Icy Pretty Love

by L. A. Rose

  Sam: You can’t teach someone how to be a good person like you can teach a dog how to fetch. Once people become something, they don’t change. Ever.

  RG: I don’t believe that. :<

  Sam: What does that punctuation have to do with it?

  RG: It’s a frowny face. I am frowny facing on your pessimism.

  Sam: It looks like a deranged bird with a reverse beak.

  RG: Fine, I’m deranged-birding-with-a-reverse-beak on your pessimism.

  Sam: I don’t have to answer these texts.

  RG: Yes you do! Or I’ll send you a thousand deranged birds until you have to change your number. And even then the birds will follow you. The birds always know.

  Sam: Fine. I’ll give you advice on your douchebag boyfriend. I hate birds.

  Sam: And douchebag boyfriends, incidentally.

  RG: He’s not my boyfriend.

  Sam: But you want him to be. Otherwise you wouldn’t bother trying to change him.

  RG: :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :< :<

  Sam: Would you look at that. It’s a flock of obnoxiousness. Why does this feel like an Alfred Hitchcock movie?

  RG: Because I’m going to show up outside your shower with a giant knife?

  Sam: Changing my number now.

  RG: No, wait! What if I show up outside your shower with a tray of cupcakes instead?

  Sam: I’d prefer it if you didn’t show up outside my shower at all.

  RG: That’s no fun.

  Sam: Debatable. I find it lots of fun to take showers without the threat of being murdered.

  RG: Or pastried.

  Sam: That’s not a verb.

  RG: Anything’s a verb if you try hard enough!

  Sam: What did you major in in college? Being annoying?

  RG: I didn’t go to college.

  Sam: What a surprise. “Anything’s a verb if you try” doesn’t usually fly on the Reading section of the SATs.

  RG: Never took the SATs either! I dropped out of high school! :>

  Sam: Why does that warrant a happy bird?

  RG: Because high school sucked.

  Sam: Look, I’m not that interested in your personal life. I just want to give you your jerk advice so you’ll stop texting me and I can get on with my life.

  RG: Your exciting life, full of lonely showers.

  Sam: Who says they’re lonely?

  RG: …

  RG: Okay no, they’re definitely lonely. “Who says” is a thing people pull when they want to act like something’s not true without having to lie.

  Sam: Maybe you would have done better on the Psychology section of the SATs.

  RG: :>

  Sam: There is no Psychology section of the SATs.

  RG: :<

  Sam: Has it occurred to you that maybe there’s a reason why this guy is a jerk to everyone?

  RG: No. There’s no good reason to be a jerk to anyone.

  Sam: I didn’t say a good reason. I said a reason.

  RG: What reasons could this guy have? He’s bee rich his whole life. He’s always had everything handed to him. If there’s one guy who should be making out with the universe in gratitude, it’s him.

  Sam: Maybe you shouldn’t judge people by the surface things you know about them.

  RG: Sometimes the surface is enough!

  Sam: Is it? Do people ever take one look at you and get everything right?

  RG: That’s different. I make a point to hide who I really am.

  Sam: Then you shouldn’t be surprised when other people do the same thing.

  I’m about to text him back something scathing and brilliant when the midnight silence is interrupted by a harsh scream. I freeze, balling up under the covers. A robber? A werewolf? A robber accidentally coming to our penthouse at the same time as a werewolf and getting into an epic wolf versus man fight? Now I kind of want to go watch.

  A second cry bursts out, savage and desperate.

  I’ve always imagined I would be the intrepid confronter in the face of a break-in. No cowering in the bathroom with 911 on the phone, filling the tub with my tears. No, I’d arm myself with a frying pan or preferably a machine gun, storm into the living room, and then the local newspaper would run a story on me and all the feminist blogs would pick me up as their new mascot—

  A third noise comes, a yell like someone getting stabbed, and this time I recognize the voice.

  Cohen.

  Oh hell no. Nobody messes with my clients but me. I grab the nearest murder weapon, which happens to be a pillow, and fly out of my room and across the apartment to his.

  “Get away from my rich jerk client, werewolf bastard!” I shriek, throwing open his door with the pillow held aloft. “Or I’ll smother the shit out of you!”

  My eyes adjust to the darkness. The only other human figure is Cohen’s, a silhouette twisted up in blankets. I drop the pillow and rush to his side. My noble entrance didn’t wake him, incredibly. But there’s something wrong. Even as the idiot side of me swells and dies forever at the sight of him shirtless, splattered with moonlight and shining with sweat, the normal side of me processes his heaving chest, the twisted expression on his face.

  “Cohen…?”

  He cuts me off with another cry. This time it’s words.

  “No—please—”

  Nightmare. My heart sinks. I grab his shoulder and shake it, hard. “Cohen! Wake up! It’s not real!”

  He jolts awake with a spasm, the muscles in his stomach clenching. His eyes find mine, wild and unfocused. He’s going to hit me. No, he’s not. The insanity melts away.

  “Rae…?” he says weakly.

  I let out a long breath. “Uh, yeah. You were yelling. And thrashing around.”

