Subscribing to the Enemy: An Enemies to Lovers YA Sweet Romance

by Jen Brady

  His grin and the light in his eyes were playful now. “Oh, you think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “Guess we’ll never know,” he said, actually sounding bummed about it. “Too bad, too. I would have liked to see your film.”

  “I thought all my stuff was mindless drivel.”

  He buried his hands in the pockets of his ripped jeans and had the decency to look a touch sheepish.

  “Your videos make people laugh. That has to count for something. And what you did for that girl with leukemia? That was seriously cool.”

  I felt my own lips turning upward. “Rick,” I said in mock surprise, “are you trying to say you’ve subscribed to my YouTube channel?”

  “No.” The force behind his quick denial should have been insulting, but it wasn’t somehow. I enjoyed the pink that came to his flustered face and neck. “But I’ve seen parts of a few of your videos . . . and some of them are amusing.”

  Giddiness welled up inside me. Somehow, his opinion mattered to me, even though he had zero taste in YouTube videos.

  “And not all of your videos are boring,” I admitted.

  “Ooh,” he joked. “High praise coming from the Joanna March, owner of a Gold-Play-Button.”

  I laughed with him, then let the quiet engulf us for a moment. The soft music playing from his phone was the only sound in the room. It had gone back to a non-German song.

  We got back to work, and he actually agreed to put my version of the opening in the film to see how it flowed. It was a huge improvement from the original sequence, but he hemmed and hawed and said he had to think about it. The time flew by, and suddenly, he had to leave.

  “Do you still want a copy of the song?” he asked.

  “Yes. It’s beautiful, even if I can’t use it.”

  “Okay, I’ll send it to you.” He picked up his phone and tapped a few times with his thumbs, then looked up. “There. Let me know if it doesn’t go through.”

  “Okay.”

  He picked up his flannel and shrugged it on as he headed for the stairs.

  “Hey, Rick?”

  He turned and gave me a smile that made my heart stutter.

  “Thanks for the Panera. You’re really good at guessing people’s favorite orders.”

  “No, I’m not.” He shook his head, his messy hair flopping.

  “Yes, you are. Tomato bread bowls are my absolute favorite.”

  “I know.” He tapped the banister twice with the side of his fist before stepping down the first step. “You talk about Panera bread bowls on your videos all the time.”

  “Oh.”

  I wasn’t sure if I felt bummed out that he wasn’t just totally in tune with my likes and dislikes or happy that he’d watched more of my videos.

  “See you later, Joanna.”

  “Yeah, see you.”

  And he was gone, taking the stairs with his graceful gait.

  I swiveled in my chair to face my desk and laptop. Spread across the surface were his balled-up, used napkins, all three sandwich wrappers, his empty soda cup, and cookie crumbs. I shook my head. What a messy goof.

  But he was an endearing messy goof.

  I tapped on the file he’d sent me. The first few notes of the hauntingly beautiful song rang out. I needed him to write down the words (and figure out the lines he hadn’t been sure of) so I could know what it said.

  I listened to the song as I cleaned up after both of us. It really would have been perfect for the credits to my movie. Tears pricked my eyes. I swiped at them with the back of my hand and chastised myself.

  Christopher Columbus, it’s not like someone had died. I’d lost some video files. I was annoyed with myself for still being so weepy over it. It was just a movie.

  But it had also been part of me. A huge part of me. And only one person in my life truly understood how much of myself had died with the loss.

  A small part of me realized that if I hadn’t lost my movie, Rick and I wouldn’t have been thrown together, and I would never have spent several minutes this afternoon snuggled in his strong arms.

  I would still never forgive Mya for taking it from me. I’d promised my mom I would try, and I had, but I didn’t know if it was something I could do.

  18

  RICK

  “MUSIC! MUSIC!”

  “No, Luz, we can’t have music right now,” I said for about the fiftieth time that evening.

  “Music!” she cried, widening her big, brown eyes into the pitiful expression that usually got me.

