laugh with my family all the time. I’ve laughed with Karina a million times. I’m just not going to pretend like I think something is funny if someone makes a shitty joke or says something stupid. I’m not fake.” Did I sound crazy defensive or was I imagining it?

  Ivan was still smiling as he said, “You’re probably the least fake person I know, Meatball. Jesus. I like your laugh, even if it sounds a little scary.”

  I blinked. “Scary?”

  “You sound like a psycho when you laugh, all heh, heh, heh, heh.”

  My spine went rigid, and it wasn’t because of the fever still in my body. “What am I supposed to sound like? Hehehe?”

  He was still grinning. “No. Your heh, heh is just like you, and don’t ever laugh like that again. That’s creepy. I might have nightmares tonight from it. God. You sound like a possessed doll or something laughing from a dark corner, waiting for me to go to sleep.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh again, even though my head hurt.

  Then he ruined it by glancing over his shoulder and wiping his expression clean. “I’m still pissed off at you by the way. Don’t think I forgot.”

  I had forgotten.

  I had forgotten I was mad at him and that what he’d done was total bullshit.

  But now that he reminded me, I shifted away from him and shut my mouth. And when I set my forehead against the glass, thinking of how much I’d screwed up, I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but it happened.

  We were sitting beside each other after eating a dinner we’d made after only exchanging three words the whole time.

  Dinner. Is. Ready.

  He’d woken me up when we’d gotten to his house—the absolute last house I ever would have imagined him living in—and he’d said maybe ten words to me. To top it off, he hadn’t joked around once while saying any of them. Which was fine by me because I wasn’t in the mood either.

  Luckily, I’d been too busy taking i
n the ranch-style home to really care. A rich blue with white shutters, it was nothing like the loft-style or Mediterranean home I thought he would live in, in some glitzy neighborhood with a guard and a community center with a badass waterpark. Nope. As I looked around the property, all I saw was green grass and trees in the distance. Ivan had acreage. So much acreage I couldn’t see another house anywhere or hear any voices in the distance.

  “Don’t freak out when I open the door,” he muttered, sounding annoyed or frustrated, or probably both knowing him. And people thought I had a bad attitude.

  I didn’t ask him what there would be to be freaked out about as he got out of the van and went around to the sliding door of the passenger seat that was opening on its own. “Come, Russ,” I heard him mutter before he whispered something that sounded like, “Lacey, be good,” as he unclipped the little white dog from the seat belt, and she jumped off the seat and out of the car, running full speed toward the front of the house the second she could.

  I got out too, grabbing my bag and damn near moaning at the weight before hefting it to the house, regretting that I didn’t ask Ivan to help me. Not that he would in the mood he was in, but maybe.

  I had just kept looking at the house, the three-car garage attached to it and the grass on top of more grass.

  It was beautiful.

  Not that I’d admit it to him, especially not right then.

  “Don’t freak out,” he reminded me once more, a split second before I heard him unlock the door while I had my back to the front deck.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  What I’d learn about one minute later, was that five animals—three dogs, one pig, and a giant bunny—had come hauling ass out of the house like they’d broke out of jail. Two dogs were tied together, and the other had three legs but ran like hell, but they were there. Swarming me. Wagging tails as they joined up with Russ and little miss priss, Lacey. They were excited as fuck as they went around me, sniffing, sniffing everything and more, like they couldn’t believe I was there.

  One small pink pig stomped on my toes, and my heart gave this… this thing that I couldn’t describe.

  I didn’t know what the hell happened to the bunny I had seen, but I was too busy taking in all the excited faces and excited tails.

  And if anyone would have been surprised that I spent two hours outside playing with five dogs and a piglet, none of them would have been more surprised than me. Because I had felt like total shit not even ten seconds before, but it was like it all went away when they were shoving their faces against my legs and hands.

  So hours later, when Ivan had come out of the house and told us all to come in, I hadn’t complained too much, especially not when I noticed he was still in his little shit mood.

  Still in his little shit mood, holding up the bunny I’d seen against his chest.

  And I definitely didn’t complain that he stayed in his little shit mood as he made his way to a kitchen my mom would have described as rustic.

  Ivan had a whiteboard on his fridge with his lunch and dinner plans written on each. So, considering it was Saturday, he’d pulled out a package of chicken breasts and the meal on the fridge said CHICKEN, JASMINE RICE, BEETS, I figured that’s what we were doing. I’d always expected him to have a chef or something, but I was coming to see that I didn’t know him at all.

  So I found the jasmine rice in a cupboard after searching through his crap—and eyeing a glass container he had on the counter filled with Hershey Kisses—and then found the right sized pot after he’d continued ignoring me as I looked for it. And we got to cooking. I let him make the beets because I wasn’t sure what to do with them. Plus, I wasn’t that great of a cook to begin with, mostly because I could have lived off baked meat seasoned with just salt and pepper, whatever grain I could make in a rice cooker, and steamed or baked vegetables for the rest of my life if it was up to me.

  Just as I was measuring out a cup and a half of rice onto each plate—because Ivan had measurements on his whiteboard of how much of everything he wanted on his plate—his cell rang. He brushed by me to grab it off the counter and instantly answered, “Hello.”

