Chapter 1

ONE

AURORA

Present

“No.” Ruby clutched her phone and pulled it even closer to her face.

The light cast a strange glow in the tiny apartment’s shoddy lighting. It made her freckles pop even more than usual against her pale skin. It caught on the highlights of her pixie-cut hair in just the right way that showed that she’d dyed it midnight blue instead of jet black. And it made the large amount of whites visible in her wide eyes glow.

“No. Freaking. Way.” Her tone contained a weird mix of indignation and fascination.

I set the envelope I was holding down beside me on Ruby’s tiny floor mattress with the rest of the stack I’d picked up at my old place this morning. It was clearly another bill and far less interesting than whatever my bestie was looking at.

I leaned closer to try and check her screen over her shoulder. “What is it?”

She turned her wild-eyed gaze to me, and let her jaw drop for maximum effect.

Still, she didn’t answer me.

I sighed and reached over to snatch the phone from her hands. She moved just in time, and finally turned her screen for me to see.

I immediately regretted it.

Endless bills would have been far more preferable.

Glowing like the freaking sun was the worst image I’d seen in my entire life— Icicles and Moonlight post-vandalization.

The Santa.

His expression.

His sagging pants.

A fresh wave of anger burst through my veins. Every detail of the spray-painted garbage was a mockery of me and what I stood for. I reached a hand to tug on my ponytail, only to find it gone.

I kept forgetting that I’d cut my hair as part of the “new me.”

I wasn’t feeling new. I wasn’t feeling fresh or light or like my life was improved in any way. No amount of hair chopped off or number of colorful skirts worn could change me at my core.

“Whoever did this is the scum of the earth,” I said.

I was still Nameless Nobody To The Art World Aurora. Boring Never Good Enough Aurora. Seriously Serious And Now Also Furious Aurora.

Ruby pressed her lips together and looked up at the ceiling like she needed a moment to keep her composure.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, perhaps a bit too harshly.

“Nothing,” she said, a little too fast, and a little too high.

She’d been my rock this past week, helping me try to reinvent and re-find myself. She’d been as angry for me as I was, if not more so. And now she was trying really hard not to laugh.

A little aghast, I said, “You don’t actually think this defacement of art is amusing, do you?”

“Of course not.” She took a breath and looked me in the eye, all humor gone from her expression. “It was completely wrong to ruin your mentor’s paintings and your hard work.”

“I’m sensing a but .”

Her cheeks turned red. She pressed her lips together.

“No but .” Ruby sputtered a laugh. “Okay, so there is a but .”

My patience for this kind of behavior was typically low, but it didn’t bother me coming from Ruby. After surviving four years in the trenches of art school by my side, she’d earned the right to be as ridiculous as she wanted.

I waited for her to say whatever she had to say. Instead, she pointed at the screen, to where Santa’s pants were partly down, revealing an inappropriate amount of his backside.

“There’s the butt,” Ruby said. “And they’re actually calling the piece Selfie Claus and Moonlight. Which of course was inevitable with that full moon on display.”

It just kept getting worse.

Ruby raised a finger. “But, even if it’s funny, and I have to admit that butts are always funny?—”

“Because you’re a ten-year-old boy at heart.” And of course I loved her for it.

“No. Maybe. But that doesn’t change that this guy Shard is a dingy gas station bathroom’s clogged toilet.”

Shard. I knew that name. Everyone knew that name.

He was a mysterious and renowned graffiti artist who traveled the world making a splash.

“Shard did this?” I asked.

“That’s what the article says.” Ruby bumped her shoulder into mine. “More like Shart, though, am I right? The word art is right in it. Plus, there’s the implication.”

“Sure,” I said, not really feeling it.

I was grateful to have her in my corner. And she always was in my corner, no matter what. Like right now, letting me stay in her “apartment” which was more like a closet, on her single bed, because I was that desperate, even though it couldn’t be easy for her.

But I was still caught up on the fact that the vandal was a ridiculously famous artist.

