14. YOM
YOM
January 29th
LYDIA CARRINGTON:Hey, Tommy!!! Hope you’re well. Just wanted to say again how much I enjoyed coming out to see you play. I’d love to come over, like we talked about. Whenever you want, just let me know.
Unread
January 31st
LYDIA CARRINGTON:Hey. Me again. It’s been a couple of days, and I know you’re busy. Me, too! This semester is already so crazy with work, right?! I could really use some intimate relief. So let me know when we can hook up!
Unread
February 3
LYDIA CARRINGTON:Happy Weekend! It’s SO COLD, though. Let me know if you want me to warm you up. Anytime. Day or night, I’m down. Just let me know.
Unread
February 6
LYDIA CARRINGTON:Congrats! I saw on the school website that you won again tonight. Want to celebrate at your place? I’m free and totally DTF. Nobody else has to know if you don’t want.
Unread
Yom couldn’t decide what was cringier: Lydia’s unread messages to Hanson or the fact that he himself couldn’t stop reading them. Over and over again. Even as the after-game party he was hosting at his lakeside mansion raged around him with at least a hundred athletes and co-eds getting wasted in honor of the Yolks winning yet another game to keep their streak alive.
The latest message had been sent just a few hours after Lydia had labeled Yom a sociopath and asked what it would take to make him leave her alone. Yet, she texted Hanson again with a desperate-sounding offer of her body.
Yom took another bitter swig from the bottle of clear liquor he’d been clutching by its neck all night.
“Hiii, Yuuummm. Whatcha looking at?”
Yom looked up from his phone to see Eliza, Lars Andersson’s Tri Kappa sorority president girlfriend, standing in front of the tufted armchair he’d been sitting in since the party started. Beside her was another blonde who looked almost identical, down to their makeup and matching outfits.
He must have still been glowering. Eliza’s friendly expression immediately morphed into a worried look. “Is everything alright?”
He hated these needlessly intimate questions Americans were always asking.
“Everything is fine,” Yom assured the team captain’s girlfriend, smoothing out his expression.
Everything was not fine. He’d only been back at school for a couple of weeks, yet it felt like his mind was unraveling. Because of one Library Girl whose actions he could neither understand nor tolerate. But the loud party at the lakeside mansion was not the place to discuss the girl he couldn’t stop thinking about, despite her constant texting to his worst teammate.
The desire to wreak more havoc on Lydia’s life rose inside him like noxious green smoke.
But then came the memory of her challenge from that morning.
Do you want to fuck me ? What will it take to make you leave me alone ?
He’d never in his life had to compel a girl into fucking him. But that one question had turned his dick to concrete.
Could putting her beneath him finally rid him of this ravenous ache he couldn’t shake, even after her true colors were revealed?
“Are you sure everything’s alright?” Eliza asked.
He must have started glowering again.
Inwardly sighing, he informed Eliza, “Lars is in the kitchen, taking shots with the other players.”
“Oh, I know where Lars is,” Eliza answered with a giggle. “He said you’ve been in a bad mood since that Restraining Order girl showed up. So, I wanted to introduce you to my little pledge sister, Hannah.”
Her pledge sister. So, that was why they were dressed in the same uniform: a scoop-neck pink tank top and black mini-skirts. In the middle of a Minnesota winter.
“Hi-yee!” Hannah said with a happy wave. “What are you drinking? Vodka?”
“No, it’s Chinese, Hannah,” Eliza answered for him. “Look at the writing on the bottle!”
He glanced down at the blue-label gift bottle of baijiu he’d received from Bai3, a Chinese spirits brand the Rustanovs had decided to invest heavily in a few months ago. The bottle’s sleek design, with its red-and-gold accents, mirrored the high quality of the liquor inside, but it was much stronger than his own family’s line of vodka. Almost 120 proof.
He’d hoped a few swigs would be enough to drown the turbulent emotions raging inside him.
But here he was, obsessively reading and re-reading the post-game text Lydia had sent Hanson—a player in every sense of the word. Earlier, Yom had watched the guy who’d left Lydia’s messages on Unread for over a week disappear into one of the many upstairs bedrooms with another sorority look-alike.
