15
Darina
I was running out of places to put all of it, and I mean that almost physically — some days I woke up and catalogued the weight the way you catalogue inventory, a small, grim accounting of everything I was currently carrying that nobody who loved me knew the full shape of.
There was Rurik, obviously, four months deep now into something neither of us had a tidy word for, hidden from two brothers who would have loved him fine as a boss and lost their minds about him as anything else.
There was Gleb's note, locked in my grandmother's broken-latched drawer, and the two unnamed men whose initials might or might not implicate someone I trusted.
And there was, increasingly, unmistakably, whatever Yegor was carrying, which had stopped reading like a romance weeks ago and started reading like something considerably more frightening, though I still didn't have a name for that either.
I'd started noticing the toll in small, physical ways — a tension headache I hadn't had since finals in high school, a tendency to startle at ordinary sounds, that exhaustion of a woman who'd stopped sleeping through a full night without waking at some point to run through the day's lies and reassure herself she hadn't let any of them slip, checking and rechecking each one like a woman counting her own till at the end of a long shift.
I loved my life, underneath all of it. I want that on the record, because it would be easy to make this sound like nothing but burden — I loved Zarya, loved my brothers fiercely, loved Rurik in a way that still occasionally stole my breath at inconvenient moments.
I had simply never expected love, of any kind, to require this much architecture to keep standing upright.
"You've gone somewhere again," Rurik said, on a Tuesday afternoon that should have been ours, both of us tangled together on my couch with a bottle of wine neither of us had finished, his fingers idle in my hair in a way that usually undid every knot in my shoulders within minutes.
That day it wasn't working. "Where do you go, when you go like this. "
"Nowhere. Everywhere. I don't know how to answer that honestly without sounding like I'm complaining about my own life."
"You're allowed to complain about your own life.
I'd actually prefer it to whatever this is instead — you, smiling at me on schedule, telling me you're fine on a timer.
" Something careful entered his voice, the register he used when he was about to ask for something he suspected I wasn't ready to give.
"I want to ask you something, and I want you to actually consider it instead of deflecting the way you've gotten good at deflecting lately. "
"Alright."
"What would it take. To tell Vadim." He said it plainly, no hedging, watching my face for the flinch he clearly expected.
"I'm not asking because I'm tired of hiding, although I am, somewhat.
I'm asking because I watch you carrying this every single week, and I don't think the hiding is actually protecting you from anything anymore.
I think it's just costing you, slowly, the way debt costs you slowly, interest compounding in directions you don't notice until the total's already unmanageable. "
"It's not that simple."
"Tell me why not. Genuinely. I'd like to understand the actual shape of your hesitation instead of guessing at it."
I wanted to tell him. Sitting on my own couch with his fingers still tangled gently in my hair, I wanted, badly, to hand him the entire weight of it — Gleb's note, the unnamed initials, the dread of not knowing whether the man I loved might somehow be standing closer to the answer than either of us yet understood.
I couldn't, not without breaking a promise I'd made to my brother the same week I'd made it, and the inability to explain my own hesitation honestly made the hesitation itself look, from where Rurik sat, like something considerably smaller and more selfish than it actually was.
"There's a lot happening with my family right now that has nothing to do with you," I said, choosing the words carefully, hating how thin they sounded even as I offered them.
"Things I can't fully explain, not because I don't trust you, but because some of it isn't only mine to explain.
I need you to take that on faith, even though I know how unsatisfying it's to be told to take something on faith. "
"I can take a great deal on faith, Darina.
I've been taking this entire relationship on faith for months, in directions that could cost me considerably more than you currently risk.
" Something tightened around his mouth, not quite anger, something closer to the frustration of a man who valued precision and was being asked to operate without it.
"I'm not asking you to violate someone else's confidence.
I'm asking whether there's an actual timeline in your head, or whether 'not yet' is simply the permanent shape this is going to take. "
"It's not the right time," I said instead, which was true and also, I understood even as I said it, not nearly the whole truth, and watched something flicker across his face that wasn't anger, exactly, but was close enough to disappointment that it landed harder than anger might have.
"It's never the right time, Darina. I've noticed that pattern developing.
" He sat up slightly, putting an inch of distance between us that felt, suddenly, like considerably more than an inch.
"I'm not trying to push you somewhere you're not ready to go.
That much was certain. I'm trying to understand whether there's an actual destination we're moving toward, or whether this is simply the shape we've decided to stay in indefinitely, because I find I want more than stolen Tuesdays, and I'd rather know now if that wanting is mine alone to carry. "
"That's not fair."
"Maybe not. I'm finding I have less patience for fairness than I used to, where you're concerned.
" He said it without heat, which somehow made it worse, a gentleness of a man stating a hard thing because he respected you too much to dress it up as something softer.
"I'm not asking for an answer today. I'm asking you to actually sit with the question, instead of telling me it's not the right time and hoping the conversation ends there, the way it always seems to end there lately. "
We didn't resolve it, that afternoon. He left earlier than usual, kissing my forehead with a carefulness that felt like its own kind of distance, and I sat alone afterward turning over the unfairness of being asked to explain a hesitation I couldn't actually explain, not without unraveling a promise that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with a brother who'd trusted me with the most fragile thing he owned.
I called Gleb that night, briefly, careful not to say anything explicit over the phone, simply asking how things were progressing, hoping for some small movement I could point to, some reason to believe the waiting had an actual end attached to it rather than stretching indefinitely into a future where I kept failing the man I loved by inches, week after week, for reasons I couldn't name.
"Slow," Gleb said, which was the same answer he'd been giving me for weeks now, delivered with the same patient, immovable calm that usually steadied me and that night only made the waiting feel longer.
"I'm close to ruling one of them out, Dari.
I promise you, I'm close. I just need a little more time. "
"Everyone keeps needing a little more time," I said, more sharply than I meant to, and heard him go quiet on the other end of the line.
"I'm sorry. That wasn't fair to you specifically.
I'm just tired, Gleb. I'm tired of being the only person who knows how many directions I'm currently being pulled in. "
"I know. I'm sorry I can't make it faster.
" His voice had gone gentle, apologetic in a way that made me feel worse rather than better.
"You could tell me what else is pulling at you, if it would help to say it out loud.
I'm a better listener than I'm a fast investigator, if that's worth anything tonight. "
I almost told him, right there, the whole shape of it — Rurik, the months of stolen Tuesdays, the question I still didn't have an answer to about Vadim.
I didn't, in the end. Some exhausted, self-protective part of me decided that handing one more person one more piece of the catalogue wasn't going to lighten the load so much as simply spread it thinner, and I wasn't certain thinner was actually better.
"It's fine," I said instead. "Just a long week. Take whatever time you need, Gleb. I trust you."
I hung up feeling worse rather than better, the loneliness of being surrounded by people who loved me and unable to hand any single one of them the full truth of anything.
I found Yegor on the back stairs of Zarya two days later, phone pressed so hard against his ear I could see the white of his knuckles even from the doorway, his voice pitched low and fast in a register I'd never once heard him use.
"—I don't care what he offered, I need the full amount, not half now and half later, that's not how this works and you know it.
" A pause, listening, his jaw working. "No.
I told you, I have until the end of the month.
I've got the boat's title transferred already, I just need the buyer to actually close, and I can't close anything if you keep moving the number on me every time we talk. "
I must have made some sound, some small intake of breath, because he turned and saw me before I'd decided whether to announce myself, and the color that drained from his face in that instant told me considerably more than the fragment of conversation already had.
"Dari—"