My stomach refused to indulge me even a moment more, though. It growled again, letting me know I needed to go heat up what turned out to be chicken soup with matzo balls, which made me wonder if Rina and her grandma were Russian Jews. That would definitely explain Rina’s ability to speak the language after growing up in Minnesota.
I’d have to ask her about it the next time I saw her, which would apparently be quite often, no matter how much I protested having a totally unneeded security/personal assistant detail.
My now unmuted phone dinged with another voice text when I was halfway through the shockingly delicious and completely comforting bowl of matzo ball soup.
It was from Yom.
“Hello, Lydia,”he said again in a formal way that made me suspect he wasn’t nearly as comfortable with voice text as Trish and Merry. “Good question. Let me know when you are figuring out the answer.”
I squinted, then pushed the mic icon to ask, “Um, is this a sex thing? Are you looking to finish what we started in Berlin? Am I going to find paperwork waiting for me when I get upstairs?”
As it turned out, confronting Yom with the hard questions was super-easy. As long as it was over voice text, and he was in a totally different room where I couldn’t see him.
This time, a light gray indicator came on to let me know the hockey player upstairs was recording a voice text.
“Hello, Lydia.Nyet, I do not desire for you to give me sex, and I promise you, I will be offering you no more contracts.”
Oh.Something inside my chest sank a little, and I couldn’t figure out if it was relief or disappointment. Did I actually want him to… finish what we started?
Either way, a flicker of anger sparked inside me as I pushed the microphone icon to ask, “Are you purposefully trying to confuse me? Do you want me to, like, keep guessing about your motives here?”
I hit send, and this time, his answer came back immediately.
“Nyet. I wish for you to know my motives.”
What the hell does that mean?
I scrunched my brow and pushed the mic icon again to ask a slightly more polite version of that question out loud: “What does that mean?”
Another light gray notification showed Yom was recording… only for it to suddenly disappear.
I checked my phone again when I went upstairs to what turned out to be another ensuite bedroom at the very end of the hall. Then again, right before I went to bed after staying up way too late watching a YouTube essay about all the feuds Nitra Mello, one of the daughters fromRap Star Wives, had going before she shocked the world by becoming a doctor and marrying an amnesiac with a secret identity. But he never left another message.
And the next morning, when I turned off my alarm, the only messages I found waiting for me were from my dad—who, unlike Yom, never did me the favor of voice texting.
I pushed a command to have my phone read the messages back to me in robo voice as I climbed out of bed to begin my morning routine.
“Message from DAD: Lyds, why am I getting several messages asking whether my daughter is dating Artyom Rustanov? Something about a speech he made about you being all over social media? But I know that can’t be true because you’d tell me if you were dating the #1 top seed unsigned player in the USCA.”
I had no idea what all that seed stuff meant. And Dad, per usual, didn’t bother to explain before asking in another text bubble:
“Message from DAD: Are you dating him??? If so, it is very important that you call me. Call me as soon as you see this!!!”
I reminded myself how grateful I should be for my adopted parents—even if my dad only wanted to speak to me when he thought I was dating a hockey player.
Then I raised the phone to say, “Hi, Dad. I’m sending you a voice text instead of calling because I’m not dating Yom Rustanov.”
We’re just living together. And driving into school together. And walking out of speeches he just made about nobody other than him being able to bully me, hand in hand.
Anyway…
I sent Dad one more voice text to say, “But if you ever want to just talk, call me anytime.”
As I was about to click the arrow to send the message, another voice text from Yom appeared, and I abandoned sending a follow-up message to my dad to play it.
“I will be meeting you downstairs in thirty minutes. Also, there is a new item number twenty-two for the Anything List....”
He paused, and my breath caught.
