Chapter 14 #2
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered.
Under the table, Nikos took my hand and squeezed.
“Guess it wouldn’t have mattered. Next one came out the same. Third one was better. Had eyes. Little ones. Couldn’t see shit, really, but he could catch a baseball. They all hated her, you know? Still hate her.”
I swallowed heavily. “I’m gonna…”
“Go,” Nikos murmured. He didn’t release my hand. “Can you call someone to stay with you?”
I shook my head. “It’s fine.”
“Jonah—”
“It’s fine.” I stood up, knocking the chair back, and it tipped over with a loud clatter. “Fuck. Fuck!”
Nikos’s chair squeaked across the linoleum as he stood up, and he grabbed me, yanking me into a hug. The pressure in my chest felt like it was going to explode, but all I could manage was a shaking sigh.
“I don’t know why it fucking matters,” I murmured against his chest. “I don’t even like him. I have never liked him, and this isn’t the first time he’s said shit like this. None of this is new information.”
Nikos rocked me gently. It reminded me a little bit of Alexio, only with Nikos, I didn’t want to turn my face up and kiss him. “It’s allowed to hurt, even if it isn’t new. You deserve better. You’ve deserved better your whole life. We’ll get this worked out.”
I swallowed heavily, then passed both hands down my face, but luckily, I wasn’t crying. Reaching for the table, I grazed my fingers over the top until I found my cane, then turned. “Point me toward the door, eh?”
Nikos did, squeezing my shoulders before letting go. “Call me if you need me.”
“Thanks, ah…thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t know how to properly express my gratitude. “You’re a good guy.”
“I am. Better than my brother, anyway.”
I laughed, the sound slightly hysterical, but only because the thought of Alexio sent my head spinning. But he wasn’t wrong. Though he also wasn’t exactly right. “Let me know if anything comes up.”
“I will.” His words actually sounded like “I won’t,” but I didn’t call him on it.
Instead, I made my way outside before digging my phone out of my pocket and calling for a car. It was ten minutes away, which was just enough time to rest my head against the brick, turn my face up to the soft glow of the sun, and let all the agony of that afternoon fizzle away.
The last thing I wanted to do was hang out with Vanya that evening. Which wasn’t anything against him, really. But my dad’s words had drained me, and what I really wanted was to crawl under my covers and rot.
Food was hard again. I managed half a peanut butter sandwich before I felt like sicking it all up, so I took a long, hot bath, then got dressed and made sure lights were on. Vanya texted me that he was on his way, so when the buzzer sounded, I was ready for him.
Well, I was mostly ready for him.
“You’re about to meet your best friend,” I told Athena, who was weaving her way through my legs. She had a fun fetish of trying to make me fall on my face whenever new people came over. Her little bell jingled happily.
Opening the door, I braced myself for his hug. It was big. And intense. He lifted me off my feet, then immediately let go and fell to his knees beside me.
“Oh my god, she is little goddess. Is why you call her Athena?”
“Uh…something like that.” I didn’t want to relive the weird tale of her rescue.
“Oh, little face. Why is her little face?”
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong with her face?”
“No, I—” He grunted as he stood up, and I heard the sound of him brushing off his jeans. “Sorry. I only come to America two years ago. I was in Canada before, you know? I learn English from watching show on TV about people with a lot of Botox selling California houses.”
“Oh. Yikes.”
He snorted. “Yes. Was maybe not…best influence. But I know I should get tutor or something…”
“Hey, no.” He sounded actually upset. I reached out and found his arm and gave it a careful squeeze. “Vanny no. You’re fine. I’m just a little distracted tonight.” I stepped around him and closed the door all the way. “Are the lights on in here?”
“Yes,” he said. “Very nice apartment. Boston homes are so pretty. Old. You don’t see a lot in US, right?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, I grew up in Toronto, so it was different.” I led him inside, toward the living room first, but then I remembered he was going to cook, so I pivoted and walked to the kitchen. “Anyway, if you still want to cook—”
He shook something that sounded like a heavy plastic bag. “Yes. Have everything right here. I decide not to make you Russian food. I’m make some curry instead.”
“That’s…I mean, I love curry, so that’s fine. But—”
“Is okay. My ammi’s recipe. My mother,” he clarified.
“Oh—so you’re…”
“Mm, yes. My mother from Islamabad, but she go to school in London where she and my father meet…oh. I can cook right here, yes?”
“Yeah, I—hang on.” I was reeling a little. I’d had no idea about Vanya. At all. But then again, that happened to me a lot. Pushing past him, I inspected the kitchen to see what exactly Alexio had put back wrong. I hadn’t done anything more than make a sandwich, and I’d forgotten to check.
But as my hands moved over the counters and through drawers and cupboards, I realized it was all in order. Every bit of it.
Fuck, that had never happened.
I cleared my throat. “Ah…just try to put everything back where you got it. If you’re not sure, just throw it in the sink, and I’ll put it away.”
“Okay. Promise to be good boy. Best boy.”
My guts squirmed as Alexio’s voice erupted in my head, calling me a good boy, and I had to breathe through it. “Um…anyway. So. Your parents met in England?”
“Ah, yes.” He began to unbag everything, and it sounded like he was pulling all the ingredients out of plastic containers, which made sense considering I knew curry took longer than a single evening to throw together.
“They live there for a little while, then move to Moscow, then St. Petersburg, where I was born. My ammi died after I turn one.”
