by Alexis Daria
“Macho, these are great.”
“They’re just rough gesture drawings.”
She pulled the binder onto her own lap and took over flipping the pages. She stopped, then went back a couple, then flipped ahead. Leaning closer, she trailed her finger along the faint handwritten notes, jotted down in pencil so many years ago. Finding the song list on the next page, she hummed one of them, slightly off-tune, and her shoulder moved as if of their own volition as she read through his notes.
“I can totally see this,” she murmured, as she moved to the next page, which detailed the third act.
He swallowed hard, holding very still as she read the notes on the page, her fingertips stroking the pictures he’d pasted around the text. Some were there to evoke mood, others for color palettes or costumes.
When she reached the end of that section, she pressed a hand to her chest. “Oh.”
Nerves frayed, he jumped on the word. “Oh? Oh what? What does that mean?”
When she raised her head, her eyes swam with emotion. “It’s about losing everything, isn’t it?”
He closed his eyes for a second. “Yes.”
She nodded, and turned back to the book.
Page by page, she absorbed the physical representation of everything that lived in his heart and mind. Everything he felt about family, fear, life, loss . . . love. He didn’t look at the pages—didn’t need to. Instead, he lived it all again through her reactions. A surprised laugh, a gasp, a sigh. Eyebrows raised, then down as she pressed her lips together against some deep emotion.
Everything he was existed in this book, and he’d just given her the keys to unlocking his heart and soul.
He leaned back against the sofa, stretching an arm out behind her. Their thighs pressed together, and it took all his control not to resort to old nervous ticks—bouncing his leg, or chewing at his cuticles. He’d broken the habits long ago, but sitting beside her while she looked through this book was the most intense kind of stress. He’d never even shown this to Alex. Sure, his cousin had seen a few pages, and was aware of some of the concepts, but Dimitri had never let him flip through the whole binder.
Moe serdtse prinadlezhit tebe, he’d told her. She had his heart, in every possible way. Who knew love would be so terrifying?
Sometime toward the end, her hair had fallen to cover her face from his view. He’d lifted a hand to brush it aside, then punked out. Better that he not see. He’d wait until she was done, and then . . . well, he didn’t know what would happen. She might just say, “That was nice, now let’s go to sleep.” She might say it was all stupid, or trite.
When she reached the last page, it was late. She closed the book, and paused with her hands flat on the back cover, which held his contact info from his parents’ house in Brooklyn, in case it was ever lost. Her back rose and fell with her breaths, each one stretching his nerves further. What if she—
She set the binder aside, on the sofa, and turned to him.
Her eyes were wet and spilling over. She wiped the tears away with her fingertips. “Dimitri.”
Just his name, quiet and slow, every syllable pronounced.
She reached for him, and he sank into her embrace, needing to touch her, needing to feel her skin and hold her and—shit, to be held. Her arms went around his shoulders and her tears wet his neck.
“My heart feels so full,” she whispered. “Thank you for showing it to me.”
She hadn’t laughed, hadn’t made light of it or rejected it. She’d taken the time to review the book in its entirety, and when she was done, she’d held him.
Relief washed through him, leaving exhaustion in its wake.
“You get it?” he asked. Not the most articulate of questions, but she nodded and eased back.
“I do. It was like . . . watching you grow up, and evolve as a creator. You’ve got everything in there. I had no idea you could make these kinds of stories.”
He shrugged. “This stuff pops into my head. Sometimes it starts with a song, sometimes an emotion that sends me searching for the music. It bugs me until I put it in the book.”
Even then, the book still haunted him. Stories and characters and ideas that wanted to be brought into the world beyond the pages of a three-ring binder.
“You said only one of them ever made it to stage,” she said.
Here it goes. “Yeah. This one.” He took the binder and flipped to one of the concepts in the first half of the book.
She smiled at the page he pointed at. “Oh, I loved this one. It had so much depth.”
His chest swelled to hear her compliment, but the memories dragged him back down. “Alex and I brought it to Broadway. It wasn’t long after the alien movie, so I was riding the fame wave to get it greenlit.”
She gasped. “I remember seeing ads for this. I wanted to go, but it closed before I could save up for the ticket.”
“You wanted to see it?”
“Of course. I had a giant crush on you, remember?”
They’d been so close, in the same city. “Where in the Bronx did you live?”
“Castle Hill. 6 train. You were in Brooklyn, right?”
“Bay Ridge. R train.”
She shook her head and studied the images on the page. “Might as well have been on a different planet, as far as the subway is concerned.”
“We could have passed each other on the street and never known it.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. “I would have recognized you, for sure. But you never would have given me a second look. I was a tall, skinny teenager who hadn’t grown into her features yet.” She cupped her breasts and bounced them. “And I hadn’t bought these yet.”
His cock twitched, ready for another round. “Cut it out, or we’ll never get to sleep.” Collecting the binder, he returned it to the drawer.
“I’ve gotta ask you another question.”
His shoulders tensed. “What?”
“Why haven’t you produced any of the other things in there?”
