Chapter 39

“Oh my god,” Christian says, half frustration and half panic as he crosses the room in an instant, wrapping me up in his arms. “Frank, what the hell is going on here!?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Frankie protests, looking at me wide-eyed from the living room. “She was fine five seconds ago!”

Nico doesn’t say anything, though over Christian’s shoulder I see him roll his eyes and move into the living room without a word.

“What’s wrong?” Christian murmurs, pulling away a little and taking my face in his hands as I sniff and try to look away, embarrassed to be caught like this. Seriously, Nico’s reaction is right – I’m being ridiculous.

“It’s nothing,” I murmur, raising a hand to wipe at my cheeks and trying to turn back to the banking –

But Christian doesn’t let me go. Instead, he drops one arm to my waist and pulls me closer, looking down into my face. “Tell me, Iris,” he says, half command and have plea.

I sigh, looking down, not wanting to meet his eyes. I’m less angry than I was before, Frankie’s words having done their trick. He’s right, after all, Christian is trying. And this isn’t his fault. “It was…it was just a hard day,” I murmur, hiccupping a little. “I didn’t like…this morning.”

Christian laughs a little at the understatement, but there’s nothing cruel in the sound. Instead, he just sounds like he gets it. “Nobody did, Iris. But what was so bad for you. Was it…Steven?”

“Well, yeah,” I murmur, looking up into his face again. “But also…the violence, Christian. It…it takes me back.”

He sighs, a long sound as he stares down into my face, clearly torn. Because he knows, of course, precisely what I’m talking about. Damon and I would run to his house when our mother shouted at us to leave, to get out, to go so that our father wouldn’t lay hands on us. And while Christian never saw it himself…

Well, he saw our faces, didn’t he?

He knows what we’ve been through.

“Come on,” he says with a sigh, dropping the hand from my face and turning, but keeping the arm around my waist steady so that he takes me with him. “You need a Cozy Up.”

“What!?” I say, kind of baffled – because, I mean, I haven’t heard that term in years. Not since we were kids.

“Christian,” Nico says, his voice harsh, and I turn my head to see him standing in the living room with his hands on his hips, pissed off. “We need to talk with Frankie – we need to make a plan.”

Of course, the unsaid part of his words is that he should not be wasting time with me.

“It can wait, Nic,” Christian says, giving him a glare as he guides me – of all places – towards his room. My eyes go wide as he leads me inside, ignoring Nico’s continued protests as they come shouted from the living room.

“Wait, Chris,” I murmur, hesitating as he leads me over towards the bed. “The kitchen – it’s a ruin, I’ve totally wrecked it.”

“Who cares,” he murmurs, pulling back his heavy white duvet and sitting me down on the bed, actually lifting my legs at the knees and pivoting me so that I’m sitting with my back against the pillows. Then – as is customary in a Cozy Up – he pulls the duvet back up and begins to tuck it in ridiculously tightly so that my legs are trapped, like a mummy.

I burst out laughing, remembering the old routine that we’d go through when one of us was upset. Christian’s mom started it, actually, but Damon and Christian and I would do it to each other, too. Just a little bit of fussing over someone, to show them that they’re loved.

“Okay,” Christian says, standing up straight and looking towards the living room even as he points a bossy finger in my face. “You are commanded to stay here, cozy, and I’ll be back in…three minutes.”

“Oh?” I say, raising an eyebrow at the precise timing. “Should I time you?”

“You’d better,” he mutters as he strides away. As he goes, he tosses me the remote and flicks the lights so that they dim the room to movie-theatre darkness, and I grin, glad that he remembered. Because it’s not a Cozy Up if you don’t get to watch some movies.

I am ridiculously pleased to see the old routine come back, even though…well, even though deep down I know it doesn’t really fix anything. I still have questions, still have concerns.

But…well, it’s still nice, isn’t it? To have my oldest friend resurrect our oldest tradition, just to cheer me up a bit.

I sit quietly, flicking through the movie options on the big-screen TV on Christian’s far wall, trying to decide. When Christian comes back a few minutes later with a big tray full of my baking and a bottle of wine besides, I send him a little smirk.

“Owe me a quarter,” I murmur as he sets the tray down between us and settles on the bed next to me.

“For what?” he says, frowning at me even as he lifts a cookie and takes a bite.

“You were late,” I say with a sigh. “30 seconds. I’ll take my payment in cash, please.”

“It used to be a penny,” he says, dry. “Per minute.”

“Inflation,” I say with a shrug, making him laugh. We talk easily for a few minutes, deciding ultimately to watch a stupid old film that we’ve seen a thousand times and loved as kids. As the opening scenes start to lay themselves out before us, and we start in on the baked goods, I can’t help but glance over at him.

He glances back at me.

“What?” Christian whispers, smirking, not letting me get away with my secret glances.

“Well, did you have a nice day?” I ask, sarcastic, because it’s not really a question. Just me trying to make Christian acknowledge the fact that we had a horrible day, and then he abandoned me, and that he just ignored it, and now we’re supposed to just sit here watching a movie like nothing happened.

Christian sighs and turns the volume down on the film – not that we need the soundtrack anyway. We could probably recite along with it.

“Iris,” he murmurs, pouring two big glasses of wine and handing me one, “I’m not trying to be condescending here. But…what do you think I’m going to say?”

I sigh, pressing my lips together, because he is being condescending. Just a bit. But I play along anyway after a long sip of my wine. “You’re going to say,” I start, “that you can’t tell me anything because doing so would put me in danger. And that I should just relax and let you handle it. And that you’re sorry that it was horrible for me, but…this is the world in which we find ourselves now.”

He considers me quietly, letting his eyes drift here and there across my features, before lifting his glass towards me in a toast. “Knew you were clever,” he says, but even though I smile I just shake my head at him. “Still,” he continues, “if you already know that then…why bring it up?”

“Because,” I say, my heart in my throat as I scootch a little closer to him, needing him to hear it, “this is not…this is not normal, or okay, Christian. You have to do the work of saying those things to me, even if I’ve already heard it and know what’s coming. And you have to hear me when I tell you that it’s bullshit.”

Christian smirks at me, which is surprising, because…well, because I think he’s pleased. Pleased with me, pleased with my pushback. As I said to Frankie earlier, I’m not sure it’s something he really gets a lot of in his life.

“Okay,” he says, giving me a nod. “But can we just…press pause on life for a few minutes, Iris? I know that today was shit for you, but it was shit for me too. Can we just take two hours to eat a bunch of cookies, and drink this bottle of wine, and watch this movie we already know the end of? And after that…I’ll let you lay into me all you want.”

I smile, defeated. Christian – he just looks so tired, and so eager, and like he really could use a big glass of wine and a friend.

“Okay,” I say, giving him a shrug and a little bit of grace as I snuggle down into the pillows and again lift my glass of wine to my mouth. “Turn the volume up, this is the good part.”

“It’s all the good part,” he mutters, raising the remote and doing as I say. And then we sit quietly and companionably for a long time…

…as I quietly and privately consider what, precisely, Christian means when he says that I can “lay into him all I want” once this movie is done.