  “We can’t. My mom and dad are home.” They wouldn’t appreciate the music Luz wanted or the volume she’d beg me to crank it up to. “And your mom’s here, too.” So far, Cristina hadn’t questioned me about letting her preschooler listen to death metal, and if Luz wasn’t going to snitch on me, I certainly wasn’t going to out myself by brazenly flaunting our playlist in front of the parental units.

  Luz thrust her bottom lip out. I’m a sucker for that, and she knows it.

  “Aww.” I ruffled her hair. “We can do something else.”

  Her lips parted into a hopeful smile. “Horsie?”

  I groaned. “Not horsie again.”

  I’d already been the horsie three times since she’d gotten here. A spot on my left knee where I had a particularly large rip in my jeans was getting rug burn from all the horsie galloping we’d done.

  Cristina had seemed frazzled when she’d come over earlier, so my mom had invited her and Luz for dinner. My parents and Cristina were now talking in hushed tones in the kitchen over wine while I occupied Luz. Usually, they laugh a lot when they hang out, but not a single chuckle had escaped the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but the air in my house felt strangely thick with trepidation.

  Half-a-dozen horsie trips around the living room later, the swinging door that led to the kitchen opened and Cristina appeared. She looked composed now, but her eyes were red, like she’d been crying or rubbing them.

  “Thank you for watching her, Rick,” she said.

  “No problem. We had fun, right, Luz?”

  Luz responded with giggles. “Horsie! Caballo! Pferd! Gatito! Kitty! Katze!” We’d been teaching each other animal vocabulary.

  Cristina smiled, despite whatever stress she was under.

  After they left, I went into the kitchen, partly because I was parched from my time as “horsie” and partly to feel out how receptive my parents would be to talking about what was going on with Cristina. A plate of chocolate chip cookies still sat on the table. I took a glass out of the cupboard and went to the refrigerator to grab some milk, keeping my ears open for hints as to what was going on.

  “I think we should do it,” Dad said. “Definitely. It’s what’s best for Luz.” His words were staccato and harsh, his accent thicker than usual, a clear sign that he was upset.

  “It’s not that easy, Fritz,” my mom said gently.

  “Sure it is. We can’t let her get put in some cage.”

  “What?” I whirled around. Some of the milk splattered out of the full jug onto my hand and the floor. “What’s going on?”

  Dad sat with his eyes narrowed, shaking his head, staring at the tabletop.

  Mom pushed the hair out of her face and rubbed the back of her neck before meeting my eyes. “There was an ICE raid at Kirke’s Café this morning. Three of Cristina’s friends were detained.”

  “But they don’t know about her, right?”

  “No. She’s safer because she does work-for-hire. Her clients would have to suspect something and then care enough to report their suspicion.”

  Dad shook his head. “I don’t understand. When I came to this country, everyone welcomed me. They had a party at the university. But Cristina comes, and people hate her for it.”

  “You came with proper paperwork to marry a US citizen,” Mom pointed out. “Cristina didn’t.”

  “Because she couldn’t!”

  I’d weaseled the truth about Cristina’s move out of Mom long ago,
then wished I hadn’t when she’d confided in me that Cristina had left Colombia because she had an abusive husband. She had a cousin here in the Boston area, so she ended up hiding out at the cousin’s house for a while until she found a job cleaning houses and got back on her feet enough to rent the house next door to us.

  “Isn’t it more important for her to come here?” Dad asked. “I wanted to move here, of course. A stunning foreign exchange student saw to that.” He gave my mom the longing gaze that usually made me want to look away from their gross, old-people gaga eyes. “But I wasn’t in danger. Why don’t people tell me to get out?”

  “You know why.” Mom sounded tired, like they’d gone round and round with this conversation countless times in the past. “It didn’t used to be this way, but nowadays, European immigrants are intriguing. People see Europeans as cultured and desirable and assets to their communities. They enrich college campuses.”

  “Cristina and I are the same.”

  “You’re not, though, Dad,” I said, knowing Mom needed back up when he got into one of his social justice moods.