He busied himself with stuff on the desk so he wouldn’t have to look at her, despite the weirdness of shuffling papers while completely naked. “Like you said, the show closed before you could buy a ticket. It flopped.”
“I heard it was really good. A couple of my classmates went to see it.”
He jerked a shoulder, gathering all the scattered pens into a pottery cup. “Doesn’t matter how good it is if the seats are mostly empty. My name wasn’t a big enough draw.”
Her features twisted into a puzzled scowl.
He sat in the desk chair, the fabric rough against his butt, and looked for another distraction. He started opening and closing the drawers.
“That was, what, ten years ago? You’re plenty famous now. Why didn’t you try again?”
“I did.” He slammed his hand on the desk to emphasize his words, and instantly regretted the outburst.
Natasha just gave him a mild stare, one eyebrow raised. It reminded him of the face his mother made when he was being an ass.
“You wanna try answering that again?” she said, voice bland.
He propped his elbows on the desk and rested his face in his hands. “Yeah, sorry. This is kind of, uh . . .”
“A touchy subject for you? Yeah, I got that.” She went to him, smoothing her hands over his shoulders and kneading the tension. “I’m here, Macho. You can talk to me about this.” She leaned closer, her breasts rubbing his arm, and kissed the back of his left hand where it covered his cheek. “If anyone understands this stuff, it’s me.”
He dropped his hands and looked up at her open, smiling face. She was right. It was why he’d brought this up in the first place—she would get it.
“I did try again,” he admitted. “I took more TV and movie roles, more investment opportunities—like the restaurant—so I wouldn’t be as broke as I was after the show flopped. I worked my ass off as a choreographer and producer for other people. But they were always other people’s projects, other people’s names on the
line. Even with the restaurant, I didn’t come out as one of the owners until it started doing well.”
Her hand smoothed over his back, rubbing up and down his spine, but she didn’t speak.
“Then my cousin Alex and I approached some investors. Alex is my partner in all this stuff. He handles the logistics, I do the creative work. Although he’s taught me a lot, so I can handle shit on my own, but anyway, we went in with a pitch. One of the last ones in the binder. Dom Navsegda.”
She nodded, face scrunching as she thought. “The one with the hoops?”
“That’s the one.”
“What does it mean? Dom Navsegda.”
He exhaled. “It means forever home.”
“It’s a search for home,” she said, her hands stilling on his shoulders. “The person in the story is jumping through all these hoops, into all these different worlds, searching for home.”
She understood. Ukraine would always be the place of his birth. He had memories there, from his most formative years. But it wasn’t somewhere he wanted to return. He wanted to find home where he was, here. She’d seen the book, and she got it. He should have felt relieved, but he didn’t. Instead, his skin itched with the urge to hide.
Was this how she’d felt visiting the club with him? Raw, revealed, exposed?
He’d thought love would make it easier to bare your heart. It was still just as difficult, even when you trusted the other person not to stomp all over it.
When he didn’t answer, she slipped into his lap, and he filled his arms with warm, naked woman, taking solace in the feel of her skin on his. It wasn’t sexual, not like it might have been in the past, when he was desperate to be with her, and treated every second they were together as if it would be the last. Now, holding her steadied him.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” She petted his cheek, smoothing down his beard. “The man in the story, looking for home. It’s you.”
When he nodded, she lowered her hand and pressed it to his chest. “It must have been hard to leave Ukraine.”
“Yes.” The word tore from his throat, expelling all the air in his lungs with it.
Everything inside him tensed, and he closed his eyes and leaned into her, dropping his forehead to her collarbones. Her arms wound around him, holding on tight.
If someone had told him being understood by the person you loved was akin to physical pain, he never would have believed it. But to have her see him so clearly, to have her understand without him explaining, just from seeing the book . . . Either he wasn’t doing a good job of hiding it, or she got him in a way no one else ever had, except maybe his cousin.
Nik didn’t get it. He’d been too young when they moved. Alex did, because they’d been closer in age. His parents did, but in a different way. But no one talked about it.
“We dropped everything to move to America. Start fresh, my mom said. No looking back. We lost everything. Left everything.”
“I think you had it right the first time,” she murmured, stroking his hair. “At least, in terms of how you felt about it.”
His breath shuddered out of him, almost painful in its release. “Yeah. And we never talk about it. Everyone wants to forget. I get it, I do, but . . .”
“Were you scared?”
He huffed out a nervous laugh. “Hell yeah, I was scared. No one would tell me what was happening. And then one day, around the holidays, I overheard them talking about leaving. And then my cousins and aunts and uncles were gone. For months. America, they said, but I barely knew what that meant, or what it meant for us that we were going there next. And Nik was so little, always trying to run away, so I was responsible for him a lot of the time. Sledi za svoim bratom, my parents always said. Watch your brother.”
“And you were how old? Ten?”
“Ten when we moved, yes.”
Her voice was quiet, her eyes soft as she ducked her head to look at him. “At least you had each other.”
She hadn’t. She’d been alone, an only child, with only a mother who sounded like a real piece of work.
