by Megan Hart
“It would be imprudent,” Theresa corrected.
“It would be a bad idea.”
She rolled her eyes and bit into her pizza so that a long, gooey strand of cheese stretched from the slice to her lips. She twirled her finger around it to break it off, then stuck it in her mouth to chew. “Anyway, besides, I already have a place to sleep.”
She made him go home shortly after that, and later in his own bed, an arm beneath his head and his other hand resting on his belly while he stared up at the ceiling into darkness, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering what he would’ve done if she’d said yes.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Afternoon delight, nothing better. Niko stretched and yawned, drowsy beneath the blankets. Alicia sighed from beside him and nudged her head against his shoulder. Her hand, flat on his belly, toyed with the curly hairs below his belly button until, chuckling, he had to grab it to make her stop.
“Ooh, you’re ticklish,” she said. “I’ll have to remember that.”
He turned his face to kiss the top of her head. “Don’t you dare.”
“It could be fun,” she told him. “Kinky, even.”
Niko laughed but kept her hands from teasing him again. Alicia laughed, too, and kissed his bare shoulder before rolling onto her back. She kicked at the covers, pushing them down. When he protested, she knuckled his side gently and rolled over him to get out of bed, then walked naked to the chair in the bedroom corner so she could grab her robe.
“Don’t.” He pushed up on his elbow. “I like to see you walking around naked.”
“I’m sure Theresa wouldn’t appreciate it.”
Niko fell back onto the pillows. “I thought you said she was working.”
“She is, but she doesn’t have set hours. She said she’d be back later, but you never know. Anyway, if I walked around naked all the time, you’d get so used to it that it wouldn’t be a big deal anymore.” She gave him an arch grin and tied the robe at her waist. “I’m going to grab a drink. Do you want something?”
“I’m starving.”
She laughed. “If that’s a subtle way of asking me to make you a sammich . . .”
“No,” Niko said. “But if you want to . . . never mind, I’ll get up. But I’m not putting on clothes.”
“Fine, let your dingle dangle,” Alicia said. “Don’t blame me if Theresa comes home and catches you with your willy wagging.”
Niko paused with his feet swung over the edge of the bed. “I don’t think I realized how much I loved you until you called my dick a willy.”
Alicia guffawed, and Niko sat back and enjoyed the beauty of that humor. To him she would always be gorgeous, but laughter transformed her. She didn’t protest when he went to her and kissed her, although she gave him a curious look.
“What’s that for?”
“Because I wanted to.” He kissed her again, letting it linger this time. They’d spent hours making love, and, still, the touch of her tongue on his sent a shiver of delight through him. He nuzzled her neck until she laughed again, softer this time.
“I love you,” Niko said.
Alicia pressed her face against his chest. “Love you, too.”
Her shoulders rose and fell, and she shook a little. The soft hitch of her breath confused him. Niko pulled away to look at her. “What’s wrong?”
“Happy.” She wiped at her eyes, then pushed up on her toes to kiss him again. When she pulled away, her gaze was serious. “Niko, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”
“Shoot.”
“I’m thinking of selling this house.”
“Are you going to ask me to fix it up first?”
Alicia punched him lightly on the arm. “No! Stop it.”
“Well, okay. So you want to sell the house. Then what?”
“Pay my parents back, first of all.” She paused with a frown. “I could do that without selling the house, but it wouldn’t leave me with much. And they’re not asking me to pay them back for anything. I just feel like I want to return the money they gave me that had been meant for Jenni’s college.”
Niko didn’t know what to say about this. He brushed the hair off her shoulders. “Okay.”
“It was generous of them. It helped me and Ilya get started with Go Deep. And they sold me this house for way less than I would’ve spent on something else. If I sell it, I can repay them for the money they gave me and get out from under it. I guess that’s the thing. I can put things behind me. Move on.”
“Moving on sounds good.” He settled his hands on her hips, holding her close. “Where do you plan to live?”
She gave him a hesitant, hopeful smile. “I thought you and I could talk about that.”
