Love Letters From Hell

22 | avengers assemble

Aryan is still very much a quiet presence behind me. Did he fucking disintegrate into the wall? I make the mistake of turning. Nope, he's still standing there. Back pressed to the wall, forearms over his chest, head tipped back slightly and eyes on me. I look away first.

I shove down the nest of feelings that course through me. He doesn't get to do that. He doesn't get to drive me to Target, buy me the damn toilet paper and shitty chocolate and then have the audacity to look at me like that.

"We're gonna toilet paper Hollywood's finest," I say to Kajal.

Understanding flares in her dark eyes as she catches on. Then, she has her hands at her hips and glances between Dima and I. "Neither of you have ever toilet-papered a house, have you?"

Dima and I blink at each other.

However, Aryan speaks up for the first time, tone surprised at his cousin. "You have?"

"My art teacher in high school failed me because I used too much yellow and not enough white," she explains with a shrug. "So, I gave her more white. Maybe it was a little petty—,"

"I love it," I find myself saying. I never really thought Kajal and I could be friends. To me, I felt she'd always be Dima's girlfriend. But I find myself half-laughing at the idea of a teenage Kajal Shankar pissed off enough about paint that she toilet papers a teacher's house.

Dima looks like he wants nothing more than to kiss her.

"Clearly, you need my experience," Kajal observes with a click of her tongue.

"Experience in vandalism, Kajal?" chimes in Aryan.

Dima interjects, "Hey, I have experience in vandalism. I keyed a car when I was fifteen. Mira helped."

My stomach twists at the memory.

"It doesn't count if it's your brother's car," Kajal shoots at him.

I recall Dima vengefully scratching curse words in the Cyrillic alphabet onto Ivan's shiny white Mercedes because his brother was going through an overly pretentious Pushkin phase back then. Russian curses for Russian poets. Me, helping by drawing a dick beside every mudak and blyat.

In those days, their brotherly feud was at its highest, both of them under the same roof as teenage boys who clashed at every turn— it was no surprise that the first thing Ivan had done when he turned eighteen was hightail it out of Calabasas. There were no doubts as to who the culprit had been and who helped him. In their grand feud, I'd always been Team Dima. Until I wasn't.

Dima's father is a lawyer with his own firm who's keen on brushing things under the rug so he just bought Ivan a new Benz. Dima's grandmother, on the other hand, was likely to beat us both with a rolling pin so we avoided her for an entire week afterwards. But Eastern European grandmothers hold grudges and she still brings it up to Dima to this day. Though, I don't think my usually peaceful best friend will ever regret it.

Proving this, Dima crosses his arms and says, "It was really spectacular vandalism on my part."

"You know nothing, Dima Nazarenko," accuses his girlfriend.

I know who's been rewatching Game of Thrones. The reference makes Dima look like he could kiss Kajal. I've only been here for seven minutes and he's worn that look twice. Simp.

Kajal turns her attention to me. "Doesn't he live in like a mansion?" She waves her arms about as if a mansion would sprout from the action. Maybe Kajal Shankar believes in magic and that's why Dima is so smitten with her. Maybe Kajal Shankar is magic. "The four of won't be able to TP an entire mansion."