Roman
I noticed her before she ever turned around. Not her face, but her spine.
There are hundreds of people in this terminal, all moving with the same dull panic airports create. Men checking watches. Women dragging children and luggage. Couples arguing under their breath. Staff smiling with dead eyes beneath fluorescent lights.
Then there was her.
And that is why I paid for her ticket, and why she’s now walking in stride beside me.
Her steps are quick at first, then uneven. She keeps her head angled slightly away from the premium counters. Once, her eyes cut left, and the change in her is immediate.
Her breath catches.
Her shoulders lock.
One second she’s walking beside me, trying very hard to look like a woman who belongs exactly where she is. The next, her whole body tightens beneath that dark coat. Her chin dips. Her fingers clutch the strap of her bag.
She’s seen someone. The distress couldn’t be clearer.
I turn around and see a brief flash of blond before it quickly disappears.
I slow my pace by half a step and let my body shift closer to hers, blocking her from the open line of the terminal.
“Keep walking,” I say.
Her eyes flick up to mine.
“You’re hiding from someone,” I say.
She looks up at me quickly. “No.”
A bad lie.
I keep walking. “Then you’re doing a poor impression of a woman who is not hiding.”
Her mouth presses together.
I like her mouth.
What an inconvenient thought.
I ignore it.
“I’m not hiding,” she says. “I’m avoiding.”
“You know the best place to hide,” I tell her, “is the first class lounge.”
She gives me a wounded, irritated look. “I told you, I’m not hiding.”
“And I told you, you’re bad at it, Katerina.”
A reluctant spark moves through her expression. It’s not a smile. Not yet. But it’s something alive.
She stops walking briefly. “Wait, how do you know my name?”
“I’m very observant,” I say dryly, pointing at her boarding pass.
She laughs a hollow laugh. “Oh right… Silly me.”
I stare at her from the corner of my eyes. It seems like a defense mechanism rather than anything else.
We pass through security without issue. The staff glance at my passport, then straighten with the familiar change in posture.
I’ve seen it all my life. Men and women rarely know exactly what they are reacting to, only that there is something in my name, my face, my money, or the way I stand that tells them not to delay me.
Katerina notices.
She’s clearly close to collapse, and still she notices everything.
“Are you like a businessman or something?”
“Something,” I say, which isn’t exactly a lie. I mean, I am going to Moscow on business.
After security, the terminal opens around us in a wash of glass and light. Shops glitter on both sides. Perfume counters, watches, handbags, polished bottles behind gold-lit bars. The floor shines beneath our feet.
Katerina slows slightly, and I watch her.
Her eyes move from one display to another, not greedy, not impressed in the simple way of someone who wants to buy everything. No, this is stranger. Softer.
Awe. As if even this airport feels like part of some journey.
Then she catches herself and straightens, pretending she was not looking.
I glance at the diamonds in her ears. Small. Real. Tasteful. Her coat is expensive wool. Her handbag is designer, though not new. Her posture carries training, money, and family expectations. She’s not poor. She’s not unsophisticated.
So… Why is this shocking her?
We reach the smoked-glass doors of the lounge. I gesture for her to enter first.
She hesitates.
“Go on,” I say.
“I can walk through a door.”
“I’m relieved.”
She shoots me a look and steps inside.
The noise of the airport dies at once.
The lounge is quiet, warm, expensive in the way places are when they know they don’t need to announce it. Low lamps. Deep chairs. Dark wood. A bar at the far end. People speaking softly over champagne and phones.
Katerina stops just past the entrance. Her lips part, but then she closes them.
I guide us to a corner near the window, private enough to give her cover, open enough for me to see the door. I never sit with my back to a room. I never trust an entrance I cannot watch.
She notices that too. “Let me guess… You always choose seats like this.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I dislike surprises.”
She studies me for one second longer than politeness allows, then sort of sits, perching on the edge of the chair as if she may need to run at any moment.
A server comes by.
“Water,” I say. “And tea.”
Katerina looks up. “I didn’t ask for tea.”
“No. You looked like you needed it.”
“I look like many things to you, apparently.”
“Yes,” I say. “You do.”
Her eyes narrow, but color returns faintly to her cheeks. I pretend not to see.
Outside the window, a plane begins to move slowly across the dark runway. Katerina turns toward it, and everything in her face changes.
For a moment, she forgets me.
“I was supposed to go out of the country after college,” she says. “Paris trip. But there was always something. My father. Family obligations. An engagement.” Her voice changes around the last word.
