Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Anya
Matteo had to put his phone away for a couple hours right around the perfect time. He had training to do, and I had a family meal to get through. On most days, I eat lunch by myself. Either in my room, in the living room, or by the pool if I’m up to it. Not today though.
Lunch today is bound to be an uncomfortable affair, to say the least. Uncle Lev and Aunt Irina are over to eat with us. And normally, that alone wouldn’t lead to any awkwardness, but unfortunately, there’s a new topic of conversation that’s bound to come up. And quickly.
Minutes into our plates being set down, I know I’ve messed up by bringing my phone along with me. I only get two bites of my grilled chicken salad before it vibrates against the wood tabletop, and Uncle Lev spots it.
“Not at the table,” Dad rumbles softly, eyeing it.
“I wasn’t going to respond,” I mutter, poking around my bowl and avoiding eye contact.
I silently hope that ignoring it and going back to eating will make the topic drop, but I’m sadly mistaken.
“Who is it?” Aunt Irina asks, genuinely interested. “Masha?”
My stomach twists at the sound of my old friend’s name. Masha hasn’t reached out in years, and I don’t blame her. I didn’t text her back when I ended up in the hospital, and I refused to allow her to visit me. She stopped trying after a few months of my ongoing rejection.
I didn’t want to see her. Masha would remind me of everything I lost the day that my mother took me. She would remind me of ballet, and how desperately I missed dancing. And how sick to my stomach the thought of putting on pointe shoes again made me.
“No,” I reply quietly. “We still don’t talk.”
Aunt Irina is friends with Masha’s mother.
They used to model together years ago, and even though my aunt retired from the runway to have children, she still looks like a movie star.
Tall, slim, blonde, and bursting with Russian beauty.
She probably sees my old friend often, but I doubt they speak of me much at all.
If she feels any disappointment from my answer, my aunt smothers it seamlessly. “A new friend, then?”
I hesitate, but nod. “Yes.”
“The Italian boy?” Uncle Lev asks, voice deep and disapproving.
“Italian boy?” His wife sits up straighter, her blue eyes widening.
“He has a name,” I tell my uncle grumpily.
“I do not care for his name. I do not like him.”
Well, you don’t have to text him then, do you?
Weakly, I reply, “You don’t know him.”
Aunt Irina nudges her husband, tsking in disapproval at his attitude. “Who are we talking about?”
“Matteo Moretti,” Father answers, his large hand tensing around his fork as he swings it down to stab his chicken breast hard. “One of Dmitri’s wife’s many brothers. The youngest one.”
“The one who handcuffed himself to pressure her into dancing with him at the wedding,” Uncle Lev gripes, taking a long drink of his water like he’s imagining it’s vodka instead.
Aunt Irina’s jaw unhinges. “What? You didn’t tell me about this.”
“I’m still far too angry to discuss it.”
My fork falls, clinking against my plate. “He didn’t pressure me to dance with him. He asked. He’s nice.”
My aunt gives me a sympathetic look, knowing that her husband is overreacting. “And you are…texting?”
“Father said we could be friends,” I answer with a small shrug. “He sends me pictures of the twins. Or well, he’s going to. We only started talking this morning and he already sent two.”
Smiling happily, she replies, “That’s nice.”
“Manipulation tactics,” Uncle Lev mutters under his breath.
“He’s nice,” I repeat firmly, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Is he cute?”
“Irina,” my father and uncle grumble in sync.
“What?” she asks, smiling innocently. “It is a fair question. She’s not without sight, gentlemen. This Matteo, he is a young man from a good family, is he not? She can notice if he’s cute.”
My face goes warm and I look down at my plate, trying to hide the blush. “We’re just friends.”
“Mmm,” my aunt hums, tilting her head slightly to one side. “But friends can be cute, can’t they? Your uncle has many beautiful friends.”
Uncle Lev clenches his jaw. “Don’t start.”
She giggles, enjoying riling him up. “Well, come on. Do you have a photo of him, or shall I google his name and see what I find?”
I know exactly what she’d find if she googled him, because I just did a search of my own last night.
Most of the results when you look up his name are from his own Instagram.
But others are from gossip articles that show pictures of him at formal events with his family ambassador brother, Emilio.
His tie is almost always off, and his shirt tends to be disheveled with his sleeves rolled, like it was at the wedding.
