by Megan Hart
She laughed again, softer this time. “Ilya.”
“Your hands are soft. Your hair is soft. Everything about you is so soft, Theresa.”
“You . . .” She sighed and withdrew her fingers, then hesitated, leaning forward to stroke his hair. “Go to sleep.”
He found a few new words at the last minute, when she was already almost out the door. “Are you, too?”
“Am I what?”
“Disappointed in me.” He was drifting . . . drifting.
“Why would I be?”
“All . . . the women in my life . . . mother, Alicia . . . they’re all disappointed in me. Are you?” The question came out of him like a belch in church, unexpected and unwanted and embarrassing. He wished at once he could take it back.
Theresa’s low chuckle eased him. Kept him from continuing to fight the waves of sleep overcoming him. Her voice soothed him.
“No,” she said.
“Why are you taking care of me? I’m a mess.”
The last thing he thought he heard before sleep claimed him was her lilting, laughing answer.
“Maybe that’s my thing.”
CHAPTER THREE
Then
They’d made out for hours, but that girl was never going to let Ilya in her pants. He was going to spend the rest of his life with his balls aching. He should have given up long ago. Gone out with someone else who’d at least agree to jerk him off. When it came right down to it, though, Ilya knew he could date a dozen—no—a hundred other girls, and not one of them was ever going to be Jennilynn Harrison. He’d never met anyone else like her, and even at seventeen, he somehow knew he never would.
What if he asked her to be his girlfriend, like be legit? If they held hands in the school hallway, went to dances? She’d wear his class ring, he thought as Jenni easily slipped his hand away from between her legs with the same skill she always did. Kiss him at the lockers before the homeroom-bell rang.
When he asked her that question, she laughed aloud. “Us? Dating? Like a real thing?”
“You don’t have to make it sound like such a bad thing,” Ilya answered, irritated. “Yeah, us. A real thing. Dating.”
“Out in public?” She’d snuck in through the back door when everyone else was asleep. This had always been a secret.
Ilya sat back against the couch. “Yeah.”
“Don’t you like us being like this?” she purred, reaching for him, her mouth open.
He held himself away. “Look, if we’re going to keep doing this in secret, but you won’t even let me touch you, and you won’t touch me, what’s the point, Jenni?
She got quiet. Her face was hard to see in the shadows, but the soft snuffle of her breathing told him she might be crying. He didn’t want to make her cry, but on the other hand, she pissed him off. She was always doing that. Teasing him, then getting angry when he called her on it. She tried to manipulate him with some kind of emotional response, and Ilya wasn’t into that, not at all.
“See, I knew that was all you wanted,” she said.
“Of course it’s what I want,” Ilya snapped with a tug at the crotch of his jeans, trying to make some room. “What guy doesn’t want to get laid?”
“But you want me to be your girlfriend?” she shot back. “Go on dates? Be a couple?”
Ilya frowned. “What’s so wrong with that?”
“If all you want is to get laid,” Jenni muttered, “why bother with the rest of the bullshit? All that hearts-and-flowers crap. So, what, you can get your dick sucked on the regular? And after that, what? When you figure out that you’re done with me, you can dump me and go get laid by someone else?”
“What’s your problem?” Ilya put an arm’s length of distance between them in case she decided to smack him or something. “What, are you on your period?”
Her reply came on a hiss, the sneer he couldn’t see on her face clear in every word. “Oh, right, because a girl gets mad, that means she’s on her period. Did it ever occur to you that maybe I’m just tired of all this shit from guys like you?”
“Guys like . . .” He knew she’d been out with a few other guys, but hearing her actually admit it put his stomach in knots. “Guys like who?”
“Just . . . all guys.” Jenni flapped her hands at him, shadows upon shadows. “You all want sex, and that’s it.”
Ilya leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees so he could scrub at his face. “I just told you I wanted to make you my girlfriend, Jenni. Take you out. Make it a real thing, not some kind of secret sex thing. Why do you have to twist it around like that? You’re the one making this into that sort of thing. Not me.”