  “You have skills that not many Americans have.” Mom’s words were gentle, but Dad still bristled. “You’re a published writer, a translator, a respected educator. Cristina . . . .”

  She winced, not knowing how to end her thought. How did you say Cristina just cleaned people’s houses and not make it sound like belittling our brave neighbor who’d had to be stronger and smarter than any of us at times?

  “It’s still the same,” Dad insisted gruffly, but all three of us knew it wasn’t.

  “I wish things were different, but it’s the reality she’s facing,” Mom said. “And as much as I’d like to help her out, we can’t adopt Luz.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “I’ll baby-sit whenever you need me to.”

  “There are an incredible number of hoops to jump through that require lawyers and paperwork and background checks and court visits. That’s not possible with Luz’s situation.”

  “If Cristina got sent back, would Luz, too?” I asked. I set my milk down on the table as I sat down. Nobody reminded me to use a coaster, which drove home how serious this all was. It took a lot for my mom not to care about the beautiful wooden surfaces in our house.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart,” Mom said with a sad smile. “She wasn’t born here, so it’s possible.”

  Dad made a fist and pounded the table with the side of his hand once, decisively, as if cementing the solution in the wood. “Then if ICE comes, we take Luz before they know. It’s like Cristina said. If she doesn’t tell them, they won’t know. Luz can stay with us, safe, until Cristina figures out what to do.”

  “You’re talking about kidnapping.”

  Dad’s eyes blazed. “Not at all! Cristina wants it.”

  “Technically, in the eyes of the court, it would be.”

  “It’s disgusting what they’re doing to those families. They would never tell me to leave and rip my child away from me to put in some system where he knows no one. If they put her in some cage, I will go down there and—” His words became unrecognizable as he grunted quickly under his breath in German. When I can’t understand what he’s saying, it usually means he’s using slang from twenty years ago or curse words I don’t know.

  “Great,” Mom said sarcastically, “so you can get deported yourself.”

  I took two cookies and my glass of milk up to my room, but the snack didn’t seem appealing anymore. I set it all on my desk and sat on the edge of my bed. I lay back and looked up at my white ceiling.

  I STARED AT THE CEILING for a long time, feeling helpless. Nothing I did would make a bit of difference as to whether Cristina and Luz got deported someday. It was a possibility we all had to live with, a fear to suppress far enough down that we could continue about our lives without letting it eat away at us too much.

  Strangely, the only thing I felt like doing was watching something funny. I looked through my shelf of favorite DVDs, but I’d seen them all too many times for any of the stories to provide a proper distraction. I sat in front of my computer, picked up one of the cookies, and surfed around YouTube for a minute until something in the sidebar caught my attention.

  We Put 5000 Bath Bombs in My Grandpa’s Pool (what could go wrong???)

  I’d been boycotting that video for months, refusing to add a view to the other 973,492 it was up to now. But the pit in my stomach felt a little relief as a flutter of intrigue perked my senses up.

  I clicked on it and took a nibble of one of the cookies.

  “Hey, amazing viewers!” Joanna greeted me. I knew she was greeting all viewers, but it felt like her pretty, gray eyes were honed in on me as she and Laurence went through their usual introduction. “Check out what we have going on today.”

  The camera panned to a large, clear tub full of colorful circles, then pulled back to show several similar bins on the deck around the pool’s edge.

  Since the video took place in and around Laurence’s pool in the middle of last August, Joanna couldn’t hide under a hoodie and yoga pants. She was wearing one of those tank top two-piece swimsuits that revealed a sliver of her flat stomach. She wasn’t this voluptuous pin-up model, but I definitely got an eyeful of her curves. When the camera panned wide, then turned to show the calm pool pre-bath bomb assault, I caught a quick glimpse of her long legs.

  “We’ve got nine bins of bath bombs located in key locations around my grandpa’s pool,” Laurence explained, “and we’re going to see what happens when we dump them all in.”