I stopped looking when I stumbled across a whole fleet of shirtless pictures of him around a pool. Pictures he posted himself in the summertime a year ago, pictures with thousands of likes and hundreds of comments.
Pictures that made my face turn bright red.
Hesitating, I grab my phone and go to my gallery. I saved both of the images he sent me this morning, and in Cesar’s, Matteo is holding him. Clicking it, I pass my phone across the table and watch Aunt Irina’s eyes light up from the screen.
Her smile spreads wide. “Anya, he isn’t just cute, he’s gorgeous!”
I try not to think about how beautiful Matteo is, so I have nothing to say in response. Uncle Lev does, though.
“He’s basically a child,” he spits.
She smirks at him, reaching over to pat his hand. “Is he a grown man trying to steal away our Anya or is he a child, lyubimiy? You cannot have it both ways.”
“He’s twenty-one,” Dad offers, looking supremely uncomfortable.
Aunt Irina looks back and forth from me and my phone. “Hmmm, a good age. You say you danced with him at the wedding? How lovely.”
I can feel Dad looking at me, but I don’t look back, remaining calm.
“He was just being nice. He probably felt bad for me because I was sitting alone the whole night.” I swallow and take my phone back.
“You were not alone,” Uncle disagrees. “We were with you.”
I ignore him. He knew what I meant.
“He brought the kids over to meet me,” I tell my aunt, smiling at the memory. “They’re very small.”
“One year old, if I remember correctly,” she agrees, folding her hands with her elbows on the table to rest her chin. “An adorable age for children. I miss when Nadya was that small. Do they speak yet?”
“Cesar more than Isobella,” I tell her, thinking back to that night. “I think she knows a lot of words but doesn’t always say them. She’s a bit shy and he’s…wild.”
“They call him a menace already,” Dad adds, unable to hide how happy that makes him. “He will be a good Pakhan with the right training.”
My aunt scoffs good-naturedly. “He’s too young to be thinking about training. He should be thinking of toys and fun, not future responsibilities.”
“Never too young,” Uncle Lev disagrees.
She waves him off. “Oh shush, you.”
There’s a small gap of silence, and for some reason, I decide to fill it.
“Matteo says that he thinks Jade and Dmitri will have many children.”
“Oh, did he?”
I nod, meeting my aunt’s gaze. She seems so interested that it files away at some of my nerves.
I missed talking to her. Even when my mom was around, I always felt closer to my aunt.
She’s soft and caring but also exciting and girly.
But Dad only recently started letting her come around the house to see me again, now that I’ve been getting better.
I never asked him to change his mind, though. I wasn’t ready yet.
“He says they flirt a lot and it disgusts him to see his sister that way. But he likes being an uncle very much so he can’t be too upset.”
My aunt giggles. “Ahh, to be young and in love. Dmitri’s wife seems very nice from what dear Anton has told me. And gorgeous from the photos I’ve seen. Such a pretty face. Did you speak with her at the wedding?”
Shame burns at my cheeks and I shake my head sadly.
“We waved at each other.” She is, though.
Gorgeous, that is. I have no idea if she’s nice or not.
I’d assume so, given how she didn’t mind the boundaries my father set for me to attend her wedding.
When no one replies immediately, I pick up my fork and poke at my food some more.
“Well, that’s all right,” Aunt Irina says lightly. “I’m glad you’ve made a friend either way. And besides, you’ll have plenty of time getting to know her when Dmitri and Ivan finally come home.”
“Right,” I agree, hoping my silent panic doesn’t show through my expression.
I know I have a few years, but I still don’t know how to handle being with my brothers again.
Seeing them at a distance at the wedding was hard enough.
Every time I think about talking to them, I think about how they saw me naked, dying, and wholly broken.
Shaking off the horrible thought, I go back to my food. Thankfully, the rest of lunch goes by with much less conversation. I’m able to finish my routine chicken salad and enjoy it like I normally would.
It’s actually one of my favorite simple lunches. I have a strict diet that I follow to help manage some of my daily anxiety and other symptoms. Tuesdays are always chicken salad for lunch, for a snack I can have Greek yogurt and a banana, and then for dinner, steak with garlic vegetables.
When I was first building my weekly food schedule, Dad was concerned that my PTSD was manifesting into an eating disorder.
