He Called Me His

I told myself the same lie all through the drive: new house, new town, new chance to disappear quietly into a normal life. I'd gotten good at lying to myself. Three years of moving between my mother's failed relationships had taught me exactly how to pack a bag in under ten minutes and how to walk into a new school without letting anyone notice me long enough to ask questions. What I hadn't learned — what nothing had prepared me for — was walking into my new "home" and finding Xavier Cole leaning against the kitchen island like he owned the whole house, which, I would quickly learn, he basically did. I recognized him instantly. Everyone at Ridgemont High recognized Xavier Cole, even people like me who'd never set foot in the building yet. His face was practically a rumor before I'd even met him in person — the guy who broke hearts for sport, who teachers pretended not to favor, who girls fought actual physical battles over in bathroom mirrors, if the stories my mother's new husband had let slip over dinner were even half true. "You're the new stepsister," he said, not a question, sizing me up with an expression I couldn't read yet. "Dad said you'd be quiet. He didn't mention you'd be glaring at me like I personally ruined your life." "You might," I said before I could stop myself. "Give it time." Something flickered behind his eyes — surprise, maybe, like most people didn't talk back to him. He pushed off the counter, closing the distance between us with an ease that felt entirely too practiced. "Careful," he said, low enough that only I could hear it. "I don't usually miss when something catches my attention. And you, new girl, just caught it." I didn't have a response for that. I just stood there in the kitchen of my mother's new marriage, in a house I hadn't chosen, next to a boy the whole school apparently orbited around — and understood, with a sinking, undeniable feeling, that "disappearing quietly" had just become impossible. My mother found me twenty minutes later, still standing frozen by the same counter, unpacking a box of kitchen towels I didn't remember picking up. "You met Xavier," she said, reading my face with the particular accuracy only mothers seem to have. "He's... a lot, I know. Richard says he's really a good kid underneath it. Give him a chance, Ivy. This family thing — I need it to work. For both of us." I heard everything she wasn't saying underneath the words. This marriage was supposed to be the one that finally stuck. The one that finally gave us the stability three years of chaos had never let us have. I wasn't about to be the reason it fell apart in the first week. "I'll be fine," I told her, and mostly believed it. I believed it right up until dinner, when Xavier's father — Richard, kind in the distracted, oblivious way of men who've never had to fight for anything in their lives — announced cheerfully that Xavier and I would be attending the same school starting Monday, and that he expected Xavier to "look out for" me since I didn't know anyone yet. Xavier's eyes met mine across the table, something sharp and amused flickering behind them. "Don't worry, Dad," he said, never breaking eye contact with me. "I'll take very good care of my new stepsister." I nearly choked on my water. My mother, blessedly oblivious, just smiled and reached for the salad. That night, unable to sleep in a room that still smelled like fresh paint instead of anything familiar, I wandered downstairs for water and found Xavier sitting alone on the back porch, staring out at nothing in particular, a version of him I hadn't seen yet — quieter, less performed. "Can't sleep either?" he asked, not turning around. "New house," I said. "New everything. Give me a week." He was quiet for a moment. "I used to hate this house too, when Dad first bought it. After Mom left." He said it plainly, no self-pity attached, like a fact he'd made peace with a long time ago. "Eventually you stop noticing the walls don't feel like yours yet. Or you just get good at pretending they do." It was the first genuinely honest thing he'd said to me all day, and it caught me completely off guard — this boy the entire school apparently feared and wanted in equal measure, suddenly just a person, sitting in the dark, admitting something quietly true. "Why are you being nice to me right now?" I asked. "You were insufferable at dinner." He finally turned to look at me, something unreadable behind the easy smirk he'd worn all day. "Insufferable gets me through school without anyone realizing how much I actually feel things," he said. "Nice is what happens after midnight, apparently, when there's no audience left to perform for." I didn't know what to say to that. I only knew, standing there in the dark on my first night in a house that wasn't mine yet, that whatever version of Xavier Cole I'd just glimpsed was far more dangerous to the quiet, invisible life I needed than the arrogant one from the kitchen had ever been. I went back to bed telling myself it didn't mean anything. I didn't yet know that by the end of my very first day at Ridgemont High, half the school would already believe there was something happening between us — and that the rumor, once it started, would be a lot harder to kill than I expected.