From Lukov with Love

by Mariana Zapata

  Even from across the table, I could see his gulp. But he’d done this shit to himself. He had brought up something that everyone else except for Ivan and probably Aaron knew about. “But there are classes you can take, things you can do to help.”

  I kept my sigh inside of me, but I took it out on the fork I was still gripping the shit out of. “I know how to read and write. That’s not it. I learned how. I don’t like school, and I never will. I don’t like people telling me what to do and what to learn. I’m not going to graduate with a college degree. Not tomorrow, not five years from now, not in fifty years.”

  Dad’s expression faltered for a moment, his gaze going around the table like he was searching for something, and I didn’t know what he thought he saw or why he decided to say the words that fell out of him a moment later, but he sealed his own deal in a voice that was too light. Too joking for a moment that to me, wasn’t humorous at all. “Jasmine, those are the words of a quitter.”

  I heard my brother Jojo suck in a breath and heard Ivan’s fork clink against the side of his plate. Mostly though, I heard the anger in me churning to his words. To his bullshit-ass assumptions. “You think I’m a quitter?” I asked him, fully aware I was giving him the same look I gave other people when I was three seconds away from losing my shit.

  “Jas, we all know you aren’t a quitter,” Jojo chimed in quickly, finally.

  We both ignored him.

  “You don’t want to finish school because it’s hard for you. Those are the words of a quitter,” my father claimed, slashing my heart in half at the same time.

  Had he not heard a single fucking thing I’d just said?

  Beside me, Ivan cleared his throat, his fingers sliding up even higher on my thigh and squeezing me, not in anger but… in something else I couldn’t place. And before I could open my mouth to defend myself, to yell at my dad that that wasn’t the point at all, he beat me to it. “I know I’m not a member of this family, but I need to say something,” my partner said calmly.

  I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. I was… I was so damn mad, disappointed, I wanted to throw up.

  But Ivan kept going. “Mr. Santos, your daughter is the hardest working person I’ve ever met. She’s persistent to a fault. Someone will tell her not to do something, and she only does it more. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who has fallen more than her and gotten right back up, never complaining, never crying, never quitting. She’ll cuss herself out, but it’s at herself. She’s smart, and she’s relentless,” he said calmly, his hand squeezing my leg tighter than before.

  “She gets to the facility at four in the morning Monday through Friday and trains with me until eight. Then she goes to work, on her feet right after that until noon. She eats her two breakfasts and her lunch in her car, then comes inside and trains with me until four. Three days a week, she has three ballet lessons by herself and one with me for two hours each time. One day a week, she takes Pilates from six until seven. Four days out of the week, she goes for runs and works out after we train. She goes home, eats, spends some time with the rest of her family, and goes to bed by nine. Then she’s up at three o’clock in the morning and does it all over again.

  “And for months, she was going back to the facility to practice by herself from ten at night until midnight. Because she was too proud to tell me that she needed help. Then she would go home, sleep for three hours and do it all over again. Six days a week.” The hand on my leg gripped the fuck out of it, not hard but… desperate. And Ivan kept talking. “If Jasmine wanted to go to school, she would graduate with honors. If she wanted to become a doctor, she would be a doctor. But she wanted to become a figure skater, and she is the best I have ever had as a partner. I think that if you’re going to do something, you should be the best at it. And that’s what Jasmine is. I understand school is important, but she has a gift. You should be proud of her for never giving up on her dreams. You should be proud of her for being true to herself.”

  Ivan paused and then said three words that slayed me. “I would be.”

  Fuck. Fuck.

  I didn’t even realize I had shoved my seat back until I was getting to my feet, dropping my napkin and fork and knives beside my plate. Something in my chest burned. Seared. Flayed me inside out.

  How did Ivan know me so well and my own dad not?

