Day 13
Vasily’s tub isn’t designed for two people. In order for us to both fit, he has to flop one of his legs over the edge, and we’re constantly negotiating the rest of our limbs as he moves me around. I’m pretty sure the downstairs neighbors are going to come yell at us for making it rain in their bathroom for all the water that’s getting splashed out.
We’re not even having sex.
No, the first thing Vasily said to me this morning as I handed him his coffee cup was, “Let’s take a bath together.” He had his morning cigarette, I slapped some hand sanitizer on him and shoved his toothbrush in his hand, and next thing I knew, I was reclining against his chest in the tub while he soaped me up and then shaved my legs.
Totally weird. I’m pretty sure Camilla would have said something if this was normal. I’ve seen sexy scenes in movies where the lady uses a flat blade to shave her man — which looks exactly like how I would kill a man on accident — but never him wielding a Lady Bic on her shaggy legs in the bathtub.
I don’t hate it, though. He’s meticulous, and his calloused fingers gliding up the smooth trail behind the razor has me making rumbly signs in my throat.
Which has Vasily making gruffer sounds in his chest and his cock poking at my back. So when my leg joins his over the side of the tub, I expect to get some orgasms out of this. But then he grabs the shaving cream again.
I should tell him I wax. I don’t want the hair in my bikini area to grow back stubbly. But I keep quiet, and not because I’m worried that he’ll be angry if I stop him. I’m just enjoying the pampering so much that it’s okay, I’ll fix it next time around.
Hopefully I’ll be with Vasily for that. I’m painfully aware that I’ve known him for thirteen days now and we haven’t discussed what’s going to happen yet.
I consider if now is the right time. I don’t know what the rest of the day is looking like, and as likely as not, he’ll be gone for most of it. I may not get another opportunity. Before I can decide how to phrase it, though, Vasily says, “If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?”
I blink at that. We weren’t talking, but it still feels out of place. Is this his way of asking me if I want to leave him? Should I say Flagstaff? “Definitely not Phoenix,” I laugh to give myself time to decide if there’s a right answer.
He responds with his own deep chuckle and a brush of his lips over my shoulder. “Yeah, I guessed as much. Believe me when I say my first answer is not Flagstaff .”
Any tension I may have had over how to answer melts at that. The relief is bittersweet, though, as I’m reminded that he has that monster in his brain telling him he’s going to die in Flagstaff. I want to ask him why he doesn’t leave — if he leaves and never returns to Flagstaff, he’ll never die here — but I suppose when your dead mother whispers something like that in your ear, you assume there’s no simple escape.
“Hmm, when you say anywhere, how much control would I have over my life? If I said the rainforest, would I have to live in, like, a mud hut? Or could I have a nice house?”
He thinks about that for longer than I’d have expected, but he’s also shaving an extremely sensitive and curved area. After a long thought and some careful passes with the shaver, he says, “Let’s say a place where you’d want to settle down. Have a family if you wanted. You’d have to work, but you’d have a comfortable life. Not wealthy, but comfortable.”
“Ah. Well, that’s a different question.” I’m hoping he can’t hear the smile in my voice, but he definitely feels the shiver up my spine when my imagination crafts not the location or even the climate but a simple front porch of a modern house with me in one of Vasily’s arms, a toddler in the other. I’m in the ugliest maternity clothes ever, my belly protruding. For whatever reason, I’ve given Vasily some classic business casual gear and a moustache I absolutely hate.
“Why are you giggling?” he asks.
“Just a silly thought. My father used to take me to Tahoe every year. Taught me how to ski and everything. Tony hated it there, too boring. Too cold. So it ended up being just me and dad, and then the last year, his nurse had to go with us. He couldn’t ski anymore, kept trying to shoo me out. Didn’t want me to miss out on the fun. But there was nothing I could have done that would have been more precious to me than sitting in the lodge with the snow falling outside and fire crackling, spending that time with them.”
Vasily reaches over to the hand towel hanging nearby and dries his fingers before casually swiping up my cheek, catching a tear.
“Crud, sorry. You asked me an innocent question, and I turned it into drama.”
“You’re fine,” he murmurs. “Perfect. That’s . . . that’s lovely that you got to do that.”
“It’s weird hearing you say ‘lovely’.”
“I stand by that. And your brother’s a total fuckhead for not going with you.”
“That sounds more right.”
Vasily resumes his task. “Is that your answer, then? Tahoe?”
“No. If I’m being honest with myself, if I need to pull my weight, it’s going to be as a barista if I’m lucky. We couldn’t afford Tahoe. And hell, I’m not that pretentious. Not anymore.”
Something in my answer inspires Vasily to lean around me so he can peck at the corner of my lip. “So, not Phoenix and not Tahoe.”
“No, but something more like Tahoe. Somewhere with snow. Mountains to ski on. Denver? Is there skiing in Denver?”
“I think it’s flat. But it’s Colorado. I’m betting there’s some little town between Denver and skiing. Or do you want the big city? Would you want to find a city that has skiing nearby? Or, if you want to be a barista, would you prefer to live at a ski resort? I bet there are ones not as pretentious as Tahoe. Skiers love coffee.”