But my doctors all assured him that routine would help me feel more stable.
It took away a daily choice that could cause unnecessary stress.
I could eat as much of the food as I needed, but this way, I had a healthy rotation of meals I enjoyed and never had to think about what to feed myself.
Every day except for Sunday, I eat one of the same breakfasts too.
A protein shake that helps me feel ready for the day each morning, or toast if I wake up feeling a bit nauseous from my medicine.
On Sundays, I always have a full breakfast instead.
Special protein pancakes with strawberries and bananas, plus two bacon slices.
Dad eats it with me every time. Sundays are our days, and they have been since before I started regularly communicating with him.
A routine is very helpful for managing anxiety, as well as OCD. And while PTSD didn’t give me an eating disorder, it did give me obsessive compulsive disorder. And asthma.
Yeah, asthma.
That one was a curveball we found out about the hard way. We all assumed I was having a standard panic attack until I started to struggle to breath. My throat was closing up, and if our family doctor hadn’t been on standby, it could have been a lot worse.
I’d never had asthma growing up. I was a professional ballerina at eight, I had no trouble breathing at all. But apparently, post-traumatic stress can do more than just cause anxiety, depression, and nightmares. It alters your physical brain, and in some cases, your whole physical health.
I can’t go anywhere without a rescue inhaler now, and I take a pill to manage it as well. And even as I get better and better, the odds of my asthma curing itself are slim to none. It’s chronic, and only meant to be managed, rather than fixed entirely.
Just another thing to bring me down.
Pulling myself out of my thoughts, I set my dishes in the sink and head up to my room. After lunch, I typically meditate or take a short nap. I’m not sure if I’m tired enough for either today, though. I have an unread text from Matteo to check, after all.
The soothing sight of soft purples and pearly whites greet me as I enter my bedroom, taking in a deep breath. The scent of lavender essential oils from my diffuser fills my nose, and I exhale slowly, kicking off my slippers in favor of walking around in my ankle socks.
My black yoga pants and white crewneck are warm enough that the air conditioning doesn’t feel too cool.
It’s just right in here, like it always is.
I’ve worked hard on finding out what best suits me when it comes to my bedroom.
I like having a cozy and relaxing space to disappear to.
I’d say I spend at least half of every day in here, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Laying down across the side of my bed on my stomach, I use a lilac throw pillow to prop my chin up and open my texts while lifting my feet into the air. My knees spread slightly to either side so that I can cross my ankles comfortably and rest.
Matteo
*two attached images*
Matteo
These two just woke up from a nap, which means it’s time to make a mess. Send help.
My heart twists at the pictures, soaking up every inch captured.
In the first picture, Isobella and Cesar are standing up at what looks like a water table, smacking against the clear liquid inside it, effectively splashing it all over.
In the second, Matteo is holding a grinning baby girl with his dark green shirt wet and clinging to his skin.
I can’t see his face, but I recognize his arms wrapped around her, and the picture is taken in selfie mode.
Anya
Aww. They look like they’re having a blast :)
They really do. Their matching blue eyes are alight with joy and playfulness—something that I wish I could see in person for myself. Would it be too much to ask for a video next time?
Matteo
Yeah, they’re having much more fun now that water sensory time has turned into throw water at Uncle Matteo time. I tried to tell them that I already showered today, but they’re not having it.
Matteo
Jade finds it as funny as they do, so she won’t even save me.
I know he doesn’t actually want to be rescued. I can practically read his smile through his message.
Anya
I think you’ll survive.
Matteo
You wouldn’t save me either, would you? I’m hurt.
Anya
It’s just water, it’ll dry.
Matteo
The sting of betrayal won’t! :(
Anya
I’m sure you can handle it.
Matteo
You’re right, I’m running away now! (It’s actually just snack time, but we can pretend I was man enough to tell the babies ‘no’ for once.)
I bite my lip, concealing a smile as if I’m being watched.
Anya
Very manly, running away from toddlers.
Matteo
I agree!
Matteo
Now, back to this friendship business, Miss Morozov.
Matteo
I have another very serious question for you.
…
Matteo
If you were an animal, what would you be?
I stare down at my phone, a baffled giggle bubbling out of me.
Oh, goodness.
Anya
That’s your very serious question?
Matteo
Very serious and very crucial to this friendship.
Anya
Oh, well if it’s that serious…