Games

Exit Event #9

“Oh. Oh—okay, I—”

Aleksandr frowns. “I want much more than that. I wasn’t lying, about children, with you.”

Hot tears swell in her tired eyes, as the tension—of what this is, where they are, where they’re going—continues to splinter.

“Sorry—sorry,” she gasps. “Sorry, I—fuck—”

His hand settles against her cheek, brushing away tears. She feels shame for how openly her crying reveals the size of her

distrust: of him, of the world, of good as something to be given rather than earned.

“How are you . . . how are you going to trust me again?” she whispers. “How am I going to deserve that?”

“Don’t you need to trust me, too?” he asks.

Unspoken: Isn’t that why you ran?

She starts crying harder. “What do you want?” he murmurs. “Tell me what you want, Lili.”

“I want to be with you,” she whispers. “I want a life, with you, but it’s—it’s hard for me to imagine that you’d want that,

too—that it wouldn’t just disappear, someday—it’s really fucking hard.”

“Ask me, then.”

“What?”

“Ask me, the things you’re scared to ask—just say it.”

She hesitates, welling heat of vulnerability. “Could you—could you really still see a life with me? Or—I mean, do you even

want that—”

Aleksandr laughs, soft. It is quiet, but it is a real sound: with genuine warmth, and a tired smile that makes his eyes crinkle,

fondness in the sadness. It makes her shame stutter. “Yes,” he says. “I want a life with you. I want to come home and see

you here. Or when I’m gone, I want to know that you’re somewhere in the world—known to me, that we’re . . . that this is something.

A life between us. That wherever you are, or whatever we each end up doing—that you come here, that this is what feels like

home to you. That us, together, feels like something—like that—to you.”

And that—there aren’t words available to her yet, to describe that: to express how much, and with what depth she wants to

reach out, and have that with him; and, too, how strongly she believes that having it will only mean losing it.

But if she thinks she deserves the horrible, unquestioningly, why can’t she deserve the good given to her, too? The blessed

and inexplicable, rather than only the horrific?

Do we have to earn everything?

Can life not be a gift, sometimes?

Fear, a shape-shifting thing.

“Aren’t you scared?” she asks.

A sound of disbelief in his throat. “Of course, I’m scared. I’m terrified. I hate all of this—uncertainty, swallowing pride,

all this stupid hesitancy—but I still want you. I still want you, and I want to believe forgiveness is a real thing, that

I can be the type of person who forgives, and doesn’t lose something, in that.”

“Why did you—I mean, not to say you’ve forgiven me, but—”

“Because I’m selfish,” he says. “I’m selfish. Like I said, I want this. I still want this.”

“Me, too,” she whispers. “Me, too, and that’s—I don’t mean to make this about me, I’m sorry, but—just to say, it frightens me, how much I want this.

I’m just . . . I’m so scared to lose something again.

After my parents . . . I—I’m terrified. Scared, too, I think, to live past the loss of them—I feel guilty even saying that.

Those are my parents, and I’m saying what?

That I found happiness that makes me forget them? I just—I don’t know.”

“Do you plan never to be happy?” he asks.

“No, but—I’m scared of forgetting. Losing them, again.”

He considers what she’s said. “I don’t think it’s a matter of forgetting,” he says. “I think that’s what you’re supposed to

build your life on. The give-and-take of loss and happiness, over and over.”

“Would you say you’re happy?”

“Not recently, no. But before, yes. I was happy, with you. That honestly made me angry, for a while there.”

“Angry?” she asks, confused. “Do you mean, after I—after I left?”

“No, before that. Right in the middle of everything. The night we went to dinner, after Greene’s party.”

A look, while they’d waited in the rain after dinner: wet pavement, rush of traffic, gleam of lights, heat of alcohol. What? she’d asked. What are you looking at? Tension in his jaw, looking away. Nothing, he’d said.

Now, Aleksandr sighs.

“I never apologized,” he says. “For that night.”

“Oh. No, you don’t—you don’t need to—”

“Let me,” he says. “Let me, that was . . . It was too far, that time. That’s when I realized what this was between us—or rather,

what it was shaping into, what I wanted it to be. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that at all—I hated it, and I’m sorry

for that. For hurting you with it, rather than—speaking to you, I suppose.”

“It’s okay,” she says, small voice. “I understand. And it’s okay. The sex, like that, it was what I wanted—you can be rough

with me, you know that. I want that. It’s the . . . not talking to me, that hurt me, that confused me. The not explaining.

But I . . . I did the same thing, if not worse.”

Because there was another glance in the rain, a different night: I didn’t see myself marrying her.