“Oh god, Vanny. I’m sorry.”
“No, no. Is okay. My grandparents help take care of me while my dad working. Very good people—teach me all about her so I never forget.” He let out a small sigh.
“My dad get remarried to very nice woman and have six more kids. Growing up was…” He stopped again like he was searching for the word. “A lot of…noise. Sound?”
“Chaos?” I tried.
He smacked the counter, making me jump. “Yes! Chaos. Very chaos. But I love my brothers and one little sister. They come to visit here when they can. My dad getting a job in London last year, so they all living there, going to English school, having lots of fish and chips.”
I burst into laughter. “Sounds nice.”
“Mm. Maybe you meet them. They try to come if we make playoffs.”
He poured something into a saucepan, and the aroma was as intense as when Alexio had been cooking. My mouth watered. God, I was being so spoiled right now.
“Do you miss St. Petersburg?”
He hummed in thought. “Mm…not so much, no. I live there most of my life. My parents take a lot of…” He trailed off with a hum.
“I forget the word in English. A lot of…of shit? People saying a lot of shit about them. About my mother before she died, because she not Russian, you know? Have very different culture.”
I bowed my head. “Yeah. That sucks.”
“I come here for hockey, and people saying a lot of shit about me here too. But I don’t care. I like it here. I also have house in Canada. In Montreal. You know Gaggie? Gagnon. Rene,” he added rapid-fire.
My brows furrowed, and I shook my head.
“Backup goalie. Good friend. Good guy. He’s free agent next year and maybe sign with a new team so he can play. But he’s teaching me French. Maybe I move there when season is over instead of go back to Russia. I like Canadians. Like you, Jonah. So small, so cute.”
“Fuck off,” I said with a grin.
He laughed. “Have cute cat, have party trick eyes. I like them.” The room went quiet apart from a wooden spoon in the pan, and then he asked, “Your brother having the same eyes? Like you?”
“No. My mom took him in to get the surgery. You have to have implants for prosthetics,” I explained. I’d done this a thousand times too, but it felt less heavy with Vanya. He was so genuine. “He went into cardiac arrest when they put him under.”
“Cardiac…is…?”
“Kind of like a heart attack?” I shrugged. I didn’t remember it. I was still a baby. “He had a bad reaction to the drugs, so they decided not to do the eye thing with him.”
“Is okay,” Vanya said, a smile in his voice. “Not needing cool party trick eyes to be good goalie. He’s good guy, yeah?”
It was true, Micah didn’t need eyes to be a good goalie, and he was a good guy. He was just kind of an ass right now, and the moment all the shit in my life died down, I was going to talk to him about it.
“Okay,” Vanya said, clapping his hands. “Now we eat. I teach you real way to eat. No forks!”
In spite of missing Alexio so fiercely I wanted to cry, Vanya was a calming, easy person to be around, and I had no regrets.
Eating with my hands with Vanya was a lot like how I’d learned how to feed myself when I was a toddler. My mom didn’t bother teaching us about utensils until we’d mastered getting food from the plate and into our mouths instead of all over the table and floor.
So it was a small trip down memory lane, except Vanya wasn’t recording it and doing commentary about how blind toddlers fed themselves. It was a lot more relaxing, and once again, the food was delicious enough to spark my hunger.
We ate at the kitchen table, and after, Vanya wanted to play with Athena, so we moved to the living room so he could throw her jingly ball around for her to chase.
It was nice. It was soothing in a way I wasn’t expecting it to be.
“When was Alexio here?” Vanya asked once Athena had settled down.
My whole body jolted. “Uh…what?”
“Alexio? Zeki?” I heard something scrape across the table. “He leaving this here, right?”
I blinked rapidly. “Sorry, Vanny. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“His lucky coin? Is on your table. Unless you have same lucky coin? He told me it’s very old. He find on beach when he was a kid.”
It took me way too long to realize what he was talking about. The fucking thing I’d found earlier? I thought Caleb had made it, but oh god. It was Alexio’s?
My hands began to shake, and I held one out. “Oh. Um…can I…can I have that?”
He pressed it into my palm. “You sure? I’m meeting him at the arena tonight for team meeting. I can bring it back.”
“No, I…I’ll…I can do it.” Fuck. Fuck! Fuck, he was going to figure it out.
He was going to know that Alexio was here—that he’d fucked me six ways to Sunday.
He was going to tell people, and the secret would be out, and Alexio would hate me and…
“I need to go.” I stood up abruptly, and I could hear Vanya jumping to his feet.
“Okay. I give you ride if you want.”
“No. No…I’m sorry. I forgot my friend was coming to pick me up. Can I call you later?”
Vanya tugged me into a tight embrace and kissed both my temples. “Yes. Best friend can always call. Anytime. Three a.m. and watching funny dog videos and want to call and share, you can. I will answer.”
I wanted to be grateful. I wanted to be fine about it, but I wasn’t.
I was freaking the fuck out. Luckily, Vanya didn’t seem to notice.
He let me usher him to the door and hug him one more time, and then walked down the hall like he didn’t have a care in the world.
Like he wasn’t about to head to the arena and tell Alexio and everyone else what he’d found in my apartment and blow this whole thing apart.
Christ. I had to get to Alexio before he did. I wouldn’t be able to stop him, but at the very least, I could try out that begging thing and show him just how sorry I was for not being careful.