Dimitri
"Your girlfriend left you for another guy and you don't want to go to the biggest party of the year, our last year before med school, to alleviate your sorrows?" Ivan asked, as Dimitri was finishing up the last of his packing.
He was more than ready to finally leave the four-year college he felt confined to in this small town and move on to bigger and better things like a med school in the city.
"First of all, I don't have any 'sorrows' to alleviate. You know I don't really date anyone-"
"Part of your rules of keeping women and your emotions at bay," Ivan interrupted rifling through one of Dimitri's boxes.
"Exactly. Avery was just a fling, a meaningless fling. I think I'm more bothered by the fact that she decided to go for Ivashkov of all people. At least she saved me the trouble of ending things," Dimitri said gratefully, folding a few more of his clothes into boxes. He remembered how angry Tasha had become when Dimitri pointed out that she was growing too clingy. The last time he'd seen her since she'd had a sort of outburst after seeing Dimitri and Avery together and a few days later when she seemed eerily calm enough but it wasn't bothering him too much.
"Then come to this party with me where you can let out your annoyance over Ivashkov-"
"I'm not so annoyed by him that I'd put so much effort into telling him."
Dimitri had hated Adrian Ivashkov from day one. It seemed everything he did, Adrian tried to one up him.
"It's the last party before everyone goes their separate ways. I heard a rumor yesterday that scared the crap out of me."
"What was it?" Dimitri asked, interested about what could scare his fearless, risk taker friend who had spent the first year of college in everyone's bed but his own.
"That they don't party like this in med school," Ivan shuddered. Dimitri laughed at the genuine fear in his friend's eyes.
"That's probably a good thing. I don't think they want a bunch of med students practicing and operating on people stoned and hung over."
"They only want the sex crazed ones?"
"They accepted you didn't they," Dimitri teased earning him a hard shove from his friend.
"This could be our last hurrah before we join the other dull douche bags in the real world. Do it for me, your best friend since diapers, the womb even?"
Ivan was always pulling the guilt card. Dimitri rolled his eyes used to it by now.
"The last time I did something for you, a very important part of my anatomy was almost permanently glued to-"
"Forgive and forget. That's what close friends do," Ivan shrugged interrupting.
"Close friends also let other close friends finish packing," Dimitri retorted taping up the last of his boxes.
"Friends don't let friends drive drunk and since I plan on drinking it is your duty as best friend to not let me drive drunk and you be the designated driver," Ivan said smugly tossing Dimitri his car keys.
"Isn't your brother going?"
"Evan The human keg? You want him to be my designated driver?"
"Consider it brotherly bonding time."
"Brother's don't need that much bonding. Although he does drive better than you, even when drunk." Dimitri ignored the comment. "He's not drinking tonight, though. He says he plans on chasing that cheerleader chick all night. She's his last goal before the school year ends," Ivan explained.
"I'm glad you two set such high goals for your selves," Dimitri said dryly.
"Not everyone is like you, Dimitri. We go to college to enjoy the last few years of young, care free youthful lives. We're not trying to run away from a nightmarish home."
Ivan was being serious now. Dimitri felt his muscles clinch. He wished Ivan wouldn't bring all of the history up. He wanted to keep everything in the past, pack up, leave everything behind and move on.
"You're playing that card?" Dimitri asked, the slightest bit of irritation in his voice.
"I'm not trying to bring all of that crap up again, honest. I'm just trying to get my closest friend out for one night of crazy wild stupid fun before we go off into that ugly, scary, boring thing called the real world," Ivan answered, his voice somber.
There was a heavy silence between the two young men.
Dimitri had to admit that he'd miss the place he called home for the last four years, the small apartment he and Ivan shared near campus. He realized Ivan was right, that they might not have any chance soon to just have simple fun.
"You're wearing your 'Ivan is right and I'm going to regret doing this' face which tells me we're going!" He shouted, arms in the air smiling.
"I'm going to regret this," Dimitri muttered and Ivan laughed at the fact that he was able to read his friend so easily. He rifled through one of the boxes Dimitri's clothes were in and tossed one of his long-sleeved black shirts to him.
"You pick out my wardrobe now? I think we've been getting to close these last three years."
"You tend to get laid more often when you wear that shirt and you need a few good lays. You're more moody than usual. And we haven't been any closer than usual," Ivan said searching for his own shirt to wear.
"You were sitting on the kitchen counter yesterday eating a bowl of cereal naked like it was nothing!" Dimitri exclaimed. "You don't even bother with the bathroom door anymore or the bedroom door for that matter and the last thing I want to see is you and two other girls tangled in the world's most difficult position. I still have nightmares," he shuddered.