“I did. And we did have it easier than some. Alex and some of my other relatives were already here. My father spoke some English. It could have been worse.”
“Moving is traumatic.” The corner of her mouth quirked.
“My parents had this attitude about it, like sometimes this just happens. Nichto ne vechno. Nothing lasts forever. Sometimes you just lose everything and have to start over. It’s normal, or even expected.” He shook his head. “Anytime something bad or disappointing happened, like when I had to close my show: Nichto ne vechno. Oh, well. Move on.”
“Is that what you did when you tried to produce . . . let me try it . . . Dom Navsegda?”
“Good pronunciation.” He patted her hip. “And . . . not exactly. The assholes basically told me I wasn’t famous enough.”
She reared back, eyes wide, outraged on his behalf. “Are they crazy?”
“They said I hadn’t done anything mainstream in a while, and since the last show was a failure, they wouldn’t go along with it until I was back in the public eye.”
Her jaw dropped. “Is that when you joined The Dance Off?”
“Bingo.” He bopped her on the nose with his finger. “You really have been following my career.”
She scrunched her face up and looked embarrassed. “It’s the only reason why people join that show. To get famous or get famous again.”
“And it works.”
“But that was years ago. Why haven’t you done another show yet?”
And there it was. The question he really didn’t want to answer, mainly because there was no good reason.
“Busy.” He toyed with a rubber band on the desk. “Between The Dance Off, the restaurant, my stocks—”
“Dimitri.” She caught his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. “Why haven’t you done your own show yet?”
“I gotta think about it.” Even to him, that sounded weak.
She rolled her eyes. Apparently, it sounded weak to her, too. “You’re gonna make me guess?”
“Go ahead.” Shit, he shouldn’t have said that.
She shook her hair back and sat up a little straighter on his lap, a move that pushed her breasts into his face. He raised a hand to pinch her nipple, and she slapped his fingers away.
“You’re worried they’ll turn you down again.”
Her words triggered the fear, and excuses rose to his lips, the same ones he’d been telling himself—and now Alex—for ages. “I just want to be sure they’ll go along with it before I start this whole process again. It’s a lot of work, and—”
“Shut up.” She pressed a finger to his lips. “Once a week, for six months out of the year, millions of people watch you on TV. As a judge, you get more screen time than any of the dancers, while doing a fraction of the work. You’re famous, Dimitri. A fucking household name. You don’t want to be sure. You, my friend, are stalling.”
He scowled. She wasn’t wrong. He’d done it with her, too, stalling for three years, convincing himself it was because he wanted to be sure she felt the same way about him. But really? He was scared she’d turn him down.
Which was ridiculous, now that he looked at it without the lens of fear. She had never turned him down. She’d done everything he ever asked of her. He just hadn’t asked for more.
Because he was an idiot. He tightened his grip on her hips. Now that he had her, he wasn’t letting go.
“So, the question becomes,” she continued, “why are you stalling?”
He opened his mouth, but she covered it with her hand.
“I think,” she said. “You’re scared of failing. I get it, because I worry about it, too. But you’re worried about failing at something that has your name on it.”
He sucked in a breath.
“Did I get it right?” she asked, looking pleased.
He pulled her against him and rained kisses on her neck. “Nail on the head,” he growled.
She s
ighed and melted against him. “Just do it, Macho.”
“Here?” His dick jumped, pressing against the underside of her thigh. If he shifted her just a little, he could slip right in.
Laughing, she pushed at his shoulders. “You know what I mean. Dom Navsegda. Make it happen. You have everything you need. Stop holding back. You can’t wait for everything to be safe and secure before you make a move.”
Stop holding back. He’d been holding back in so many ways, so many areas of his life. He was thirty-five years old. Wasn’t it time he stopped waiting for the rug to get pulled out from under him?
She yawned so hard her jaw cracked.
“You’re right. Come on.” He stood, cradling in her arms, and carried her out of the office.
“I’m wearing the boot. I can walk.”
“I don’t care. I want to carry you.”
She smiled and twined her arms around his neck as he carried her through the living room and down the hall to his bedroom, where he settled her into the bed.
“You’re not coming to sleep?” she asked, snuggling into her pillow.
“I will in a minute. Just have to send a quick text.”
He sifted through the piles of clothing on the floor until he found his phone.
Let’s do it, he typed, then sent it to Alex. As he walked around the bed to plug the phone in, it buzzed in his hand.
About damn time.
He paused and typed back, You’re up?
The reply came two seconds later. I’m at the airport. Since you wouldn’t answer my calls, I’m hopping on a flight to come knock some sense into your hard head. Glad you’ve seen the light. Pick me up at the airport and be ready to work on the pitch. We need to move fast on this.
Dimitri froze with the phone in his hand. Shit, this was really happening. Just like that. Too quickly.
Alex’s flight info showed up the screen. He was arriving at LAX in eight hours.
“Macho?” Natasha’s head poked out of the covers. “Come to bed.”
How could he resist her?
He texted back one word. Yes.
Then he scooted under the covers, spooning the woman he loved. His love for her, and her understanding, chased away the fear.