  He presses the back of his hand to his forehead. “I thought I told you not to come in here.”

  Yup, he’s fine. “You’re welcome for waking you up and saving you from the imaginary tiger that was trying to eat you. That’s what it sounded like, anyway.”

  He grunts. His muscles are taut. The hand at his forehead is shaking a little. He’s still terrified. What kind of dream could make Cohen Ashworth cry out like he was being tortured?

  I sit at the edge of his bed. “You wanna talk about it?”

  “No, I do not want to talk about it,” he spits.

  “You sure? Because talking can really—”

  “Get out.”

  “I’m just trying to—”

  “Get out,” he snarls, removing his hand from his face and looking at me with deadly eyes. “I want to sleep, not deal with your nosiness. I don’t want you in this room.”

  That stings. I get up and back away, about to say something cold and biting, but I’m not quite capable of cutting down someone who looks so oddly vulnerable.

  “Okay, but I’m here if you want to talk,” I say quietly.

  He doesn’t respond. I shut the door.

  These niceness lessons are going to be more work than I thought.

  The next morning, I’m sitting at the breakfast table, munching on a bowl of strawberries, when Cohen comes out of his room.

  I spare him one haughty glance before returning wordlessly to my strawberries.

  He moves around in the kitchen, making an inordinate amount of noise, presumably to drown out my icy silence. It doesn’t work. I can make my silence really loud when I want to. Eventually, he sits down at the table with me, one chair closer than yesterday.

  “This cheese you bought is decent,” he says after a minute.

  I snort. Is that his idea of peace offering?

  He struggles through a few more minutes of silence and then says, “There’s juice in the fridge.”

  I ignore him.

  Finally he explodes. “What do you want from me?”

  “First rule of being nice: apologizing when you’ve been a jerk to someone.” I pop another strawberry into my mouth.

  “You’re the one who broke into my bedroom in the middle of the night.” />
  Silence.

  “I’m not going to apologize for telling you to get out. You had no right to be there.”

  Silence.

  “Somehow you manage to make your not speaking more annoying than your speaking. It’s incredible.”

  Slow chewing.

  “Fine,” he hisses. “I am sorry if I was a little bit harsh with you last night.”

  “There! First lesson completed! C minus,” I say.

  “You’re grading me?”

  “Yes. You apologized, but you were very roundabout and you still managed to sound like a jerk while you were doing it. So, C minus. Strawberry?”

  He sighs. I glance at him. He really looks terrible. His eyes are bloodshot and ringed by dark circles. I have a sneaking suspicion that he did not, in fact, go to bed after I left him last night.

  “I should write this down!” I dig a notebook out of my purse, write Cohen’s Niceness Book on the cover, and embellish the top of the first page with a lovely, curly C minus. “I always thought I would make a good teacher.”

  “Or boot camp instructor,” Cohen mutters.

  “Lesson two of being nice: no snide comments under your breath. Or over your breath. Or anywhere near your breath, really.”

  Cohen starts to say something, but stops.

  I smile. “Good job.”

  I want to ask him what his nightmare was about, but even I’m not stupid enough to expect an honest reply. Instead, I turn another page in the Niceness Book. “Today we’ll be doing some fieldwork.”

  “Fieldwork?” Cohen’s eyebrow rises again. I’m going to tape that goddamn thing into place if he’s not careful. “Shouldn’t you…tell me things first? I know you didn’t go to college, but classes generally start with a lecture.”

  My heart shoots into my mouth. “How do you know I didn’t go to college.”

  He shrugs. “Girls in your line of work generally aren’t college graduates, I think it’s safe to assume.”

  My heart settles back into place. Chill, Rae. “You’d be surprised. A few of my colleagues were Art majors. I think there was even an English major in there somewhere. Anyway.” I mark down some bullet points. “Tell me the things that annoy you the most.”

  He sips his coffee. “Number one—being told to tell someone what annoys me the most.”

  I shut the notebook. “Fine, if you’re not going to take this seriously—”

  “I am! I am.” He lets out a breath. “This is hard for me.”

  “There are worse things that are harder for a lot more people,” I say. “We’re going to do a kind of exposure therapy with you. My friend Gabby went through it. She had a spider phobia, so the therapist would show her pictures of spiders and stuff and eventually had her stand near live ones in a cage. You’re like that, except instead of spiders it’s everyone and instead of being afraid of them, you’re a jerk to them.”

  “So you’re going to expose me to things that make me be a jerk.” He leans back. “Why do I suspect that’s not going to help me with not being a jerk?”

  “You’re the only one who makes you a jerk. You’ll see, it’ll work. Now tell me what bothers you.”

  “People,” he says.

  “Well, yeah, I kind of assumed that. We’re not trying to fix your attitude to plants here. What kind of people? What are the things they do that bother you the most?”

  He thinks about it, his expression unreadable. “People who make assumptions about others without knowing the whole story.”

  “Oh yes, them. Good thing I’d never do anything like that. Nuh uh.” I write it down. “I was thinking more…situational-type things.”

