Nova.

Rhett loves his little sister. He does. She’s hard to get along with and annoying and manipulative, but he loves her all the same because she’s his sister and he feels obligated to do so. They’re family after all, and if you don’t have family, what do you have?

That doesn’t mean that he thinks everything she does is just so darn cute and precious all the time. No, usually, she makes him want to scream and tear his hair out.

Like now, for example.

“So, Rhett…” his mother says conversationally, cutting her veal into tiny little pieces with her fork, “…a little birdy told us you’re seeing someone.” He looks up from his plate and narrows his eyes at Amelia, who’s just sitting there with this perfectly innocent pearly white smile. She smirks at him and he sighs quietly, rolling his eyes.

“I’m not.”

“But—”

“We just went on a couple of dates and stuff,” he lies smoothly. “It wasn’t anything serious.”

His father makes a rare appearance from behind his newspaper. Rhett’s father is a stern-looking, middle aged man that always looks extremely bothered or deeply troubled by something all the time, and Rhett really doesn’t understand how they’re even related, they’re so different. His deepest fear is becoming someone he isn’t, namely, his father.

“It wasn’t?” his father asks.

“No,” he says coldly. Why is it any of his business? He only cares because he wants something, but Rhett isn’t dealing with it tonight, or any other night, for that matter. In any event, his father is unaffected by his tone of voice.

“Wonderful!” his mother chirps, also oblivious to his icy tone. “You see, a friend of ours has a daughter around your age, and we were thinking that maybe—”

“No,” Rhett says, looking back down at his dinner.

“But—”

“I said no, Mom.”

“Don’t talk to your mother that way,” says his father, frowning.

“Just give her a chance, okay?”

“I don’t want to,” he mumbles, spearing some vegetables with his fork and shoveling them into his mouth.

“Why not?” He has Nova and he really hasn’t seen any other girl as pretty or sweet or as different as she is, and he isn’t about to mess that up just to pacify his parents by taking out their friend’s daughter, whoever she was. He can’t say that and it makes him even more upset than before. So upset, in fact, that he can’t even finish his dinner.

“’Cause I don’t want to.” He sets his napkin on the table. “May I be excused? I have a lot of homework to do and—” His mother purses her lips, sighing.

“Good night, darling.”



He meets Delilah, the girl his parents had been trying to set him up with, the next afternoon after school.

Seeing as Nova doesn’t have dance practice this afternoon, they’re going to go to a park or something and hanging out. She’s going to introduce him to some of her friends—at his insistence, not hers—so he’s running pretty fast. His plan is simple: get in, shower, change, eat, and get out. All in under thirty minutes? He’s going to try, at least.

He’s already showered and dressed two minutes ahead of schedule, so he decides to take his time on the stairs. Rookie mistake.

“Rhett? Rhett, dear,” his mother calls out softly from the den. He stops on the stairs, sighing.

“Yes?” he asks impatiently, mocking her saccharine voice.

“Would you come in here, please? We have some company I’d like you to meet.” He has a feeling he knows what this is, and he’s going to hate every second of it. He walks into the den regardless, knowing that this is going to set him behind and be an unpleasant and unnecessary encounter with people he doesn’t like. Everything is polished and clean and neat in here, which means that Marisol must have spent the whole day tidying the house from top to bottom.

His mother looks the way she always does, and with her is a woman who’s similar to his mother in the way she dresses, very posh and fancy and snotty, and a man in a suit, stiff and bored. A girl sits with them, a ribbon in her hair. She seems shy and looks up at him with a small smile.

Of course.

Here we go.

“Yes?”

“This is my son, Rhett, the one I was telling you all about.” She beams at him proudly and he gives her an uncomfortable smile. He’s going to be late and Nova’s probably going to think he blew her off. “These are the Steins, honey.”

“How do you do?” the woman (Mrs. Stein, he assumed) greeted, looking a bit…unpleased? Mr. Stein grunted in response. Their daughter simply waved.

“Hi, there.”

“Delilah goes to your school, Rhett,” his mother says.

“I think you’re in my history class,” Delilah adds softly.

