Preston
"How was your day?" I ask Vadim whose handsome face is filling up my phone screen nicely as I get settled on my bed.
A couple of things have changed in our nightly call routine.
The biggest is that we've pushed the time back so it's closer to bedtime than dinner time, meaning Mom won't be prone to finding an excuse to knock on my door. It also gives Vadim some time to unwind after work, hit the gym, and catch up on any soccer matches he might have missed.
The second change is a genius hack, a phone stand I picked up on for under ten bucks.
It means I can talk hands-free because despite Vadim usually taking a while to warm up, we actually end up talking for at least an hour most nights.
That's been making my arms start to hurt, and I'm already in enough pain.
The headaches are back and worse than ever. I popped an Imitrex after dinner so I'd be alright for this call.
Tonight, though, I'm not met with the usual fine, and there's no need for me to coax out information by asking follow-up questions. Of his own volition, Vadim hard launches into telling me about a conversation he had with Marek about his son, Lukasz.
I listen intently, noticing how he's getting worked up as more and more details spill out of him. His bitch ex-sister-in-law. The cowardly bullies who beat Lukasz up at school. But it's his most recent revelation about seeing a different side of his brother that catches me by surprise.
"Wait. Your brother doesn't know you're gay?"
Vadim stops talking but his mouth stays open, like my reaction caught him off guard.
"Uh, no. No one does."
"No one?"
He shakes his head. "No one from my family or anyone around me here in Reno. And all my family back in Poland and Ukraine are even more conservative." He takes a small breath. "I have a very small group of friends from around the world who I open up to a little. We have a group chat on Signal."
I take a moment to process the fact he's thirty years old and the topic of his love life, or lack of one even, has never been raised by anyone in his family? How can that be?
"Are you worried about telling your family?"
"If I'm being honest, a little. Marek would be the one most likely to be okay with it, especially now I see how he's handling things with Lukasz. That makes me feel like I can trust him enough to be cool with it."
"What about your other brother? Is he still overseas, by the way?"
Vadim nods. "Kamil is, yes."
He doesn't say anything else. Nor does he move. It's only when he blinks a few seconds later that I realize the screen didn't freeze.
"He's going through a lot, and he's even more distant to Marek and me than Marek and I are to each other. It's…complicated."
I decide not to push any more on that front. "What about your dad and stepmom? How do you think they'd react?"
"I think Iza would be fine. She loves the gays…
to do her hair, help her shop, make her face looks ten years younger.
I think that would extend to her being okay with actually having a gay person in her family, but I'm not entirely sure.
You can never tell these days. Some people don't mind the gays when they're working for them, but it's another thing entirely when they're faced with having a gay person in their family. "
"And what about your dad?"
Vadim exhales loudly through his nose. "Hard to say for certain. He's this weird combination of being as vain and obsessed with his appearance as Iza is, but he's also ultra-competitive and hypermasculine. It could go either way."
A deep frown lands on Vadim's forehead.
It's obvious this is a difficult topic for him. But since he's not changing the subject, or deflecting with his terrible humor, I shoot my shot and follow up with the question he dodged at The Butterfly Lounge the night we met.
"Are you close to your dad?"
"I wouldn't say so, no." His eyes sharpen.
"My father meted out his love through discipline and by providing for us.
Growing up, he would always say emotions are a luxury we can't afford.
For a while, I actually took that literally and thought emotions must be really expensive if even we couldn't afford them.
Then I got older and realized he wasn't being literal.
Now that I'm even older, I understand emotions, or at least expressing them, isn't something he seems to be capable of.
At least not with his kids. Iza seems to bring out a slightly softer side to him.
" He lets out a small, sad smile. "Guess that explains where I get it from. "
"You're not emotionless," I counter, perhaps a little too quickly, too forcefully.
One of his eyebrows hitches. "Say more."
My chest tightens.
I don't want to overstep, but at the same time, I feel like there are times you need to be brutally honest. Times like when a person has an opinion of themselves that might not be completely accurate.
I just don't know if he's ready to hear what I want to tell him…
or if I'm the right person to be bringing it up with him.
I don't want him to feel like I'm calling him out on anything, but I think I should at least raise the idea, leave it with him to marinate, and he can come to whatever conclusion he wants to about it, on his own terms, whenever he's ready to.
"I disagree with you. When you say you're emotionless, I don't get that from you.
Personally, I've seen you display care and compassion.
Thoughtfulness. Kindness. Protectiveness.
" Our eyes meet. My heart's racing away in my chest. "Those aren't qualities I'd associate with someone who doesn't have emotions.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying maybe don't be so hard on yourself. "
There. I said it.
Vadim's stare intensifies, and I truly have empathy for any poor deer caught in headlights. Not the blinding part. The frozen, surprised part. It's not a nice feeling.
He blows out a breath and rakes his hand through his messy, longish locks. "I don't know what it is about you, Preston Miller, but I find it easy, or at least less hard, to talk to you."