“And what happens when you want to break up with me?”
He looked at her, trying to turn the shadows and darkness into a face, her face. “What makes you think I’d want to?”
“It’s what happens,” she said in a small and broken voice. “And then what?”
“Jenni . . .” He reached for her, but she kept herself out of reach, so he stopped reaching.
“It’s what happens,” she said again. “So we’d have this thing for a little while, and then you break up with me—”
“You could break up with me,” Ilya retorted.
None of this was going how he thought it would. He had to swallow hard against the rush of nausea and the chills. He clenched his fists, digging the knuckles into his knees. He wanted to kiss her, that was all, but the way she looked at him made him think she might bite him if he tried.
Jenni swiped at her tears. “Whatever. Then we hate each other.”
“How could you think I would ever hate you?” Ilya shook his head.
“Well, it’s not like you love me,” she spat.
The words had been there, on the tip of his tongue. If only they’d been able to move past his teeth. But . . . love? That was a huge thing to say out loud. And what happened then, Ilya thought, once he said it? He wouldn’t be able to take it back.
Love was forever.
“I have to go.” Jenni got up. “This is all bullshit, Ilyushka.”
He frowned. “Don’t call me that.”
“Maybe I just won’t call you anything,” Jenni whispered, not moving away. She stood in front of him.
He could have reached for her again. She might have let him touch her this time. He thought that if he did, they could fix this thing between them that felt so determined to be broken, but he couldn’t quite make himself do it. It was too much like giving in to her, when he didn’t feel like he was the one who needed to surrender.
Without another word, Jenni left him there. He heard the whishing noise of the back sliding glass door open, then close. After that, silence. He waited a few minutes more to get his body under control before he decided to go upstairs to bed, where he suspected he wouldn’t find it easy to sleep.
In the kitchen, a dark silhouette startled Ilya enough to shout. “What the—”
“Shhh, you’ll wake your mother, and I’ll have to explain to her what you were doing down here in the middle of the night with a houseguest.” Barry sat at the kitchen table in nothing but a pair of sagging boxers. He had a bottle in front of him. Clear liquid inside. An empty shot glass that he filled while Ilya watched. He pushed the glass across the table toward his stepson. “Here. Sounded like you could use that.”
“You were listening?” Worse, maybe he’d been watching? A rush of disgust had Ilya crossing his arms.
“I came down because I heard a noise.”
“Did . . . did Jenni see you?”
Barry shrugged and tipped back the vodka from the shot glass with a smack of his lips. “She went out the back door, but yeah. Probably.”
“Dude . . .” Ilya was at a loss for what to say. His mother had married this guy, who seemed decent enough, but he was hardly a father figure. If Barry thought Ilya needed some kind of advice, he was going to be disappointed.
“She called you Ilyushka,” Barry said. “Isn’t that what your grandmother calls yo
u?”
Ilya gave him a wary look. “Sometimes. Yes.”
“In Russian, it’s how to talk to someone with fondness, right? Like a nickname.”
Ilya shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Ilyushka is what you’d call someone you love,” Barry said, and poured himself another shot. He didn’t offer it to Ilya this time, merely tipped it up in a salute before downing it. “Just saying.”
“I’m going to bed.” For a moment, Ilya thought Barry would call him back, but he climbed the stairs in darkness and silence and made his way to his bedroom, where he tangled himself in the sheets and was asleep, despite his fears of insomnia, within minutes.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Are you disappointed in me, too?”
Ilya’s words had echoed in Theresa’s dreams all night long, and she couldn’t figure out why.
She woke without being rested. She’d intended to stay in the guest bedroom that she’d used the last time she slept here, but it had been full of construction supplies for the repairs she knew Ilya’s younger brother, Niko, was doing. The bed had been covered in boxes, while tools and paint cans had been scattered on the floor. The couch in the Sterns’ den wasn’t the most comfortable in the world, but it was better than the backseat of her car, which was where she’d been sleeping for the past two weeks.