Niko’s brows rose. “About living together?”
“Well . . . yeah. Traveling first,” she put in quickly. “I want to do some of that. But we’d still need a place to come home to. Maybe more modern. Not out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe not even in Quarrytown.”
This gave him pause. “Not even here?”
“We could go anywhere,” she said.
Niko kissed her again. “We could go everywhere.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ilya had brought in the mail, a handful of bills addressed to him, and the rest mostly junk. He’d opened the slim letter and shaken out the check made out to his mother in a nearly illegible hand without paying much attention to it until he realized it had not been meant for him. He looked it over. Fifty bucks, no change. The weird thing was it had come from Barry Malone.
“This is yours,” he told her and set the check and envelope in front of her.
It was nearly three in the afternoon, but Galina was eating a buttered English muffin and drinking coffee. She snorted softly as she slid the check toward her. She shrugged, maybe at the amount, and tucked it in her pocket. “Thank you for opening my mail. Apparently I’m so old and decrepit I can’t be trusted to do it myself.”
“It was by mistake.” He wasn’t going to let her get to him. “Why’s Barry sending you money?”
“We were married,” Galina said, like that made sense.
Ilya snorted much the way she had moments before. “Sure, a million years ago.”
“What can I say? He feels compelled to offer me financial compensation in restitution for being a terrible husband.” Her smile broadened, looking wicked. She took a bite of her muffin, crunching. “Where is your brother?”
“I’m sure he’s across the street.”
“Ah.” His mother twisted in her seat to look at him. “Sit. Talk with your mother. I haven’t seen much of you for a few days.”
He grabbed a can of cola from the fridge but didn’t sit at the table. “I’ve been packing things up at the shop.”
“Really?” Galina looked surprised. “Does this mean you sold it?”
If he said yes, she would ask him for money. Perhaps not directly. She was subtler than that. She’d always had a way of getting what she wanted, even without asking outright. Look at the way she was still getting money from her ex-husband of some twenty years ago. Telling her the truth would lead to a fight.
“Yep,” Ilya said calmly. “I sold it.”
Galina’s eyes widened a tiny bit more before she nodded, looking pleased. “Good. I think that’s the best thing for you. You’ve held on to that for too long. What will you do now? Travel, like Alicia?”
“I don’t know.” The truth was, he didn’t love traveling. Sure, the exotic locations and liquors and, yes, the women had always been exciting, but his idea of a good time would always be a hotel with a clean, soft bed and an all-you-can-eat buffet. Trekking through mountains and any kind of wilderness didn’t appeal to him at all. It felt like he’d already been most of the places he’d ever want to go.
“You’ll figure it out,” his mother said serenely and sipped from her mug. “I’ll be going out later. Don’t wait up for me.”
“I don’t ever wait up for you,” Ilya answered.
She laughed.
“I would think you’d be happy to know your mother has friends.”
“You’ve always had friends,” he told her. “You’re the sort of person who always manages to find some.”
Galina’s smile became a little pinched. “Why does that sound like you don’t intend it as a compliment?”
She was who she was, and always had been. He didn’t have to like it, or her. But he couldn’t do much to change it.
“Never mind,” she said with a wave of her hand before he could answer, not that he had anything to say.
Upstairs, Ilya tossed himself onto his bed and considered pulling up a movie on his laptop, but it had been such a long time since he’d bothered to even log in that the account refused to let him. He’d been using Alicia’s for years. He guessed she’d finally changed the password.
Idly, he pulled out his phone and pulled up Theresa’s number. “Hey. What’s up?”
“I just got home.”
“To Alicia’s?”
“Well . . . yeah,” she said. “That’s home, for now. What’s up with you?”
“Just following up on things,” he said as though that were the truth. “Any idea when it will go through?”
“They got Alicia her money within two weeks. I figure it will be about the same for you,” Theresa said.
Ilya nodded. “Okay, I guess that’ll have to work. I spent the morning clearing stuff out from the shop.”
“How’d that go?”