“How nice,” Rhett replies, uninterested. His mother can see this so she tries another vein of conversation. It fails horribly, and they sit in a very tense and awkward silence. She seems like a decent girl and all and had it been any other day he would have been more than happy to go along with this whole ‘happy-family’ ruse, but he’s supposed to be at a park right now with his actual girlfriend (or whatever) and not here, in a stuffy den with stuffy people.

He’s miserable. He keeps glancing at the clock on the wall and his mother, ever the keen observer, notices.

“Do you have somewhere to be, honey?” She turns to the Steins. “Rhett is such a busy kid, you know? He’s always got somewhere to be. He’s got so many friends and so many things to do. You know how teenagers are,” she laughs, even though he can tell that she’s probably going to fight him about this later.

“Actually, I kind of have a study group at the library in like, five minutes, so I should probably head out.” He stands up straight. “It was nice meeting you all,” he says awkwardly. “Bye, Delilah.”

The girl blushes and he rolls his eyes as he walks out of the room.



It wasn’t like Nova didn’t have any friends.

She just didn’t have as many as most people did.

They were The Three Musketeers: Yolanda, Blanche, and Nova. They were both pretty nice, he supposed, in their own right. Yolanda had very short curly brown hair and wore a little too much make up, but then again, Nova didn’t wear any so it wasn’t fair to compare the two. Blanche had frizzy black hair and was a bit pale skinned (hence the name Blanche).

The three girls were sitting on a bench near the park entrance. When Nova introduced them all, they both had different reactions. Yolanda raised an eyebrow and glanced at Nova, who made a face. Blanche smiled a little but still looked uncomfortable.

People stare, but it’s at Rhett, because once again, he’s a white kid in a minority neighborhood, hanging out around a bunch of black kids and not acting like he was expected to act, which was rude and unrefined and uncouth. He doesn’t know how Nova stands it. It’s driving him crazy.

People have staring problems.

They get along somewhat easily. Blanche is nicer than Yolanda, who says rude things in a positive way, which is kind of weird. Rhett doesn’t know what Nova told them about him and he doesn’t want to ask, because what if she didn’t tell them they were dating (or something) and he spills the beans by asking?

It gets dark soon, and the girls have to be back before the streetlamps are on. Seeing as Lisa really doesn’t care about what Nova does anymore, she can stay out for as long as she’d like. Rhett wants to avoid his parents, so he’s planning on sneaking in late.

They’re taking the train to the movies.

“They hate me,” he says quietly. They’re standing again, holding on to a pole. People don’t stare because they’re too busy looking at their magazines or newspapers or phones or other things, so they’re free to talk.

“They don’t hate you,” Nova laughs, pulling off her hat. “They just…well.” She shrugs, rummaging around her bag. “I never thought I’d say, but it’s ’cause you’re white.”

“What?”

“Yeah.” She stuffs her blue hat into her pockets. “Weird, huh?”

“Oh.” It’s the first time that happens to him, and he’s not quite sure how to feel about it. It feels rather ridiculous to be frank, but he’s pretty sure his friends would react the same way towards Nova, just a little more rudely. It’s odd to have the tables turned.

“They asked me if you were my boyfriend or something,” she continues, looking down at the floor. “I didn’t know what to say, so I told them we were just friends.” She’s quiet for a few minutes and they both think about what to say next.

“Oh.”

The silence continues. She’s the first one to speak up. “What are we, Rhett?” She looks up at him, curious. She wants to know because she’s tired of the ambiguity and the uncertainty. Even if she can’t be public with him for obvious reasons, she would like to clear the air all the same.

“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully. “What do you want us to be?” She shrugs again, unsure of what she wants to say. “’Cause, you know, I kind of want to be your boyfriend.” She flushes and he laughs and she starts to giggle, trying to stifle it.

“Only kind of?”

“Really.”

“I thought so.” She looks at him coyly. “It all works out pretty nicely, though, ’cause I really wanted to be your girlfriend.” She’s risky, but not risky enough to kiss him in front of all these people, so she just settles for inching her hand up the pole and squeezes his hand tightly.

She feels complete, for once.

It’s nice.