Ivan just laughed.
By the time the first hour at the university's biggest party of the year had passed, Dimitri knew three things for sure: he would've regretted not coming to say good-bye to the friends he'd made, some that he's known all of his life and grew up in the same small town he did, and Ivan's argument about Dimitri being the designated driver was pointless because he was drunk.
It didn't really matter much since everyone else was too.
He managed it better than Ivan did though. His friend was doing the robot to a Good Charlotte song on top of a very unsteady looking coffee table with a lampshade on his head, a bra strapped across his shirtless chest (the shirt was soaked in the wet t-shirt contest Ivan participated in when they'd first arrived), two girls and a guy on all sides of him, and the words 'I feel pretty' written on his back in marker.
Dimitri laughed, standing on the opposite side of the room, avoiding Ivan's drunken gaze incase he decided he wanted to try and coax Dimitri up on the make shift stage.
"I am ashamed to call him my brother," Evan said standing beside him.
"I'm ashamed we're the same species," Dimitri countered, leaning against the fireplace for support.
"What sucks is that, as stupid as he looks, it's almost guaranteed he'll end up with at least one of those girls tonight, maybe both and the guy, while I'm staying sober for a cheerleader without the guarantee of doing anyone but myself tonight."
Dimitri inched a bit away from Evan at that last comment. A wild risk taker, willing to try anything at least once like his brother, Dimitri didn't want Evan to get any ideas.
He glanced at Evan who was dressed pretty nicely, better than his usual Toga attire he wears to every party, for a party thrown by a bunch of frat guys. "Who is this girl you're going to such great lengths to impress?" Dimitri asked, his words slurring a little.
"I've pointed her out to you. The world's most flexible cheerleader?" Evan looked at Dimitri to see if he knew who he was talking about and received a blank stare.
He lead him outside to point out a girl who was upside down in a handstand on top of another girl, her dress fallen down, exposing her underwear, or lack thereof, beneath.
"If I nail her," Evan sighed dreamily. "Greatest goal achieved."
"What is it with you and your brother and goals all of a sudden?" Dimitri asked, starting to stumble away from the group of people surrounding the wrong side up cheerleader.
"Gives us a greater sense of accomplishment. We aim for the general goal of experiencing and/or witnessing something impossible at each party we go to so that we have an exciting story to tell later. Besides, wasn't your goal tonight to have fun?" Evan asked as they walked around the large frat house trying to find a way back inside. Dimitri was briefly distracted by the shouts of the people supposedly mud wrestling on the roof.
"Mission accomplished," Dimitri cheered holding up the empty red cup in his hand. Disappointed to find out his cup was empty he tossed it to the ground, determined to find an entrance to the frat house and find more.
"I can see that," Evan laughed helping Dimitri lean against the back wall of the house. They were far from anyone else but could hear the blaring of the music and cheering and talking of the crowd coming from the patio doors of the house, as if they were in the middle of it all.
"You know what I see?" Ivan asked appearing behind them, stumbling against Dimitri and his brother who managed to catch him before he fell, the lampshade still on his head.
"I see two drunken idiots," Evan said helping his brother stand.
Dimitri and Ivan laughed at such a reprimanding tone coming from the university's biggest party animal.
"I see Mr. Perfect wonderful star of the soccer team Adrian I-can-cough," Ivan laughed butchering Adrian's last name intentionally.
Both Dimitri and Evan looked around and spotted Adrian coming out of the frat house.
Dimitri didn't want to give Adrian the satisfaction of seeing him at his worst and motioned for Ivan and Evan to step out of view.
They watched as Adrian practically stormed out of the house and realized he wasn't alone.
Dimitri spotted a girl with familiar wild curls trailing behind Adrian sounding very upset, her high-pitched voice barely heard above the music. Dimitri caught bits and pieces of the conversation.
"…don't know what I did wrong. Why are you so pissed at me…"
Adrian sipped from a glass he was holding before speaking. Even from the distance and through his drunken fogginess Dimitri could tell that Adrian was yelling, shouting. Avery flinched with each step he took toward her. Dimitri noticed the patio doors to the frat house had closed when Avery came out of the house. Even if they'd been open the noise of the party would've drowned them out and people were too drunk to care or even notice the couple of three weeks fighting.
"I don't know why I want you either...nothing special about you except for the fact you're a good lay and even that…how you thank me for taking a chance on a whore like you…" Dimitri heard.
