Chapter 9 #2
“You’re so gentle with each other. Tell us your secret!”
“We’ve known each other for a very long time,” Alisa said. “We just feel each other.”
The reporter’s grin widened immediately.
“So are you dating, honestly? You would make such a beautiful couple.”
“We? No… we…”
Before Alisa could say anything stupid, Lev interrupted.
“Our personal life is our personal life. Let’s not ask intimate questions.”
He said it seriously enough that the journalists only laughed awkwardly and then finally moved on to the other skaters, and without that same teasing enthusiasm anymore, as if they had already spent all their curiosity on the first questions.
After that there were only serious conversations about careers and Olympic quotas and preparations and everything else.
Soon everyone was standing separately in pairs while the reporters divided themselves into little groups, each wanting to ask one pair their own questions, and finally they drifted away from Alisa and Lev too.
Lev immediately grabbed her by the shoulders and hugged her.
“We won the gold, damn it!”
He shook her lightly, almost laughing, but Alisa did not feel what she thought she should have felt. She only felt strangely empty… this was not what she had imagined winning the championship would feel like.
“So, are you coming to the club with me tonight, or are you going to—”
“Shh!” Alisa hissed immediately, cutting him off.
“Not here, Lev, are you crazy? What if someone hears?”
“You think they understand Russian?”
“No, but that doesn’t matter, there are journalists everywhere…”
Alisa looked around anxiously, but the reporters were already gone. Only the skaters’ families remained on the ice, along with their coaches.
“I don’t know…” Alisa said quietly. “Let’s see, okay?”
Lev nodded and skated away toward the locker room, and Alisa stayed where she was for a few seconds longer, watching Tora and her mother.
Her heart tightened painfully.
Tora seemed to be loved simply because she existed… simply because she was herself. Even after winning only bronze, no one was calling her useless or telling her she had failed. No one was looking at her as if she had ruined everything.
They loved her for nothing. Or maybe, Alisa thought, that was exactly what real love was.
God… what a nightmare my life is, Alisa thought, lowering her head as she skated toward the locker room. For some reason, anger from everything that had happened suddenly overwhelmed her. She clenched her jaw as she began changing clothes.
Then her phone vibrated.
It was a message from Tora.
Alisa opened it immediately, still standing half-dressed in the nearly empty locker room, where there were no bags except her own and the Estonian woman’s, because apparently she was still somewhere giving interviews.
Tora: Location pin drop
The message contained only a location.
Tora: See you in two hours!
Alisa smiled despite herself.
Alisa: Accepted
She did not even open the map. Most likely it was another hotel. She was already used to the fact that they met in hotels, always wherever Tora was staying, because somehow it had happened that Alisa had never once had a room to herself, or else the room had been too small for two.
Two hours later, after showering and changing into an ordinary tracksuit, Alisa finally opened the location Tora had sent her and called a taxi to the address. It was some small building somewhere closer to the center.
Did they have a hotel in the center again?
Throwing a warm down jacket over her shoulders, she left her hotel and got into the taxi. The drive was not long, maybe twenty minutes.
But when Alisa arrived, she stepped out of the taxi and for several seconds did not understand where she was supposed to go.
Then she opened the map again. No, she was definitely in the right place. Except that instead of a hotel there was a sex shop.
Did Tora send me here on purpose?
Was this some kind of joke?
Alisa immediately sent her a message.
The answer came almost instantly.
Tora: I’ll be there in five mins. Go inside and look around for now, don’t freeze outside. babe. It’s -30 anyway :)
Seriously? Why did Tora need me in a sex shop?
Alisa snorted softly and, after standing outside for another few seconds, finally forced herself to go in, if only because she absolutely did not want to freeze to death on the street.
She had never been to sex shops abroad. The only time in her life she had gone into one had been when she was fourteen and had sneaked into one with a school friend purely out of curiosity, because they wanted to know what was hidden behind the dark doors with the glowing eighteen-plus sign and the heavy red curtain instead of a real entrance.
Her expectations back then had been entirely different.
She had imagined that there would be all sorts of strange dildos and mysterious cocks laid out openly, but in reality everything had been hidden away in boxes with photographs on them, and there had been weird costumes that looked more like ropes and straps than actual clothes.
Adults, Alisa thought as she stepped inside the shop and the bell above the door rang quietly, were very strange.