“Easier than I thought,” he said. Murmured voices through the phone caught his attention. “Is that my brother?”
“Yeah, he’s over here. They’re talking about ordering pizza and playing cards. You should come over.”
“Sure. That’ll be swell,” he told her, his voice thick with sarcasm.
Theresa laughed. “Are you going to avoid them both forever? That could make holidays inconvenient.”
“Bah, humbug.”
“Come over,” Theresa said. “It’ll be fun.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ilya and Niko had gone together to pick up the pizza while Alicia and Theresa dug through the cabinets in the den to pull out a selection of old board games. If Alicia or Niko was upset that Theresa had invited Ilya to join them, neither showed it. Still, she thought she’d better make sure.
Theresa swiped dust off the lid of an ancient version of Clue. “I should’ve asked first if you’d be cool with me asking Ilya to come.”
“No problem.” Alicia shrugged and held up Monopoly. “We used to play this for days.”
“I’m not sure why I did,” Theresa admitted as she set a battered game of Stratego on the table. “He called me to follow up on the offer, you both had just asked me to hang out . . . I don’t know. I guess it felt like I should. Kind of like . . .”
“Old times?” Alicia nodded. “Yeah. I get it. Don’t worry. Really. Ilya’s the one who has to deal with me and Niko being together. It’s not like I’m holding on to any lingering romantic feelings for him.”
“That’s good.” She’d said it too quickly, so that Alicia looked up curiously. Theresa didn’t want to remember Ilya’s kiss or the way his fingers had felt in hers or the fact he’d sort of asked her on a date. Or anything else about him in that way, really. “It’s got to be a little weird. But only for a little while, right?”
“I hope so.” Alicia sat back to study the array of games they’d pulled out of the cupboard. “I haven’t seen any of these in forever. So much stuff in this house . . . it’s going to be a huge project to get rid of it all.”
Theresa looked up. “Oh?”
“Yeah . . . so, I’ve been thinking about selling the house. Not right away,” Alicia said quickly, although Theresa hadn’t made so much as a murmur of protest. “I’d have to clear it out first. Lots of years of stuff here.”
“And you want to move on,” Theresa said. “I get it.”
“I didn’t want you to think I was going to kick you out after I just told you it was cool to stay, that’s all.” Alicia got to her feet with a small groan and a crackle of her spine as she stretched.
Theresa stood, too. “I appreciate it. So much. It wasn’t ever supposed to be long term anyway.”
Alicia nodded. “It’s going to be a lot of work, though.”
“I can help. I’m pretty good at figuring out what you need to take and what you can easily leave behind.” Theresa tapped the lid of one of the games. “I’ve had some experience.”
“I’d like to live somewhere I can get a pizza delivered instead of having to go out for it,” Alicia said. “You know? I’d like to have a movie theater with more than two screens.”
Theresa chuckled. “No kidding. Before I moved in with my boyfriend, I lived within walking distance of a couple nice restaurants, and I had three pizza places that delivered, along with a horrible Chinese place. Once I moved in to his house, it was back to flipping a coin to see who’d have to go out to get the food, and he somehow always managed to have an excuse about why it wasn’t his turn.”
“Maybe that’s why you didn’t want to marry him,” Alicia said matter-of-factly. “If he’d been the one who offered to go, you might have thought differently.”
Theresa laughed at first, then paused. Alicia wasn’t kidding. She also wasn’t wrong. “I couldn’t stand the way he chewed. It made me insane with rage.”
“Ilya couldn’t find anything,” Alicia said suddenly, sharply, as though the words hadn’t meant to slip out of her. “Flat out refused to look, sometimes. Just said he didn’t know where it was, whatever it was. It was infuriating.”
“Is that why you broke up?” Theresa coughed lightly into her hand, trying not to sound too nosy.
“It seemed like it at the time. I don’t think anyone gets divorced over one small thing. I don’t think anyone necessarily gets divorced over one big thing, either. It’s all the things together.” Alicia frowned. “But what’s done is done, I guess. It’s not like I can get away from it. The only thing I can do is keep moving forward.”
