“Who was it?” Jet Hannigan asked curiously.
“Well…” She stepped aside, and my eyes zeroed in on Nova. She was sitting at the table with her fork in one hand, staring down at the food on her plate with the saddest look in her pretty eyes, which made it hard to breathe for a second.
Then I shifted, and her head shot up. “Ryan!” The way she screamed my name, like it was the best moment of her life, made my knees weak, but I locked them as she launched herself out of her seat and across the room.
Her slight weight hit me with force and we both went down, but I cupped the back of her head and held on tight, making sure that I took the full impact of the fall. She was already laughing, making all the tightness in my chest disappear as she smiled down at me.
“You said you couldn’t come. Did you lie to me?” Before I could answer, she was already speaking again. “I don’t care. I’m just happy you’re here.”
“I didn’t lie. I didn’t want you to be sad, so I came without telling anyone. I think I’m in trouble, but I don’t care. It was worth it to get to see you smiling at me like that.”
I knew I was in trouble, but I didn’t want to put that burden on her. I would do it all over again a hundred more times if it meant I wasn’t the reason for her tears.
9
Nova
Ryan Age 15 : Nova Age 10
Christmas music played softly in the background as Ryan and Anya sat on the couch sipping their cups of hot chocolate that Mom had made for everyone. It was late and I hadn’t expected either of them to drop in out of the blue, but I wouldn’t say that I was disappointed. If anything, this was the best present I could have been given.
I saw Ryan every summer and he made sure he came for my birthday each year, but it usually wasn’t until New Year’s Eve that he came for another visit. Then I wouldn’t see him again in person until spring break. I’d already mailed him his Christmas present, and he’d called me when he’d received it, making sure to show me that he’d placed his and his little sister’s gifts under the huge tree at the Vitucci mansion.
When he hadn’t called me that morning to let me know if he liked his present or not, I’d just assumed he was too busy with his family. I knew without a doubt he would have called me before either of us went to bed that night, so I hadn’t given it much thought.
Then the doorbell had rung, and I’d started to believe in Santa all over again, even though I’d found out the truth about that when I was seven and Garret had broken my heart by forcing my eyes open to the fact that magical beings like Santa and the tooth fairy weren’t real. But I’d been given the only gift I could ever possibly want or need with the appearance of my best friend on our front porch, and I’d almost looked to the sky to see if Santa and his reindeer were in the vicinity.
Instead, I’d been too busy throwing myself at Ryan, and like he always did, he caught me and twirled me around, making me laugh even more.
“How was your flight?” Mom asked Anya from where she was sitting beside Dad on the couch. “I heard there was a huge snowstorm over the Midwest.”
“We flew around it,” Anya told her with a smile. “It put an extra two hours on the trip, but it was an uneventful flight.”
“Great. I was worried you wouldn’t be able to make it.”
That caught my attention, and I turned my head to look at my mom. “You knew they were coming?”
She and Dad both nodded, but Mom was the one to speak. “Well, Anya asked us if she could give you a special gift and needed our permission to make it happen. Plus, you needed a bag packed, sweetheart.”
I frowned at her. “I don’t understand. I opened the gifts they sent this morning.” The pillow that had one of my favorite pictures of Ryan and me on it was already on my bed, ready for me to snuggle up to it that night. Then there were the books Anya had sent. All the travel books she knew I loved and collected from St. Petersburg and all the cities
I wanted to visit in Italy one day with Ryan.
“This is something different,” Anya answered. “With you getting older and becoming more…” Her blue eyes traveled over me, taking in the boobs I was starting to develop and my long blond hair. I was still the shortest person in my grade, possibly even shorter than the smallest kid in the grade below me, but there was no denying that I’d been growing in other areas. “Of a woman.”
Mom and Aunt Raven said I would be a pocket Venus one day, small but curvy. Dad had only grunted when they’d been talking about it over dinner one night, saying he needed to buy more guns. I was the mirror image of Aunt Raven in all those pictures of her from when she was the same age, but I felt…lacking. My height sucked because I was always having to look up at people.
“Mom wants to take you to Paris. Get you a full wardrobe for this spring and summer,” Ryan told me when I just sat there frowning at Anya.
I jumped to my feet, already bouncing from one foot to the other in excitement. “We’re going shopping in Paris?” I whisper-shouted the question.
He laughed, his dark eyes alight with happiness just as they always were when I couldn’t contain my emotions. “You and Mom are. We’ll stop on the way and drop me off since I have to work.”
Some of my excitement evaporated. I still wanted to go, because no one in their right mind would ever turn down the chance to go to Paris, whether they were shopping or not. But it wouldn’t be nearly as fun without Ryan there to enjoy it with me. And then there was the whole thing about Ryan working. He was only fifteen, but he’d been shadowing his dad for the last year, learning the ropes of their businesses so he could take over for him one day.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew that some of the Vitucci businesses weren’t exactly tax-paying enterprises. Just as I knew that my own family wasn’t exactly law-abiding, even if my cousin Lexa had married the sheriff. But I’d noticed that it was changing Ryan a little more every time I saw him. It wasn’t something I would say was a bad thing. He still treated me like I was the most precious thing in the world. It was everyone else in the world who needed to worry about getting on my best friend’s bad side.
“I was thinking we could turn this into a yearly shopping adventure,” Anya said with a grin. “Get you prepared for all those events Ciana is constantly insisting on attending as a family. I told her my plan to take you shopping, and she was adamant I get you heels so she could teach you to walk in them this summer.”