  How could Ivan know all these things about me, and my own dad be disappointed in who I was? I knew I wasn’t book smart. When I’d been younger, I’d wished that I had been. Finishing high school had been hard enough for me, but it was because I hadn’t given a shit about it, because I had loved this sport and wanted to be like the other girls who were homeschooled or had private tutors. I hadn’t been lying when I said I hated school and had no interest in going back.

  But it was hard enough to be a disappointment with the one thing I was good at, without being able to handle disappointing my own dad, simply by being me.

  That burning sensation made its way up to my face, and I honestly felt like I couldn’t breathe. It almost felt like I was drowning as I pushed past the people waiting by the hostess podium, shoving the door open as I tried to gulp for breath. My palms went up to cover my eyes as I sucked in air, trying so hard not to cry. Me. Cry. Over my dad. Over Ivan. Over the reminder that I was dumb and a failure, regardless of how I looked at it and how happy I was. It had all been too soon. Or maybe I was finally just acknowledging how much my dad’s beliefs and desires and actions affected me.

  But goddamn. It hurt. It sucked.

  I could win every competition this season, and I would still be stupid, useless Jasmine to my dad. Disappointing, big-mouth Jasmine. Cold, pissed-off Jasmine with dreams that were a waste of time and money.

  I hadn’t been enough when he left, and I still wasn’t enough for him now.

  But I wanted to be. It was all I had ever wanted. I had wanted to be enough for my fucking dad. Even now after all this shit, I still just wanted him to see me. To love me. Like everyone else in the restaurant did.

  I wanted to be enough just the way I was, without Ivan having to tell my dad all the things about me he should have known.

  My palms grew wet, and I sucked in a breath that sounded like a sob but felt like a razor blade straight into my sternum.

  The one man I wanted to appreciate me and respect me, didn’t.

  And the other man, the one whose appreciation and respect I had told myself for so long didn’t matter, seemed to think the world of me.

  Why didn’t he know how hard I was willing to work every day for the things I wanted?

  Digging the meat of my palms even tighter against my eyes, fully aware I was probably smudging my mascara and eyeliner but not giving a single shit, I sucked in a breath that probably could have been heard from down the block.

  The doors beside me opened and I heard a “you should probably give her a minute,” said by my brother, followed by the sound of the door closing.

  I didn’t sense someone close by until it was too late, and two arms wrapped themselves around my shoulders. It only took a single sniff to know who it was.

  My choke reached down into my lungs, pretty much making my entire chest contract in a near hiccup. The arms hugging me pulled me into a chest I was too familiar with while I dropped my arms and let them hang loosely at my sides. And I let it happen. I let my face fall forward into the spot directly between pectoral muscles I’d seen countless times, and touched countless times, and admired more and more by the day, and I grit my teeth to keep from making anymore choking noises.

  I failed.

  The muttered “fuck” went in one ear and out the other. Followed by what must have been a cheek pressing against the top of my head. Ivan’s voice came low, so low I barely heard him. “Why do you do this to yourself? Huh?” he asked me.

  My chest stuttered, a hiccup, a compressed choke that hurt me more than I already was.

  “You know how good you are. You know how rare that is. You know how much work you
put in to everything. You know how strong you are,” he whispered, his arms crossed over my shoulder blades. “Your dad doesn’t know anything about figure skating, Jasmine. From the sound of it, he doesn’t know you at all. You know better than to let what he thinks get to you. You know better.”

  “I know,” whispered into the bone directly between his pecs, squeezing my eyes shut so that I wouldn’t disgrace myself even more by bawling into him.

  “You warned me, but I didn’t believe you,” he went on, some part of his face still pressed against the top of my head.

  “I told you,” I said, the miserable feeling inside of me growing by the second. “I told you. I didn’t even want to come. I knew it was going to happen, but I’m stupid, and I hoped maybe this time would be different. Maybe I could shut up and he could pretend I wasn’t there, like he always used to. Maybe this time he wouldn’t criticize me and tell me all the different things I could be doing with my life, but no. It’s my fault. I’m a fucking idiot. I don’t even know why I still bother. I’m not going to be an engineer like Sebastian. I’m not going to use my GI bill to work in marketing. I’m not going to be a project manager like Tali, or even just be Ruby. I’m never going to live up to my brothers or my sisters. I never have—”

  My voice broke. Totally just snapped in half.