  I finished measuring as I heard him keep talking, “Yes, she’s here… Better but she’s still sick…” Obviously I was the “she.” I think. The question was, who the hell was he talking to? “Tomorrow?... It depends on what we’ll have… That’ll work… Okay. Sounds good. We’ll see you tomorrow then… I love you too. Bye.”

  I told myself it wasn’t any of my business who he talked to.

  But if he left his phone lying around and I could figure out the password, I’d look at it.

  Ivan didn’t say anything to me about where we were going or what we were going to do, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to ask, so I kept my mouth shut and stood back as Ivan finished putting the food on the plates and then later as we ate.

  I had just finished swallowing the last bite of the lime chicken he had stir-fried in coconut oil when Ivan shoved his plate away and finally turned to me, looking just as pissed off as he had two hours ago. Even his stupid shoulders were rigid and tight.

  I gave him a lazy look, expecting the worst.

  So, because I was expecting him to give me hell, I wasn’t anticipating what actually came out of his mouth.

  “I want you to cancel your accounts again.”

  “What?”

  He repeated himself. “I want you to cancel your accounts again. Having a few followers isn’t worth you getting things like that in the mail.”

  What the hell was happening? “Ivan,” I started to say, confused. “I don’t know if they’re still coming in the mail or not, but the private messages and comments are no—”

  “We can delete the team one too. Lee will understand,” he said, each word coming out angrier and angrier.

  Well, I wasn’t the kind of person to throw other people under the bus, but… “She knows about them. Or, she has an idea about them. We talked about it months ago.”

  Those bright blue eyes could have had lasers in them from how uncomfortable his gaze was making me feel. “What?”

  “When I first agreed to be your partner, we talked about it. I didn’t tell her much, I just kind of gave her an idea why I’d cancelled my accounts.”

  “Wait a second….”

  I ignored him. “She told me to tell her if things started coming up again, but I didn’t. I just stopped reading my mail to begin with.”

  He blinked. “You told her. But you didn’t tell me.” Why the hell were his words coming out all stiff and robotic?

  “Yeah.” Because I had. “I didn’t think you needed to know.”

  Yeah, he was getting all pissed off again. “You thought I didn’t need to know?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t. We weren’t exactly talking then. It seemed pointless. Why would you care?” I asked him with a shrug, not about to feel bad for doing what I’d done.

  “Why would I care?” he murmured to himself, still trying to kill me with his eyes alone.

  “Now, I get it. We’re friends. We’re partners. But chill. It’s fine. I’ve never gotten aggressive messages or threats. It’s always just… the pictures and those videos. I might not even be getting them anymore.”

  At some point while I’d been talking, he began to tip his head back to eye the ceiling. He wasn’t looking at me as he said, still sounding like he was made of metal on metal, “Is that why you didn’t want to do the TSN shoot?”

  I didn’t want to tell him, but I did. “Yes. That was the other part of it. I wasn’t lying when I told you I didn’t want you to make fun of me either.”

  His groan was basically a rumble as he continued to look at the beams across his high ceiling. He sighed. He sighed and he shook his head.

  It was my turn to sigh. “Cut it out. It’s all right. I knew what I was doing.”

  That had his chin dropping. “Yeah, being a stubborn ass, and it’s not fucking all right.”

  I scoffed.


  He stared at me.

  Okay, maybe he had a point. “Look, I don’t want anyone worrying. Everyone has enough stress in their lives, nobody needs me to add more to it. I can’t… I won’t stop living my life and wearing whatever I want to wear or don’t want to wear because of other people being assholes. I hate that I let it bother me as much as I do and did, to begin with.”

  He kept on staring.

  “If I need help, I’ll ask.”

  The laugh that came out of him was a sharp one. A fake one. One that said he knew I was full of multi-layered shit. “You could need a kidney replacement and not ask anyone you know for one, Jasmine.” He shook his head, a frown crossing his mouth. “You think I don’t know you?”

  Well. Shit.

  “You are so stubborn. So fucking stubborn it drives me insane. You know how many times I’ve wanted to choke you?” he asked, shaking his head in clear exasperation.

  I blinked. “Probably half as many times as I’ve wanted to choke you out too.”

  He didn’t take my joke. “What we have, it’s more important than a marriage.”

  I rolled my eyes and let the m-word go.

  “It is, and you know it is. I need you healthy, and I need you focused.”

  Something uneasy burned through my belly. “I get it, Ivan. Without me, you can’t compete. Trust me, I get it. I know it. I’m not planning on screwing you over. I didn’t mean to get sick and screw up starting our choreography. You know I’m sorry.”

  The look he gave me….

  “You’re my friend, Jasmine. Not just my fucking partner. Don’t give me that bullshit.”

  I reeled back at his tone and watched his face get furious.

  “I want you to be safe because you matter to me. You think I bring my partners to my house? You think I let them into my life? You think I spend time with their families? I don’t, and I never have. I learned my lesson when I was a teenager and my partner tried to blackmail my family by saying they paid for us to win our junior events. That’s why I do contracts now, to keep it professional. I don’t ever want to be as unhappy as I was after my first partner did those things to my family and me. But you….”