Different words, similar reactions, push and pull.

“When you have sex with other people—is it like that?” she asks. “I don’t mean just that night, I mean—all of this, what we’re . . .

what we’re like.”

“No. No, it’s not.”

She exhales a breath that’s been waiting, silent and heavy, in her.

“And for you,” Aleksandr asks, “is it like that, with others?”

“No,” she whispers. “No, it’s never been like this with anyone else.”

Lili glances at their hands again. She traces his lifeline, the warmth of his palm. Left hand, bare ring finger.

“How do I . . . ” It’s so unbelievably selfish, what she’s about to say. “How do I trust that you won’t do that to me? Sleep

with someone else, as some way to punish me?”

He stiffens. “I’ve fucked enough people these few weeks to last several years.”

Lili flinches, instinctive. Aleksandr’s gaze immediately softens.

“Sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry, that wasn’t—”

“Please stop saying sorry,” she whispers. “Please.” She remembers earlier words in bed: Missed that, the way you fucking come for me, nobody else—nobody else comes fucking close to that. “Did . . . did you sleep with many people?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. “I slept with other people, yes.”

She listens, waiting for more past his half-answer. Aleksandr lets out a heavy breath. “I just . . . I kept imagining you,

with someone else. I didn’t know why you’d left. If you’d wanted to be with someone else, if you only didn’t—didn’t want this,

with me. I was—furious. I was furious.”

Lili closes her eyes, against his chest.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know when that’ll ever mean enough, but I am sorry.”

“I want to forgive you,” he replies, quiet. “It’ll just—it’ll take time.”

You have time, she thinks. You have all of my time.

Somewhere on the floor, his phone goes off.

Aleksandr reaches for it, keeping her in his arms. He glances at the number, not visible to her. He frowns.

“Sorry,” he says, as he pulls away, getting out of bed. “I have to deal with this.”

“It’s alright.”

The sheets quickly lose his warmth. As Aleksandr pulls on his trousers, Lili sits up. She winces with the soreness in her

hips.

“Do you want a bath?” Aleksandr asks, watching her.

She’s about to decline—not wanting to be a burden—but then stops.

“That’d be really nice,” she nods. “Please.”

He goes into the en suite, tapping through messages on his phone.

As she hears the water turn on, Lili draws her knees into her chest. There isn’t resolution in the air; things are not yet resolved.

She gnaws on her nail, thinking about the calls he has to answer—work, yes, but also maybe, Sanae.

Lili is helpless in the face of that. She can’t begrudge it, little right to be angry or hurt.

Lili glances out the window, looking down Walker.

She still has so many questions.

From the window, fresh air drifts in. Summer is cooling, heat laced with the dryness of leaves, close to falling.

In the midst of those changing seasons, the city feels like possibility, again.

A place becoming a home. Concrete, stone, glass—these sidewalks, those bridges. She remembers arriving in New York, first

weeks of undergrad, during this same turn of seasons, wondering what all of this would eventually mean to her, this city that

people dream of. Over the years, the accumulation of memories and habits: the places she’s been happy, and the places she’s

been far too drunk, the places she’s watched her life change, and the street corners that hold her mistakes.

Years past, years ahead: the uncertainty of all this city could hold for her, in what’s to come.

“Alright?”

Lili glances away from the window. Aleksandr stands in the bathroom door frame, watching her with a faint smile.

Her hair feels loose and messy; the sheets are warm and white. Familiar street noises outside, the tall windows open. A man

in a door frame, the rush of bathwater, and sunlight.

This man she wants a life with.

“Yeah,” she says, with a smile of her own. “I’m alright.”

She doesn’t make it to the bath.

The water goes cold, after she’d caught Aleksandr’s gaze on her in the mirror, when she’d walked into the bathroom, sheets

clasped loose around her as she reached a hand into the bath to test its temperature.

The stare of a man who looks and looks, and finds himself wanting still.

And her heart: It thrummed a little faster, as she’d let the sheet fall, and he’d come closer.

Housekeeping arrives half an hour later, when Lili lies panting on the floor, marble slick with sweat, a glow dimming in their

bodies. The acoustics of the bathroom ring faintly with her moans, how they rose higher and higher.

“Fuck,” Aleksandr mutters. He lifts his head from her shoulder, breath uneven, leveling out from earlier exertion. “It’s the

staff. You take the shower, I’ll deal with this.” He helps draw her to her feet, starting the shower for her.

Hot water rushes over her. She tips her head back, relaxing into it. A loose smile rests in her chest.

Through the steamed glass, she catches Aleksandr’s grin, as he rights his clothes, runs a towel through his hair—and it’s