Did Lydia know how little the player she wouldn’t stop texting thought of her?
“Can I have a sippy-poo of your Chinese vodka?”
Hannah’s question jolted Yom out of another jealousy spiral.
He eyed the sorority girl up and down. No, baijiu hadn’t stopped his out-of-control brain from obsessing over Lydia.
But maybe this girl could.
“Are you just getting here?” he asked her, taking another swig from the bottle.
“Yes,” Hannah replied, her eyes lighting up with excitement. “I was so happy when my big sister offered to introduce us. I’ve been dying to meet you. By the way, you played so well toni?—”
“ Da, da, da .” Yom had no interest in her compliments. “Are you having anything to drink yet?”
“No, not yet.” She scrunched her brow. “That’s why I was asking about trying your Chinese vodka.”
So, no, Yom didn’t end up offering her a drink. But he did give her an NDA contract to sign in his upstairs office a few minutes later.
“Okay, all signed!” she announced with a cheery flourish of her pen. “Do you want to take me back to your bedroom?”
“Here will be fine,” Yom answered from where he’d sat down on the dark leather couch with the bottle of baijiu still clutched in his hand.
Why Hanson and not me ?
The question rose unbidden and unwanted. He forced it back down as the sorority sister settled herself into his lap and peeled her tank top and bra over her head with one motion. Like a stripper who was on the clock. He’d already forgotten her name.
Something with an H.
Helen? Nyet…
He pulled off his shirt for the benefit of skin-on-skin contact. Her breasts would perhaps substitute for Lydia’s. A little smaller —H-girl had obviously been wearing a push-up bra. But they would do.
“Are you going to kiss me?” she asked.
A memory of finally getting to taste Lydia’s mouth starburst inside his head. Then curdled inside his chest.
“No,” he answered. “No kissing.”
“Okay,” H-girl said agreeably, as if he’d simply told her he didn’t have her preferred tea. “We don’t have to. We can just…”
She pulled his head into her chest and began grinding her hips into his lap.
This was a good, wise position. But his body didn’t respond. Not until Yom closed his eyes and imagined Lydia holding him, apologizing for what she’d done at her brother’s bidding.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, Artyom. This has all been a huge mistake. Of course, it’s you I want. Not Tommy.”
“Call me Tyoma,” he told imaginary Lydia, as he’d meant to tell her that night. “There is no need for you to call me by my full name.”
“Tyoma.” The syllables of his diminutive flowed from imaginary Lydia’s throat like silken threads. “I like that. And, of course, you can call me Library Girl.”
She slipped a hand down past the waist of his jeans as she continued to grind into him, massaging the swollen evidence of his desire for her.
“You like that, Yum?”
“ Da ,” he whispered past the painful ache in his throat.
“Yeah, you like that, don’t you, Yum?” Lydia said with a knowing laugh. “You’re getting so big for me!”
But it wasn’t Lydia’s voice. It was the sorority girl whose name he couldn’t remember.
Yom opened his eyes. And just like that, he deflated below the waist, like a balloon popped.
“What’s wrong?” the pledge sister asked. “Do you want me to suck it?”
She didn’t wait for his answer before scrambling to the floor and getting into position between his knees. She whipped her long hair back from her made-up face like someone built for a porno.
But Yom didn’t want a porno. He wanted...
“ Chyort voz’mi ,” he cursed in his father’s tongue. Then caught H-girl’s hand when she attempted to pull down his zipper.
“What’s wrong, babe?” she asked, her red lipstick mouth forming a confused pout.
“I am no longer interested in this.” He could not be bothered to soften his natural tone as Uncle Alexei had advised before Yom came to American university. “You can go.”
“I can go ?”
She was up for anything, apparently, except being dismissed. The sorority girl’s sexy bombshell expression darkened with anger. It was likely the first genuine emotion she’d shown him since they met, Yom guessed. Unlike Lydia, whose nervousness had flickered across her face like a neon sign in Berlin.
Though, that hadn’t been real, either, had it?
How had she managed to deceive him so thoroughly?
“What are you? Like, gay?”
The sorority girl was back on her feet now, teetering on the high heels she’d never taken off as she reached for her discarded bra and tank top.