We’ve been in the tub for a while by this point, the water’s beginning to cool. I think Vasily’s done, so I spin on his lap so both legs are over the edge and I can curl up on his chest. I place my hand there too, feeling his heartbeat under it.
Comfortable can be a tub that isn’t really meant for two but gets the job done.
“A small town between Denver and the mountains sounds lovely.”
Vasily grabs a cup from the shelf and dunks it in the water. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Before I have a chance to consider what he means by that, he dumps the entire cup on my head. “Oh my God, what are you doing?” I squeal as I scramble away from him, but the damage is already done. My hair is drenched.
The way he sits up makes me think I’ve actually helped him. With another dunk of the cup, he says, “I’m going to wash your hair.”
“There’s no space!”
The mean jerk that he is, Vasily puts his free hand up at my hairline while he pours the next cup so it doesn’t get in my face. “I’ll pull the showerhead down to rinse it. Spread your legs to wash that pussy down, too. Get it good and wet. And then I’m going to mark you.”
“You’re going to what?”
“Mark you,” he says every bit as reasonably as he said he’d use the showerhead. “You’re mine, aren’t you?”
“Vasya, I’m not—”
He takes hold of my chin to bring my eyes to his. Clear blue. Coffee and a cigarette, that’s it so far today. Could mean nothing. I should treat it as nothing. But I push into his hand to lay a kiss on his cheek instead.
The stern look — not upset, just intense — of a moment ago melts off his face at that kiss. “Are you trying to distract me, zvyozdochka ?”
“No, but that would have been clever, right?”
“Very. You’re mine, aren’t you? And I mark what’s mine.”
Here I was thinking that the hypothetical was the test, but I should have known better. Vasily doesn’t test. He just comes out and says it.
I drop my eyes, needing to think about it and unafraid that I might irritate Vasily. These few days together, they haven’t been perfect, but they’ve been the life I think I’m supposed to have. It could simply be the fact that it’s been a bizarre sort of vacation, but I feel more like myself than I ever have before.
I trace my fingers over the brand in a V shape on Vasily’s chest. “Would it be a brand? I don’t . . . I don’t think I could handle that.”
“Of course not. I would never put something so ugly on you. It will be small. Simple.”
“Okay.”
“Absolutely not!” I protest an hour later when Dima drops off a tattoo gun but not a tattoo artist . “I’ve seen amateur tattoos before. I don’t want that on my body.”
“You’re fine. I’ve done tattoos before. I told you it’d be small. Did you really bake this bread? This is the best bread I’ve ever had. Amazing. I’ve never even thought about bread.”
I want to be mad at him for continuing to eat breakfast as I argue with him about how it doesn’t matter how I feel about him, I do not want him to tattoo with me. But that’s the third loaf of bread I made this week, and the first two I discreetly tossed into the trash because I didn’t like how they came out. This one looked perfect, but hearing him say it gets me all gooey.
“Is this safe?” I ask, somewhat mollified, as I sit back down and attempt to push my French eggs onto my garlic baguette, but my stomach is flipping uncomfortably now that the gun and all of its extra equipment are in front of me.
“Everything that might be unsafe is sealed. I’ll take care of you, you know this.”
I tuck my hands between my knees and nod.
Vasily wipes his mouth clean and carries his plate into the kitchen. He usually takes mine, too, but I don’t think he’s gotten lazy. He wants me to eat more.
“I’ll go first so you can see how this works, okay?”
“You want me to tattoo you?” I ask, horrified.
Vasily snorts. “No, don’t be ridiculous. I’m going to tattoo myself.”
Not sure I like that, either. I’ve heard they’re painful. But I watch as he gets the equipment set up, fascinated by it even though I have no idea what any of it is. I see that there’s a piece that it’s in a sealed pouch; that must be the unsafe part. The needle. Once he gets it all set, he doesn’t hesitate to drop his pants, grab a pen, and doodle on his thigh.
The sound of the gun when he starts it up gets me tense. I guess Vasily is used to it despite having only a couple small tattoos and that brand because he looks calm as anything. Even when he lays the needle into his flesh, he’s calm, literally unflinching. A good thing, I suppose, when you’re tattooing yourself. Still, I can’t help checking his eyes to see if I’m wrong and he did get high at some point when I wasn’t looking.
Nope, crystal clear, normal pupils. As far as I can tell, he’s good. Just this calm.
The way his hand is positioned, I can’t see the design as he works. He works quickly, at least in my opinion, and once he lifts his hand, he wipes it down once with a wet paper towel and shows me what he’s done.
It’s a word. A phrase, I guess, because it starts with the number 3. “Three bezgorka ,” I sound out slowly, surprised that for how incomprehensible the Cyrillic alphabet is to me, I can at least recognize the letters when it’s in cursive. Other than the k looking like a weird attempt to make a regular capital but small k , which could simply be Vasily’s own handwriting, it all looks the same.