Their school days consist of discreet texting and note passing, of longing stares and conspiratorial smiles and the occasional brush of hands in the hallway or in class. Their afternoons and evenings consisted of each other and each other only, and Rhett really couldn’t be happier. In a perfect world, they could be more expressive of it, and he wants to be, he wants to tell the whole wide world how much he cares about Nova, and he can’t. It’s okay, because at least she knows, and her opinion’s the only one that really matters anymore.

There’s only one problem.

Her name is Delilah, the same Delilah that his mother unsuccessfully introduced him to. Seeing as the teacher doesn’t really care where they sit and is pretty liberal in general about the class itself, she’s taken to sitting next to him. She’s new, and she needs a friend, and he really doesn’t want to catch any grief from his mother about it, so he indulges her.

Slightly.

People notice, especially Roslyn.

“So…” They’re at lunch, and thankfully, Delilah doesn’t have their lunch, so he’s free to eat in peace without some clingy teenage girl leering and drooling all over him. Nova’s taken to eating in the lunch room again and artfully dodges any and all things thrown her way, looking at him over the edge of her copy of Hamlet.

“So?” he finishes, looking over at his friend.

“You know ’Lilah, right? She’s, like, my bestie now,” she says, a mischievous gleam in her eye. He almost rolls his, because he already knows what she’s up to and that his answer is going to be a firm and unyielding, No. Still, he’ll put up with this anyway because he knows that this is just how Roslyn is. She’s a matchmaker. She can’t help it.

“She sits next to me in history.” Roslyn smiles.

“Do you think she’s cute?”

“What?”

Roslyn makes a face.

He can’t win.

If he calls her ugly, Roslyn and Delilah will let him have it (though he really doesn’t care all too much about what the latter says). If he calls her pretty, it’ll be like cheating on Nova, and he can’t do that either. What can he do? He sighs, cleaning off his hands with a napkin.

“She’s okay, I guess,” he mumbles.

“Like, hot okay, or like hit-it-and-quit-it okay?”

“I don’t know, Roslyn. She’s okay.”

“Just okay? Not even pretty?” She frowns at him and he sighs again.

“Yes, okay? She’s pretty.” But she couldn’t hold a candle to Nova.

“Do you like her?” He looks over at her, annoyed. Nova wrinkles her nose at him from across the room playfully and he smiles softly. “What’re you smiling at?” Roslyn glances in Nova’s direction and looks sour as Nova quickly hides behind her physics book, trying to look busy. “Anyway, do you like her?”

“Um…”

“C’mon,” Roslyn whines. “It’s a yes or no question!”

“Why are you asking me all this?” She leans over and tells him that Delilah likes him in a hushed whisper.

“Amelia told me that you weren’t serious about that girl you were seeing so that means I can totally set you up with Delilah now.”

“But I don’t like her—” he says, but is swiftly cut off by Roslyn.

“Don’t be stupid, Rhett. Everybody likes Delilah. She’s pretty and nice and stuff.”

“But—”

“She’s going to be so excited!” Roslyn says, thumbs racing quickly over the screen of her phone.

This is going to be messy.



They have dinner at the Steins’ that evening. He would honestly rather not go, mostly because of what Roslyn told him earlier that day.

The Steins live at the Waldorf-Astoria. They come from money and they really aren’t afraid to show it.

Rhett comes from money too, but his family isn’t that blatant about it. While their parents have drinks in the parlor, Delilah takes it upon herself to give him a grand tour of their ‘modest’ abode with their housemaid, Madelyn. Madelyn is a stocky, dark skinned woman with grays in her hair and who wears a thick pair of glasses and a uniform similar to Marisol’s, but it’s a darker shade of grey.

For once, he wishes for Amelia’s company, because Amelia probably wouldn’t let Delilah get a word in edgewise and he probably wouldn’t be the latter’s center of attention. Unfortunately, Amelia (and Nova) is at a mandatory double practice for the recital. It’s just a few short weeks away.

Rhett is stuck with Delilah for the evening.

Madelyn ends the tour with Delilah’s bedroom. The house keeper stands in the doorway while Delilah leads Rhett in by the hand. Her hand is soft, too soft, like she stuck it in a bowl of lotion for hours or something. It’s big and lavish, white and lacy and really feminine. It’s all so saccharine and fake that Rhett almost feels sick. Nova’s room is cozy and smells like home, like summer and warmth and everything Nova. This one smells like the perfume counter at Macy’s, and he’s overwhelmed by the scent of flowers and other assorted scents.

