13. Zoya #2
Nadia gives me one small wave too, dignified and reluctant, like she’s doing me a favor.
“That’s my girl,” I whisper.
Miss Elena appears behind them and says something gentle. Mila turns away first. Nadia looks once more through the glass before following her sister. Then they are gone into the classroom.
I look down at my phone. Unknown Number waits on the screen.
I close the thread.
But I don’t delete it completely. I’m not that brave today.
Karina calls before I can start the car.
I answer and say, “Before you ask, yes, I survived.”
Karina says, “You sound like a Victorian widow.”
I wipe under one eye. “That is my natural state.”
“Come for breakfast,” she says.
“I’m coming.”
“Don’t sit there staring at the building.”
“I’m not staring.”
“Zoya.”
“I’m starting the car,” I say, pressing the button.
“Good. And don’t text him.”
My hand stills on the steering wheel.
Karina doesn’t know about the unknown number. She means Ruslan. She always means Ruslan when she says him in that careful voice, even after all these years.
“I don’t have his number,” I say.
Karina is quiet for a second. “I know.”
“I’m fine,” I say.
“You’re not fine. You’re having a big day.”
I breathe out slowly. The phone lies face up on the passenger seat, the messages app closed now, the unknown number hidden again where it belongs.
“I’ll be there in ten,” I say.
Karina says, “Seven.”
“You live twelve minutes away.”
“Step on that gas pedal, babe.”
I laugh despite myself. “That makes no sense.”
“Neither does motherhood. Come here.”
“I’m coming,” I say again.
I end the call and look once more at the school.
My daughters are safely inside their classroom with their labeled water bottles and first-day shoes.
Karina is waiting for me with breakfast and emotional surveillance.
I’m supposed to be thinking about whether Mila will eat the apple slices I packed or trade them for something illegal, like gummy worms.
Instead, my brain chooses betrayal, and reminds me of the text I received last night.
Unknown Number: Are you awake?
That was how it started.
Not me this time. Him.
I was in bed, alone, after packing the girls’ bags for school.
Two lunch boxes on the counter. Two tiny uniforms laid over the backs of chairs.
Two pairs of socks, because Nadia had rejected three others for “toe reasons.” The apartment was too quiet after the girls fell asleep, and I was lying on my side, staring at the ceiling, feeling the strange ache of tomorrow before it arrived.
Then my phone lit up.
Unknown Number: Are you awake?
I remember the way my heart jumped. It was ridiculous. Embarrassing. Six years later and a text from a man I had never met could still make my body react before my mind approved it.
I stared at the screen for almost a minute. Then I had typed back: That depends on why you’re asking.
His reply came faster than I expected.
Unknown Number: Because I thought of you.
I rolled onto my back, phone held above my face, cheeks heating in the dark.
Me: That is either sweet or suspicious.
Unknown Number: Both.
I laughed quietly because the girls were asleep in the next room, and motherhood had turned every adult feeling into something that had to be managed at low volume.
Me: You disappeared for nine months and came back with “Are you awake?”
Unknown Number: You answered.
I hated that he was right. I hated more that I was smiling.
Me: Maybe I was checking if this number still worked.
Unknown Number: It works.
Me: Clearly.
Unknown Number: Did you miss me?
I stopped smiling then.
The question had slipped under the door I try to keep shut. Not because I miss him, exactly. Missing someone requires knowing them. This man is still a number, a voice made of old messages, a private bad decision I return to on nights when I feel too much inside my own skin.
But I miss being wanted without having to make snacks first.
I miss being spoken to like my body belongs to me.
I miss the version of myself who can feel desire without immediately counting the cost.
I typed one answer, deleted it, then typed another.
Me: Sometimes.
Unknown Number: When?
The red light changes to green, and a car behind me honks. I flinch and drive forward, gripping the wheel tighter than necessary.
“Fantastic,” I mutter. “Distracted by imaginary phone sex during school drop-off. Excellent parenting.”
But the memory keeps unfolding anyway.
Last night, I turned onto my side and pulled the blanket higher, as if anyone could see me through the phone.
Me: When the apartment is quiet.
Unknown Number: It’s quiet now?
Me: Yes.
