Earnings Season
It’s like breaking water.
Finding breath.
Gentle, for once—drifting out of the distance of sleep. Almost easy, and it’s confusing: the unfamiliar ease of relaxing back
into her body, the foreign welcome of her mind.
She’s never felt this before.
This space that isn’t lack. Looseness between skin and self, like she’s slowly cohering. Empty of real thoughts, just the
quiet hum of sensation: slept-in sheets, warm bed, and—someone else. A body near hers.
Lili shifts, hearing the rustle of her hair against the pillow. It’s barely morning; rain patters soft against the windows,
and beside her, Aleksandr is watching her.
“Hi,” she breathes—or rather, tries to.
Hoarse in her throat, her voice gives out.
As she starts coughing, the bed shifts. A cold glass presses into her hand, and Aleksandr props her up enough to gulp down
water.
“Thank you,” she whispers after she drinks, passing it back to him.
“Are you—how are you?” he asks, settling beside her. He’s left space between them.
Nestling closer, Lili leans her forehead against his chest—sighs, as she rests her palm on his bare skin, the soothing heat
of his body a weight into her bones like sleep.
“I’m okay,” she murmurs. And it’s true; truer than she’d have thought. There’s too much of a mess inside of her, still half-asleep, to look deeper.
“What do you need? More water?”
“I’m alright.” And she is, shakily so—she just wants to stay here, curled against him, letting the aches in her body subside
in the gray storm.
“Are you hungry? Food? A bath, anything?”
“Really, I’m fine.”
“Lili.” It’s a rough sigh. She looks up at him. “Just—just let me take care of you.”
His focus is intent on her. He looks exhausted, concern uneased by sleep and at odds with the strange, dislocated peace she
feels. Like he’s bracing for something.
“Okay,” Lili whispers.
Relief washes over his face.
“What do you need?” he asks again.
“Can we . . . can we just stay here?” she asks. “For a bit?”
A pause, before: “Of course.”
Lili relaxes. She breathes slowly as his steady pulse thuds under her palm.
After a moment, Aleksandr gently touches her neck. Her throat feels raw. From being choked, but also from tears; how hard
she cried last night. Some shame prickles inside her.
“Sorry for, um—crying yesterday.”
“Are you joking?” he breathes. “Lili, last night—”
“Don’t,” she interrupts. “Don’t, last night was . . .” She doesn’t want to finish the thought, ruin the spell. The idea that
this feeling—subspace?—is fleeting. I got pushed as far as I asked, and I’m not entirely sure what I found inside myself. “Just don’t.”
Guarded, his gaze follows the cautious brush of his fingers against her throat, hesitantly touching the faint weight of bruises.
Shadows clarify of both straining towards and struggling against the same body she’s curled into now, and she wonders, is
it wrong to find comfort here? But there’s this sense—clear, like release that’s finally arrived; half-spoken, just daring
to reveal itself, complex and possibly problematic—the sense that she might have survived something, past what she thought
endurable.
Not him, but herself.
Is this all you want from me?
Lili takes a breath. “That’s not all I want from you,” she whispers.
Aleksandr’s fingers still.
Ignoring the ache in her body, Lili reaches up, and she kisses him.
He hesitates for a moment before kissing her back: softly, but with a slow heat that soothes her. Subtle tension releases
from his shoulders, as he lets her sink back into the pillows, grasping her face gently—delicate, like he could break her.
When she has to pull away to breathe, Lili lets her hand linger on his face. His nose brushes hers, and some feeling soft
and hidden settles over her. She so rarely sees his face in the wash of morning, its open quiet light.
Something silver and faint catches.
Lili narrows her eyes. A tiny scar bisects his eyebrow, long healed.
“What’s this from?” Lightly, she traces the mark.
“Oh.” A faint smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “A dog, when I was seven. I tried to play with the guards’ dogs at the Bolshoi
Dom.”
Lili frowns. “What were you doing at the Bolshoi Dom?”
“My mother was in some meeting.”
“And a dog attacked you?”
“Oh, no.” Aleksandr grins, almost rueful. “A puppy they were training, we started wrestling. I was bored, waiting around.”
He has different smiles: knowing ones, public ones, practiced ones. But this smile—it’s different. In these moments when they’re
alone, quiet, and a bit uncertain with each other, it feels intimate. Crooked, just the tiniest bit uneven—it shows the gleam
of his teeth, but there is softness to it, a wry twist, and that terse watchfulness steadily drains out of him, and his hair
is messy with sleep, and this is all she ever wants him to look like—
Looking away, Lili tangles their hands together, slipping her fingers between his. She fiddles with his ring. “And this?”
“It belonged to my father.”
“A heart surgeon,” Lili remembers.
