Find Me Under The Moon

Chapter One: To Quit Or Not To Quit

Arizona, Sedona, Three months before

LIANA:

When Iris invited me to the party, she promised it was going to be just that. A party. A simple party with simple lights and simple drinks and simple people, in hopefully, a simple house.

And, foolish me, I believed her.

Or at least, I tried to. This was Iris after all, Ivan's twin sister. She was the mild to his fierce. While Ivan was a blazing, April sun, scalding everything in his path, Iris was like the sun in December: kindly, just enough to be seen, barely enough to be felt. This also meant she was the truthful one, because Ivan was as slippery as a snake in a barrel full of butter.

But while Iris might have tried her best to keep things at a minimum, with the Flags, a party was never just a party.

This was a lesson I had learnt in the two years of working for them. In truth, it had been two years of working for their son, Ivan Flag in his section of the family business, their colossal online marketing forum, Birds. In my two years working for the Flags, I had learnt more than the fact that parties were never just parties with them. I now knew that (a) the Flags were richer than they put themselves out to be, especially if you were counting assets; (b) they were, surprisingly, more attractive than the newspapers and magazines made them out to be, which was not usually the case with the high and mighty; and (c) Flags—some Flags, to be precise—hated anything they could not control.

I had decided I was going to tell Ivan that I was quitting today, but the mere thought of forming the words put a bubble in my throat. That was before this, before I saw him across the room. Even in the press of bodies, Ivan Flag stood out, towering over the rest. He waded through the crowd of people like a river. Occasionally, he stopped to say hello to the people milling around him, and his smile, as I knew it, was pure wattage.

Ivan was close enough that I could hear what he was saying. He had stopped to speak to a silver-haired woman in a red dress. The woman was slender and pale, but she carried it with an ease and a gracefulness I had long since began to identify with the wealthy.

“Hey, Evie. Thanks for coming. Ah, you know how my sister is. She was trying to be conservative. Oh, you like?" Whatever she said in answer made him bark a laugh suddenly.

Ivan was always like this in public. A shining sun, happy, and loud about his happiness, as if he were trying to prove a point. And in a manner, he was trying to prove a point, I had discovered. Ivan was not in fact always shiny. He was not always the Flag's shining, gleaming boy. He had a temper like lightning, and he could curse up a thunderstorm. He had gotten so frustrated once—after losing the bid for the sale of another online platform he had wanted to acquire—that he punched the wall of his office so hard, it cracked.

But he was wealthy and beautiful, too, and so when he flashed the world his wattage smile, they were blinded by it. They were blinded to the possibilities of who he was behind all that perfect teeth and charisma.

I was not.

Working with a person for two years, traveling halfway across the world with them in that time frame, sleeping in hotel rooms opposite each other's, can take the blindfold away, can take any blindfold, from any person.

Ivan had spotted me in the overflowing hall; his eyes narrowed for a second, like the multiple times he had caught me playing Candy Crush when I was supposed to be at work. But then he smiled, as if he had only just realized that they both were at a party, and he started moving towards me. To be fair, it was not just any party. It was his sister's engagement party. Now that I thought of it, it was insane for me to have thought that the Flags would not make a big deal of it. It was Iris for God's sake.

She was getting married to Tobias Carter, a model I had met a couple of times in the preceding months. He had umber skin, golden eyes, and a demeanor to match Iris's. Calm as water. Another person who was the direct opposite of Ivan.

Suddenly, Ivan was next to me, towering above me, snapping me out of my thoughts.

‘Stranger,’ he said. His voice was a melted butter.

‘Hi,’ I answered.

It seemed right, fitting, to speak so informally. We were at a party after all; Ivan was as relaxed as I had ever seen him, his eyes bright, lips set in a smile. His sleeves were rolled up and his collar was undone. The light of the chandeliers above touched the fine skin at his clavicle.

A waiter passed carrying a tray of drinks and Ivan fluidly swept two flutes of champagne off the tray. He handed one to me. I held on to the glass like it was a buoy, an anchor.

‘You look lovely in that blue dress, Liana.' He said.

I raised a brow. He was this way with me at parties, flirting, circling me like a predator, but never pouncing. I had long acclimatized to it. I knew that the next morning, he would be my boss again. Stone faced and brisk. At first, it was maddening. Then after a time, it became routine.

He chuckled at my raised brow. ‘I gather you are enjoying the party.’

‘I expected it to be a lot less, you know, gigantic, and a lot more filial.’

‘Oh yeah?’ He snickered. ‘that was your mistake.’

‘I know.' I sighed. ‘You don't have to throw it in my face.’

‘Just saying.’

Soft music was playing and couples eyed each other. Strangers did too. We paused to watch the small crowd, short glasses and tall flutes in each and every person's hand. These were the well-to-do, people so unlike me, whose mother once could not afford to pay the electric bill, so unlike me that I could not imagine myself mingling with them, flirting with my eyes as they did. Poor people were more direct, more purposeful. The rich had the time to play games. After three dates with three different men I had met in the Flag's social circle, I decided being a wallflower at their parties was not only sensible in my case, it was necessary.

They were beautiful to watch though, the men primed and polished, the women modified to literal perfection, from their full lips to their flat stomachs, their tanned skins gleaming like oiled plastic.