  And that was when the first wave of tears hit my eyes, and I gasped to keep them inside of me. To fucking keep them in because I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to fucking do it, especially not over my dad’s comments.

  But your body doesn’t always listen to what you tell it. I was well aware of that. But it still felt like a betrayal when it didn’t hold in the tears I was trying to keep a rein on.

  And Ivan’s arms tightened even more, pulling me in the millimeter left until we were plastered together from thighs to hips to chest.

  “I was a mistake, you know? My parents had already been on the rocks, and then my mom got pregnant and my dad stuck around for another couple of years, hoping things would get better, but they didn’t. And I wasn’t enough for him to stick around, so he left. He just fucking left and came back once a year, and my brothers and sisters loved him, and he loved them, and—”

  “You are not a fucking mistake, Jasmine,” Ivan’s voice shook into my ear and my shoulders went so tight, I started trembling. Me. Trembling.

  And I cried. Because my dad had left when I was three, and instead of watching me grow up, instead of being there to try and teach me how to ride a bike like he’d taught all of my brothers and sisters, it had been my mom who had.

  “Your parents splitting up had nothing to do with you, and your dad leaving is on him. It wasn’t up to you to keep them together,” he continued on, anger hanging onto the softness like a shield.

  And I just kept on crying.

  His arms were steel around me, his face and his mouth and his whole head over mine and to the side like he could block me and protect me.

  “You’re enough. You will always be enough. Hear me?”

  But I kept on crying into him, his button-down shirt getting wet beneath my face, and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t help it. I cried like I hadn’t cried… ever.

  Because there were a million things wrong with me, and the one thing that wasn’t, was one of the biggest things that disappointed my dad… and everyone else I loved.

  Ivan cursed. He hugged me tighter. He cursed some more.

  “Jasmine,” he said. “Jasmine, stop. You’re trembling,” he let me know, as if I couldn’t feel it for myself. “You said once in an interview that you skated because it made you feel special. But you’ll always be special. Figure skating or not. Medals or not. Your family loves you. Galina loves you. You think Galina wastes her love on people who don’t deserve it? Lee admires you so much she texts me in her car to tell me how good she thinks you are. You think she feels that way about just anybody? You have more heart in you than anybody I’ve ever met. Your dad loves you too in his own fucked-up way.”

  His head dipped down to my ear and he whispered, “And when we win a fucking gold medal, he’s going to be watching you, thinking he couldn’t be prouder of you. He’s going to walk around telling everyone his daughter won a gold medal, and you’re going to know you did it without him. That you did it when so many people didn’t believe in you, even though those people don’t matter. The ones that matter are the ones who have always known what you’re capable of.” He swallowed so loud I heard it. “I believe in you. In us. Regardless of what happens, you will always be the best partner I’ve ever had. You’ll always be the hardest working person I’ve ever known. There will only ever be you.”

  I sobbed into him. These fucking tears just purging themselves from me. His affection, his words, his belief were just… too much. They were too everything.

  And I was so greedy, I needed them. I needed them like I needed to breath.

  “I’d give you every ribbon, trophy, medal, anything at my house or at the LC if it meant something,” he told me. “I’ll give you anything you want if you stop crying.”

  But I couldn’t. And I didn’t. Not for every medal in the world could I stop. Not for any and every figure skating honor I’d been dreaming about for half my life, could I have stopped.

  I just kept on crying. For my dad. For my mom. For my siblings. For myself.

  For not feeling good enough. For not feeling enough. For doing what I wanted to do despite all the noes and the eye rolls and all the things I’d had to give up along the way. All the things I’d lost that I might someday regret more than I already did.