“Maybe the vandalism wasn’t a random act,” I said. “Shard paints all over the world, in the biggest cities, at some of the most famous sites, yet they traveled to a tiny island at basically the North Pole. They’re a street artist, yet they painted on canvas. The motive must be personal, right?”

“You think Shart has a vendetta against you?” Ruby twisted her lips, considering. “Like he or she’s trying to ruin your career just as you’re about to make your big break?”

“Maybe? No. There’s no way Shard knows who I am. The exhibition was supposed to put me on the map. I'm nobody…but my mentor isn’t.”

“Bertram—no last name, like he’s trying to be Awkwafina or something. Or Shart. Maybe Bertram wants to be Shart.”

“Bertram is a genius in his own right.”

“Eh.”

I stared at Ruby. “Eh?”

“They don’t have remotely similar styles, so I think it’s a stretch for Bertram to be on Shart’s radar.”

I noticed she didn’t elaborate on her dismissal of Bertram’s genius. But I let it go. We both knew she wasn’t exactly a Bertram fan, but I’d thought that was due solely to his off-putting personality, not a comment on his work.

Ruby shrugged. “Maybe Shart just has a hard-on for Christmas. ’Tis the season and all that.”

That could explain why Shard was there, but it didn’t explain why they would deface an exhibition.

“Either way, if Shart’s plan was to ruin either of you, he failed. Look.” Ruby again waved her phone at me, this time, zooming in on the text beneath the photo of Selfie Claus and Moonlight . She read, “ A mesmerizing display of talent and vision. An unparalleled blend of grit and beauty. An artistic tour de force . Critics loved the exhibition, Ror.”

Ruby was right, but she was missing the point.

“They’re all talking about Shard, praising the damage he caused. No one is talking about Bertram.” I let out a slow breath. “Or me.”

“Aww, sweetie.” Ruby dropped her phone onto the mattress and squeezed me. “Maybe something good will come out of all of this, professionally, even if you can’t see it yet. Plus, one mindblowing, amazingly good thing already happened, right? If you hadn’t left the show when you did, you never would have met Mr. Bananas, changing your whole thing to saying yes instead of no, and you would have missed out on all of those glorious orgasms.”

She’d been calling Foster Mr. Bananas ever since I told her what happened last week, in reference to the tasty caramel dessert Bananas Foster, plus the hint of an accent that may have been Australian. The whole Mr. Bananas thing—I kinda loved it.

“It’s only a shame you wouldn’t let him tell you his last name, or where he lived, or anything like that. You could have spent more magical nights together,” Ruby said. “You could be having orgasms with him right now.”

“It’s better this way.” I was certain of it.

Thinking about Foster and our amazing night together was the perfect palate cleanser now, just as it had been when it happened. Of course I couldn’t just up and travel halfway around the world for a chance with a total stranger, no matter how amazing the conversations or the sex. Even if I wanted to be that person, the one who said yes, I had to take baby steps.

I picked up another piece of mail and opened the envelope. Another bill.

Ruby patted my wrist. “I know what will make you feel better.”

“I feel fine.”

She shook her head and gave me a look that said we both knew I was a liar. “Come with me to the club meeting.”

It didn’t sound ominous when she put it like that. But this meeting was for something called Holiday Revenge Club.

After Ruby had told her neighbor Vivian from the first floor about the trouble she’d been having at work, Vivian had given Ruby an invitation.

It said to meet tomorrow night at a cafe called Eterni-Tea, which seemed normal enough. But the invitation was printed on blood-red cardstock. The font was somehow even creepier, with each letter ending in dagger-like points.

I didn’t know Vivian. But I was concerned that the Holiday Revenge Club was going to be some sort of let’s-conspire-to-murder-people cult. It would probably be best to duct tape Ruby to her mattress tomorrow night before the meeting. Then she couldn’t go and get herself thrown in prison by association.

I couldn’t voice my concerns so bluntly, even though if our roles were reversed, Ruby totally would. But thinking now about Ruby’s struggles made me realize we’d only been talking about me and my problems this evening.