Avery was sobbing, Dimitri could see her shoulder's shuddering. He was more amazed to find the aloof and almost equally emotionless girl crying than he was to see that Adrian wasn't as picture perfect as he seemed and was made out to be.
The mixture of his surprise, curiosity, and unsteady drunkenness kept him from approaching the couple.
She wanted him, now she had him, he thought coldly, figuring she'd gotten herself into such a predicament, she could get herself out.
Just as Dimitri's last distracting thoughts disappeared, he focused on the couple in time to see Avery shout something back at Adrian before his hand lashed out and struck her.
She fell in one quick motion, landing on her back, holding her hand to her face.
She rolled over, crying no doubt, and attempted to stand and back away but Adrian was on her quicker than Dimitri could blink.
He couldn't believe it.
He suddenly had a sense of déjà vu.
Ivan and Evan seemed as surprised as Dimitri was and it took a moment for any of them to react to everything that was unfolding.
"I can't believe this. We have to go help her," Evan said moving to head towards where Avery lay and Adrian was retreating calmly, walking back into the party as if nothing had happened.
"Let's go," Ivan said trying to stand.
He didn't make it. Instead he slowly sank lower to the ground before ending face down on the ground, the intensity of his drunkenness taking over.
"You guys go, I'll wait here," Ivan said, his voice muffled by the grass.
Dimitri and Evan gave him a quick glance before moving toward Avery. The sight of seeing Adrian hit Avery sobered Dimitri enough. He seemed more focused than he would've ever been completely sober.
He could smell the alcohol in the air, rolling off of Avery from a few feet away before they reached her limp form covered almost head to toe in mud from the times she'd tried to get away. Up close she was already bloodied and swelling. She held her hand to her face, the other hand limp and blanketed with blood from blood long wounds on the backs of her hands. Dimitri realized she'd tried to shield herself form Adrian's blows.
"Avery, are you alright, can you hear me?"
She moaned a response looking up at Dimitri and Evan from her spot on the muddy grass.
Evan moved to try and help her up.
Dimitri was too numb to do anything but stare reliving a few of his own childhood memories and still stunned by everything he saw.
"Is he gone?" she whispered frantically looking around.
Dimitri looking toward the closed patio doors could tell that no one inside the house would've been able to see the argument through the darkly tinted windows of the closed patio doors and the music was even louder from this point.
"He's gone."
She glanced at Dimitri briefly, a look of regret and sorrow before her usual cold and distant expression masked over. "I need to get out of here," she slurred.
"We'll help get you to the police station after we find Ivashkov and give him a taste of his own medicine," Evan said helping Avery up.
"What!" she shrieked.
"We don't take men abusing women very well around here," Evan explained misunderstanding her sudden fear and confusion.
"No, no, leave it alone…just leave it alone," she hiccupped and slurred standing. She adjusted the front of her clothes attempting to smooth out and clean up her appearance but only feeling the blood on her hands and face.
She didn't give Dimitri or Evan another glance before quickly striding, but occasionally stumbling, away, disappearing around the opposite side of the house.
"We should go and try to help her. We can't let her go off like that alone," Evan was saying. Dimitri wasn't really listening or responding, too wrapped up in his own jumbled thoughts.
"Damn, it's a lot easier to smoke the green stuff than to get up from it. What'd I miss?" Ivan asked finally making his way over to Dimitri.
Evan had gone off after Avery but came back saying she'd disappeared and he couldn't find her.
"She moves pretty quickly for a beaten, drunk person," he huffed jogging back toward his friend and brother.
"Is all this blood hers?" Ivan asked gesturing to the red keg cups that littered the grass around the few red droplets of blood that were Avery's.
"Those are keg cups, stupid."
Ivan just nodded leaning against both Evan and Dimitri.
They shared a look of disbelief and surprise, Ivan looking between the two of them
"What just happened? What'd I miss?" Ivan asked repeating his question before.
"We completed one of our goals tonight, witness the impossible," Evan explained, referencing to the previous conversation he'd had with Dimitri earlier. He'd been joking then but everything seemed so serious now and didn't seem like it would get any better from this moment on.
Dimitri realized that if this was the truth, reality, that everyone had a hidden dark side, then maybe it was better to stay the cold, distant man he was. He figured it was safer that way.
When Ivan raised his brows in confusion, Dimitri elaborated.
" We just saw the real Adrian Ivashkov."
"I feel horrible," Ivan said after they'd recalled the night of the party.
"You should," Evan started. "You were so drunk, you're probably still hung over," he laughed.