But she was one of them for 3 years already, being twenty was fun at some point.
When she entered the sex shop, the first thing Alisa noticed was the windows.
They were huge and completely open, everything transparent and visible from the street…
beautiful sex toys of all shapes and colors stood inside the displays, slowly turning like exhibits in a museum.
There were no shame and clearly no attempt to hide something that was apparently considered perfectly natural here.
She stepped farther inside and looked around carefully.
The shop was brightly lit, more like an ordinary cosmetics store or some neat little convenience shop than anything else.
It felt strangely domestic, as though people came here the same way they went grocery shopping, only instead of fruit and milk they bought lubricants and sex toys.
Something about that quietly shattered one of the old stereotypes inside Alisa.
Her gaze stopped on a small pink thing displayed under the glass. It was pretty and no larger than a fingertip. Before she could look away, one of the consultants approached her, a handsome blond man with a perfect beard, glasses, and bright gray eyes that lit up immediately.
“Oh, excellent choice, ma’am. Vibro bullets are very popular among lesbians right now.”
“I’m not a lesbian—”
“Oh, sorry, sorry,” he interrupted at once, visibly embarrassed. “Where are my manners? End of the shift, sometimes my brain just leaves me. In any case, this is a wonderful toy whether you want to use it alone or with a partner, no matter what gender they are.”
“This is really—” Alisa began, but she stopped abruptly when she suddenly felt warmth behind her.
Tora’s hand slipped into the opening of Alisa’s half-unbuttoned jacket and rested gently on her waist.
“And what exactly did you like about the bullet?” Tora asked softly.
The consultant smiled immediately when he saw them together.
“What was I saying? Ah, yes. It has twenty-five different vibration modes and adjustable intensity, plus it can be controlled remotely or through an app, very high-tech. It also warms to body temperature, and if you want, it can even sync with music.”
“Music?” Alisa repeated, raising her eyebrows. She could not have cared less about technology.
“Yes. It vibrates to the beat of whatever track you put on.”
Fantasies flashed through Alisa’s mind about how the bullet would vibrate to her favorite tracks…
“Interesting…” Tora looked down at it thoughtfully for exactly two seconds. “We’re taking it.”
The consultant nodded immediately.
“Anything else?” he asked, glancing between them.
Tora looked around the shop.
“I wanted to try that new rabbit, the blue one.”
The consultant turned at once toward the center display. There, under the brightest lights in the entire shop, stood some new model surrounded by so many fascinated couples that it looked almost like the main exhibit of the entire store.
“Oh, that one is wonderful,” he said enthusiastically.
“You can adjust the size, there are different vibration settings, heating mode, cooling mode, automatic lubrication, everything. It stimulates from inside and outside at the same time, and if you want, there are extra attachments too, six of them, different shapes, different textures…”
“So basically,” Alisa muttered, staring at it suspiciously, “it’s some kind of fucking transformer.”
“Well… you could say that.” The consultant grinned, and beside her Tora nodded seriously.
“We’ll take that too. And add some fruit-flavored lubricant.”
“Of course. Which flavor would you like?”
“Do you have a preference, babe?” Tora asked quietly, leaning close enough for her breath to brush Alisa’s ear.
Goosebumps ran instantly down Alisa’s neck.
“Is there a raspberry one?” she asked, staring stubbornly down at the counter instead of at Tora.
“Of course. Very popular.”
“We’ll take that,” Alisa said quickly. “And a strawberry one too.”
“Perfect.”
The consultant disappeared toward the register, and Tora turned to Alisa with a broad, almost unbearably fond smile.
“Are you nervous?”
“Maybe a little,” Alisa admitted, swallowing.
“Hey.” Tora touched her hand lightly. “You won gold today. That means every wish comes true, remember? You only have to tell me.”
She looked so bright and excited, as if she could hardly wait to get back to the hotel, and suddenly Alisa realized that if she did not say it now, she never would.
“I just…” Alisa pressed her lips together. “Well…”
Then she leaned closer and whispered in Tora’s ear.
“I’ve never… done that before. Not really. Not except for your fingers.” The words came out so quietly that she barely heard them herself.
Alisa pulled back immediately and looked at Tora, waiting for her to laugh, or look disappointed, or worse, look at her the way everyone else always did whenever Alisa turned out to be not enough.