8
Lev
My father has never introduced me as his son without introducing Frol first.
I don’t know why I’m thinking about that now, at a winter festival in a neighborhood too close to home. I’m standing next to a woman who laughs with her whole body when a vendor’s paper lantern tips in the wind and almost takes out the guy behind him.
Polina grabs my arm to steady herself, and even through my coat, I feel where her fingers land. My body reacts fast.
Her hair is loose tonight. Sleek and straight, no French braid. She’s in a dark wool coat with the collar up, and a blue scarf that won’t stay tucked. Every time it slips, a strip of skin shows at her throat.
I can’t stop thinking about putting my mouth there.
That’s been the problem tonight.
We drift through the stalls and music and strangers who have no idea who we are, but my eyes sweep the crowd out of habit. A man in a gray coat about thirty feet ahead stops walking, and my stomach drops at the flash of similarity to Frol.
Then he turns. Not him.
I exhale and keep moving.
Polina stops at a vendor selling roasted nuts and pulls out cash before I can reach for my wallet. “You paid for dinner. I think I can manage some nuts.”
“I wasn’t going to argue.”
“You had the face of a man about to argue.”
She shoves the paper cone into my hand, and her fingers drag slowly across my palm in the transfer. My cock takes an immediate interest and grows even harder behind my trousers, and I resist the urge to reach down and adjust myself.
“I’ve realized you have at least four faces,” she continues, walking again. “The one when you’re pretending to be relaxed. The one right before you say something you’ve been sitting on. The one when you’re inspecting a crowd and hoping I won’t notice.” She pauses. “And then there’s the one you had just now.”
“What did that one look like?”
“Like something scared you and you didn’t want me to see it.”
I pop a roasted pecan into my mouth and say nothing, because she’s right on all counts.
As we peruse the festival, a man moving too quickly in the opposite direction clips Polina’s shoulder and nearly spins her off her feet. I have my hand on his collar before he’s takenanother step. He’s big, in his mid-forties, and thick through the chest, which he puffs out when he looks at me. Then he gets a look at my face and recalculates.
“Watch where you’re going,” I drop my voice to a dangerous whisper.
He opens his mouth, closes it, then mutters something that sounds like an apology, but I hold him there for another second just to let him feel how serious I am. Then I let go of his collar, and he scurries away.
Polina is watching me when I turn back, covering a smile with her hand. “I was fine,” she tells me with a giggle.
“I know.” I reach over and tuck her scarf back into place where it’s slipped, and my fingers graze the back of her neck in the process. She sucks in a breath, and when she lets it out again, it ghosts against my wrist before I take my hand back.
After a few seconds of charged silence, she says, “You went from zero to a hundred in about half a second.”
“He wasn’t watching where he was going,” I point out as I take her hand and place it on my arm before we start walking again.
“Most people would have just said, ‘Excuse me.’”
“I’m not most people.”
She lets out a little snort. “No,” she concedes. “You’re really not.”
The festival opens into a wider square. A trio plays an old folky song near the fountain. Polina stops to listen, so I stop, too.