She turns to Madelyn, eyes narrowed.

“Leave,” she says rudely.

“I can’t leave you two alone.”

He sends her a thankful look. She gives him a small, almost discreet smile in response. Delilah isn’t getting her way and isn’t happy at all. She curses out the maid, who’s really just doing her job, and eventually goes and slams the door in her face. Rhett’s pretty sure that if he ever did that to Marisol, it wouldn’t end nicely. Madelyn just took it, though, which made Rhett wonder why she didn’t fight back.

He can’t think about the matter for long, because he now has to deal with Delilah. Delilah could be pretty if she just didn’t try so hard. Her eyes are big and blue. Her face is pale. Her hair is long and brown. She’s all skin and bones, but not like Nova. Delilah looks like she doesn’t eat, whereas Nova tends to eat everything in sight without giving it another thought.

She props herself up with her elbows on her bed, thin, knobby legs hanging off the edge of it.

“You can sit down, you know,” she tells him, acting as though she hadn’t just been unnecessarily rude to someone who was just trying to do her job.

He sits on the desk chair, trying not to look at her. He’s growing more and more uncomfortable as time goes on. She’s wearing a lacy get up that he supposes is trying to be attractive, but it isn’t, not really, because she’s trying too hard and he can see her bra and panties through it if he looks hard enough and he doesn’t exactly like it very much. He wishes that he was with Nova right now, watching a film or eating pizza or studying or watching her dance and obsess over her routine, or anything, really, as long as it was with her and not with Delilah.

She pouts at him, sitting up.

“Why are you so far away?” She pats the bed and winks at him, telling him that he should sit next to her. “I don’t bite.” Delilah grins. “Hard, anyway.”

He feels sick and hopes that any moment, their maid will, despite Delilah’s spoiled and harsh attitude, come in and tell them that dinner is about to be served. She doesn’t, not yet. He sits down on the bed unwillingly, on the edge. Delilah sneaks closer to him and he tries, he tries so hard not to tell her to just go away, because she seems like the kind of girl who can’t handle rejection all too well, and he really doesn’t want her to start crying.

“So, um…how have you been?” she asks. There is an infinitesimally small space between them and he feels uncomfortable and suffocated and—

“Can you open a window, please?” he replies, finger pulling on his collar uncomfortably. “It’s kind of warm in here.” She smirks at him and he realizes she misinterpreted his words. She gets up and sashays to one of the windows, bending over and pushing it open. He rolls his eyes. It’s not like she has much going on there anyway, and her pointing that out didn’t make it any better.

He’s miserable.

He really, really wishes he were at Nova’s right now.

“So?” she asks again, sitting even closer to him, if possible. She smells like cosmetics and hair products and way too much perfume, and he wants to throw up. He doesn’t, because he’s ‘nice’ and ‘nice’ boys don’t tell girls things like that, or throw up on them, for that matter. “How are you?”

“I-I’m good,” he says, stammering when she puts her hand on his upper thigh. “Just, uh, waiting for dinner.” He wants to ignore it and hopes that if he does, she’ll stop. She doesn’t. Her hand just inches up more. “It’s supposed to be steak tonight, right?”

“Yep. You look so edgy, Rhett,” Delilah murmured, squeezing his thigh a little. “I can help you with that.”

“W-What?” he says, and it sounds all squeaky and scared and he’s so surprised that his voice cracks for the first time since middle school. She looks down and laughs, taking her hand off his thigh as she shakes her head.

“I can’t do this.” Delilah calms down, glancing at him. “I’m sorry if I freaked you out or whatever. I just can’t…go through with this.” Her bony fingers pick at the hemline of her dress as she chews on her lip, quiet giggles escaping. What the hell just happened? “I’m sorry if I freaked you out.”

“What?” he asks again. He’s more confused than ever.

“Our parents want us to be together or whatever,” she begins to explain, tucking some of her thin hair behind her ear. “Everyone does. Roslyn and Stephen and Gracie and Sophie and pretty much everyone we talk to.” She shrugs. “You’re cool, I guess. You seem pretty sweet and friendly, and you’re nice…but you’re not my type. It’s not you, really, it’s me. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She looks over at him. “Sorry.”

