by Megan Hart
Niko shook his head. “It could be.”
Could it, Ilya wondered when he and his brother had hugged it out and Niko went on home to do whatever he planned to do with the woman Ilya had once called his wife. Could it be that easy, really? To let it all go?
“Another of these,” he said to Kelly with a tap on his empty whiskey glass and a smile that set her back a step or so before she returned it. “Keep ’em coming.”
CHAPTER TEN
Theresa’s phone buzzed from its place in the center console of her car. She’d plugged it in to charge but had turned off the car engine so that she wasn’t wasting gas. The night air in April could still dip low enough to be considered chilly, but under the weight of a few blankets and wearing fleecy pj bottoms and a heavy sweatshirt, she wasn’t worried about being too cold. With the inflatable car mattress in the backseat, she wasn’t even particularly uncomfortable.
She fumbled for the phone to glance at the screen, assuming it was her father. He had a way of forgetting what time of day or night it was, his messages rarely urgent and never frequent, but generally inconvenient. At first, the name on the screen confused her, and Theresa had to rub at her eyes to make sure she was seeing it correctly. Then she sat up in the backseat of her car, the blankets tangling around her feet, to hold the phone closer to her face. Another text buzzed through as she looked.
With a sigh, she thumbed her screen to pull up the message and hit the “Call” button. It rang several times before, finally, a familiar voice answered. From the background noise, she could guess where he was.
“Hey,” Ilya said, “Niko left without me. Do you think you could come get me?”
Theresa stifled a yawn and looked at the time. It wasn’t terribly late, at least not by bar standards. Far from last call, anyway. She’d only fallen asleep maybe half an hour before. And, frankly, she was already in the car.
“You’re at Dooley’s?”
“How’d you know?” He sounded joking, lighthearted. Not slurring his words or anything.
Still, she still had a question for him. “Why me?”
“You did it for me the last time.”
“I was with you the last time.” She was already crawling over the center console and into the front seat.
“Because,” Ilya said after a second, “I know you’ll do it without expecting something in return.”
“I don’t know about that part. See you in twenty minutes.” She disconnected the call and deflated the mattress, an act she’d managed to get down to a science. She started the car, taking a moment to pull her hair into a high ponytail and check her face in the visor mirror for signs of sleep. She didn’t bother to change her clothes. Hey, if people could go discount-store shopping in their pajamas, she could drive to a bar parking lot to pick up her . . . whatever Ilya was to her.
It took her a few minutes longer than she’d expected to get to Dooley’s. She spotted him immediately, pacing outside the front doors. A tall man wearing a pair of faded jeans and a black Henley that clung to his lean frame. His dark, shaggy hair, the color of expensive black licorice, glistened a little from the misty rain that had started falling. Theresa flicked on her windshield wipers, watching him as she pulled up.
“Hey,” she called, when it looked like he hadn’t seen her. “Get in.”
Ilya bent to look in the window. “My mom told me never to go with strange ladies.”
“I have candy,” Theresa replied at once, easily, laughing.
He’d earned all the gossip, she thought as Ilya went around the front of her car to the passenger side. He was charming, but effortlessly, so that you couldn’t help but respond even when you knew you shouldn’t. He’d always been like that, she remembered, but as a boy he’d sometimes stuttered in the execution of his charisma. As a man, Ilya Stern worked it, and hard.
“Thanks for coming to get me.” He slid into the passenger seat and closed the door. He shivered dramatically and shook his head, flinging water everywhere.
“Hey!”
He grinned at her. His hair hung in wet strands over his forehead. Drops of water slid down over his skin, and with a swift motion, he licked a few off his lips. The motion mesmerized her. He smelled like springtime rain and the promise of flowers ready to bloom.
He was definitely no longer the boy she’d known.
Theresa forced herself to look away from him. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel tighter than she needed to; she made herself loosen her grasp. “Let me get you home.”
“Not home.”