“Yeah. Forward.” Theresa thought about that for a second, hating herself for asking the next question. “Do you think he cheated on you?”
Alicia didn’t seem insulted or angry. She gave Theresa a thoughtful look. “No. No matter how much of a ladies’ man he’s been since we split up, I don’t believe he cheated on me. Maybe he cheated with me, I guess, if you want to count the memory of a ghost.”
“Jenni.” Theresa frowned, sorry to have brought it up. “You don’t think he’ll ever get over her?”
“I don’t think he wants to,” Alicia said. “But he sure needs to.”
“Behold, I am the bearer of beverages!” Ilya’s voice rang through the den as he appeared in the doorway holding up two six-packs of what looked like craft beer. “My brother brings the pizza. And, ladies, hold yourselves back. We got a Caesar salad and garlic knots! So you may worship us as the gods we are.”
“I’m so not worshipping you,” Alicia told him wryly, but with good humor.
Ilya rolled his eyes and looked around her at Theresa. “I got some fancy iced tea for the teetotaler.”
“Thanks.” Theresa caught Alicia’s surprised look but didn’t say more than that.
“Oh, you got anchovies? Thank you, baby.” Alicia offered her mouth to Niko for a kiss.
Ilya made a disgusted face and grabbed Theresa as she moved toward the cupboard to pull out plates. Laughing, she tried to pull away, but he was dancing with her, making goo-goo eyes. She gave in after a second, letting him twirl and then dip her.
“Ooh, baby, thank you-u-u,” Ilya said in a sickly sweet falsetto.
“Jerk,” Niko said without rancor, and planted a long, involved, and exaggeratedly sloppy kiss on Alicia’s mouth.
Theresa turned her face at the last minute so that Ilya’s attempt at doing the same landed on her cheek. “Don’t be a cretin.”
He made sure she was steady on her feet before he let her go. “Damn, Theresa. A cretin, really? That hurts me ri
ght in the feelings hole.”
“I said don’t be one.” She nudged him with an elbow. “C’mon. Food.”
Ilya sighed and shook his head, but if he was truly put out by the sight of his brother and ex-wife snuggling, he didn’t show it. “Both of you, just so you know, that’s how germs spread.”
“I’ll take my chances.” Alicia, eyes bright and cheeks flushed, laughed. “But I’m with Theresa. Let’s eat.”
Theresa hung back a bit, letting the others go first. When Alicia and Niko had taken their plates into the den, she snagged Ilya’s sleeve as he loaded his plate with a couple of slices of pizza. “You okay?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Huh? Oh. Sure. I mean, it’s weird, right? Tell me it’s weird.”
“It’s a little weird. Yes.” She took a bottle of the iced tea he’d brought her and cracked off the top to take a drink.
They’d moved toward each other without making too much of it, their voices lowering so Niko and Alicia wouldn’t overhear. This close to him, she could see the rim of indigo around his grayish eyes. He smelled like fabric softener, a sensory memory, again of that time so many years before when they’d shared the same house and the same detergent. So he might not ever get over Jennilynn Harrison, Theresa thought. There were plenty of things she wasn’t quite able to get over, either.
Ilya smiled. “Whose idea was it to ask me to come over?”
“Mine.”
He nodded. “I haven’t played board games in a long time.”
“Me neither.” She grinned. “I bet I kick your butt.”
Ilya leaned close and closer, until the soft whiff of his breath gusted along her cheek. “Bring it.”
Watching Niko and Ilya square off as team members, one trying to get the other to guess a word on a card without using a series of forbidden words, was the funniest thing Theresa had seen in . . . well, a long time. Her stomach hurt from laughing, and she was sure her mascara had become a streaked mess, but none of that mattered. She hadn’t been convinced the game-night idea was a good one until now, but man, was she glad they were doing it.
“Time’s up!” Alicia slapped the buzzer to turn off the annoying sound. “Losers.”