16. Taylor
TAYLOR
My mother calls at seven fourteen.
I know it’s bad before I answer.
Not because of the time. Seven fourteen in Moscow is still late morning at home, and my mother is a morning person in the way some people are born with blue eyes or allergies. She’s always believed that bad news sits better with coffee.
But she doesn’t usually call me.
She texts first. A little warning. A soft landing. Hey honey, are you free? Can I call you for a second? Nothing scary, just want to hear your voice.
This call comes with no warning. I’m sitting on the edge of my bed with my work clothes still on, including my shoes, and my blouse half-untucked, staring at the wall like it might explain what happened today.
My elbow still remembers Mikhail’s hand. Not the pressure. The restraint. The instant he let go when I told him to. That should be the part I’m proud of. Instead, it’s the part I keep touching through my sleeve like a bruise I wish were darker.
My phone buzzes again. Mom.
I answer before it can stop. “Hi.”
“Hi, baby.”
No. Absolutely not. My mother only calls me baby when she’s trying not to cry. I sit up straighter. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Mom.”
She exhales. I can picture her perfectly: standing in the kitchen before sunrise, one hand wrapped around a mug, the other pressed to her forehead. “It’s just been a hard week,” she says.
My stomach tightens. “A restaurant hard week or a normal hard week?”
She laughs softly. It sounds tired. “Restaurant.”
I close my eyes. The apartment beyond my door is quiet except for Anya moving around in the kitchen. A cabinet opens. A spoon clinks against a mug. Normal sounds. Safe sounds. I have no right to be this far away. “What happened?” I ask.
“Your dad had to push back a supplier payment. Again. And the air unit is making that noise, the one it made last summer before it died for two days. He says it’s fine, but you know your father.”
I do. My father says everything is fine the way a man in a sinking boat says the water is refreshing. “How much?” I ask.
“Taylor, no.”
“How much?”
“I didn’t call for that.”
“Mom.”
“I just wanted to hear your voice.”
That’s worse. So much worse. If she asked me for money, I could be useful. If she only wants comfort, then I have to sit here in my Moscow apartment, surrounded by all the proof of what they paid for, and do nothing but listen.
“I can send some,” I say.
“No.”
“I have a little saved.”
“You need that.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re in another country.”
“I’m in a city, Mom. They have banks.”
“Do not get smart with me from Russia.” Her snappy tone catches me off guard. It catches her too. For half a second, we sound normal. We both chuckle. Then she goes quiet. “I don’t want you worrying about us.”
“I already am.”
“I know.”
That makes my throat close. I stand and pace. My room is too small for this conversation. Too small for my mother’s tired voice, my father’s struggling restaurant, the new job I’m already ruining, and Mikhail Korolev’s fingerprints still ghosting my skin.
“I’ll send something,” I say.
“Taylor—”
“I’m sending it.”
“We’ll pay you back.”
“I know.”
“We will.”
“I know, Mom.”
She sniffles once. That almost does it. I press the heel of my hand to my eye and breathe through my nose.
“Are you doing okay?” she asks.
The question is so absurd I nearly laugh.
I think about my boss. My actual boss. The one who touched me until I came in his bed and then told me being close to a politician could help me, which sounded enough like a threat to make me cold.
I think about Nikolai not calling. About Mikhail smirking over my lunch.
About wanting a man I should be afraid of and being afraid of how much I want him.
“I’m okay,” I say.
Liar.
“Classes are good?”
“Yeah.”
“And the internship?”
I look down at my wrinkled work clothes. “It’s intense.”
“Intense good or intense bad?”
“Yes.”
She laughs a little. “That sounds like you.”
I want to tell her everything. Not details. God, not details. But enough. I want to say I made a mistake. I met someone dangerous. I feel stupid and powerful and ashamed and awake. I want to say I think I’m in trouble, but not the kind you taught me how to avoid.
Instead, I say, “I’ll send the money tonight.”
She protests twice more. I ignore both. By the time we hang up, I’ve promised to call Sunday, promised to eat enough, promised to be careful, and promised not to worry.
I break the last promise immediately. The transfer takes less than three minutes. Two hundred dollars. It’s not enough to save a restaurant. It’s not enough to fix an air unit. It’s barely enough to matter.
But it leaves my account, and I stare at the new balance until the number blurs.
Spoiled brat, I think. The words land softer this time.
Not because they hurt less. I’m just too tired to flinch.
When I come out of my room, I go straight for the bottle of vodka Anya keeps on top of the refrigerator and the shot glasses she keeps in the freezer.
Anya watches from the couch as I shoot it.
It burns all the way down. “Jesus,” I gasp.
“Solving your problems with vodka. You are becoming Russian,” she says, pointing toward the freezer. “Do not be stingy. Pour me one too.”
I sputter out something between a cough and a laugh.
It comes dangerously close to turning into crying.
Her face softens, but she doesn’t ask. That’s why I stay at the table.
That’s why I let her pour another shot. Because she’s learned, for tonight at least, not to put her hand directly on the bruise.
We drink. I don’t get drunk quickly. I get warm first. Then loose.
Then heavy at the edges. The apartment blurs into something kinder.
Anya tells me about Petyr being sulky at the bar, and I tell her about Nikolai not calling because that seems like a safe thing to tell her about. Which is almost nothing.
Not about my mother. Not about the money. Not about Mikhail grabbing my elbow and letting go. Especially not about the fact that the letting go hurt worse than the grabbing.
