10. Taylor
TAYLOR
The driver does not speak to me.
Somehow, that makes it worse.
If he looked at me in the rearview mirror, if he smirked, if he asked for an address in a tone that suggested he knew exactly what kind of girl gets driven home from a stranger’s house at eight forty in the morning wearing yesterday’s dress and last night’s shame, I could hate him.
I could build myself up around the insult.
I could become sharp and indignant and American about it.
But he says nothing. Well, he says one thing. He says, “Your seat belt, miss,” and when I buckle up with a small laugh, he begins driving down Mikhail’s luxuriously long driveway. An iron gate opens, and I hazard a glance back, just one. I can make out his figure, still watching.
I close my eyes against the knife twist of him watching me and face forward again.
The driver remains silent. I look out the window at Moscow, somehow quieter and stiller than usual, as if everyone in it has agreed I should be alone with my thoughts.
Alone with the underwear in my purse and the dried mascara along my waterline.
My mind wanders to Mikhail’s room. His bed.
His hand over mine, twice the size, a dusting of dark hair on his scarred knuckles, rings on his fingers.
His lips near my ear, his voice graveled and deep, his accent thickening as the night went on, telling me to stay with him like I was in danger of floating away from my own body.
Nope. Absolutely not. We are not thinking about that in a stranger’s car.
Except I am. Of course I am.
I press my knees together so hard it hurts.
The driver turns down a familiar street, and the spell breaks all at once.
My apartment building appears ahead of us, gray and square and aggressively normal.
No gate. No marble. No men posted at the doors pretending not to be guards.
Just the chipped front steps, the dirty snow along the curb, and the buzzer that only works if you hit it with the heel of your hand.
The car stops. Before I can reach for the handle, the driver is already outside, opening the door. I step onto the sidewalk.
“Thank you,” I tell him as he offers his hand. I take it, surprised by the chivalry and in need of it all at once, still shaky from dehydration or exhaustion or adrenaline.
He inclines his head. “Miss Hayes.”
I freeze. He knows my name. Of course he knows my name. Mikhail must have told him. I force myself to nod like this is normal, then hurry up the steps before I can do something embarrassing, like ask if his boss always sends girls home in black cars after ruining their lives with his hands.
The apartment door opens before my key is fully in the lock.
Anya stands on the other side wearing flannel pajama pants, a university sweatshirt, and the expression of a woman who has spent the last ten hours imagining my murder.
Her long silvery-blond hair is tangled over one shoulder, and bluish-purple shadows bruise the skin beneath her blue eyes. “Oh my God,” she says.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Do not good morning me.” She grabs my arm and yanks me inside. “Where were you?”
“I texted you.”
“You texted me, ‘I’m fine, going somewhere safe,’ which is exactly what someone texts before she dies in a documentary.”
“I didn’t die.”
“That is not because of your decision-making skills,” she tells me sharply, her eyes roaming up and down my outfit.
I pull my arm away. The apartment smells like burnt coffee and toast. Our little kitchen table is covered in her Russian homework, two mugs, and the remains of what looks like a package of stress-eaten crackers.
My stomach twists. She really was worried.
I know I should take the time to console her, but I’m too tired, too full of the awful knowledge that I will never see Mikhail again and that I got played.
And most of all, I am way too late. “I need to get ready,” I say.
Anya follows me down the narrow hall. “No. You need to tell me what happened.”
“Nothing happened. I went to his house.”
She stops so suddenly I almost run into her when I turn toward my room. Her eyes drop to my dress. My coat. My face. “Taylor. You went to the house of a strange man in Moscow.”
“He wasn’t strange.”
“You met him last night.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s strange.”
“That is exactly what it means.” Her voice rises.
“Do you hear yourself? You disappeared with some older man none of us knew, Petyr left because he was furious, I stayed at that bar for an hour waiting for you to come back, and then I spent the rest of the night staring at my phone because your location stopped updating.”
Guilt hits low and fast. The service at Mikhail’s house must have been terrible. Of course it was. The place is large enough to have its own weather system. “I’m sorry,” I say, but it comes out too small and too annoyed to be useful.