  But mostly, I cried because while I didn’t care what most people thought of me, I cared too much about the people whose opinion I did value.

  Ivan held me and kept on hugging me the entire time I stood there, letting out things I didn’t even know I had in me. It might have been a couple of minutes, but considering I’d only cried two other times in the last ten years at least, it was probably more like half an hour that we stood outside the restaurant, ignoring the people going in and out. Watching us or not watching us, who the fuck knew.

  But he didn’t go anywhere.

  When the hiccups weren’t so bad, when I finally began to wind down, and I felt like I could breathe again, one of the forearms draped horizontally across my spine moved. The flat of Ivan’s hand went to the base of my spine and slid upward, making small circles there, one, two, three, four, five, before it made its trek back down and up.

  I hated crying. But I didn’t realize I hated being alone more.

  And I wasn’t going to overanalyze Ivan being the one bringing me comfort, being the one who understood me better than anyone else in that restaurant.

  Slowly, and way more timidly than necessary when there was no sense of personal space between Ivan and me—when he’d seen more of me than any man and touched me more often than anyone else probably ever would, and hugged me more than anyone before him—I wrapped my own arms around his waist and hugged him back.

  I didn’t tell him thank you. I figured he would take my hug for what it was. A thank you and a thank you and a bigger thank you that was so large and pure, my mouth couldn’t have done it any justice. It was always my mouth that got me into trouble, but actions couldn’t lie.

  In the middle of making a circle with his palm across my shoulder blades, Ivan said—not asked—“You’re all right.”

  I nodded against him, the tip of my nose touching the lean, powerful pectoral muscle in front of it. Because I was all right. Because he’d been right about all the things he’d said. And a lot of me knowing I was going to be okay was because he believed in me. Ivan. Someone. Finally.

  I sucked in a strangled breath, feeling shitty but not totally pathetic anymore. Some part of my brain tried to tell my nervous system that I should feel embarrassed, but I couldn’t. Not even a little bit. I’d never thought my sister was weak because she cried over the most random shit.

  My dad had hurt me.

  And bab
y and adult Jasmine had never known what to do with that.

  “You want to leave or you want to go back inside?” he whispered, still rubbing my back.

  I didn’t have to think about it as I stood there, not moving a muscle besides keeping my arms around the narrow waist in front of me. And when my voice came out hoarse and strangled, I sure as hell didn’t let myself feel any shame. Maybe part of all this was my fault, but some of it was my dad’s too. “Let’s go back inside.”

  Ivan made this amused sound, his face still against the top of my head. “That’s what I thought.”

  “It’s already awkward in there, might as well make it more awkward,” I said roughly, not totally feeling it.

  The chest beneath my cheek shook, and the next thing I knew, Ivan was leaning back, those strong palms cupping my temples with those long fingers curling around the back of my head. He didn’t blink. He didn’t smile. He just looked me right in the eyes, his expression serious as fuck, and he said, “I might want to kick your ass sometimes, and I might tell you that you suck when you screw up and when you don’t, but you know it’s only because someone needs to keep you in check. But I meant what I said. You’re the best partner I’ve ever had.”

  And a hint of a smile, tiny, tiny, tiny, stretched the corners of my mouth.

  At least until he kept talking. “But I’m never going to admit that again, so you better remember it for a rainy day, Meatball.”

  And just like that, the tiny little baby smile on my face stopped in midgrow.

  Ivan gave my head a gentle shake, his own mouth curling open, fully and totally. “And if your dad talks to you like that again, or says some shit like we aren’t real athletes, we’re going to have a problem. I was being nice because he’s your dad.”

  I nodded, because it was the only thing I could do right then.

  He dropped his hands, his eyes never straying from mine, and I dropped my arms too, leaving an inch of distance between us.

  “I will always have your back, you know that,” he stated, sincerity staining his tone.