Theresa had spent the past nine months or so crashing on couches and guest rooms with a series of excuses to her friends, all so she didn’t have to tell them the truth. She didn’t have an apartment to go to, and she couldn’t afford a hotel room. She could barely afford to cover her cell-phone bill or buy gas. There were only so many stories she could tell her friends, and only so many friends to tell the stories to.
She’d planned to wake up before anyone else did and slip out so she could avoid any questions. She must’ve been more exhausted than she thought, because what woke her was not the soft bleat of the alarm on her phone but the sizzle and smell of bacon frying and the sputter of coffee brewing. Theresa stretched and sat, noticing the light slatting through the blinds. It was late.
“Hey.” Niko stood in the doorway, his hair sleep rumpled and a mug of coffee in his hand. “Good morning.”
“Morning.”
He didn’t look surprised to see her crashing there, which either said a lot or not much at all. The idea that she somehow belonged there enough not to cause speculation felt strange and yet oddly comforting. Theresa yawned behind her hand and took the elastic from her hair to redo the messy bun. Her mouth tasted like an ashtray, which was stupid since she hadn’t smoked a cigarette in years.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Almost eleven. Ilya’s still passed out.”
She’d expected as much. They hadn’t gotten home until after two, and he’d been pretty hammered. “I gave him a ride home last night . . . it was late. I crashed on the couch. I hope that’s cool.”
Niko lifted the mug. “It’s not my house, but I don’t imagine it’s going to be an issue. Coffee’s in the kitchen.”
She swung her legs over the edge of the couch, very aware that she wore a sloppy T-shirt and a pair of pj bottoms with pineapples on them. The pajamas alone spoke to at least some level of intent or advance preparation for a sleepover, but if Niko noticed, he wasn’t pointing it out, and she wasn’t going to bring it up.
“Thanks.” She shuffled past him into the kitchen and helped herself to a mug, adding sugar and cream and sipping with a grateful sigh. Sometimes the worst part of everything was how hard it was to get coffee in the morning. She let the heat bathe her face, aware the Niko had come into the kitchen behind her. “Where’s Galina?”
“No idea. She wasn’t home last night.”
Surprised, Theresa turned. “No?”
“She has a new friend. Or more than one. Who knows? She does her own thing.” Niko smiled and shrugged. He offered her the plate of bacon, setting it back on the counter after she’d taken a piece.
Theresa crunched the bacon, tilting her head at the flavor, and sipped the coffee, contemplating this. “Huh. Turkey bacon?”
“Yeah . . . my mother’s finding her religious roots. No pig allowed.” Niko laughed.
“Wow.” Theresa knew that Galina had taken on some of the Jewish traditions after her mother’s death, but this seemed a little more extreme. “She’s keeping kosher?”
“In her own way. An observant person wouldn’t think so.”
“What do you think about it?” Theresa nibbled again on the strip of turkey bacon. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t like eating real bacon. On the other hand, she wasn’t too proud to turn down a free breakfast.
Niko turned off the burner and slid the pan off the heat, then took a drink from his coffee. “I lived on a kibbutz for years. It’s not like I don’t know how to keep kosher.”
That wasn’t exactly what she’d meant. Theresa studied him. “Are you religious now?”
Niko laughed, shaking his head. “Oh, far from it. No, I’ve never been. I chose to live at Beit Devorah, so it was respectful to follow the rules, but it was never anything I felt mattered to me, personally. I traveled too much to keep kosher and observe Shabbat, at least if I wanted to eat and get anywhere on time.”
“I don’t know much about it,” she admitted.
Niko shrugged. “It’s complicated. But if my mother wants to decide she’s going to be religiously observant, I’m not going to argue with her about it.”
