I almost laugh at my own hypocrisy. Like I haven’t taken advantage of anyone, like my entire life hadn’t been built on the suffering of others.
“Was your cello okay?” Ilya asks, surprising me with what seems to be real concern. “I saw Kyran Winters carrying it, and he is a brute.” The way he emphasizes the word is funny, considering everybody else would callIlyaa brute.
“If you mean your friend’s, um, friend, he treated the cello well,” I answer.
It hadn’t been that Kyran guy who’d been rough with the cello.
It hadn’t been Ilya, either, when he’d helped me carry it into the back.
“Then I am glad.” Ilya takes another few bites of his parfait.
It feels like he’s just a normal man, someone I met out in the world instead of a mobster.
“How did you start with the cello?” he asks.
It’s not a question Adam has ever asked me.
I smile despite the thought. “When I was in elementary school, you could take music lessons instead of going to gym class. I decided that anything would be better, and I ended up really liking it.” My smile fades. My father had paid for the small cello, but he hadn’t been happy about me practicing it at home.
“That’s better than my sister. She hated violin, but our father insisted.” Ilya shakes his head. “‘We are Russian,’ he would say. ‘We must show the world we are leaders in culture.’”
I consider that for a moment. It’s such a small thing, but such a personal thing, too. I don’t understand why he’s sharing it with me.
Adam never talks about himself.
“What about you?” I ask. “You said your parents made you play sports? What kind?”
Ilya laughs, but his expression turns darker. “Yes. Many martial arts. Boxing. ‘A man must be strong!’” His hand tightens on the spoon. “My father had traditional ideas. Everything was very rigid.”
The mafia thing, probably, but it’s not like I can bring that up.
How do I evendothis?
It would be easier if Iwasa femme fatale, if I could really sleep my way into his life and find out more through pillow talk and intrigue.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “It doesn’t sound like either of us had the best parents.” I don’t look at him. I take a few more bites of my parfait, appreciating the fresh fruit in it most of all. It’s nice. Maybe I’ll get fruit to make fruit salad with or something, to keep this memory at the forefront of my mind when I eat it.
But then Adam would want to know why I got fruit when it wasn’t on the list, and he might not like the surprise. Or maybe he would, and he’d smile at me, and everything would be all right for an evening.
“No. But my father is gone now, and I am here in America.” Ilya finishes off his parfait. “Americans say they are the land of the free. But everybody can be trapped. If you can’t leave, if you can’t do things you love, that’s not freedom.” He looks me in the eyes then, icy blue irises freezing the blood in my veins.
What does he think he knows?
“Ilya…” I croak out. “I don’t want to talk about that.” I stare down at the parfait. My stomach doesn’t like the idea of continuing to eat.
Ilya looks at me, then nods. “All right.” He reaches out to rest his hand on mine. “Then tell me more about your playing. Do you often perform at nights open mic?”
I glance at his hand.
Mostly, I’m surprised by how little I want to pull away. I sort of like his warm hand on mine, even this little bit. I almost forget to answer, but I finally shake my head. “You mean ‘open mic nights’? That was my first time.” I let out a self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t know what I was thinking, honestly.”
“Did you enjoy it?” Ilya asks. “Some people like performing. My sister, she did not like practicing, but she liked winning competitions.”
“I think I was too sad to enjoy it,” I say slowly, which is the truth. I hadn’t even been able to enjoy the aftermath, the applause, either.
Or the fact that Ilya had come to me as a result of it all.
It should’ve been good. I hadn’t even had to figure out a way to approachhim. He’d come to me all on his own.