We stare at each other through the screen.
My heart is positively galloping now, reading between the lines of what he just said. He opens up to me.
Only to me.
Breaking the heaviness of the moment, he asks me how my day was, and I tell him about going grocery shopping with Mom while Dad slept in in the morning, then sitting outside in the garden after lunch with Dad, sorting through all his photos on his iPad, then playing a few rounds of Uno, which I haven't played with him in years.
Vadim listens, nodding every so often, and all the while I'm forgetting that none of this is new information to him since he's got guards and cameras following my every move.
"And what are your plans for tomorrow?" he asks.
"Mom and Dad are going to meet with their lawyer."
"How's that side of things going?"
"Not great. Every time they come back they're in happy la la mode."
"What's happy la la mode?"
"It's a term my brother came up with for when they act happy to mask being not."
"Wait. You have a brother?"
I nod. "I do. He's estranged from us, though."
"Oh." Vadim's eyes soften. "I'm sorry to hear that." A few seconds tick by, and then he says, "Can I ask what happened?"
"It's a long, sad story."
"Hey, I told you mine."
"Fair."
"I'm kidding. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
"What?" I get myself comfortable on the bed. "And have both of us be bad at communicating? No, thanks."
He chuckles even though I seriously dissed him.
"Shit," I add. "Sorry if that came out too harsh."
"Don't apologize. It's the truth," he says.
Settled within my cocoon of pillows, I open up to Vadim.
"This is the second marriage for both of my parents.
They both married in their early twenties and were both divorced by the time they turned thirty.
They met and fell in love and desperately, more than anything, wanted to start a family before Mom missed her biological window. "
"That makes sense."
"It does. Unfortunately, the universe wasn't cooperating.
After trying for a number of years to conceive naturally with no luck, they started IVF.
It was a very expensive option they couldn't really afford, but even worse, it proved just as fruitless.
Once Mom turned forty, they decided to broaden their options and explored adopting.
However, there's a long waiting list for domestic infant adoption, and there's a significant cost involved as well. "
"Really? I never knew that."
"Yeah, it sucks. So they gave up IVF treatments and focused solely on adopting. And then, finally, after close to a few years of waiting, the call came. They were going to be parents."
"That's awesome."
"It was, yeah. It's just that…"
"What?"
Vadim's frowning, and I realize my voice must have gone sad. "It's nothing bad, sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. It's actually great news. Literally the week after they found out they'd be adopting a baby, Mom got pregnant. Naturally. At forty-three."
"Oh, wow."
"I was the baby inside her, and my brother, Shannon, was their adopted baby. By the time I was born, Shannon was already with them. He's a year and two months older than me, so for all of our childhood, he was just my older brother."
"So your parents never told you or Shannon that he was adopted?"
"No. They didn't want it to change anything. They loved and treated us both equally, so in their minds, there was no point." I blow out a heavy breath. "And Shan and I probably never would have found out if Uncle Kevin didn't get super wasted one Thanksgiving and accidentally blurt it out."
"Shit. How old were you guys?"
"Sixteen and fifteen."
Vadim winces, combing a hand through his hair. "What happened?"
I take a moment to find the right words.
What followed was the single worst thing that ever happened to our family. "Shannon exploded. He felt completely lied to and deceived. He moved out to live with his best friend's family, and he…he, um…" Tears well in my eyes. "He petitioned for emancipation from our parents."
"Oh, Pres."
I wipe an errant tear away with the heel of my palm. "He didn't get it, but it took a huge emotional toll on Mom and Dad. He never moved back home with us, and once he graduated, he left the state, and no one knows where he is or what he's doing or even if…even if he's still alive."
A few more tears fall, the memories of that awful time hitting hard, as fresh as if it only happened yesterday.
Vadim and I fall into a long, deep silence. It should be weird or awkward or uncomfortable, but it's none of those things. It's nice having him near, even though he's actually hundreds of miles away, and it's reassuring knowing he's there without having to say anything.
"Families are complicated," he says after some time passes.
"They are." I sniff. "Mom and Dad have both said, multiple times, that not telling us the truth is the single biggest mistake they've ever made in their lives. They said that to Shannon, too, but for whatever reason, it wasn't enough to get through to him."
I shake my head. "I miss him. I love him. I hate him. I'm worried about him. I wish he were here, spending some time with Dad. But most of all, I just want to know he's okay. That wherever he's ended up, he's doing well, has good people in his life, and that he's safe."
Vadim doesn't respond, but his frown lines have multiplied.
Some more time lapses, then he says, "Well, I hope your parents have a productive meeting with the lawyers tomorrow."
"Thanks. I hope so, too. I'll give you the update tomorrow night."
"Sounds good."
I bite the inside of my cheek. "Vadim?"
"Yeah."
His eyes lock onto mine.
Well, they lock onto the camera on his phone, but it feels like they lock onto me.
"I like…this."
A genuine smile lifts his cheeks. "I like this, too, Pres."