Fia
I woke parched. I guzzled the water I didn’t remember bringing up and then lay flat, staring at the ceiling.
He’d given me his room again and taken the guest room across the corridor.
Bodri was nowhere to be seen, but he’d been a wigglebutt throughout the night. It felt like I’d got some sleep, so maybe he’d left a few hours ago.
Without getting up, I opened the drawer full of the snacks Zolt had left on the bed and munched on the nuts as I sulked.
Yesterday had been a rough day. I’d expected to remain strictly professional for as long as I could. I was here to complete the report and gain as much understanding as I could about Zolt’s medical clearance.
I was not here to bond with my nagyi and hug my step-brother, before bringing up that I’d left the door unlocked last time — like it meant something.
But one memory kept brutally penetrating my mind. Ichomped angrily on a handful of nuts and let it replay one final time — Nagyi sat on the patio after Zolt cleared our table, and she sipped her tea. She watched him go and then placed her small hand on top of mine. “Zsófia,” she whispered.
“Yes?”
She’d apologised for her absence as I grew up, unsure of how to communicate with me when I no longer spoke to my dad. I understood it, even if it hurt. But the way she said my name this time… this was a secret. I leaned in.
“Are you and he… are you two more than friends?”
I was glad I wasn’t drinking because I might have choked. In fact, I wanted to do just that so that I could distract her from her own words.
“Sorry?” I asked, looking over my shoulder through the tall windows, seeing him making another scone on the kitchen counter.
“Zoltán and you,” she said again, and my ears rang because it was preposterous for her to have gauged that.
“No, Nagyi,” I said and shook my head. “Of course not.”
She shrugged and sipped more of her tea, but my stomach was slowly knotting as the patio disappeared beneath my feet, and I felt incredibly weightless. And heavy.
Like I did in bed, gorging myself with nuts. Which would get me nowhere.
But it wasn’t until I smelt baked goods that I stood and wrapped the fluffy dressing gown around me.
He couldn’t top yesterday’s afternoon tea or the pasta he brought us out for dinner. I’d seen him scoffing the rest of the scones alone and tried not to laugh to myself.
Which was the problem.
I found the whole thing lonely. I was the happiest I’d been in years when I was around him, and I had no one to share all my joy with. I was trying to act nonchalant with Zolt, but I wished I had a girlfriend to squeal over all of this.
Because that’s how I felt, my happiness was overwhelming — I had to hold still to stop myself jumping up and down, grinning like an idiot at the thought of him making me pastries for breakfast.
When I didn’t think about all of our problems, when I was in his presence or thinking about him, I was a woo-girl. I was ready to woo up and down the streets.
And then I crash-landed into reality.
A reality where he always, somehow, managed to make jam sexy.
It really wasn’t fair to my sanity.
He stood, topless, making pancakes. More jam. I was screwed.
And then, on the side, worst of all, were túrós batyu. I’d completely forgotten about them — sweet, folded pastries filled with curd cheese. Nagyi used to make them on the weekends.
“Good morning,” he said with a ravishing, bright grin and threw the last of his túrós batyu in his mouth, before licking some of the escaped cheese from his thumb. “I was going to bring this up to you.”
“You’re not allowed past the door, remember?” I could not take my eyes off the pastries.
