Knocked Up By the Russian Boss by Bella King
Chapter 33
MAXIM
Ivory approaches my vehicle as I sit inside smoking, and for a moment, I’m nervous that she’ll chew me out for leaving her alone in the apartment. I try to piece together some kind of half-baked explanation when she knocks on my window.
“Hey, sorry about this morning, I forgot I had an exam to take, and I needed to study in the library beforehand,” I lie.
She seems completely unbothered by both my absence and my explanation. “Can I come in? I feel like I’m going completely insane,” she says, and I unlock the passenger side door for her to climb inside.
“What do you mean?” I ask. I know exactly how and why she feels the way she does, but I feel like imposing my impression of her suffering on her isn’t the right thing to do right now.
“I just… with this whole Chad thing, I guess I just feel like I’m in some kind of fucked up prank show, or like I’m in an episode of The Twilight Zone,” she says, staring right at me with her eyes full of concern and anxiety. “I haven’t heard anything from the cops, either about my laptop or the fact that it was taken from them, and there hasn’t been a vigil or memorial for Chad at all since he died. I know he was a complete ass, and everyone hated him, but his parents paid for the entire football field, so I figured there’d have to be something for him.”
The fact that Ivory came straight to me to comfort her shows me that she’s more than attached to me at this point. While I’d never directly leverage her emotions against her, it feels good to know that I’ve somehow become enmeshed with her life in a meaningful way.
“Do you want to get some dinner with me?” I ask. It’s the least I can do, and it gives me the opportunity to spend more time with her. Not to mention, I’m also fucking starving. Going straight to the meeting to school with my head buzzing around all the bullshit going on has made it easy for me to forget to feed myself.
“Yeah, that actually sounds amazing,” she replies, her eyes lighting up at the suggestion. She tosses her bag in the backseat, and I pull out of the parking lot, only narrowly missing a group of giddy sorority girls as they cross the road obliviously.
“What do you want to eat? I’m assuming you’re not keen on going anywhere too gritty like last time.”
“Can we actually just get takeout or something? I look like shit, and I don’t want to be out where people can see me. I just kind of want to hole up and shut the world out for a while,” she says.
While I disagree that she looks like shit, she definitely doesn’t look like herself, and given what I know about her, I can understand why her current state would feel foreign and uncomfortable.
“Takeout it is,” I say, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel at a stoplight. “It’s actually been a while since I’ve had takeout.”
“Same.”
When we return to my apartment, Ivory immediately makes herself at home, curling up into herself on the couch. I toss her the only takeout menu I have for a Thai place that I frequent when I’m hungover or too lazy to cook. She studies it intently, as I’m sure she does with everything, and I call in our orders.
“Can we watch a movie?” she asks, her eyes returning to their regular sparkle instead of the paranoid cast they’ve had for the last few days.
“Yeah, what’s your favorite?” I ask. I selfishly regret asking her what her favorite film is; seeing her bedroom has me under the impression that it’ll be something totally unwatchable and insubstantial.
“Can we watch Black Swan?” she asks. Black Swan? Isn’t that the movie about the ballerina who goes insane?
“Uh, are you sure that’s the right choice for your mental state? I remember that one being a little bit unnerving,” I reply.
“Yeah, I guess I’m just in the mood to indulge it. I know that’s weird,” she says, and I find the movie online for her.
We wait to start the movie until our food arrives, and I’m baffled at Ivory’s ability to eat regularly while watching a movie about a delicate little princess’s rapid descent into shit-eating lunacy. There’s a part of me that wonders if I’ve influenced her this way, somehow unlocking a distorted piece of her brain that was left on standby when she was raised in such ideal conditions.
After we’ve finished eating, Ivory curls up next to me, almost demanding that I put my arm around her as she engrosses herself in the film. “I was in ballet as a kid,” she says as we watch Natalie Portman peel back a hangnail up to her elbow. “I was so uncoordinated, and the teacher hated me because my father had beat her husband in a local election. It was so weird and inappropriate,” she continues, her body tensing as the scene grows more fevered and disjointed.
I hold her closer, wrapping my arms around her as we lie back. “I think that a rich little blonde girl being in ballet as children is one of the least surprising things you could have told me about yourself,” I reply, hoping to god that my comment will be taken as a joke and not an attack of her character.
Ivory laughs. “Yeah, I guess I always have been kind of a rich-kid stereotype. I tried not to let it define me growing up, but even saying that makes me sound so unaware of my own luck in the world,” she replies.
“I grew up in a part of Russia where addiction and joblessness were rampant. People there would kill each other over a crack rock if they were desperate enough,” I say.
“Damn, that’s horrible,” she says, not at all receiving my anecdote as a criticism of her station in life.
That’s something I like about her, truly. She isn’t her parents’ money, even if she very well could be. She’s a person all on her own, with her own convictions and beliefs that can’t be negotiated with money like her friends. Such an existence must be extremely lonely for her, being surrounded by money-grubbing cheaters and liars.
Ivory takes one of my hands and absently plays with it, spreading out my fingers and tracing the veins along my wrist. “My parents would always talk about outreach for addiction and homelessness in press conferences, but whenever we encountered someone who really needed help, they would scoff at them and treat them like they were subhuman. My mom would tell me not to look people in the eyes as we walked past them,” she says, her voice growing distant at the faraway memory.
“We had so much that we could have given them,” she continues. “Even one of my mother’s necklaces could have been sold to feed a family of four for two months.
I feel a twinge of guilt. Would I be any different from her shallow, greedy parents if I were in their position? Her genuine concern for the well-being of others is endearing, but I’m also nervous that I won’t be up to the task of saving the world for her.
The movie plays on, and we arrive at the scene where the two female protagonists have sex while high on molly. Ivory shifts a bit in my arms, and I’m uncertain whether or not this shared experience is arousing for her or completely embarrassing. She doesn’t seem like the type to have an experimental phase.
“Have you ever done molly?” she asks, looking up at me curiously.
I chuckle. “Yeah, a long time ago at a club in St. Petersburg. It was amazing, but my jaw hurt like a motherfucker the next day. I remember one guy brushed past me to get a drink at the bar, and I wanted to kiss him. It was really weird,” I reply.
She laughs. “I did it once, but I didn’t really like the person I did it with. He was nice, but I remember during the whole experience, I wished I was with someone I really loved and cared about. I think that would have made the experience a lot better,” she replies.
I’d do anything with Ivory, regardless of safety or legality. I’d experience the world with her, and I’ve never felt that way about a person before. She’s special, my small little twinkle of hope in this horrible world.
As the movie finishes, Ivory damn near slips into a coma as she rests on my chest. Her implicit trust in me has brought down my defenses with her, and I rub her back slowly as she drifts off.
All I can hope for right now is that she feels safe and knows I won’t let anybody hurt her. For now, I think that’s all she really has because I have no idea who is pulling the strings behind her recent terrors.
Nobody does, and to be honest, it’s unnerving even to me. I don’t just want Ivory to be safe. I need her to be.
