Chapter 36 Sonya
SONYA
“You can’t stay in there forever, Sonya,” says Hughes, knocking on the bathroom door.
I’m comfortable on the floor, which sounds disgusting but private jet bathrooms are not the same as the ones on commercial flights. There’s triple the room, at least, and a cozy rug by the sink.
Hughes knocks again.
“Go away!” I yell, warmth blasting across my skin when I picture what I was doing in here just half an hour ago.
“Baby.”
“Nothing you say will make me come out there,” I grind out.
Yeah. I know it’s childish, but I’d rather spend the rest of the flight in here than face what happened and what almost happened between us.
I bring my face to my hands and count backwards from a hundred—until I hear another voice. It must be a flight attendant. Hughes is talking to them in a lower voice, and the word privacy jumps out.
Then I hear a scuffling sound that makes me press my ear to the door. I frown.
“My biggest fear,” Hughes says. “Didn’t you want to talk about that? You said you wanted to know.”
My throat goes dry. His voice is closer like he’s sitting down, too.
Like we’re both leaning against the door, but on opposite sides.
For some reason, the visual of that makes strange emotions tumble inside me.
I clench and unclench my hands, watching my skin go pink in the spots where my nails pinch my palms.
“It’s… It has to do with why I don’t want to go to Oslo.”
What? How is that connected to his biggest fear?
He doesn’t elaborate. I don’t ask. It’s silent for so long that I’d think Hughes got up, except I’m listening so hard that I can hear him breathing. These low dragging inhales.
He finally speaks, a quietly uttered name. “Jesse Osler.”
My eyebrows squish together. Why does it sound so familiar? Where have I heard it before? Too curious to stop myself, I ask, “This person is the reason you turned down playing for Team Canada?”
“Yeah.” More long, beats of silence pass before Hughes finally adds, “Because it was his dream, and it didn’t feel right fulfilling it without him.”
I’m glad he can’t see my face. There’s shock written all over it.
So many newscasters and fans have been speculating about why Adrian Hughes didn’t go to the World Hockey Championship. Most of them claimed the hockey captain wanted to spend his off-season excessively partying.
I’m still trying to understand. “So he wasn’t invited and you were?”
“No. He, um, would have been invited, if he had the chance.”
“But he didn’t?”
“He… He pa-… He passed away.”
I hug myself as a weird tightness grips me. I don’t know what to say. I’m ill-equipped with words, especially in these situations. My tongue feels thick and unlearned.
“It happened a long time ago,” Adrian says, his voice strained.
“How long?”
“Ten years in nine days. There’s actually a memorial service happening in my home town soon.”
Before I can ask, he confirms, “I’m not going to it.”
“Why not?”
He chuckles, but it’s a rare, hollow sound. “Wasn’t that your advice? To forget the past?”
He’s right. It’s what I’ve done for myself. So why does regret bloat my stomach, thinking about him doing the same? I don’t know how to explain it. To myself or him.
So, once more, I stay quiet.
He does, too.
Maybe neither of us know what to say next.
Meanwhile, I’m doing it again. Digging my fingers into my palms, a nervous habit I’d hate for anyone to see me do. I don’t even remember the last time I behaved this way.
“Sonya?”
“…yeah,” I mumble.
“When did you first start? Always imagining the worst things that could happen to you.”
When I hadn’t said a proper sentence in two days, wondering if my foster guardians would notice.
They didn’t. So I extended the experiment to a week.
Still, nothing. That made me cry. A lot.
Until I laid in bed one night and imagined for hours them never speaking to me again.
It hurt, until it didn’t. Until I got used to the idea.
I simplify it and say, “When I was a kid.”
“You said you’ve been told to be grateful you got a home. Basic food on the table. And back in that rage room, you said your foster parents never showed you any emotions at all.”
I shift uneasily against the door. “Foster guardians, not parents. And is there a question in all that?”
“Do you still talk to them?”
“No.”
“Thank fuck.”
It happens.
The apocalypse hasn’t been triggered, but it very well could’ve been.
I smile.
And I’m so glad he can’t see my mouth curve this way, because where did it come from? And why does my head also sag and rest against the wall beside the door?
It must be because I’m not used to a reaction like his.
Normally people judge you for cutting “family” out of your life. It’s something you’re supposed to feel guilty about.
I don’t.
I’m so proud of that decision, even if it meant shedding what other people tell me I shouldn’t live without. They don’t understand the peace it’s given me. How can you be a bad person when you do what’s best for your mental health?
“Tell me something about your childhood,” I demand out of nowhere. Not because we’re learning things about each other. I’m—collecting more data. Yes, it’s all about that deal we made before. About balancing scales.
“I grew up poor.”
“Huh.” I pause. “Did not expect that.”
“Because of how I live now?” he asks, amused.
“It’s a lot of space for one person.”
Hughes chuckles for real, and some tension loosens inside me.
“It’s not meant to be for one person. I wanted a home big enough for everyone to visit and stay over if they need to, where everyone gets their own space, but apparently people have lives and get busy and have other plans and don’t always have time to come over. ”
“So you have a big family…”
“Six sisters,” he confirms. “Only one niece so far. And yeah, we hang out. But recently it’s been harder to plan things and coordinate.”