Budget cuts at the radio station where Ruby worked had amped up existing tensions between clashing personalities, namely between Ruby and Beau, the jerky scumbag morning host.

“How are you holding up with the whole Beau situation?” I asked.

“Fine. I’ll be even better after the meeting, I’m sure. But don’t change the subject. Tell me you’ll come.”

I sighed. “How well do you know Vivian?”

She shrugged. “Not too well. But you’re still changing the subject. I bet everyone at the meeting will have ideas on how to hunt down Shart.”

“Shard. You should stop saying Shart. It’s starting to gross me out.”

“That’s why I like it. You wrinkle your nose every time I say it, and that’s exactly what that snot-encrusted tissue deserves.”

I was definitely wrinkling my nose, but I would stop immediately. “Calling them names doesn’t hurt them. They’re not here. I need to figure out how to move on and salvage the disaster that is my life, not plot a way to hunt down an artist who would totally have been doxxed by now if that was possible.”

“I’m sure there are ways to enact vengeance without knowing someone’s hidden identity,” Ruby said. “If you won’t come to the meeting for you, come for me. Moral support.”

She grabbed my hand and smiled at me, her eyes hopeful.

There was no way I could convince her not to go.

Accompanying her as a chaperone would be easier than taping her to her mattress.

“You’re a yes woman now,” she said. “You love to say yes.”

I, the sucker that I was, said, “Fine. I’ll go. But only to make sure Vivian doesn’t do anything unsavory.”

“She won’t do anything crazy at the meeting. That all comes after.”

“Great,” I said flatly. “I feel so much better.”

Ruby chuckled.

I grabbed another envelope from my seemingly endless stack and opened it.

It was not a bill.

It took me a moment of reading to realize what it was, and when I did, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. The words blurred together as I tried to process them.

“A marriage certificate?” My mind scrambled to make sense of the impossible. My stomach clenched. “This has to be a joke.”

Ruby tilted my arm to get a good look, too. “It looks real.”

It did look real, but it couldn’t be. Plus, neither of us was an expert on this kind of thing.

“I am not married,” I said.

“Who is the lucky groom?” Ruby asked.

I’d read the document over and over and still that bit hadn’t processed.

Ruby gasped as we both found his name.

Foster Musa.

“His name is Foster,” Ruby whispered. “Rory, you’re Mrs. Bananas.”

“This cannot be happening,” I said.

My heart pounded in my chest, a wild, erratic beat that echoed in my ears.

I mentally replayed everything we’d done that night. I searched for any clue as to how this could have happened.

“Do you think he tricked you into some sort of quickie wedding because he didn’t want your perfect night to end?” Ruby asked.

I responded on gut instinct. “It’s not possible.”

But then I kept thinking.

I kept searching.

There had to be some clue in my memories as to how this could have happened.

“It certainly looks official, but North Pole Island is a totally different country,” Ruby said. “Maybe weddings there don’t count. I read somewhere that Keaunu Reeves and Winona Ryder’s characters got married in a movie they were filming in Eastern Europe, so technically the actors are married there, but it doesn’t count here. And they had no idea.”

Foster and I hadn’t pretended to get married. But maybe Ruby was right. Maybe it was possible we’d gotten married without either of us realizing it, but it didn’t really matter anyway because it didn’t count here.

Maybe this whole thing would go away on its own.

“We should try and figure it out,” Ruby said. “And we should definitely hunt down your husband online. Find out everything we can about this guy. Who knows, maybe Mr. Bananas is secretly a billionaire and as Mrs. Bananas you’re entitled to half his fortune.”

“I can’t be Mrs. Bananas.”

“All right. We’ll still hunt him down. We’ll find out all about annulments, because how could you marry a guy when you don’t mean to, and you don’t even know his last name? And it happened in an itty-bitty country at the North freaking Pole. Even if it’s real, that can’t be legally binding.”

“Yeah,” I said, praying that she was right.

But as we hunted for good news the rest of the day and all through the night, we found none.