Taylor
His words are beginning to crash into each other like waves against rocks as he drinks. His thumb slips into his vodka, and he lifts it to his lips, sucking the alcohol from his skin.
“You know I can’t, Petyr,” I say. “I have to focus on my studies. I have people relying on me back in America.”
A grin breaks across his pale face. “You mean sosredotochit’sya,” he says, drawing the word out slowly like he’s my professor instead of a drunk man with his thumb in his vodka.
“What did I say?” I ask.
“Pritselit’sya,” he laughs. “You said you need to aim yourself at your studies.”
I groan, tipping my head back. “Close enough.”
“Maybe in English. English is forgiving. Not Russian. Maybe you do need to focus, schoolgirl.” He leans closer, his grin getting worse. “So what are you doing out at the bar?”
“Alcohol is less distracting than men,” I tell him with a wink, then throw back my shot. The vodka burns all the way down. I wince so hard one eye closes.
Petyr points at me, delighted. “Stop pretending. Get a mixed drink.”
I shake my head, eyes still squeezed tight. “I’m trying to assimilate. I don’t want to be one of those study-abroad students who only eats McDonald’s, wears jeans, and asks why nobody smiles at them. I’m trying to experience the culture.”
He waves one hairy hand at me. “You’re too stubborn for me anyway.”
“And what’s good about you?” I ask, holding back a smile.
I try not to flirt with Petyr, but he makes it too easy.
He has been chasing me since the first week of my language immersion program, when I misread a café menu so badly I accidentally ordered plain hot water and a plate of pickled fish.
He corrected my Russian, bought me a pastry out of pity, and has been acting like that made us fated ever since.
And he is nice.
Or maybe not nice exactly, but kind. Normal. Interested.
And I’m going home in a year. It’s better not to get entangled.
“You drink like a fish,” I say, “and you spend all your money on it.”
“Everyone drinks in Russia. You should be lucky to end up with a man who has the money to do so.” He taps his chest, mock-wounded. “Besides, lyubov moya, I can change for you.”
My love.
He says it with a coy smile, a cloying tone in his voice that makes my stomach twist, because I wonder how much of it is still a joke beneath the teasing.
“I want to make my own money,” I mutter, standing from the creaking stool. My dress catches on the plasticky fabric, and I tug it back down, trying to keep Petyr from catching a glimpse of my skin.
No such luck. His eyes dart down, then back up to mine.
I press my lips into a tight line, annoyed. His palms rotate upward in silent apology, like he didn’t mean to see what I accidentally showed him and like that matters.
Petyr’s right, though. He’s a good man. Boyfriend material by any reasonable standard. He’s funny. He’s interested. He helps me with pronunciation when my tongue refuses to cooperate. He knows which bars water down their vodka and which cafés are kind to foreign students trying not to look lost.
But I cannot get my parents out of my head.
Their restaurant is still open, technically, but every month it brings in less than it costs to keep the doors unlocked.
My father keeps saying he needs to sell before it takes the house down with it, but no one wants to pay enough to clear the business debt.
So he keeps opening every morning, paying the lease, paying employees, replacing equipment that breaks, and losing a little more money each week.
The mortgage is bleeding them dry on top of it.
I keep thinking about the panic in my mother’s voice when she thought I couldn’t hear her talking to my aunt over the phone, the way I was acutely aware she was just a little girl talking to her sister in that moment.
And here I am, standing in a bar in Moscow, spending rubles on alcohol and calling it cultural immersion. The guilt crawls up the back of my throat, sourer than the vodka.
It isn’t as though I’m destitute. My scholarship covers tuition, most of my housing, and enough of my living expenses that I can afford to go out sometimes if I’m careful. My parents aren’t paying for my drinks.
That almost makes it worse.
I reach for my coat hanging over the back of my stool.
Petyr catches my wrist, not hard, not digging, his fingers an O around my bone. “Taylor,” he says, softer now. “I am teasing.”
“I know.”
“Then why do you look sad?”
The question makes the guilt even more persistent, a lump forming in my throat that I have to clear away. I hate when people who don’t know me well accidentally see me clearly. I especially hate when they do it while drunk and smelling like vodka and cigarette smoke.
“I’m not sad,” I say.
“You are American. You think every feeling must be named correctly.”
“And you’re Russian, so you think every feeling should be drowned.”
He laughs, and I smile despite myself. That’s the problem with Petyr. He’s too easy to forgive. He’s something akin to lovable.
He releases my wrist and lifts both hands this time, surrendering completely. “Fine. No date. No proposal. No passionate love affair that ruins your studies and makes you stay in Moscow forever.”
“Thank you for respecting my boundaries.”
“I respect nothing. I am simply patient.”
“That’s ominous.”
“Why is everything ominous with you? It’s supposed to be romantic.”
I look at him in silence as I button my coat, my fingers shoving the squeaky plastic through the tight, threaded holes of the new material.
The tip of his nose is slightly red, but otherwise, he’s handsome. Stubble grazes a strong jaw. Sparkling hazel eyes sit deep beneath a head of thick auburn hair. He doesn’t flinch from my gaze. His eyes soften, and he tilts his head like he can get a clearer view into my brain.
“I’m not going out with you,” I say finally, reaching into my pocket for some rubles and setting the money on the bar.
Petyr snatches it up and pushes it back into my coat pocket. His grin returns, lazy and warm. “One day you will realize nice men are not so bad.”
I put my hands into my pockets, fish his hand out, and drop it like something heavy and dirty, but I don’t pull the money back out.
“I know nice men aren’t bad. That’s not…” I trail off, looking toward the door and the street beyond it, wishing I were already outside instead of having this conversation. Finally, I look back at him and finish lamely, “The problem.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
The problem is that nice men expect you to become part of their lives. They expect coffee in the morning and texts before bed and dinner with friends who already know where they’re going to be five years from now. They expect normal. They expect a future.
And they should.
But I barely know what I’m doing next week.
I have a student visa, a scholarship that covers less than everyone back home thinks it does, a bank account that makes me nervous if I look at it too closely, and parents who keep telling me not to worry in voices that sound like worry has eaten them alive.
I’m double-majoring in political science and Russian, but the Russian is the reason I came here. A full year immersed in the language is supposed to make me fluent enough to turn the degree into something useful when I go home.
Diplomatic work, translation, international policy—something stable and respectable enough to justify being thousands of miles away while my parents’ lives slowly collapse.
Petyr is not the problem.
“I’m not here long enough,” I say finally.
His expression shifts. For the first time all night, the flirtation slips. Underneath it, he looks younger. Maybe hurt. Maybe just tired.
“One year is long enough for many things.”
“Not for that.”
“You are very sure.”
“I’m trying to be.”
He studies me for another second, then nods toward the door. “Let me walk you home.”
“No.”
“It is late.”
“I live two blocks away.”
“It is still late.”
“And you’re drunk.”
“So are you.”
“I’m less drunk.”
“You are smaller. It counts more.”
“Petyr.”
He sighs dramatically, like I have wounded him beyond repair. “Fine. Text me when you get home.”
I lift an eyebrow.
“As friend,” he says, placing a hand over his heart.
“As friend,” I repeat.
“Cold woman.”
“Persistent man.”
He smiles into his glass. “Goodnight, schoolgirl.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling when I turn away.