Mikhail #2
“Liar.” She drinks again. Too much this time. I reach across the table and take the glass from her hand. Her fingers tighten. “Excuse me.”
“You should slow down.”
“You just ordered it for me.”
“To nurse. You are not nursing it. So now I’m telling you to slow down.”
Her mouth opens, and I expect anger, but she laughs. A bright, startled laugh. “You’re very confusing, you know.”
“No one has ever accused me of that. I’ve always been told I am direct.”
“Oh, that’s because they’re scared of you.”
She says it like a joke, and she’s drunk enough that I can’t see what’s behind her eyes anymore, if she means it. All I know is she is looking at me like I am a man.
“Are you scared of me?” I ask.
“Not yet,” she says, her tongue moving out of her mouth to reach for her straw. She remembers grownup drinks don’t come with straws, and her tongue retreats back inside her mouth.
Something dark and possessive opens in me. “Not yet.” No one has ever given me a more tempting answer.
I wonder what kind of trouble a girl like Taylor Hayes has found before me.
Petty trouble, maybe. Academic. Romantic.
Family. Money. The soft troubles of people who have never had to decide whether a man lives past dawn.
People who have never put other people down like dogs.
But with an answer like ‘not yet,’ I’m sure there’s been trouble, nonetheless.
The night stretches in front of us as she nurses the second drink and our conversation turns sloppy. I learn she came to Russia for study abroad. I learn she is a good student and an even better daughter. I learn she is someone who measures herself that way.
I learn she has a mother who worries and a father with a failing restaurant, though she tries to say it lightly and then scrunches her whole face up when it’s out, like a terrible secret she meant to keep in.
I learn she is proud and guilty in equal measure.
I learn she goes silent when she’s divulged too much.
She’s smart, and she knows it, but she’s conflated that with street smarts. She’s painfully na?ve, settled in the back of this bar with me. I keep wanting to grab her and whisper into her ear to leave and never do anything like this again.
She learns almost nothing about me, not my last name or my work. She doesn’t learn about the guards stationed around the bar since before she noticed me or I noticed her. She doesn’t notice them even now, something that scares me.
She’s forgotten about her little friends, Petyr and Anya, hasn’t noticed that Petyr has left or that Anya keeps checking her phone and glancing toward us with open worry. Anya has nothing to worry about. I have already decided that I should leave without touching her.
The server returns. I order water for Taylor and when it arrives, I push it toward her.
She stares at it like I have insulted her. “Subtle.”
“Drink.”
She touches the rim with her finger and looks at me, eyes wide and unblinking, slightly hazy with the alcohol in her system and snickers. “Bossy boy.”
Her finger, wet with ice water, creeps toward my nose. I catch her wrist. “Man,” I correct her before letting her go. “But yes.”
“Mmm, you should work on that,” she says with a long blink. She pulls the straw to her mouth, and I try not to think of the things going through my mind, the way her lips would look puckered around my thumb or my cock.
I run my tongue over my teeth and look away quickly, pushing my nails into my wrist. “No.”
She laughs again and drinks the water. Obedience looks good on her.
She could tell me to go to hell. I suspect she would enjoy doing it.
Instead, she drinks because she knows she should, because I told her to, because the line between those two things has started to blur and she is curious where it leads.
Then Taylor leans forward, chin resting in her hand, and says, “You’re lonely.”
I still. The words are soft, so soft they’re almost swallowed whole by the music in the bar. “What did you say?” I ask her, my eyes cutting toward her so hard that she pulls back like I struck her.
She makes no apologies. “You’ve been watching everyone in this room like you’re outside of it,” she continues. “Like you’re waiting for someone to surprise you and they keep disappointing you.”
No one speaks to me this way anymore. My mother, perhaps, when she is in enough pain to forget caution. Olga Dobrovaa tries sometimes, but even she wraps truth in policy and principles. She does not put her hand directly into the wound and press.
Taylor does. Accidentally, maybe. Or maybe because she is drunk and young and foolish enough to mistake honesty for bravery.
I lean closer to her to whisper in her ear, and I feel her breathing change as she stirs to sit upright. I move her hair away from her neck. “You should be careful,” I say.
“I know.”
“No. You do not.”
She looks at my mouth. Only once. But once is enough. I stand. “We should go,” I say.
Her throat moves. “We?”
“You can go back to your friend,” I tell her. “Or you can come with me.”
I should not give her the choice. Rather, I should not want her to choose me.
Taylor looks over her shoulder. Anya is at the table alone now, watching us with her phone clutched in her hand. Petyr is gone. The empty shot glasses remain. A little circle of ordinary life, waiting for Taylor to step back into it. She could. She should. I would let her.
I hate myself a little for knowing that.
Taylor turns back to me. “How far?” she asks.
“Not far.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
“Are you always like this?”
“Yes.”
“That must be exhausting.”
“Mostly for the people around me.”
Her smile appears slowly. There’s the bad decision. I see it before she makes it. She pulls out her phone and types something.
“That’s a responsible choice,” I commend her.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” she says flatly. She sends the message, then slips the phone into her coat pocket and lifts her chin. “I’m not promising anything.”
I shrug one shoulder, my bottom lip poking out. “I did not ask you to.”
“I’m serious,” she insists, her eyes sparkling. She thinks I’m playing a game.
“I know.”
“If I change my mind, I leave.”
“Of course. I will arrange the car myself.”
She studies me like she’s searching for the trap. There is one, of course. Me. But she will not see that side tonight.
I gesture toward the door. Taylor walks ahead of me.
Outside, the cold hits hard enough to make her gasp.
She wraps her coat tighter around herself and laughs, breath fogging white in front of her.
“God, this country is dramatic.” A black car pulls to the curb before I lift a hand.
Taylor notices, and her laughter fades. “That was fast. Do you just have cars lurking?”
“Usually.”
“That was supposed to be a joke,” she says, looking up at me, her arms wrapped around her.
“I know.”
She looks from the car to me and studies my face, her brow becoming heavier as, for the first time tonight, real uncertainty crosses her face.
Finally. Good. “You can still go back inside. I think your friend is still waiting for you.”
“Do you want me to?”
“No.”
The answer is too direct. Her cheeks flush deeper from something that is not only cold. “Then don’t pretend to be noble.”
“I’m not being noble.” I open the car door. “I am presenting you with the options.”
“I know my options,” she says, but her voice is hesitant.
She looks into the dark interior. Then at me.
Then back toward the bar. Snow has started to fall in thin, delicate streaks, catching in her hair and on the shoulders of her coat.
Under the streetlight, she looks younger than she did inside.
Softer. I almost close the door. Then she gets in.
The driver keeps his eyes forward as I slide in beside her. I shut the door on the city, muffling the sounds of the street and the people.
For a few seconds, neither of us speaks. Taylor stares out the window as the car pulls away, her reflection pale against the glass. “Do I get to know where we’re going?” she asks.
“Yes. My place.”