“No. I wouldn’t, either. From what I remember about her, it’s not likely you’d win.” Theresa had finished half her mug without thinking much about it, and she went to refill it. She breathed in the steam, grateful for this simple thing, this comfort she didn’t need to struggle for.
Niko took a carton of eggs from the fridge, along with a stick of butter. He pulled a pan from the cupboard. “Scrambled?”
“Yeah. Sure.” She put a hand on her stomach, feeling the hollowness there. Her last full meal had been a grilled chicken salad at lunch yesterday. “You have any bread? I can make toast. Oh, how about potatoes? Hash browns? I can cut up some onions.”
“Check out the freezer. I think there are some frozen breakfast potatoes in there.”
Niko moved aside a bit so she could also put out a frying pan and add a thin layer of oil. She spread out the frozen potatoes while Niko took care of the eggs. He whisked them with a little milk, some garlic, and some chopped scallion.
“Fancy,” Theresa said, watching.
Niko laughed. “Where I lived, everyone had assigned turns to work in the kitchen, no matter what other job you had. The idea was that you’d appreciate it so much more if you understood the amount of work it takes to feed people.”
“It’s a good skill to have.” She took his place at the stove to turn over the potatoes, then gave him space to finish the eggs. “So how long are you planning to hang around? Are you going back overseas?”
He glanced at her as he set three plates on the table. “No. I’m staying here. The house needs a bunch of repairs, stuff I can handle so Ilya doesn’t have to. Or my mother, I guess, since she’s set on staying here, too. I have a little bit of time before I have to get a job. I’m going to guess that finding a permanent job as a beekeeper around here isn’t going to happen, so I’ll have to look for something else. That’s one thing I’ll say about the kibbutz. You were guaranteed a job, a place to live, food, clothing. Made things easier.”
“Is that what you did? Keep bees?” For some reason this delighted her.
“Yeah, that’s where I settled. How long have you been doing this real estate development stuff?”
Less than a year, she thought. A job born of desperation and necessity, cobbled together out of her own grasping, clutching, and climbing. There were days when she tried to be proud of what she’d begun and how well she’d succeeded at it so far, relatively speaking. Maybe she’d be able to feel that way once she no longer had to sleep in her on-the-verge-of-breaking-down car because she couldn’t get the credit app
roval to rent an apartment.
“I worked a bunch of different jobs while I was in college, to help pay my way, and by the time I graduated, I figured out I was really good at organization, completing tasks, keeping people on track, putting things together that might not have been the obvious way. I was not very good at accounting, which is what I got my degree in, so I moved around for a while, trying to find a place that fit. I tried retail, real estate, insurance sales, even some multilevel marketing.” She shuddered at that, remembering, and Niko laughed. “Then about three years ago, I started working for Diamond Development in their human resources department, then in their research and development department.”
She didn’t mention that she’d also dated and then subsequently broken the heart of the company’s owner, and that had begun the downward spiral that had led her to where she was right now.
“I realized,” she said after a second, “that I was really good at making connections between people who had things other people wanted to buy or build or make. So here I am.”
“Cool.”
They both sat at the table. She ran her fingers over the scarred top, remembering the pattern of scratches and gouges. Galina had been putting Niko to work repairing and refurbishing a lot of things in this old house, but she hadn’t replaced any of the furniture. Theresa circled the dark ring in the center.
“This is from the time Ilya wanted to make popcorn, and he caught the pan on fire. He set it down here.”
Niko looked at it, then at her. “Yeah. I’d forgotten that. How did you remember it?”
“I only actually lived here for about six months, so I guess you have a lot more memories of this house to sort through than I do. The things that happened here stuck kind of hard. When I come back here . . .” She looked around the kitchen. “I feel kind of like I’m a teenager again.”
“Yowch,” Niko said. “That can’t be great.”
She laughed softly. “It wasn’t all bad. There was Babulya. Living as part of your family was certainly a strong influence on me, no doubt about that. Everything we go through makes us who we become. Right?”