31
A tentative hand knocks softly on my door. I ask Lily to go away, but it’s Basile who slips into my room and sits cross-legged at the foot of the bed.
“I know we aren’t particularly close, Alma. But I could hear you crying on the other side of the wall. Do I need to go beat somebody up?”
I manage a smile, a little embarrassed that I wasn’t more discreet. “No, I’ll be fine.”
“That’s what big brothers do, right? Defend their sister. Comfort them when they cry. But I don’t really know how to do that…” He fidgets with his fingers, not quite comfortable in this new role.
“You’re doing pretty well, I think.”
“So, is it Arcadi?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
If I talk about it, I’ll fall apart.
“Basile, it’s nice of you to come see me, but… do you mind leaving me alone?”
“If that’s what you want. But one day, I reckon we’re going to have to talk about the fact that we never talk.”
He heads for the door, and the sight of him is touching, somehow. His lanky, awkward body, his little-boy haircut, his shoulders sagging under the weight of his secret. As he grabs the door handle, the words spill out of me before I can stop them.
“I saw you the other night. By the gym.”
He turns around in slow motion, his face pale.
“With Zach Powell,” I breathe.
“What exactly did you see?”
“You know what I saw. And I don’t care, Basile. You can kiss whoever you want, meet whoever you want in the middle of the night, but you should have told me. You might be less of a pain if you were a little happier.” I smile at him as best as I can.
“Oh, just look at you! Giving me lectures on happiness when your nose is all stuffed up and you’re crying your eyes out!” His voice wavers somewhere between panic and laughter.
“I just wanted to tell you that it’s not a problem that you’re gay. Or bi. Or whatever you are. It doesn’t change anything for me. Actually, it makes me proud of you. But I know it must be hard to deal with, you know, because of Tim and the rest of the gang…”
“Oh, I don’t give a damn about them. They’ve only got one brain cell between the five of them. And I’m not the first gay guy in college. But if Dad finds out…”
“We don’t know how he would react though, do we? And anyway, he can’t decide for us, Basile! Aren’t you tired of him dictating your behavior? Putting so much pressure on you all the time?”
“I am. But who am I without him?” he sighs, sad and weary. “I’m supposed to carry on the legacy, follow in his footsteps—”
“You are you,” I interrupt. “Basile Lancaster. And you have the right to be whoever you want. To love whoever you want. And so do I. If Dad disinherits both of us, we won’t die from it.”
“So, that’s your plan then? To live your life however you want?”
“Something like that.”
“And you couldn’t have chosen a guy slightly less polarizing than Arcadi to prove your point?”
I stick my tongue out at him, and he copies me, like when we were five and six years old.
“In case you’ve forgotten, you’re dating a basketball coach ten years older than you!”
“Eight. And he’s not exactly the only one…”
After dropping this little bombshell, he rushes out of my room.
“What? Basile! Come back here!”
My brother, a player?
I hear my phone vibrating in my purse, which is lying where I abandoned it on the floor near my bed.
Vadim.
Feeling little feverish, I answer after a few rings.
“Alma?”
“Vadim?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Well, no. I don’t know…”
Sniffling, I clutch the phone to my ear. I wish he was at my window. That he would suddenly appear in my room. I could curl up against him and let the hours, the days, the years pass by.
“Alma, are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“I looked into it, and apparently you have to do a blood test to confirm…”
He doesn’t finish his sentence, as if he wants to spare me the big word. And I’m grateful to him for it.
“I know a free lab where you can do it anonymously. I’ll come with you.”
“Okay,” I say. “Tomorrow morning?”
“I’ll come pick you up.”
The silence that follows feels endless.
“Vadim?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
I picture his tender smile and anxious eyes as he listens on the other end of the phone.
“I’m so sorry you have to go through this, Alma,” his husky voice murmurs. “If I could, I’d switch places with you.”
“Eight o’clock tomorrow?”
I hang up, then fall apart.
The next day, he doesn’t let go of my hand in the car. Or in the waiting room at the lab. Not even when I come back out, with a small, white bandage on my arm.
I used the blood draw as an opportunity to get an STD test, and Vadim did the same.
On our way out, we walk for a bit before sitting down on a café patio. We order two lattes, which neither of us touches.
Vadim is the first to break the silence. “How long has it been?”
“Not even two hours. They said they’d call me.”
Silence settles over us again. We wait and wait some more, without saying a word. My head gradually comes to rest on his shoulder, and his arm wraps around me. Our bubble protects us. Until my cell phone comes to life and bursts it.
In a daze, I listen to the woman from the lab give me the results. I mutter a quick thank you, and then hang up.
“It’s negative,” I murmur. “Our other tests, too.”
I burst into tears. Overwhelmingly relieved, yet also caught up in a wave of sadness. The top half of my body crumples onto the small table. Vadim sits me up and pulls me against him.
“Alma, it’s going to be okay. There, there. Easy…”
Between sobs, I try to speak. “She said the embryo must have stopped developing.”
“You must be relieved.”
“Yes, but I’m sorry, too. For you. For all this.”
“Don’t be. It just proved to me how much I love you, Alma.”
I cry even harder, in the arms of this wonderful guy, whom I feel I don’t deserve.
“You know, one day I’ll be the happiest girl in the world when they give us a positive result.”
He smiles and kisses my neck. “When the time comes, I plan to give you two or three…”