Chapter 8 Lev
Lev
My father has never introduced me as his son without introducing Frol first.
I don’t know why I’m thinking about that now, at a winter festival in a neighborhood too close to home. I’m standing next to a woman who laughs with her whole body when a vendor’s paper lantern tips in the wind and almost takes out the guy behind him.
Polina grabs my arm to steady herself, and even through my coat, I feel where her fingers land. My body reacts fast.
Her hair is loose tonight. Sleek and straight, no French braid. She’s in a dark wool coat with the collar up, and a blue scarf that won’t stay tucked. Every time it slips, a strip of skin shows at her throat.
I can’t stop thinking about putting my mouth there.
That’s been the problem tonight.
We drift through the stalls and music and strangers who have no idea who we are, but my eyes sweep the crowd out of habit. A man in a gray coat about thirty feet ahead stops walking, and my stomach drops at the flash of similarity to Frol.
Then he turns. Not him.
I exhale and keep moving.
Polina stops at a vendor selling roasted nuts and pulls out cash before I can reach for my wallet. “You paid for dinner. I think I can manage some nuts.”
“I wasn’t going to argue.”
“You had the face of a man about to argue.”
She shoves the paper cone into my hand, and her fingers drag slowly across my palm in the transfer. My cock takes an immediate interest and grows even harder behind my trousers, and I resist the urge to reach down and adjust myself.
“I’ve realized you have at least four faces,” she continues, walking again.
“The one when you’re pretending to be relaxed.
The one right before you say something you’ve been sitting on.
The one when you’re inspecting a crowd and hoping I won’t notice.
” She pauses. “And then there’s the one you had just now. ”
“What did that one look like?”
“Like something scared you and you didn’t want me to see it.”
I pop a roasted pecan into my mouth and say nothing, because she’s right on all counts.
As we peruse the festival, a man moving too quickly in the opposite direction clips Polina’s shoulder and nearly spins her off her feet.
I have my hand on his collar before he’s taken another step.
He’s big, in his mid-forties, and thick through the chest, which he puffs out when he looks at me.
Then he gets a look at my face and recalculates.
“Watch where you’re going,” I drop my voice to a dangerous whisper.
He opens his mouth, closes it, then mutters something that sounds like an apology, but I hold him there for another second just to let him feel how serious I am. Then I let go of his collar, and he scurries away.
Polina is watching me when I turn back, covering a smile with her hand. “I was fine,” she tells me with a giggle.
“I know.” I reach over and tuck her scarf back into place where it’s slipped, and my fingers graze the back of her neck in the process. She sucks in a breath, and when she lets it out again, it ghosts against my wrist before I take my hand back.
After a few seconds of charged silence, she says, “You went from zero to a hundred in about half a second.”
“He wasn’t watching where he was going,” I point out as I take her hand and place it on my arm before we start walking again.
“Most people would have just said, ‘Excuse me.’”
“I’m not most people.”
She lets out a little snort. “No,” she concedes. “You’re really not.”
The festival opens into a wider square. A trio plays an old folky song near the fountain. Polina stops to listen, so I stop, too.
She sways a little without noticing. I notice the way her coat pulls in at her waist. The slow roll of her hips with the music.
She isn’t trying to do anything to me. She doesn’t have to. It’s driving me out of my mind.
I’ve been hard since I saw her tonight, and standing behind her while she moves like that is not helping. Every part of me wants to step in close, slide my hands under that coat, and remind myself what she feels like underneath it.
But I stay where I am. I eat another roasted pecan and try to think about anything else.
It doesn’t work.
“My mother used to love this kind of music,” she says out of nowhere. “She’d listen to folk music and say it was the only genre that has any real soul.”
“My father made Frol take piano lessons for appearances. He didn’t bother with me.”
She peers over at me from the corner of her eye. “Did you want to learn?”
“I was nine. I wanted whatever Frol had. Now, I’ve stopped needing what he has most of the time.”
“And the other times?”
She asks it straight without bothering to soften it. She genuinely wants the answer, which is the problem. I don’t give real answers to people, but she makes me want to.
“Frol walks into a room, and my father says, ‘This is my son.’ So full of pride. When he introduces me, it’s ‘… and this is Lev.’ Like a footnote. Like he’s legally required to mention me but doesn’t want to.”
“Does Frol know how you feel?”
I offer one curt nod. “He knows.”
“That says enough.”
“Yes,” I agree. “It does.”
She sighs and looks back at the musicians. “Did your father ever come to anything? When you were young, I mean. School, sports, anything like that.”
It’s such a specific question that it takes me a second. “Once,” I admit. “A boxing match. I was twelve. I won. He left before the final round because he had to get to Frol’s football game.”