“Yes,” Aleksandr says. He kisses her shoulder. He hesitates, before adding: “Worked at Almazov.”
“And your mother was a teacher,” she says.
He nods.
There are more questions she wants to ask.
How did he die? Do you miss them? Do you sometimes hear their laughter in the streets?
“You were young, weren’t you?” she asks, instead. “During the collapse?”
“A week before my fifteenth birthday.”
Lili traces the stroke of his lifeline across his palm. “What was it like?”
He shrugs. “Inevitable, really. Felt like it had been dying for most of my life. By the time I was old enough to know what
was going on, the whole country had rotted through.”
“Was it worse, afterwards?”
“A different kind of worse, I suppose. When there was a chance to get out, I took it.”
Lili remains quiet, listening to his breathing. She doesn’t want to disturb the delicate calm settling between them. A yawn
stretches up her throat. She tries to suppress it, but her shoulders hitch.
Another kiss, this time pressed to her collarbone.
“Do you want to sleep?”
Lili shakes her head. “Can you—could you read to me?” Reaching for the nightstand—hiding the wince elicited in her body: sharp
twinge in her lower back, strain in her thighs—she grabs her borrowed copy of Cancer Ward.
Aleksandr tilts his head. “You’re reading this?”
“Yes,” she replies. About to frown, about to defend—
But he smiles, faint, as he takes the proffered book.
There’s a way people hold books they’ve loved: copies they’ve worn out. Not precious, but familiar; not careful, but welcoming.
Sitting up, Aleksandr leans against the headboard, and draws a spare pair of glasses from the nightstand drawer. Lili settles
her head against his thigh, the silk sheets soft against her cheek.
After he puts his glasses on, he runs an absent hand through his hair—the muscles of his chest, lithe under bare skin, shift
with the motion. Lili hides a small smile, looking up at him. “What do you think of it?” he asks. The rustle of paper, finding
the page she was on.
“It’s brutal. Much funnier than I expected, but it’s agonizing. Wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry sometimes.”
“Russians aren’t entirely sure if they prefer laughing or crying,” Aleksandr replies. Over the sheets, he rests his free hand
on her hip.
“Top of the page,” Lili prompts.
“Alright.” He clears his throat. “‘Although Kostoglotov argued with her, he did it only as a defense against the excesses
of medicine, as laid out . . .’”
It’s still raining. As dawn steadily bleaches the room, like the gray light that trickles into churches in early hours, Lili
listens to the sound of the rain, Aleksandr’s voice.
There’s not insubstantial pain in her body. But there’s relief, in it. Like she knows the map of herself a bit better. Little
hitches keep running through her: sharp, like aftershocks; washed up ashore—finding air; the lingering overwhelm of hurt,
more than brushed against—drowned into. Felt until its last crack, its last exhausting spasm.
Something soft, in its wake.
And she’s never—she’s never thought of this, lying on the other side of being fully broken open.
Breath. Space, between shattered pieces—relief. After giving into what she’s repressed, pushed down so deep, tried so hard to outrun.
And the idea that maybe—just maybe, and it’s delicate—barely enough to be a hope, but more than it’s ever been—that she might
be stronger than she thought: that when everything is stripped away, when she can’t run anymore, when she actually experiences
her pain—some of it, not all of it, the tender, brutal beginnings—something remains. Endures, with meaning, irreducible, that’s only hers. That it—she—might be more than the hurt; that there’s more to her than protecting the bruise she tries to hide at the center of herself—that
her grief might not swallow her, if she dares to touch it.
God, it’s so fragile—so fragile, and she can’t look too closely at it.
Lili keeps breathing, as Aleksandr reads to her.
While he reads, his voice slips between precise tones of his Oxbridge accent—clear, enunciated—and moments of something older,
more natural, a rough rasp around certain words: Kostoglotov, Tashkent, Rusanov. She lets her hands settle on his forearm,
his closeness comforting.
Holding onto his voice lets her drift, doze.
The new space adjusts between her and her pain, for now. An ease, a distance that could be healthy. Allowing it, rather than
turning away. Letting it rest—in arm’s reach—and let it be.
And there’s another question, looming in that distance, looking at this gentle moment.
Is this what you deserve?
Lili tenses, familiar instincts.
But it’s somehow—barely—a little easier to whisper: Yes.
Aleksandr’s hand on her hip starts rubbing small circles. Lili realizes he’s stopped reading. Glasses set aside, finished
the chapter. He’s watching her.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he murmurs.
“Yes,” she whispers.
He looks unsatisfied. “Do you—should we talk about last night—”
“No,” she interrupts, hurriedly. She doesn’t want to examine last night out loud; she doesn’t want to risk losing it, this