Chapter 17 #2
She began walking to the door, pausing when she held the handle. “I hope to see you around, Genevieve.”
She was out before I could respond, leaving a chill and an oddly familiar accent in her wake.
“Definitely not what I was expecting from your big shopping trip.”
I threw the bag containing the dress I got for Anna—which was also the only bag I was carrying—on her and hurried to my room.
Anna’s footsteps followed me, stopping when she was in my room.
“You good?”
I ignored her, snatching my MacBook from my work table and plopping onto my bed without kicking off my shoes.
The few seconds it took for the device to come on were easily the longest seconds of my life.
I cracked my knuckles, bounced my feet as distractions from the emotions coursing through me while I waited for the home screen to come on.
“Genevieve?”
Anna’s voice drew closer as I opened my Google search and typed in the words that haunted me the entire way back.
“Kazimir Ivanovich dating history.”
“Are you serious right now?” Anna exclaimed, sitting next to me.
A long list of webpages opened alongside pictures of him with different women.
“He does have a type.”
I ignored Anna’s comment to open the page from a relatively trusted magazine and almost passed out from the sight that met me.
NEW YORK’S MOST UNATTAINABLE BACHELOR
Beneath the caption were multiple pictures of Kazimir at different events, occasions and places with women who looked like they just walked off the front page of a magazine.
In all my time stalking and fantasizing about him, I never paid much attention to his dating history. I never deluded myself into thinking I had a chance and only focused on his pictures, so this was a revelation.
I scanned through the pictures, noting two things. Anna was right, he did have a type: long hair, sharp features, nice tits. The next was the dates.
Each picture had a maximum of two months between them. Some had as little as two days.
He changed women at the same frequency I changed a bra.
“Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?”
I pushed the laptop to the side, taking a deep inhale till I felt my body relax a little. The sting in my chest did die down, but it wasn’t as suffocating.
“Remember the woman I told you Kazimir attended the ball with?”
Anna nodded. “The one you said looked like the prototype for supermodels.”
The image returned with harsh bitterness. “I ran into her at the boutique.”
Anna sat up. “Did she do anything stupid?”
“Yes—No.” I let out a dry chuckle, letting my arms raise and fall limp beside me. “I don’t even know.”
“What happened?” Anna asked carefully.
I narrated the exchange in the changing room with Anna whilst watching her face go from oh to what the fuck and back to oh.
“She’s a bitch,” Anna said the moment I was done.
“Is she though?”
“Yes. She’s a bitch, a bully disguising as a girl's girl and jealous to her core.”
I let out another chuckle. “Jealous? Anna, be for real. What’s there to be jealous about? Plus, she did reveal the truth to me.”
“Yes. After spending the first half of the conversation deliberately trying to talk you down. She knew exactly what she came to do. Probably some bitter ex.”
“She’s not an ex, though.”
Anna’s face scrunched with suspicion. “Then what is she?”
“An old friend.” A light bulb suddenly went off in my head and her accent became clearer. “I think they go way back to Russia.”
Anna snatched my laptop from the bed. “What is her name?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It suddenly struck me how she had known virtually everything about me and I didn’t even know her name.
“Yup. She’s definitely full of shit.”
“I wouldn’t say so.” I tried to recall the exact details of our conversation. “The woman I met was anything but full of shit, and she was definitely not jealous."
Anna began typing. “Remind me of the gala you saw her at?”
I gave her the details and in less than a minute, she pulled up an image. “Is this her?”
“Yes,” I affirmed, staring at the woman in Kazimir’s arms.
Unlike the women on the magazine site, she wasn’t clinging to him. Kazimir had his arm around her waist, resting casually on the small of her back while they spoke to an older man with a walking stick.
“They do look cozy together.”
“Thanks, Anna,” I said, falling back on my bed.
“On the bright side,” she lay next to me. “She said they were old friends and there are very few pictures of them together. Most of them were in work settings, so I’m guessing they’re probably connected through family businesses.”
“Okay?”
“And the other women,” she shoved the screen in my face. “No multiple appearances and none lasted more than a month.”
“What exactly is your point?”
“That you’ve been with him longer than any of them.”
I stood up, pacing the room. “That’s the problem, Anna. We’re not together. I am not with him. I am just another girl he’s fucking, and if he’s kept me longer, it’s because I work in his office.” I looked at the screen. “Svetlana was right. Don’t try to pacify me.”
Anna’s face softened as she watched me. “So what are you going to do?”
I stopped mid-track. “I don’t know. I don’t know what this is, I don’t know what I want from it. The man scares me shitless so I hardly know what to do with him, but he also turns me on so bad. All I know is, it hurts seeing these pictures and hearing what Svetlana had to say.”
“Then you have to figure it out,” Anna said softly.
She rose from the bed, gave me a long hug, before silently walking out of the room.
I remained standing for a long time, Svetlana’s voice in my head, flashes of the pictures I’d seen in my mind's eye.
Kazimir and I were hardly together. Bluntly put, we were nothing. Just two people fucking, but for some reason, I couldn’t stomach what I discovered.
Today revealed the layer beneath our relationship that I’d been ignoring, and I also realized I was the only one on that layer.
The next line of action was clearer than the daylight outside my windows.