Frowning, she glanced at him. “Huh? Why not? Did you and Niko have a fight or something? Is that why he ditched you?”
“We didn’t have a fight. He left me because he wanted to get home to Alicia, and I told him to go.”
“Is that why you don’t want to go home?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t want to go home yet because I’m starving. Let’s go to the diner. My treat. Consider it my pickup fee.” Ilya gave her one of those deliberately seductive grins that he probably used on everyone, although when she didn’t return it immediately, his faded a little. “Unless you have somewhere to be.”
She was hungry. It seemed like she always was, even when she’d just eaten. Somehow being unsure of where she was getting her next meal had kept her appetite at a constant simmer. “It’s very late. Where would I have to be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you were on a date.” His glance fell to her pajama bottoms, her hoodie, then up to her messy ponytail. “Or not.”
“I was not on a date.”
“That’s good to know.”
She gave him a hard side-eye, not sure what he was trying to get at but not trusting his motives. “I was trying to sleep.”
“Sure, that’s what all the good boys and girls should be doing this time of night.”
“Clearly that leaves you out.” Theresa put the car in drive, turning left instead of right out of the parking lot. Heading to the diner. From beside her, she heard Ilya’s soft chuckle.
“But you came to get me, anyway? Aw, thanks. I owe you.”
She glanced at him again. “Definitely. Put your seat belt on.”
He did without protest. They drove for a minute or so in silence, sliced into even pieces by the whoosh-whoosh of the wiper blades and the thrum of the tires on the damp streets. Ilya leaned forward to look out through the windshield, and alternating bands of light and shadow from the street lamps cut across his face before he settled back into his seat.
“If it’s going to rain, it should just rain,” he muttered. “Thunder, lightning, that whole business. Not this soft little excuse for a storm.”
“Is it supposed to storm?” She slowed, for a moment uncertain which road to turn on to get to the diner but following Ilya’s lead when he pointed at the cross street in front of them. She felt him look at her but kept her gaze on the street ahead.
“I don’t know. I just wish it would.”
In another few minutes they were pulling into the diner’s parking lot. The restaurant had a name—Zimmerman’s—but nobody ever called it that. It had always been, and would always be, simply the diner. Open twenty-four hours. Breakfast all day.
“I haven’t been here in years,” Theresa said as she found an empty parking spot and turned off the ignition. She twisted a little to look at him. “I think the last time I ate here was with you and Niko, actually. We came here after the musical Alicia was in. Jenni worked here. She brought us extra fries and pudding for dessert.”
On the roof above them, a spatter of harder rain made them both look up. From far off came the slow, rolling rumble of thunder, though she hadn’t seen any flash of lightning. Ilya grinned. After a second, so did she.
When he opened his car door to get out, though, she hesitated. “Wait.”
“Huh? Don’t tell me you changed your mind. I need coffee and eggs. Bad.”
“I can’t go in there like this.” She ran her hands over the thighs of her soft pajama pants.
Ilya laughed. “It’s not like you’d be the only one.”
“I do have some dignity left. I haven’t yet totally given up on life.” She’d meant her words to be blithe. A joke. They came out a little cracked, a little rough, a bit too raw.
Ilya didn’t laugh again. His voice was softer when he answered. “Sure, Theresa. Okay. We don’t have to go in. Tell me what you want. I’ll get takeout.”
“I have, umm . . .” She cleared her throat, not looking at him. If she did that, she was afraid she’d break down altogether, which would be ridiculous and useless. This was Ilya, after all. “I have some clothes in my umm . . . gym bag. In the trunk. You go in and grab a table for us, okay? You know there’s almost always a wait. I’ll throw something on and come in.”
“Theresa.” Ilya spoke quietly but with confidence. A man used to women looking at him when he called them by name. She did not so much as glance his way. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Go on.”