“Six sisters…is six.” A lot.
“My sisters and I—we all come from different dads.”
“Oh.”
“My childhood had a parade of losers walking in and out of our house growing up.”
“Um. Sorry?”
Hughes laughs more ruefully. “Don’t be. We made the best of it.”
A sudden image occurs to me. Him as a kid, clowning around joking and telling silly jokes.
More or less what he does today. But back then, was it to make his sisters laugh as their bad dads strolled in and out of their lives?
What about the fights? With a parade of losers, and that many sisters, there must’ve been fights and pain.
Why can I imagine him as this toothy kid trying his best to be charming and yelling “look at me” just so the arguments blow over?
So the tension defuses? So everyone stays as happy as possible?
The thought of all that, I don’t know, grips me. I’m aching in places I feel I can’t reach. I want to… I need to…
I inhale an uneven breath and get up. My hand goes to the lock. I push it open, but I can’t budge the door. There’s a hockey captain-sized weight blocking it—until there’s not.
The door opens.
Hughes is there. So close. His hand palming the door frame.
For a moment, all I can do is stare up at him. Those uncertain, vulnerable blue eyes. That hopeful but weary expression tightening his mouth like he’s holding his breath and waiting to see what I’ll do next.
“I—” He swallows, then rubs the back of his neck. “I’m really glad you’re coming out. Not that I didn’t like talking like that, but I was afraid you wouldn’t want to see me ever…again…”
The tops of his cheekbones go pink as he smoothes his palms down his pants.
I want to hug him.
This revelation makes my eyes round, and is followed by a fair amount of horror and anxiousness, because I can’t.
If I do, it feels like everything will change.
I step back.
Hughes’ hand shoots out. A brief touch on my arm. “Don’t go back inside. We should eat. Dinner is ready!”
“I—shouldn’t—”
A flicker of something that looks like fear, but can’t be, crosses his eyes. “We don’t have to talk about anything that happened. I promise you, we won’t.”
I’m frozen.
“Please, Sonya?”
I manage a nod, because at the end of the day, he’s right. I can’t hide in a bathroom forever. Not only will we be in Oslo together, but he’s always going to be around. He’s my brother’s captain. Kavi is married to Dmitri. There are group hangouts and some games I go to. Our lives intersect.
I have to find a way to face him and move on, even if this whole situation is getting far riskier in ways I refuse to examine properly.
Hughes leads me to a table that’s been set up for us. On a white tablecloth are white plates with gold accents, polished silver cutlery, and long-stemmed wine glasses. Small plates are also covered in metal dome-shaped cloches.
We’re in the clear, coasting through the open sky. Even so, nothing is made of glass. Anything that can be bolted down is secured.
He pulls out my chair and makes me sit down. “Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of everything.”
He says it in such a calm and reassuring way, but it doesn’t end there.
Those words repeat, even when he doesn’t say them.
I hear them unsaid when he pours me a glass of wine.
In the way he uncovers the domes, asks for my preferences, and serves me exactly what I like, picking out every olive in a bowl of pasta.
It’s in the refills I don’t have to lift a finger to receive.
How he picks up a fork I accidentally drop and gives me another one without missing a beat.
I hear it especially loudly when he tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear, one that kept poking the corner of my eye. When I grumble at him, he winks.
All these actions land right in the center of my chest, water nourishing earth that’s been parched forever.
It’s dangerous, and I tell myself that we can’t have any more personal conversations, but Hughes tricks me into hearing about his first job, him shoveling snow in his small town.
His gangly years when he failed his driver’s license test twice and had to bike house-to-house for a below-minimum wage job.
I scoff and talk about my first job manning the fryer at a fast-food joint. How the manager hated me, but my coworkers were nice since I was the youngest. That I’ve grown to hate tater tots, but continue loving onion rings.
Somehow he gets it out of me that I got the job in the first place because ballet classes were expensive.
Soon we’re fighting over dessert, much closer to our normal selves. Giving me a bit of hope that maybe everything hasn’t shifted fundamentally between us. That soon we can go back to how we used to be—and that it won’t destroy me.
A Tupperware container is brought out.
He made homemade cookies.
“Pass,” I tell him. “I’m already full.”
“But I want to hear what you think. I’ll even say please. Please, Sonya. Try them, darling!”
“Ugh. You’re so annoying.”
“Come on, just one bite!”
To shut him up, I nibble on an edge. It’s divine. Ultra chocolatey, a tender shortbread-like texture, nutty, toasty, sweet notes of browned butter. Okay, maybe one more bite. One more. And somehow I’ve scarfed it all down, letting out the softest moan.
Instead of grinning with triumph, Hughes freezes, like a wild animal caught in headlights would.
Blood rushes to my cheeks. “Fine. I’ll have another one. Otherwise they’ll go to waste.”
I eat three.
And have to stifle more moans.
Now I have chocolate on my face.
He moves like he’s going to use this thumb to wipe it off, but I’m already rushing to stand. Saying I’ll clean up in the bathroom, though really it’s an excuse.
To splash water on my face as if that will help. And to push down this question that’s tugging at me, getting louder and louder, the more I learn about Hughes.
He wants to take care of everyone, but who takes care of him?