Anya hears that too. “You are sorry?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say you understand how stupid that was.”
I flinch. Not because she’s wrong. Because she says it like she has been holding the word in her teeth all night and finally gets to spit it at me. Stupid.
I feel stupid. And for more reasons than she knows.
I have felt stupid since I woke up and realized I had to be somewhere in twenty-three minutes.
I felt stupid when he told me no at the door, like last night was something he needed to correct before it got worse.
I felt stupid in the car, staring out the window like some rich man’s discarded mistake, with Mikhail’s shirt folded in my bag like evidence.
I felt stupid when I realized I might have ruined my first real opportunity to make this year mean something.
My family spent money they did not have to send me here while my father’s restaurant continues losing more every month, and I celebrated proving their sacrifice was worthwhile by getting drunk the night before my first day.
I spent all year turning away Petyr because I didn’t need a distraction, and one night of distractions could have ruined it anyway.
Now Anya is standing in our hallway saying what I already know out loud.
“I know it was stupid,” I snap.
“Do you?” she asks, her eyes wild and sunken.
“Because it really does not seem like you do. It seems like you got into a nice car with a man who bought you drinks and decided that because he was attractive and rich, basic survival rules stopped applying. And what time were you supposed to be at work today, Taylor? You just don’t care anymore?
This isn’t you. You’re not some spoiled little American. ”
My throat tightens, and I push past her into my room.
“You’re trying to lecture me because you’re scared, and I get that.
I do. But I cannot do this right now because you’re right, I’m late.
I was supposed to be at work at nine, and I don’t even know what time it is.
Since you’re also right that it isn’t like me not to care, I am still going.
My parents didn’t sacrifice everything they did for me to waste this, so I need to get ready.
” I slam the door shut on her and lock it.
I take one second to breathe. My room is tiny and cold, the radiator doing its best and failing with dignity.
Clothes sit folded on the chair. My internship outfit hangs from the closet door, steamed yesterday before I went out because I was trying to be the kind of person who deserved to be here.
A good student. A grateful daughter. A girl who doesn’t waste chances other people paid for.
I grab the blouse from the hanger too hard, and the hanger clatters to the floor.
“Taylor,” Anya says through the door, softer now. I ignore her and start digging through my dresser for clean tights, the stench of cigarettes clinging to the pair from last night. “I didn’t mean spoiled.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I meant reckless.”
“You meant spoiled.”
She goes quiet. I yank the door open, blouse clutched in one hand.
“Do you know how much my parents spent for me to come here? How many extra shifts my mom picked up? My dad’s restaurant is still open, but every month it stays open costs them more money, and no one will offer enough for it to clear the debt.
They’re drowning, but they still wanted me to have this opportunity.
Which means I had better not fuck it up. Do you know all that?”
Anya says nothing. She’s watching me with a slight pout to her perfect lips, her delicate bone structure made harsher by the shadows beneath her eyes from staying awake waiting for me. I’m gaining steam now, angry with the world and making Anya answer for it.
“And I’m here. I’m here in Moscow, taking pictures of pretty buildings and drinking too much and going home with men I shouldn’t because I got an internship and wanted to feel normal for once, I guess.
A stupid internship that probably doesn’t even matter.
And my parents are at home acting like it’s all worth it because I’m supposed to be doing something impressive. ”
My voice breaks on the last word. Embarrassed, I bury my face in my blouse and pull it over my head. “I already feel like a spoiled brat,” I say. “I feel like one all the time. I really don’t need you to stand there and say it for me.”
Anya’s voice is very quiet when she says, “I did not know.”
“No one knows,” I tell her while I pull on the clean tights, no longer worried about modesty.
She looks away anyway, her hands behind her back and her eyes fixed on the wall. “You could have told me.”
“When? Between vocabulary drills or during commercial breaks? Or maybe when you were telling me I should give Petyr a chance?”
“That is not fair.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I am sorry,” she says.
I laugh once. It sounds awful. I step into my skirt. My hands shake as I fasten it. “You were right.”
“No, I was not.”