For a second she thought he was going to refuse, but then he got out of the car. His body broke the beams of her headlights as he crossed in front of them. The rain had started falling even harder. Quickly, she got out and went around to the trunk to find her bag. A pair of jeans, socks. The T-shirt and sweatshirt she’d been wearing would be okay, she thought distractedly as she tried to finish fast enough to avoid leaving the trunk open so long her entire collection of worldly belongings got soaked. She slipped her feet into battered tennis shoes and gathered her small purse and keys.
By the time she made it into the diner lobby, her hair was dripping and the hems of her jeans were damp, but at least the rain hadn’t managed to penetrate her sweatshirt. Just as the glass door swung closed behind her, another roll of distant thunder tickled her eardrums. This time, she also saw the flash of lightning reflected in the diner’s back wall of mirrors.
Ilya had snagged a small booth for two in a back corner. The diner still featured little jukeboxes at each table, and he was flipping through the selection with a look of concentration. He glanced at her when she slid into the seat across from him.
“Ordered us both coffee. Hey, you got any quarters?”
She ran her hands over her hair to smooth it, tightening the elastic band. With a paper napkin, she wiped off her face. “No.”
He looked at her then, with one of those grins that lit his eyes and showed off straight, white teeth. She couldn’t remember if he’d worn braces the way she had—two years of metal torture in her mouth, until her father had stopped being able to pay the bills on the work and she’d had them removed. She’d worn them again as an adult, paying for them herself in order to fix what had been left undone the first time around.
“It’s really going to storm,” Ilya said at another rumble of thunder, closer this time. “Awesome.”
With steaming mugs of coffee in front of them, and a typical diner menu that featured hundreds of choices, Theresa let herself relax into the booth. She scanned the menu, wondering if she should order something that would keep overnight in the car so she could eat it for breakfast the next morning. Two meals in one.
She decided on a diner standard: veal parmigiana. It came with crusty garlic bread, salad, and a side of pasta, as well as dessert. Choice of tapioca pudding or ice cream. Ilya ordered breakfast, as he’d planned, and also the diner’s special: loaded waffle fries.
“Sorry, hon, we don’t do those anymore,” the waitress said.
Ilya looked surprised. “What? No more garbage fries? Since when?”
“Since the new owners took over.” The waitress shrugged. “Been about six, eight months.”
“What happened to Reggie Zimmerman?” Ilya asked.
The waitress gave him an apologetic smile. “I only started working here a couple months ago, so I don’t know. Sorry. I can bring you nachos instead, with a side of chili and onions?”
“Nah.” Ilya leaned back in the booth to put an arm up along the back. When the waitress left, he said, “I’ll save room for dessert. Something from the dessert case, something good.”
“What, you don’t like tapioca pudding?” Theresa laughed.
“Tapioca pudding is like eating custard with caviar in it.”
She grimaced. “Ew. No way. I love tapioca pudding!”
“You’re welcome to it,” Ilya said, then added, “You know who liked to make homemade tapioca pudding?”
“Babulya,” Theresa answered. “I know. She taught me how.”
“She never taught me how to cook anything.” Ilya reached for a straw from the holder on the table and stripped it of the paper to twist the plastic tube tight around his fingers. He held it out to her. “Flick it.”
She’d forgotten how they’d all done this. She flicked it hard with her fingers, crowing at the way she made it pop. It ruined the straw, of course, split the plastic so you couldn’t drink from it, but it felt somehow . . . triumphant. Her grin softened when she caught Ilya’s gaze on her. They stared, not speaking.
“We used to come here all the time,” Ilya said finally.
“You and her.” Theresa nodded, thinking back to those long-ago years.
Ilya’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t ask her to clarify whom she’d meant by “her.”
He said, “I meant all of us. But yeah. Me and Jenni. It was the place to be.”
“Even the kids from Central came here.” Theresa had not. In high school, there’d been no extra money for hamburger platters or milk shakes after school dances, and besides, she’d never gone to those. She might have if they’d stayed in Quarrytown. Or not. There was no way to know and no sense in dwelling on it.
Ilya took up the straw paper and tied it in a knot. Then another. He looked around the diner. “It looks the same here, but . . . not as nice.”