There’s a smirk on Vasily’s face like whatever he’s just written is naughty or I’ve pronounced it in a way that makes a normal word dirty, but he doesn’t say anything and I don’t push. He was calm through that, but blood is bubbling in a couple spots. Blood is pain. I’m a wimp. I’m getting too nervous now to ask what he wrote there.
Vasily finishes up by putting a little clear strip of adhesive plastic over it, removes the cartridge, pops it in the package he got it from, and tosses it in the trash. He takes my plate then, but instead of tossing the food, he places it into the microwave, saving it for later.
“I don’t think I’ll want to eat after this,” I admit.
“You will. It’ll hurt, but it’s quick. It may get sore later, but it’s going to be small enough I don’t even think you’ll feel anything. Just a couple quick jabs, and then you’ll feel better again. Now take off your pants.” He wipes down the table with a counter wipe as he says that, just usual clean-up, and then puts on a pair of latex gloves.
I’m pretty sure if one of us does have a disease, we’ve blown right past the stage of gloves, but I appreciate the thought.
I pull down my pants and adjust my panties, only for Vasily to say, “Those, too.”
“You kept yours on.”
He flashes me a playful grin, glitter dancing in his eyes. “Because I tattooed my thigh. I’m not tattooing your thigh.”
I consider firing back that if he thinks he’s tattooing my bikini area, he better tattoo his dick first, but I don’t think he’d hesitate on that for a second.
We probably wouldn’t be able to have sex for a while. We’re in a critical window whether he knows that or not. And I’m thinking dick tattoos probably look funny. Like, it definitely doesn’t seem like the right sort of skin for it. I don’t want to look at that every time we have sex.
Hopefully for a long time going forward.
“Whatcha thinking about?” Vasily asks when I’ve gone still for probably too long.
“Am I really yours?” I blurt out.
“Da , you’re really mine. I wouldn’t mark you if you weren’t.”
“And Denver?” I ask, desperate to know if he’s thinking about an actual future.
He spears his fingers into my hair and rubs my scalp as he kisses my forehead every bit as fiercely as he would my lips. “I have a long night tonight. While you’re at Kseniya’s, why don’t you see if the town you want exists?”
It’s really happening. It’s gotta be really happening. I don’t want to go to Kseniya’s again tonight. She and Miguel have been great, but if I’m not here, it’s because Vasily isn’t, either, and there’s bad stuff going on. It’s not that I have an issue with Kseniya and Miguel babysitting me so much as I have an issue with not knowing if Vasily is safe.
But I don’t want to stress him. This Denver thing is big . We are not people who should have the ability to just move to wherever and be baristas. Didn’t he tell me that once? That he used to dream of living anywhere but here but that’s no longer an option?
I don’t push it. I remove my panties and, at Vasily’s insistence, lay myself on the table. He opens another sealed pack and replaces the bit before kissing my mound, wiping it clean with another damp paper towel, and starting up the gun.
“Aren’t you going to draw it first?” I ask.
“It’s going to be small, remember?”
“So is the one you just did!”
“I was writing upside-down on my own leg, zvyozdochka .”
“Right, yeah.” I settle back down and take a deep breath, narrowing my eyes onto the basic chandelier light hanging above my head. I jolt when something touches my mound and only afterward realize it wasn’t even the gun. It was Vasily’s other hand.
No lectures from him. No warnings. He taps me a few more times, each time starting the gun before he does so, until I finally stop jolting, and only then does his touch come with pain.
Only for a second before he lifts it away.
“You now have a tiny black dot. A beauty mark. It’s pretty.”
I exhale and look down to see what he’s wiping clean. It’s barely visible, a small dot a millimeter or two wide just to the side of my slit. It only stung a little bit, and he’s right. I feel nothing now. “Wait, was that it?”
“No, that was practice. To make sure you were steady and so you know not to be afraid. I have to have my hand on you to draw the lines properly. You feel okay?”
Unable to find fault in his logic, I nod and settle back down, this time breathing evenly. When his hand goes on me again, his fingers pressing firmly enough that they can stretch the soft flesh taut, I focus on that breathing and remain still when the needle pierces me again.
He’s fast. In my mind, he’s moving slower than he did on his leg, but time is elastic with something like this. Despite how slowly it feels like the needle moves along my pelvis, I blink my eyes, and he’s done.
He cleans me gently and tells me to stay where I am while he walks into our bedroom and returns with a small mirror. He tilts it at the right angle so I can see what’s been permanently etched on me.
It’s tiny. Not even the size of a dime. Instead of being off to the side like the practice beauty mark was, it is perfectly centered, the apex of the design leading seamlessly into the shadow of the cleft between my labia.
An Aries symbol, although I’ve traced the scar on Vasily’s pec enough times to know that it is also the symbol of the Baranov Bratva. This one has a little extra to it: a B between the horns.
“For Baranov?” I ask, reaching down to point at the letter, only for him to slap my hand away so he can wipe a bead of blood away and stick another piece of plastic to it.
“For Vasily.”
“What? Not the—” I sigh. The Aries symbol may be the Baranov crest, but it’s also a stylized V. “Did you just put your initials on me?”
He kisses me right above the plastic. “I supposed I did. Now spread your legs so I can kiss you more.”