‘I wanted to speak to you about something important.’ I blurted suddenly, surprising even myself.

Ivan had his hands tucked safely in his pockets, fixated on the scene. He glanced away from the sigh to give my sidelong glance. ‘Is this thing you want to talk about work related?’

‘It is,’ I managed.

My courage was swiftly leaving me, just as swiftly as it had come.

‘Then it can wait until tomorrow, stranger.' Ivan said. 'No talk of business this night. Haven't you heard the saying all work and no play makes Liana a dull girl? Loosen up.’ He grinned, and despite my reservations, I was blinded for a moment.

Here,’ Ivan extracted the mostly full glass of sparkling champagne from my fingers, then he placed it and his own mostly empty glass, on the table next to us, a stretch of flat mahogany spilling with enough tulips to make a bouquet.

‘It is a party,' he said. 'Dance with me.’

This, I had not expected. But I let him lure me to the floor anyway. Ivan Flag was a difficult man to say no to. Especially when he was smiling as he was when he pulled me to him. There was an undeniable ease with which he met my steps, with which his palm curled around the slope of my hip. I could have danced with another man a hundred times and the hundredth-and-first time would still be awkward as hell. But Ivan, he made every move fluidity itself, he made every twirl perfection.

We danced.

Many minutes had passed when midway through a twirl, Ivan said, his voice low, ‘Is this better? Or are you still thinking of work?’

It was then I remembered my decision to quit, to start my own thing now that I had saved enough money to push myself. One touch from Ivan and I had forgotten. I had forgotten everything.

Pathetic, I thought. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

I made to pull away from the clasp of our bodies, but he held me in place, close enough to feel the warmth roiling off him.

‘You are, aren't you?" He chuckled, oblivious. ‘Hell, You are a bigger workaholic than Iris is. And you know how Iris is.’

This made me laugh, my discomfort easing away. There was a legend in the family, that once, Iris tried to stay up for a week organizing an event—a music award night or so—fueled by black coffee and perfectionism. And she actually almost managed the feat. But by the end of the fifth day, Iris dozed off riding the elevator. Tobias woke her.

That was two years before I began working at Birds, and four years before this engagement party. Even though the couple had known themselves for a while, at least since the elevator incident, they had only started dating months before. Yet, if you watched them, you would think that theirs was old love, antiquated, the kind where each person knows and accepts the other's flaws and imperfections, accepts them for who they are wholly, the kind of love that reaches past the heart and lies deep in the soul, like a fire never to be extinguished. They were at the edge of the room at a table, Tobias leaning against the wood while Iris leaned against him. Tobias had a hand in her hair, twirling a lock around his fingers. He had this look on his face, like he was thunderstruck.

Around her, Tobias always was.

‘They are really something, right?’ I asked.

Ivan nodded in answer. It seemed as though he wanted to say something, but then he stopped and stared at something outside. Through the glass windows, I saw it. A burst of brightness tore through the sky, ravenous for more altitude, making a whistling sound as it went. The crowd had seen it, too. It popped and colours filled the sky suddenly.

Fireworks. A cheer rose up.

Tobias smiled and pulled Iris to him, his hand on her waist, hers on his chest. They watched it together. The wedding would be crazy if they were going to shoot fireworks at just an engagement.

Whether I was an employee or not, I was now a friend of the Flags. I was a friend of Iris', at least. With Ivan you never knew. I would be forced to attend the wedding, I realized. And it would be grandiose, if anything. I dreaded it already

Another firework shot into the sky immediately after the first. It made the same whistling sound before it popped.

I turned back to Ivan. 'You Flags sure know how to throw—'

Ivan was clutching his head. Then suddenly, he caved like a crumbling mountain.

IVAN:

Fireworks.

The first of them went off like a bomb, detonating while airborne. Brilliant red and yellow colours burst across the sky, in a shower of sparks. The noise of the explosion was so piercing, so violent, it seemed as though it had happened inside my head. I was thrown backwards by the sheer force of it, by its nearness.

My vision swam.

'Ivan! Ivan!" A voice said.

Whoever it came from sounded alarmed. Very alarmed. It took me a moment to register whose voice it was.

Liana.

She had abandoned her purse and she was staring up at me, worry creasing her features.

'Ivan, can you hear me? Ivan!'

Another explosion went off somewhere. I did not see this one. It must have been a marvel to look at, but I never saw it. Or anything else, besides the ceiling.

Liana made to grab me, but I fell fast. Too fast. Too hard. I felt myself slam into a table. There was no sound after that. Nothing at all but a dull ringing sound like that of a malfunctioning microphone. When my hearing returned, it came suddenly, flooding in like a wave. Soft hands were pressed against both my cheeks.

Liana.

Another face joined hers above mine. Dark skin. Amber eyes. Tobias. Someone was saying, 'I think he's having a fit. We have to move him. Now!'

I wanted to counter that, to say that I never, ever, ever, had a fit in my life, and I was not about to start now. But an odd blackness had started to creep in from the sides of my consciousness. Slowly, slowly, it came. Then all of a sudden. All at once. I drowned under the blackness, and the world went quiet.

The last thing I saw was Liana's face, her necklace swinging downwards towards me.

She was so beautiful.