She sways a little without noticing. I notice the way her coat pulls in at her waist. The slow roll of her hips with the music.
She isn’t trying to do anything to me. She doesn’t have to. It’s driving me out of my mind.
I’ve been hard since I saw her tonight, and standing behind her while she moves like that is not helping. Every part of me wants to step in close, slide my hands under that coat, and remind myself what she feels like underneath it.
But I stay where I am. I eat another roasted pecan and try to think about anything else.
It doesn’t work.
“My mother used to love this kind of music,” she says out of nowhere. “She’d listen to folk music and say it was the only genre that has any real soul.”
“My father made Frol take piano lessons for appearances. He didn’t bother with me.”
She peers over at me from the corner of her eye. “Did you want to learn?”
“I was nine. I wanted whatever Frol had. Now, I’ve stopped needing what he has most of the time.”
“And the other times?”
She asks it straight without bothering to soften it. She genuinely wants the answer, which is the problem. I don’t give real answers to people, but she makes me want to.
“Frol walks into a room, and my father says, ‘This is my son.’ So full of pride. When he introduces me, it’s ‘… and this is Lev.’ Like a footnote. Like he’s legally required to mention me but doesn’t want to.”
“Does Frol know how you feel?”
I offer one curt nod. “He knows.”
“That says enough.”
“Yes,” I agree. “It does.”
She sighs and looks back at the musicians. “Did your father ever come to anything? When you were young, I mean. School, sports, anything like that.”
It’s such a specific question that it takes me a second. “Once,” I admit. “A boxing match. I was twelve. I won. He left before the final round because he had to get to Frol’s football game.”
“That’s terrible. My father came to everything. Every recital and school play. He sat in the front row and embarrassed me every time. I didn’t understand what that was worth until it was gone.”
She doesn’t elaborate. She doesn’t need to. I already know how she lost him, and it has nothing to do with black ice. I keep my eyes on the musicians and say nothing, because what could I possibly say?
“I’m sorry,” I say. It comes out like I mean it, because I do. More than she’ll know.
She glances up at me. “So am I. For both of us.”
Her phone vibrates in her coat pocket. She checks the screen, and her face pulls tight as she sends it to voicemail without a word. Someone from her world. Someone who would be devastated to find out who she’s out with tonight.
“You don’t have to ignore it for my sake,” I tell her.
She rewraps her scarf. “It can wait.”
We find a standing table near the east end of the square and eat mediocre pelmeni from paper bowls, then argue about tea while we wait for cups from the vendor beside us. She takes hers plain. I take mine with sugar. She stares at me like I’ve committed an offense.
“Sugar in tea is an abomination.”
“Sugar in tea is the only reason to drink it.”
“That is genuinely the most wrong thing you’ve said tonight.”
“It’s just sugar.”