  They bantered back and forth for a while, clueing their viewers in as to where they’d managed to scrounge up 5000 bath bombs (they bought out all the stores in town and then hit up a surplus company in Boston). I stopped listening and just watched her.

  Her wavy hair was down, reaching nearly to the patch of bare skin between the tank top and shorts of her swimsuit. Her freckles were out full force, making her cheeks and nose look extra adorable. And her smile . . . it was relaxed and matched the sunny day vibe.

  I felt the tension draining from my shoulders as I settled back into my chair to watch as they each tipped over one bin, then jumped into the pool.

  At first, they had fun splashing around and reveling in the bubbles. They swam through particularly fizzy patches, marveled over which colors appeared in random spots, and slapped foam all over each other.

  Every now and then, one of them would swim to the edge of the pool and pull on one of the ropes to tip another bin, and a cascade of colors would topple in and raise the water level with fizz.

  It was just a normal day hanging out in the pool but with a little extra color, sizzle, and foam.

  Then the bath bombs started to take over.

  “Woah, look at that huge mountain!” Laurence exclaimed, pointing at the expanding mass behind Joanna.

  She turned, then whirled back, eyes wide. “Oh, my gosh! That’s wild!”

  Laurence bobbed to the final tub and grabbed the rope, grinning at the camera. “Here we go!”

  Joanna looked behind her again, then glanced to her left as the fizz expanded from that direction as well. “Uh, Ted? I think maybe—”

  He let out a whoop and tugged on the rope, and the last bin of bath bombs plopped into the water.

  The pool exploded.

  I mean, it didn’t actually blow up. But I could hear fizzing through the camera mic as the foam grew quickly now. It seemed to swallow Laurence from his spot where he’d pulled the last bunch in, the foam expanding over his head so he had to tread away to still be seen. The high point plateaued for a few seconds, then the entire water level rose en masse, and water gushed over the sides of the pool, running down the deck and drenching chair legs and towels until it disappeared under the meticulously-sculpted bushes next to the house.

  The camerawoman shrieked and jumped, the screen going bumpy for a second. “It got my feet!” she exclaimed. “You guys, the hot tub!”

  The backyard was a blur of motion
until the camera focused on the small hot tub in the corner of the patio. It was about six feet away from the deep end of the pool, and the bath bomb fizz streamed into it.

  Joanna and Laurence exchanged a panicked look, then started screaming as the fizz grew and grew, showing no signs of receding any time soon. The freaking out must have been contagious because the camerawoman shrieked along with them as the foamy water flowed toward the patio door.

  “No!” Laurence yelled, looking up and waving his arms over his head. “Grandpa, no!”

  The sliding door opened, and Mr. Laurence stepped outside. “What is going—” He broke off as a wave of fizzing water crashed over his feet. He stared down for a few seconds as his shoes and pant cuffs got soaked, then looked up and gazed around the entire patio area, his mouth opening in shock.

  Finally, he looked toward the camera and said, eyebrows narrowed, “Call the pool guy and have him fix this,” like he was done with the situation.

  He sloshed back into the house, slamming the sliding door shut. Joanna’s hand flew to her mouth as she and Laurence stared at each other before bursting into loud, long peals of laughter. The camerawoman laughed, too, until they were all gasping for breath and trying to get through their outro without completely busting up.

  I let YouTube autoplay the next video, which was of some little kids and their dad attempting to arrange their blow-up pool and swing set so they could go down the slide into the pool. I finished my milk and cookies as it played in the background, but I wasn’t paying much attention.

  I was thinking about the bath bomb pool video, replaying the best moments in my mind until I chuckled and realized I felt better. There was a lightness in my heart that wasn’t there before.

  Was it a completely silly video? Sure.

  Was it some great work of art? Nope.

  Had my concerns about Cristina and Luz gone away? Not really.

  But for a brief while (eleven minutes and forty-two seconds, to be exact), JoJo+Teddy had made me laugh. Their silliness was exactly what I’d needed—a break from life.

  She was the reason my heart felt lighter now, and that mattered.