“For what?” He laughs a little, trying to figure out what’s going on. “I’m not really… I mean, you’re nice too, but, um, I kind of have feelings for somebody else.” Delilah’s face floods with relief and she smiles, pulling her knees up to her chest. “It’s kind of…complicated. I don’t know. My parents would kill me if they knew.” She gives him a sympathetic glance.

“I’m kind of in the same boat.” He glances at her, confused. “I can’t tell my parents anything. It’s this guy. He’s not really, um, I don’t know.” She looks down at her hands. “They won’t understand if I try to explain it and—” He squeezes her shoulder and she sighs. “I don’t know what to do. They’re getting suspicious and if they find out, I’m dead meat.”

“It’s okay. I’m here if you need to talk, you know.” She nods sadly, gnawing on her thumbnail.

“What are we supposed to tell them? I mean, our parents are expecting us to hit it off and become soul mates or something stupid like that.” Rhett furrows his eyebrows laughing at her. “I eavesdrop a lot.”

“Well, we’ll just…make it believable, right?” She laughs, nodding. “It’s not like they’ll be able to tell the difference, Delilah.”

“Okay.”

It’s like a big practical joke, because he hates his parents and she hates hers and they’re bored, anyway. Also, maybe he can kind of convince them that she’s the ‘mystery girl’ he’s been seeing, sort of, and maybe that’ll explain his comings and goings to them. He doesn’t know.

When dinner is announced, they’re still in her room, conspiring. She ruffles his hair a little bit and makes her dress hang off on her left shoulder. It’s supposed to look haphazard and crazy, like they’ve been doing things they shouldn’t have been, so that’s what she does. Her parents, she tells him, will fall for it. He’s not sure if his will, though.

Won’t hurt to see.

At the end of dinner, their parents are saying their goodbyes at the door. Delilah and Rhett are a little away from them. She looks at him with mild longing and slips her number into his pocket brazenly with a soft smile, telling him to call her sometime if he wants to have fun, glancing at her mother.

In the car, Rhett’s mother looks at him in the rearview mirror with a faint smile.

“You and Delilah looked so cute,” she croons happily. “It was adorable.” He looks at her, trying not to laugh, because it’s kind of priceless, and now it means he can pretty much just do as he pleases and say he was with Delilah and vice versa. It works out nicely for everybody.



“Hi.”

Nova’s voice sounds silky and tired and he knows she’s exhausted, and the fact that she picked up makes him feel better and worse at the same time. How does he explain the events of this evening? He can’t skip over them, but he can’t tell her without her freaking out either. It dawns on him, after taking a shower and dressing for bed, that if Nova finds out that he’s faking having a girlfriend (who’s granted, not attracted to him in the slightest) just to appease his parents, she’s going to freak.

Probably.

So he tries to figure out a way to break it to her delicately.

“How was practice?”

She groans.

“God, it was so awful. Madame is getting so crazy about it, you have no idea! She was relentless today. We didn’t leave practice until, like, nine. She freaked out on the choreographer, the pianist, even on the stage lights guy!” Nova sighs. “It was so intense! We have practice all day Saturday and Sunday.” She whimpers.

“I could call you tomorrow, if you’re too tired.”

“No, no,” she murmurs. “I missed you too much today. How was your night? It has to have been better than mine.”

“It was…” He trails off. “I don’t know.”

“What’d you do?”

“N-Nothing!” he exclaims and Nova laughs.

“Easy, tiger. It was just a question.” He realizes that she means what did he do with his evening and isn’t at all talking about Delilah. She doesn’t even know who Delilah is, right?

“I-I just, uh, went to dinner…with some friends of my parents.”

“Cool.”

“It was boring.”

She doesn’t push it anymore and he’s thankful, because he still has no idea about how to explain what the hell just happened, because he’s still trying to figure it out himself. Well he does know, but it’s complicated and he doesn’t think she’ll see it the way he does.

Eventually, she falls asleep. He knows she does because her breathing gets all even and soft and she only mumbles and murmurs half-minded responses to everything he says.

It’s late and he doesn’t have the heart to hang up, so he just leaves his phone there, sighing.

It’s all so complicated.