"Not about that," Ivan said, despite the fact that he pushed his full glass of liquor a little away down the bar. Dimitri pushed his own drink away, alcohol suddenly very unappealing to the quickly sobering man. "That we forgot about that night and Avery. I saw her a couple of years ago at a bookstore and she gave me the world's dirtiest look. I thought she was a one night stand that I never called back or something."
"Wow," Evan exclaimed. "You've been inside a book store?"
Ivan socked his brother in the arm before settling back onto the bar stool. "Not funny, man. She's probably traumatized after that night."
"No she's fine," Evan said nonchalantly.
Dimitri and Ivan both looked at Evan expectantly as they had before remembering everything.
"And you know this because…"
"The following year when I graduated, I went to the end of the year party, at the same frat house by the way and it wasn't nearly as awesome as the party before but anyway, Avery was there. She said she barely remembered that night and figured she'd been one of the girls the frat guys had convinced to mud wrestle on the roof, to get over her break up with Adrian that she didn't remember, and that's how she go hurt," Evan rambled, explaining.
"Why did she give me the evil eye then, when I saw her?" Ivan asked.
"She doesn't like you."
Ivan scoffed surprised. "Everyone likes me. Especially women."
Dimitri and Evan shared a looked that said otherwise but Dimitri just shook his head. "Conversation for a different time," he said motioning for Evan to go on.
"She thought you were one of the frat boys that convinced her to mud wrestle on the roof."
"I probably was. That whole night is still a blur."
"No she was muddied because of that bastard Adrian," Dimitri mumbled. He was starting to feel the same way he'd felt that night, a sense of déjà vu and in a rush realization hit him.
Adrian…Rose…
Ivan, forever able to read his friend's face, came to the same realization, his eyes widening.
"Rose," he said aloud.
"I have to go," Dimitri said moving in one swift motion off of the bar stool and towards the door of the bar.
"Wait we'll go with you," Ivan had started to say but Dimitri was already gone.
Dimitri had never driven so fast in his life.
He also usually respected the no drinking and driving even with a slight buzz and the
no talking while driving law but he figured this was an emergency. All of his thoughts were concerning Rose right now. The law was the furthest thing from his mind.
Unless I kill Adrian, then I'm sure the law will always be on my mind, he thought searching the recent calls on his phone for the number he was looking for.
A small ounce of elation ran through his body at the first thing that seemed to be going right for him that day. He found the number and Lissa answered on the second ring, her voice uncertain.
"Hello?"
"Lissa it's me, Dimitri. I need your help." He recapped a bit about the night of the party and his own suspicions.
"Oh my god," she gasped on the other line. He could hear her panic through the phone. "Why didn't she tell me? I knew something was wrong?" she was gasping more to herself than to Dimitri still waiting on the other line.
"Lissa I need your help. Adrian sends his driver to pick up Rose's belongings from the house right?"
"Right," she breathed trying to calm down.
"Do you know where he takes her stuff? What's Adrian's address?"
"I-I-I don't know. Stan is the in between guy."
Dimitri's elation from before faded a bit with disappointment.
"But Adrian had sent Rose flowers and a few gifts once. Rose didn't really want them and I kept the flowers and the card with his address on them!" she exclaimed sounding as happy as Dimitri felt.
Lissa read Dimitri the address.
"Dimitri, please bring my cousin home. Take care of her," she told him. It came out as more of a question, as if she was asking him to protect her cousin the way she failed to.
"I will," he promised.
He found himself at Adrian's door sooner than he expected, the travel a vague blur. He didn't consider the fact that Adrian might be home but realized he didn't care. He almost wished he was there with Rose.
He thought about how all of this had happened, how things had become so horrible and difficult and how none of this felt real and none of this would've happened if he'd taken Rose when he had the chance to really be with her.
He blamed himself, he blamed Adrian, he blamed Tasha…he finally put it together that all of his suspicions about Tasha's sudden niceness toward Rose and setting her up with Adrian hadn't been wrong.
This was all still a game.
Dimitri would have to deal with that later though.
For now he had to focus on Rose.
He knocked on the door, his anxiousness getting the better of him.
He almost worried that she wasn't there, that she was out with Adrian.
"H-hello? Who is it?" She asked her voice cracking.
Dimitri exhaled loudly before saying, "It's Dimitri."
A/N: It was a bigger response than I expected for the last chapter. You guys are completely amazing! I'll be honest I was a little worried about how some of you guys would react but I think you all took one of the big revelations pretty well. Sorry about any spelling errors and I'm glad you guys like the story so much. And this should be among the last of the chapters that includes a really long flashback. I hope this flashback or this chapter in general wasn't confusing. Answers to all the open-ended questions will be given over the next few chapters.