I let my gaze drop to her bare finger.
She sees me looking and folds that hand into her lap. “Don’t,” she says.
“I have not said anything.”
“You were about to.”
“No.” I lift my eyes to hers. “I was deciding whether the man deserved it, deserved you. And the answer is no.”
Her face stills. The lounge light catches the wetness along her lower lashes. She has not cried in front of me yet, but the tears are close. Angry tears. I can tell the difference.
“You know what?” she says. “I don’t feel like having tea.”
Before I can stop her, she calls the server over.
“Vodka,” she says. “Cold. Neat.”
The server glances at me.
I give him a small nod.
Katerina notices. “I don’t need your permission.”
“No,” I say. “But he wanted mine.”
Her eyes narrow. “Why?”
“Because you look like a woman making decisions she will hate tomorrow.”
“I already made those.”
The vodka comes in a small glass beaded with cold. She picks it up and looks at it for a second, as if she has ordered courage and is trying to decide whether it will work.
Then she drinks it in one swallow.
Her face changes, her eyes tightening around the edges.
I lean back and say nothing.
She places the empty glass on the table. “Another.”
“Katerina.”
“What?”
“You have a long flight.”
“I know.”
“And a bad night behind you.”
“I know that too.”
I study her. The flush rising slowly under her skin. The hard set of her mouth. The way she keeps glancing toward the other side of the lounge and then hating herself for it.
“This is not a solution,” I say.
“No, it’s not.” She smiles without warmth. “And I don’t fucking care.”
The second drink comes. This time she sips. For about thirty seconds. Then she finishes it too.
I should stop her.
I’ve stopped men for less. I’ve taken bottles from captains, brothers, soldiers, idiots with guns in their waistbands and grief in their mouths. It’s easy to control a room when people are afraid of what happens if they test you.
But Katerina is not mine to control. Not yet.
Not ever, some sane part of me says.
She orders a third. Then, when the server brings it, she reaches into her handbag and pulls out a card.
“I’m paying for these.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Her eyes flash. “You’re not buying my ticket and my drinks.”
“I already bought the ticket.”
“And I will pay you back.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will and I mean it.”
“I believe you.”
“Then let me pay for the vodka.”
I look at her card.
I turn to the server. “Put the drinks on her card.”
Her surprise is quick. Then suspicion follows. “That was easy.”
“I choose my battles.”
“And this isn’t one?”
“No,” I say. “This is a woman buying three drinks she cannot handle.”
“I can handle vodka.”
“You’re holding the glass with both hands.”
She looks down, and sees I am absolutely right. Her lips part, then she laughs.
It’s softer than before. Less controlled. The vodka has warmed her, loosened something at the edges. The sound travels under my skin with more force than it should.
Bad decision, Roman. Very bad.
The third drink stays half-full for a while.
She talks more. She talks about Russia.
About how she used to look at photographs of Moscow in winter and imagine the cold would feel cleaner there. About how she bought a ridiculous fur-lined hat she left upstairs because it would not fit into the overnight bag. About how she has never seen snow except in films.
“You have never seen snow?” I ask.
She shakes her head, then points a finger at me. “Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“You’re laughing inside.”
“No,” I say. “Inside, I’m deeply serious.”
This makes her laugh again.
The lounge seems to change around it.
Or maybe I do.
Her cheeks are flushed now. Her eyes brighter. She leans forward when she speaks, forgets to guard her expressions, forgets to pretend she’s not wounded.
“You look very Russian,” she tells me.
“I’m Russian. But I grew up in the States.”
“No, I mean...” She gestures vaguely at me. “Extremely Russian.”
“What does that mean?”
“Like you own a forest.”
I stare at her. She stares back.
Then she covers her mouth, horrified. “I don’t know why I said that.”
I almost smile. “Neither do I.”
“You do, though,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “You look like you own things. Forests. Buildings. Men.”
That last word sobers me more than it does her.
I take the remaining vodka from her glass and move it to my side of the table.
She watches me. “Rude.”
“You’re finished.”
“You’re bossy.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t like bossy men.”
“No?”
Her mouth opens. Then closes. The color in her cheeks deepens. She looks away first.
Thank God.
The boarding announcement saves us both. When our flight is called, she stands too quickly, and the floor betrays her.
I’m out of my chair before she has time to fall. My hand closes around her elbow, steadying her.
She looks down at my hand, then up at me with wide, offended eyes. “I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I am.”
“Walk.”
She takes one step. Then another. Not terrible, but not good.