Chapter 7 #2
She was on us before I had time to decide what to do about her.
Small. Dark hair pulled back. The same blush at the top of her cheekbones she had always had.
The same sharp eyes that had been sharp at the dinner table the first time Mikhail brought her home.
A canvas bag over her shoulder with a small wooden spoon sticking up out of the top, the kind Yelena Whitfield sold from Whitfield Ramen in Brooklyn, the kind I would know from across a room.
I went to introduce them the way a man introduces two women at a mall when one of them is his and the other one is his brother's wife.
"Chloe Kim. Sienna Sorokin. My brother Mikhail's wife."
Sienna's face did the small fast thing it did when she heard a Korean surname.
She did not check with me. She did not check with Chloe.
She pulled Chloe into a hug before either of them was ready for it, held her there a beat, then pulled back and held her by both shoulders and looked at her for a beat longer than I was comfortable with.
"Look at you. You are beautiful."
I put my hand at Sienna's shoulder and eased her back half a step.
"That is my girl you are complimenting."
Sienna's eyes sparked.
"Since when do you say that out loud, Daniil? I did not know you could be possessive."
Chloe laughed. Out loud. The first time she had laughed at me out loud in public. I took it the way a man takes a punch he has been waiting for.
"Leave us alone, Sienna."
"I cannot do that. Mikhail is at Krov until late. I am alone and I am bored and I am attaching myself to your woman."
She linked her arm through Chloe's. Chloe let her. I moved a half-step to break it up, and Chloe shot me a look over her shoulder that stopped me where I stood.
"Behave, Daniil."
Sienna stuck her tongue out at me from over Chloe's shoulder. I had not been mocked by Sienna in a year and a half. It landed the way it used to land. I let my hand fall back to my side.
We ate at a tray table by the window on the food-court side.
Sienna and Chloe across from me, side by side, the way two women sit when they have decided in the last six minutes that they are going to be friends and the men in their lives are going to have to deal with it.
Sienna had a salad. Chloe had fries and a coke.
I had nothing, because I was not hungry and because I was watching.
Sienna was telling Chloe about a case she was working.
A custody fight. A father who had gotten clean and stayed clean for two years, the maternal grandparents who had not let him near the boy in those two years, the judge who was making both sides come to the table.
Chloe was leaning in across the table. Chloe was asking the right questions. Chloe was not eating her fries.
"Does the boy know him?" Chloe said.
"He remembers him. He was four when his mother died. He is six now."
"Does he want to see his father?"
"He does. He is scared to say it in front of his grandparents."
"That is the worst part."
"That is the worst part."
I let the corner of my mouth go where it wanted to go, which was down, a small amount, at being left out of the conversation by two women who had clearly decided I was furniture.
I did not mean for the pout to happen. It happened.
Chloe caught it without looking at me. She made a small bright sound of a laugh and went back to Sienna without missing a syllable.
Sienna asked Chloe how she had ended up with me.
Chloe gave her the small clean version. The coffee shop.
The slow lap of the Maybach past her window.
The first time I had come inside instead of sitting at the curb.
She left out the parts she would have been embarrassed to tell a stranger.
She left out the parts I would have been embarrassed for her to tell my brother's wife.
Sienna listened with her chin in her hand and her eyes on Chloe's face, the way she always did.
Then, while Sienna was in the middle of a sentence about how courts treat sober fathers, Chloe's hand dropped below the table.
I felt it on my thigh.
I thought, at first, that she had put it there to steady herself, the way a person leans a hand on a thing.
She had not.
Her hand moved. Slow. Light. Going somewhere on purpose. She found me through the fabric of my pants. She palmed me there, easy, like she had been doing it for years, watching Sienna's face, listening to Sienna's case, nodding at the right beat.
I froze.
I could not make a sound. I could not move her hand.
Moving it under the table would be obvious, and Sienna would catch it, and she would not stop laughing about it for a year, and the next time the family was at a table for a holiday I would have to sit through whatever she chose to make of it, and Mikhail would not help me. Mikhail would help her.
I gripped the edge of the table. My jaw did the work my jaw had been trained for.
She has been planning this since the kitchen.
She got bolder. Her thumb moved. A small low sound came out of the back of my throat that I did not authorize. It was not loud. It was not low enough.
"Daniil," she breathed out, high and broken. Then, "Oh god." Then, lower, ragged, "Right there. Don't stop."
"I think the coffee disagreed with me." My voice was steady. My voice was not mine. "I am not feeling well."
"Looks like we should get you home, baby." Chloe was gentle. The performance was glass. Her hand was still on me under the table. "Sienna, it was so good to meet you."
The women got up. They hugged across the corner of the table. Sienna held Chloe by the elbows the way she had held her by the shoulders an hour before, and she said something low in Chloe's ear that I did not catch, and Chloe laughed.
Sienna turned to me. She looked at my face for a long beat.
She had clocked it. She had clocked all of it.
She was choosing not to say it here, at this table, in this food court, because she was going to make me pay for it in front of the whole family at the next dinner, and she wanted me to know it.
I took it. I did not have a choice.
I got Chloe out of the food court and through the atrium and back across to the parking deck. I got her into the passenger seat. I closed her door. I walked around the back of the car to my own side and I got in and I closed my door and I turned the engine on and I did not pull out of the space.
I turned to her.
I put my hand at the side of her jaw the way I had been putting my hand at the side of her jaw for two months. I kissed her, deep, the kind of kiss that pulled a small surprised sound out of her against my mouth. I pulled back half an inch. I spoke against her lips.
"You are so naughty."
"And you like it."
I held her there with my hand at her jaw and my thumb at the corner of her mouth, and I let myself look at her, and the engine ticked under us in the dark of the deck, and outside the windshield the gray of the concrete pillar held the light the same flat way it had been holding it before she had touched me under that table.
My ptichka. I am yours, and I am not coming back from it.