Someone touches me. Forces one eye open.
“Hey!” I turn my head.
“She’s rolling,” he says, then they switch back to what sounds like Russian.
When I open my eyes again, we’re alone, and he’s crouched by my feet undoing the laces of my boots.
“Awake again,” he says.
I’m embarrassed to have drifted off.
He tugs a boot off, and it feels so good to have it gone. Nina’s feet are half a size smaller than mine, and the boots were pinching my feet.
I watch his dark head as he unlaces the other boot and takes that off too, then stands. He might be the tallest man I’ve ever seen.
“You’re beautiful,” I tell him, laying my head on the back of the couch again.
“And you’re tripping. Here.” He walks away, then returns a moment later and hands me an open bottle of water.
I take it and drink a sip, then several gulps, realizing I’m parched.
He sits beside me, and I look down at what he’s holding. It’s my clutch. He opens it, and I’m slow to process as he takes out my things and lays them on the coffee table.
“Hey,” I say. “You can’t do that.”
He ignores me, eyes my fake ID and pockets it, then studies the real one.
“Your hair’s pretty. Why do you color it?”
I touch my hair, disappointed that he doesn’t like it, and suddenly feel incredibly sad.
“Ah, shit. Don’t cry.”
I didn’t realize I was.
“You’re very beautiful,” he says. “I’m just saying your natural red is very pretty already.”
I smile, taste the salt of a tear, and lean my cheek against the couch again. I watch him as he takes a photo of something in my bag.
He thinks I’m beautiful. And I think he’s beautiful.
I feel a grin stretch across my face, and I do something I would normally be too shy to do. I reach for his face with both hands, press my mouth to his, and I kiss him.
He’s surprised, I can tell, but he kisses me back a moment later. His mouth tastes good, like whiskey but not stale, just nice. And the scruff on his jaw tickles my cheek, and I want him. I want him so badly, there’s an ache between my legs and an emptiness inside me that I’ve never felt before.
But when I try to slide my tongue between his lips, he draws back.
“Hey, hey.” He looks at me, and his eyes have gone dark. “You’re high.”
I’m confused, but then I look down, and I see he does want me too, so I smile at him. “I want this,” I tell him and kiss him again.
This time, when he breaks our kiss, he groans. “Katerina,” he says, his voice low and deep and like he doesn’t want to stop. “Be good.”
Be good.
Instantly, I’m transported in time, and that feeling is gone; that warm, achy wanting has vanished.
Be good.
“I’m sorry.” I drop my head and pull my hands into my lap, then slide one up under my fingerless glove to press my nails into my forearm until it hurts. “I’m really sorry.”
“Hey.” He taps my face. “It’s all right. You with me?”
I blink, rubbing my eyes.
“I don’t know what you took, but you’re tripping. Just try to relax.”
He wipes his thumbs across my cheeks, and I see smears of black on his fingers. I turn my hands over and see how the backs are smeared with black. Smokey eye gone wrong. Nina had spent half an hour doing that. I wonder what I must look like now. A raccoon probably.
But then he takes my hands and draws them apart, and we both look down at once.
Shit. My glove.
I try to draw my arm away, to cover it, but he doesn’t let me. Instead, he peels the glove off and turns my arm so he can see all of it. Every ugly, bumpy inch of it.
I look too, and sometimes when I see it, I can still feel how much it hurt.
But that’s not important right now.
I put my hand over it, although it barely covers half the scar.
“I’m cold,” I tell him.
He looks at me, and for a moment, I think he’s going to ask me how it happened, but then, without a word, he’s on his feet, and a moment later, I’m lying down on the couch and he’s laying a thick wool throw over me. He lifts my head to slide a pillow beneath it. It’s scratchy, but I don’t mind.
There’s a ding, and I think it’s the elevator again. I try to sit up, but he tells me once again to relax, so I lie back down.
He pulls his phone out of his pocket. Must have been a text, not the elevator.
I watch him type something, then repocket it. He looks down at me. “Why don’t you close your eyes for a little bit? I have to go take care of some business, but I’ll be back, okay? You just stay here and get some sleep.”