Childhood best friends to enemies to lovers.
Alina wants nothing to do with the rebellious bad boy, Liam Somner.
Which is difficult, because he goes to her school. And lives on her street. And keeps showing up at her apartment, and sitting in her ki...
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Smoke billowed over Manhattan the day Liam was born.
It's been almost eighteen years, but it's something that haunts my mom to this day, and I know it haunts the Keller family even more.
We call them the Kellers because that's what my mom always calls them. We're the Cooks, and they're the Kellers, even though Sonja changed her surname to Somner, and my mom gave Dad's name to Oscar and me. But I like Cook, and I'll hold onto it. In my head, I'm Alina Cook.
Our families have been together since before Liam and I were born, and long before that. My grandmother, Oma Ingrid, says that the Cooks and the Kellers have spent their lives saving one another, and we'd do well to remember that, because one day we'd be able to call in the favour. But she says a lot of things, and most of them are crazy.
It's probably not a surprise that I'm her granddaughter, then.
The thick, soupy humidity of August breaks with an ominous thunderstorm on the evening before the first day of school, and I can't help thinking it means something. Or maybe that's just me, searching for meaning in everything because I've never found it in anything.
In the morning, I force myself out of bed and down to the East River, my sneakers slapping on wet pavement as I dodge between dogwalkers and other joggers. Manhattan's just across the water, and its silhouette is so familiar to me, held up today against a brilliant blue canvas of sky. Sure, that view has slowly changed over the years as a few new buildings have popped up downtown. But I never knew it eighteen years ago, so I didn't see that one major change that still haunts our grey city.
When I get back to the apartment, two iced coffees in hand, red-cheeked and sweaty, I don't even notice that there's another pair of shoes in the hallway next to the front door.
That's a Cook thing. No shoes in the house, or Claudia Cook will make you mop the floors.
"Oscar, you out of bed yet?" I yell out.
I barge into his bedroom, to find his bed empty, and instantly my stomach does a horrible flip, and I think the worst. But five seconds later I hear laughter from the kitchen and I realise Oscar must be out of bed.
"Hey," I say, breathing hard, as I walk into the kitchen. And I stop dead. For the second time in about two minutes, my tummy does a somersault.
Liam Somner is sitting on the barstool, legs swinging.
Liam Somner, who I haven't seen for over a year, but his face is more familiar to me than that Manhattan skyline.
And he's not wearing a shirt for some reason, which makes me realise that it has really been a year since I've seen Liam Somner, and in that time he's grown and...
"Did you get a tattoo?!"
Liam drops off the bar stool. "A year since you've seen me, and I don't even get a hello?"