“It is a little shabby.” Theresa looked around.
The retro decor was no longer really vintage, just old. Several of the booths had duct tape covering tears in the vinyl. The mirrors along the back wall had gone dark with age, the silvering worn off in places, leaving disconcerting blank spots in the reflections. The place was crowded with a mix of patrons of all ages, most with coffee mugs in front of them.
The food arrived on worn, thick white plates that bore the scrape marks of thousands of forks. She dug in to her veal, disappointed at how tough it was. Not burnt, just overcooked. The pasta was limp, the sauce more like watery ketchup than real Italian marinara. The salad consisted of iceberg lettuce and a few carrot shreds and a couple of croutons. Literally two.
Ilya paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, noticing her hesitation. “No good?”
“It’s fine.” She cut into the veal and ate another bite, hoping it was going to taste better than it looked. And it was fine. It just wasn’t . . . good.
She ate it, anyway, because she was hungry, and because she wasn’t about to waste a meal. She set the salad and pasta aside, along with the garlic bread. She could eat them later. The shoe-leather meat would fill her up but leave room for the pudding.
The conversation was brief as they chewed and swallowed. Not awkward or strained. She noticed that. Sitting across from Ilya, Theresa didn’t feel as though she was somehow expected to run a long string of words, small talk, to keep this from being weird. Nor did he ramble on like he expected her to listen.
It wasn’t a date, Theresa reminded herself sharply. They weren’t strangers, really. He wasn’t trying to impress her, and she was not looking to be impressed.
But once, just once, when she let herself linger over the sight of the way the tendons in his forearm twisted as he spread jelly on his toast, Theresa wondered what it must be like for those women who did go on a date with Ilya.
“How’s the pudding?” he asked when the waitress had brought a Styrofoam container for Theresa’s leftovers, along with a cup of the dessert.
Theresa pulled her spoon through the creamy white custard and tasted it. “Good.”
Ilya shuddered theatrically and
turned to the waitress. “Can I get a piece of the chocolate cream pie?”
“Sorry.” It seemed to be the theme of the night. The waitress shrugged. “We have apple or cherry pie, chocolate cake with peanut-butter frosting. Also vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Chocolate, vanilla, and tapioca—”
“I’ll take a look at the case,” Ilya began, but stopped at her look. “You’re kidding me. No dessert case?”
The waitress’s entire expression wrinkled. “Sorry.”
“Man.” Ilya sat back. “This place used to have the best desserts around. Mrs. Zimmerman made them.”
“Well, she died.”
Theresa blinked. Her spoon clattered against the side of her pudding cup. Ilya let out a small noise of surprise.
“No dessert, thanks. Just the check.” He pulled a few bills out of his wallet and tucked them against the bill. He waited until the waitress had taken the check and money and left their earshot before saying, “I should’ve had the pudding.”
“You can have a bite of mine. I’m stuffed.” She offered him her spoon, not thinking that he’d take it.
Ilya’s fingers closed around her wrist to keep her hand steady as he leaned toward the spoon, mouth open. He’d captured the mouthful of pudding on the spoon before Theresa could react. He looked up as he finished the bite, gaze holding hers as his tongue swiped across his top lip to catch the little bit of cream that had lingered.
He didn’t let go of her wrist. She didn’t pull away. They stayed that way until a flash of lightning and thunder made them both jump.
“We should get going,” Theresa said.
Five minutes into the drive back to his house, the rain had made it almost impossible for her to see the road. That, along with the increasingly frequent slashes of blue-white lightning and ear-splitting thunder, was enough for Theresa to be white-knuckled on the steering wheel. By the time she pulled into his driveway, she was tense, fingers aching and jaw sore from clenching it.
“You should come in until this passes,” Ilya said. In another flash of lightning, his eyes glinted.
For a few seconds too long, Theresa let herself get a little lost in the intensity of his stare before she looked back out the windshield. “I should get home.”