Unknown Number: Are you alone?
I looked toward the girls’ room, where the night-light made a soft moon shape on the wall.
Me: Not exactly.
Unknown Number: Kids asleep?
My thumb paused.
I had never told him much about them. Just enough over the years that he knew they existed. He knew there were two. He knew they were girls. He didn’t know their names, their school, their faces, the way Mila sang nonsense songs in the bath or the way Nadia arranged crayons by emotional importance.
Me: Yes.
Unknown Number: Then why are you still awake?
I swallowed.
Me: First day of kindergarten tomorrow.
Unknown Number: You’re nervous.
Me: They’re five. They will be fine. I am the problem.
Unknown Number: You always were.
I laughed again, softer this time.
Me: Excuse me?
Unknown Number: You think too much.
Me: That is not a crime.
Unknown Number: It becomes one when you use it to avoid telling me what you want.
I stared at that message for a long time. Outside my bedroom window, the city was humming faintly. Someone’s dog barked two floors down. The ceiling fan made its tired little click every fourth turn. My body, traitorous and awake, started to warm under the blanket.
I had known exactly where this was going. I could have stopped. I didn’t.
Me: Maybe I don’t want anything.
Unknown Number: Liar.
The word hit too low in my stomach.
I remember closing my eyes. I remember pressing the phone briefly against my chest like that could settle me. I remember thinking that I was too old for this, too tired for this, too much of a mother with two lunch boxes in the fridge and school forms clipped to the table.
Then I typed anyway.
Me: Maybe I wanted to feel like a woman tonight and not just someone’s mother.
His answer took longer that time.
Unknown Number: Then be a woman.
My breath caught.
Unknown Number: Tell me where you are.
Me: In bed.
Unknown Number: What are you wearing?
I looked down at myself and almost laughed.
Me: An old T-shirt and shorts. Very glamorous.
Unknown Number: Take the shorts off.
I pressed my thighs together under the blanket.
Me: You’re very bossy for a stranger.
Unknown Number: You like it.
I whispered, “Unfortunately,” to the empty room.
Me: Unfortunately.
Unknown Number: Good. Shorts off.
Now, I stop at another light and glance at my phone on the passenger seat like it might accuse me. The screen stays dark. Sensible. Innocent-looking. As if it didn’t spend last night burning in my hand while I tried to breathe quietly enough not to wake my children.
The worst part is that I listened.
I put the phone beside me, pushed the blanket down, and slipped out of my shorts with my heart pounding like I was doing something forbidden. Technically, it wasn’t forbidden. I was an adult woman in my own bed. I was allowed to touch myself. I was allowed to want.
Still, the apartment felt full of invisible judgment. A lunch box magnet shaped like a strawberry was staring at me from the dresser.
Me: Done.
Unknown Number: Good girl.
The words went through me so fast I almost dropped the phone. I hadn’t expected that to still work on me.
I wished it didn’t.
Me: You can’t just say that.
Unknown Number: I can.
Me: You are impossible.
Unknown Number: Touch yourself.
I stared at the message until the letters blurred slightly.
My hand moved before I replied, sliding under the hem of my shirt, over my stomach, lower.
My body responded with humiliating speed, heat gathering between my thighs, skin too sensitive after so many months of ignoring it.
I’d barely touched myself before I had to bite the inside of my cheek to stay quiet.
Me: I am.
Unknown Number: Slowly.
Me: You don’t know how long it’s been.
Unknown Number: Tell me.
I almost typed Ruslan’s name.
I don’t know why. Maybe because memory and need are terrible together. Maybe because the last man who touched me like that was him, and after six years, my body still keeps records my pride refuses to read.
I deleted the thought before it became words.
Me: Too long.
Unknown Number: Then don’t rush.
Me: I hate you a little.
Unknown Number: No, you don’t.
I didn’t. That was the problem.
I hated myself a little, maybe. I hated the loneliness. I hated the fact that my body could be pulled awake by a stranger’s words while the real man I should have hated was somewhere in the world not knowing he had daughters.
But the unknown number was separate. He had to stay separate.
I keep driving, hands steady on the wheel now, while the memory moves deeper into places I shouldn’t be thinking about in traffic.