“I wish,” he answered, thinking jealously of one of his favorite cousins, Spidey, who never appeared to have any turmoil in his romantic life, despite being an internationally ranked gymnast who openly preferred men.
“You wish,” the sorority girl repeated. “Like, you’d rather get with a guy than me?”
Tears welled in her eyes.
But unlike this morning with Lydia, Yom remained unmoved. Her tears didn’t create strange cracks in his chest like Lydia’s had.
“You are pretty enough girl. Go find someone else to fuck you tonight,” he instructed, the same as he would a dog to go back to its spot.
“You’re a fucking asshole, do you know that?”
“ Da , I am already knowing this,” he assured her. Before reminding her, “And you signed NDA. Talk about what is happening in this room to anyone else, and there will be consequences.”
“Are you threatening me? Oh my God…” Her face flickered with realization. “Is this how things went down with Restraining Order? Is that why you made sure to trash her reputation—because you knew there was nothing she could do to fight back?”
That accusation hit too close to home.
“Go!” His cold voice took on a vicious edge. “Go before I am telling my hockey teammates to throw you from my home like trash.”
Her bottom lip trembled. “You wouldn’t dare.”
He stood up, letting his ice-cold glare speak for him.
She must have heard his answer clearly. She ran from the room, slamming the door behind her.
Leaving Yom alone to… to… sink back down on the couch, feeling like a defeated moron.
He hadn’t been able to raise his cock for someone who actually wanted to be with him. Simply because she wasn’t the girl who’d offered to fuck him just to make him leave her alone.
What was wrong with him?
Perhaps Lydia hadn’t been incorrect about him being some kind of crazy person—he could only assume that was what sociopath meant.
This was supposed to be his focus—winning championships, cementing his legacy. His final college hockey season only had about a month left before the Big Ten, followed by the USCA Championship that would etch his name into both American and Russian history books. He needed to focus….
Instead, here he was. Pathetic. Weak. Sick with lust for a girl that had turned out to be a lie.
Setting the baijiu aside, Yom laid back on the couch, pulling down the zipper he had stopped the H-sorority girl from undoing. Just once more. Perhaps it will work this time .
Lydia .
His shaft swelled in a painful instant at just the thought of her name.
He closed his eyes and let his head fall against the couch arm as he gripped himself, jerking with rough, punishing strokes. Seeking to exorcise this sickness out of his body.
He needed to stop obsessing over her.
His hand moved faster and faster, tears of frustration gathering at the sides of his squeezed-shut eyes as Library Girl apologized to him, placed a gentle hand on his heart as she kissed him softly. Shyly offered to touch him. Kiss it. Lick it. Make everything better.
“I’m sorry, Tyoma,” she told him inside his mind. “I’m truly, sincerely, so, so ? —”
The orgasm ripped through him like an explosion, and he came with a guttural groan, his cock spewing cum across his chest as she faded from his mind.
For now.
But she’d be back. She always came back. It had been bad before, but since Berlin…
He sat back up on the couch, disgusted with himself. He hadn’t managed to clock twenty-four hours between these needed exorcisms since that night. Not even once. The sick obsession that never fully faded was already settling back in, dribbling shame down his chest in the form of his hot spend.
He snatched the baijiu bottle up with his sticky hand and took a long, burning swig. It wasn’t helping. Nothing was helping.
But he had to let her go.
Yom raised his phone, determined to delete the spyware app he couldn’t stop checking and rechecking. But first, some masochistic instinct made him check the messages Tommy had received from Lydia one last time.
One more reminder, he told himself. One more reminder that this woman was nothing but a pathetic liar.
His eyes flared when he saw the messages marked as Read.
Moreover, there were two more below them now. From Hanson.
HANSON: hey shortie sorry I been outta pocket but I can’t hook up tonight
Yom let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Hanson hadn’t decided to cross him, to prove some point about America being the best, or to get a spot he didn’t deserve on the Minnesota Raptors—or any of the hundreds of reasons that had gone through Yom’s head when he’d decided to plant spyware on the other player’s phone.
But then he saw the next message.
HANSON: How about Friday? After our game?