“That’s terrible. My father came to everything. Every recital and school play. He sat in the front row and embarrassed me every time. I didn’t understand what that was worth until it was gone.”
She doesn’t elaborate. She doesn’t need to. I already know how she lost him, and it has nothing to do with black ice. I keep my eyes on the musicians and say nothing, because what could I possibly say?
“I’m sorry,” I say. It comes out like I mean it, because I do. More than she’ll know.
She glances up at me. “So am I. For both of us.”
Her phone vibrates in her coat pocket. She checks the screen, and her face pulls tight as she sends it to voicemail without a word. Someone from her world. Someone who would be devastated to find out who she’s out with tonight.
“You don’t have to ignore it for my sake,” I tell her.
She rewraps her scarf. “It can wait.”
We find a standing table near the east end of the square and eat mediocre pelmeni from paper bowls, then argue about tea while we wait for cups from the vendor beside us. She takes hers plain. I take mine with sugar. She stares at me like I’ve committed an offense.
“Sugar in tea is an abomination.”
“Sugar in tea is the only reason to drink it.”
“That is genuinely the most wrong thing you’ve said tonight.”
“It’s just sugar.”
“It’s a character flaw.”
She wraps her hands around her cup, and I watch her fingers curl around the ceramic. Before I can stop myself, I imagine those fingers wrapped around my…
“My mother always said putting sugar in tea meant you didn’t trust it.”
“So, your mother believed in suffering. Noted.”
Polina throws her head back and laughs, and I watch her throat move.
Damn.
What I wouldn’t do to wrap my hand around it and feel her pulse jumping under my thumb. Push her against the nearest wall and find out what other sounds I can pull out of her.
I take a long sip of tea instead. We finish the festival on foot, wandering until the cold drives us back to the car.
The drive back is quiet, but not the comfortable kind. It’s the kind that builds.
She’s got her boots on the dashboard, and her coat is open.
The car is filled with that warm scent I’ve been catching all night whenever she gets close.
At every red light, I can feel her looking at me, but I don’t look back.
If I meet her eyes in this small, dark car, I’m going to pull over and do something about the problem she’s been all night.
She knows it, too. I can tell by the way she says nothing, sitting there like she’s happy to let it simmer.
It’s infuriating, but it’s also the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
My hands stay on the wheel, and the want just sits there between us, thick and unaddressed, the whole way home.
By the time I park outside her building, I’m fully hard from anticipation. She’s wearing the smallest smile I’ve ever wanted to kiss off someone’s face.
Then she invites me up, and all bets are off.
Her apartment is what I expected. Small. Organized. Functional. Medical textbooks on one end of the shelf, a framed photo on the other. Her with a young woman who looks just like her. Daria, if I remember her file correctly.
Polina kicks off her boots and heads to the kitchen to fill the kettle. I watch her move around barefoot and think about picking her up, setting her on the counter, and stepping between her knees.
She reaches past me to get into a cabinet, and her body comes close enough that she barely brushes my chest. I go still and hold a groan inside my chest.
“Have a seat,” she offers, not looking at me.
“I’m fine here.”
“You’re in my way.” She opens the cabinet. “Sit.”
She measures loose-leaf tea at the counter. I sit at her kitchen table and watch her, thinking about my hands on her hips and backing her into that counter. Thinking about her neck, the way it showed all night, every time her scarf slipped.
I could cross this kitchen in four steps.
I stay in my chair because she hasn’t given me the go-ahead, and I don’t take what I haven’t been offered.
But I want to. Badly.
My phone rings right then, yanking my attention away. Ruslan’s number. I answer, keeping my voice low while Polina faces the counter.
“Frol went to Timur about your recent absences,” he says. “Timur doesn’t know anything, but Frol doesn’t ask questions unless he already has half the answer.”
“When did it start?”
“Two days ago. I found out tonight.” He pauses. “Lev. You need to think about this.”
I glance at Polina. She is looking anywhere but at me. “I understand.”
“I’m not sure you do. Because if you did—”
“I understand, Ruslan.”
Polina comes back in with both mugs. She sets one in front of me and sits across the table, pulling a leg underneath her in the chair as I end the call.
“Everything alright?” she asks.
“Work.” True enough.
She watches me for a second with dark eyes. I know she doesn’t buy it. I also know she’ll let it go. She’s good at knowing what to push and what to leave alone.
She wordlessly slides the sugar bowl across the table.
We sit in her kitchen with the building quiet around us. I look at her. She’s got one leg tucked under her and her hands wrapped around her mug. Her hair is holding the cold from outside, and I think about how many nights I have left that will look anything like this.
Not enough. Not even close.
And sitting here, I don’t know what I’m going to do about that.