“Easier than what?”
“Truth.”
“Which is?”
He stops, turns those frozen lake eyes on me with the slightest hint of annoyance. “Bodyguard raises questions. Boyfriend doesn’t.”
“But—”
“Move. Dairy next.”
He’s already walking away, clearly done with this conversation.
I trail behind, pausing every time he stops to grab something. Jars of vegetables in cloudy liquid. Rough, dirt-dusted roots. Cheese so pungent it could have its own passport. He handles each item with the same focus he used in produce—measuring, testing, approving—leaving no room in his world for guessing.
At the meat counter, the butcher—a young guy with a hipster beard and too much enthusiasm—starts flirting.
“Haven’t seen you before. New to the area?”
“No,” I say.
“Well, if you need any cooking tips for this beef—”
Dima materializes behind me. Doesn’t speak. Doesn’t need to. Just exists in that space with the kind of stillness that suggests violence in pause mode.
The butcher’s smile dies. “It’s, uh, pretty self-explanatory actually.”
“Da,” Dima agrees.
We get our meat and move on.
“You didn’t have to scare him.”
“Didn’t.”
“You did.”
“That was existing. Scaring looks different.”
“What does scaring look like?”
He glances at me. “You don’t want to know.”
He’s right. I don’t.
We round another corner, and I realize we’re at the last stop. Or at least it feels like it. My feet are already filing a complaint. I drift a little ahead, thinking we’re done, and somehow end up in the wine aisle. Total accident.
I reach for my usual—cheap Moscato.
He replaces it with something French I can’t pronounce.
“I don’t even like red wine.”
“You’ve never had good red wine.”
“What’s the difference?”
“One makes you forget. The other makes you remember.”