By two in the morning, Anya yawns and says she’s going to bed. “You okay?” she asks from the hallway.
I lift the bottle, which is mostly still full. “Almost Russian.”
She gives me a look. “Drink water, mostly American.”
When she closes her bedroom door, the apartment goes quiet, and I’m left with only my thoughts and the ringing in my ears. I clean the table badly. Put the shot glasses in the sink. Take water to my room like a responsible person and then don’t drink it.
Instead, I sit on my bed and take out my phone. I don’t have Mikhail’s personal number, but I’m resourceful, which is exactly how I ended up with an internship in Moscow in the first place. Resourcefulness got me in this predicament.
But I still have the message from his driver. I still have the office directory. I still have too many ways to reach him for someone who absolutely shouldn’t reach him.
I open a blank message. I type nothing. What would I even say? Hi, thanks for humiliating me professionally and maybe threatening me politically, also I can’t stop thinking about your hands?
I shove the phone under the pillow with a groan.
I hate him. I hate the way he says my name like it belongs in his mouth.
I hate the way he looks at me like he knows the answer before I’ve decided the question.
I hate that when he threatens me, it makes me wet, and I don’t know what it means about myself.
I hate that when he grabs me, I don’t want him to let go, and I hate that he listens.
I hate that he’s not quite all bad. I hate that I can’t make my mind up about him.
I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling.
The vodka makes everything warm and restless.
My skin feels too aware of itself. My blouse is still on but unbuttoned at the throat.
My skirt rides high on my thighs. My mind drifts, traitorous and vivid, back to his office.
His hand on my elbow. “This isn’t a movie,” I told him. “Let go.”
And he did.
My fingers find my own elbow first, pressing where his hand had been. The skin is normal. Of course it is. He didn’t hold hard enough to leave a mark. I wish he had. The thought is so embarrassing that I close my eyes.
Then my hand slides lower. Not quickly. Not dramatically. Almost like I can pretend it isn’t happening if I move slowly enough.
I think of his voice in the dark. “Stay with me.” I think of his hand over mine, guiding and not guiding. Making me say what I wanted. Making me hear myself ask. I think of his mouth at my temple. “Good girl.”
My breath catches. I turn my face into the pillow, furious with myself, and my hand slips beneath the waistband of my tights.
The first touch makes my whole body tense, not from surprise this time but memory.
It isn’t the same. Of course it isn’t the same.
My own hand is smaller, softer, too familiar.
It doesn’t carry the threat of him, the restraint of him, the terrible focus of him watching my face like every sound mattered.
I close my eyes and let myself imagine him beside me again. Fully dressed. Controlled to the point of cruelty. Watching me like he’s angry at himself for wanting to watch.
In my head, he says my name. Not Miss Hayes. Taylor.
I move my finger in a circle over my clit, and shame burns through me so fast it becomes part of the heat. I bite my lip to stay quiet. The wall between my room and Anya’s suddenly feels thin as paper.
I think of his silence when I asked if not being close to a politician could hurt me. The way he dodged the question about whether he was the reason Nikolai hadn’t called me. He did dodge it, didn’t he? He smiled when I pointed that out.
I imagine him telling me that yes, he’s the reason Nikolai hasn’t called me. Telling me to close the door. I hesitate, but I walk over to it, and I do as he asks. When I turn around to face him, he grabs me by the elbow, and this time, I don’t tell him to let go.
“Good girl,” he murmurs, pulling me toward him. I think he’s going to kiss me, but he bends me over his desk instead, face down so that my cheek is pressed against the cold wood. “You listen so well.”
He pulls my tights down and pushes my skirt up, and the air hits my exposed pussy. His fingers slide up and down my hot skin, and I jolt at the touch. His weight is on top of me, and his mouth is at my ear. “You’re already soaked, kotik.” Kitten. “Is it because I called you a good girl?”
“Yes,” I admit, shame making my cheeks hot.
He pushes two fingers into me and whispers, “Yes, what?”
I know what he wants. The humiliation is thick in my throat, but I want to say it too. And he knows I do. He can feel it in the way I tighten around his fingers, the way he can barely move them inside me. “Yes, sir,” I whisper.
He chuckles. “You’re sweet. Spread your legs.”
I open my legs for him, my face still against the cold wood, and breathe out, knowing what’s going to happen, knowing he’s going to be my first. It won’t be romantic. I want it so badly.
“You were trying to make me jealous, weren’t you? Letting him touch you?”
I nod.
“Slovami.” In words.
“Yes.”
He begins to push inside me. As I stretch for him, I let out a sound I’ve never heard from myself, and he clamps a hand over my mouth.
He gathers the length of my hair in one hand and pulls my head back while he pushes the rest of himself inside me. “No more men, Taylor. Tell me who you belong to.”
“You, I belong to you.”
His grip tightens in my hair. “And tell me who your pussy belongs to.”
“You, Mikhail. It’s yours. Take me.”
My body tightens, and the release comes hard enough that I have to press my wrist against my mouth. I groan his name into my flesh over and over.
For a few seconds, there’s nothing. No Russia. No money. No office. No Mikhail. Just breath. I lie there with my skirt twisted around my hips, my heart beating too fast, my hand still trapped beneath my clothes.
Then it all returns.
I pull my hand free, roll onto my side, and finally drink the water.
I leave sticky fingerprints on the glass.