When We Were Young

Nine:

Nine

Someone was waiting outside her door when Alina finished her classes that afternoon. She realized, unexpectedly, that it was the very last person she wanted to see and the very last person she expected to be outside her room. "Morozova," she said, "what are you doing here?" He was sitting on the floor, with an ice pack on his face. He looked up at her, and Alina gasped as she saw that he had a black eye.

"Don't go out with Vasily," he rasped, "If its not me, I can live with that. But promise me that you won't go out with Vasily."

Alina raised an eyebrow. "What happened to your face?"

He winced. "I did something stupid. Don't worry about it."

"What happened to your face?" Alina demanded forcefully. She didn't know why she cared, except that he looked so pathetic sitting there on the floor she couldn't help but ask. She also suspected that he had gotten punched by Mal again.

Aleksander sighed. "I punched Vasily."

Alina's eyes widened. "Are you kidding me?"

"He was saying shit about you, Alina."

Alina sighed. "Morozova, we're not going to sleep together, no matter how many people you punch. I am going to choose who I sleep with. Maybe Vasily is an asshole, but he's an asshole that isn't trying to protect my virtue, or whatever which is a lot better than some pretentious douche bag trying to get me to sleep with him to get back at my best friend. All I want is to do things that most people my age do, and I want someone to care about me. I've spent my whole life with people not caring. I deserve that, don't I?"

Aleksander smiled sheepishly up at her. "Of course, you deserve to be cared about, Alina. But Vasily Lantsov only cares about one thing. He cares about himself. You...you know how my family makes their money?"

Alina sat down next to him on the floor. "I don't know. Drugs? Bribery? Corruption?"

"Flattering," Aleksander said, "I mean....it depends on who our clients are. My Mom owns a law firm. One of the biggest in---"

Alina frowned. "Oh god. You're.....you're that Morozova? Baghra Morozovas son?"

Aleksander frowned. "How do you know about my mom?"

"Her name was on the donations list at the orphanage that I was at. Because she made such big ones, she got a whole part of the building named after her. Apparently, she used to oversee the adoptions. There were a lot of kids that went to rich families or celebrity couples there."

"And you never got adopted?"

Alina shrugged. "I was ten when I was brought there. People tend to like younger kids. They could practically smell the trauma."

"Bad childhood, Alina?" Aleksander asked.

"None of your business, Morozova. But you were saying about your family?"

"My mom works with Vasilys father. The whole family is bad news. I know almost every bad thing that they have ever done. They're not a family that you want to get mixed up with, Alina."

"There's always going to be bad people in the world."

"Yeah, but it doesn't mean that you have to let them into yours if you don't want to." Aleksander shifted the icepack and winced. "You deserve to have someone that cares about you, Alina, but you also deserve the best of the best. Don't settle for less."

Alina frowned. "That's quite the pep talk. Can you tell me why you're so invested?"

"You know how I first saw you?" Aleksander said.

Alina shook her head. "I mean, Genya mentioned something about you seeing me at a party."

"Yeah. You remember what happened at that party?" Aleksander asked, looking helplessly at her.

Alina took a deep breath, and she turned away from him as if the memory of that night hurt her far too much to think about. "That was the night that I told Mal that I was in love with him...and the night that he rejected me. For the first time."

"Yeah. I saw that. I was there. I wasn't even going to let him into the Frat, but everyone else liked him so much and I thought he'd be fun to haze. You spent the rest of that party crying in the bathroom, and Oretsev didn't even come looking for you. He went and hooked up with Zoya for the first time that night, even after Zoya was rude to you and made that crack about you being Mals Oliver Twist. He's never cared about you the way that you wanted him to."

Alina's scowled. "Look, you don't know the first thing about my relationship with Mal, and I think everything you've said was bullshit. Your Mom used to visit Mal, you know. That's how I also know who she is. And Mal always seemed to have the best of everything but we could never figure out why. How about this. You tell me the truth about Mal, you show me a little bit of honesty, and maybe, maybe I'll consider sleeping with you. Secretly."

Aleksander frowned. "Why secretly?"

"My friendship with Mal is complicated, but he's still like my brother. And his parents pay for my school. They had a college fund set up for him, but then Mal got both a football and a hockey scholarship and so they decided to put the money towards me going here. He's an athlete, but he was born with asthma, and they wanted someone to keep an eye on him they could trust. If his parents thought that I were sleeping around, or wasting my time here, they might stop paying for me to go."

"It's not that simple, Alina. Mal's past isn't really mine to disclose."

"Okay, then. You can leave me alone, forever." Alina stood up to go. "Now can you please remove yourself from the front of my door so that I can get in?"

Aleksander sighed. "Wait."

"What? Going to finally be honest with me for a change?"

"Mal's my cousin."