  “Crowds. Kids. People behaving like idiots. Loud noises. Tourists. Holidays—”

  “Holidays?” I gape. “Christmas? Nobody hates Christmas.”

  “I hate Christmas.”

  “I changed my mind. I can’t work with the Grinch. Everyone knows your heart’s three sizes too small and I am not a coronary doctor.” I point at him. “How can you hate Christmas? It’s all about love, and giving things to the people you care about, and family, and—”

  “A holiday supposedly about selflessness, maintained entirely by greed. I suppose I can appreciate the irony, if nothing else.”

  “Didn’t you ever decorate a Christmas tree with your family? Set out gingerbread cookies for Santa? Sing Christmas carols and drink eggnog?”

  “No,” he says shortly.

  I never did those things either, but the idea of it has always kept me starry-eyed and awake late into the Christmas evening. A family celebrating a special day together…nobody with that could ever be unhappy. “Moving on, then. The way I see it, the only thing to do is go somewhere there’s lots of crowds, loud noises, tourists, and people acting like idiots…I know! The Eiffel Tower! Oh, but you’ve already been there.”

  “No I haven’t.”

  My jaw flops open. “You’ve been in Paris for—how long now?”

  “A year.”

  “A year, and you still haven’t gone to the Eiffel Tower? Are you a monster?”

  “Most likely,” he says coolly.

  I stand. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

  “And we’re going where, exactly?”

  “Where else?” I call as I race out the door. “To the Eiffel Tower!”

  Twenty minutes later, we’re being dropped off in front of the aforementioned tower. Seeing it in person is bizarre. When you see a famous landmark enough times on the internet, you tend to forget it’s a real thing somewhere. It becomes one of those myths that everybody knows about but that don’t actually exist, like mermaids or werewolves. But there it is: an enormous structure, like a vertical spiderweb dipped in molten metal.

  “French people don’t actually go to the Eiffel Tower. They generally consider it ugly,” says Cohen, standing on the sidewalk and looking up at the huge thing like it’s an insect. An insect that happens to be about a million times taller than he is.

  I ignore him. After a while, he glances at me and blanches. “Rae, are you…crying?”

  “No,” I sniffle. “Maybe. I just never thought I’d see it, you know…” I wipe my eyes. “When you’re convinced you’ll never get the chance to travel, you tend to spend a lot of time on Google Images.”

  “I don’t see what you’re so excited about. It’s just ugly metal scaffolding.”

  I hit him. It’s sort of like hitting a brick. Jesus, between doing paperwork and being mean to everyone, when the heck does he have time to go to the gym? “Third rule of being nice—no raining on someone else’s parade when they’re having a moment.”

  “I hate parades.”

  This time I reach up and pinch his cheek. It bothers him way more than hitting him did. He jerks back, his expression the same mixture of shock and murder that I imagine a tiger would have if someone pinched its cheek. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “It’s called negative enforcement.”

  “Negative reinforcement,” he corrects.

  “That is such a stupid distinction—anyway. When you do something mean, I’m going to pinch your cheek. That means you’ll start associating being mean with getting your cheek pinched, and soon you’ll be nice to everyone!”

  “Why would you feel the need to explain negative reinforcement to me if I was the one who told you what the real name for it was? Obviously I know what it is.”

  I thump his chest. “Just putting fear into your heart.”

  He steps back. He’s obviously not used to being touched. It rubs him the wrong way. “You’re insane.”

  “I prefer the term certifiable,” I say. “So when someone calls me certifiable, I can say ‘certifiably awesome!’”

  He shakes his head. Apparently, whatever response that warranted was beyond words.

  “I have a homework assignment for you tonight.” I tap the side of my head. “It’s one of my brilliant ideas. I want you to start keeping a meanness diary. If you write down the mean thoughts you have about
people, maybe then you’ll be less inclined to say them out loud.”

  “Will that be graded too?” he asks sarcastically.

  “No, I won’t read it. It’ll just be for you. And when you’re done with each entry, I want you to read it over and contemplate what a douchebag you sound like, and how much better it would be if your entries were filled with compliments for other people’s hairstyles and stuff.”

  He massages his temples. I swat his hands away.

  “Stop it. Now let’s go get tickets.”

  Fun fact about the Eiffel Tower: anybody who has ever visited Paris in the history of ever, except before the Eiffel Tower was built, has visited the Eiffel Tower. That means, at any given time, there are approximately a bazillion people at the Eiffel Tower. Statistics courtesy of Harvard University. And at least two hundred percent of those people are screaming children, yakking tourists, or people acting like idiots. Bringing Cohen here was such a great idea that I almost have to wipe a tear from my eye at my own brilliance.

  After standing in line for ten minutes behind a man loudly explaining the rules of football to his son, whose response to the rules of football is to release an unrelenting bird-of-prey screech, Cohen is visibly twitching.

  “You’re doing well.” I pat his shoulder.

  Ten minutes later, the little kid decides to start a game of hide-and-seek with his sister, choosing the best hiding place—behind Cohen’s legs.

  “It’s illegal to kick small children,” I remind him.