Chapter Fourteen
AgeFourteen
At first, the boy came every week.
Then, every other day.
Finally, he started coming every night.
She knew he wasn’t supposed to be there because he smelled like the subway: diesel, brake dust, takeout, and sweat.
He introduced himself as Achilles. Wrote his name in Russian on a piece of paper, which she tucked under her pillow as if he were a wish.
She told him her name was Tierney. He didn’t need to write that down. Every fiber of her was etched into his memory like a bone-deep scar.
He brought her gifts. Italian pastries and CDs he’d burned with his favorite songs. Satin scrunchies for her delicate red hair, and two thick pocket-size books—theOxford Russian-English Dictionary, one for him and one for her.
They leafed through the dictionary and pointed at words they wanted to say to each other. Getting to know one anotherwas like peeling an apple slowly, paring the skin in one whole thread.
Slow. Careful. Oddly rewarding.
The raw anticipation of finding out what the other was going to say, the careful flip of the pages, the somersaults their hearts did in their chests made them forget the world outside of Tierney’s bedroom.
A world where he was a stone-cold killer and she was the odd, broken girl her father and older brother were too cautious to approach.
One day, she pointed at a sequence of words.
“I am so sorry I still can’t speak English.”
He frowned at her, shaking his head and flipping through the dictionary to find his own words.
“I’ll wait forever to hear your voice.”
They grinned at each other, and she felt herself blushing all the way down to her little toes. He, too, felt like something inside him moved and shifted, rearranging itself in a way that made it less hard to breathe.
Their knees touched as they sat crisscross, and suddenly, he wanted to kiss her.Kisskiss. Not those quiet pecks on the temple he gave her before he slipped away into the night when they said goodbye.
He had a dream, and it was a silly one, but he couldn’t help it. He dreamed that this girl would make him coffee every morning. His mother made his father coffee every morning. And though there was no love lost between his parents, every morning was a quiet moment, of intimacy and comradery, when Chiara placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of Vello, and he nodded solemnly, accepting the gesture, as though it was a shake of hands, a hug, a statement that whatever this was, they were in it together.
They were almost fifteen, but he worried Tierney wasn’t ready for that yet. All kinds of rumors flew around about what they did to her in the work camp where the Bratva kept the twins. Achilles made sure to punch whoever spread them, but they still gnawed at the corners of his mind.
Plus, he didn’t know how to kiss. How to kill—yes. How to kiss—no. Even if he knew, what if all she wanted was friendship?
He pointed at more words, pushing down the foreign, all-consuming urge in him to touch her.
“I can’t wait to hear all your amazing thoughts.”
She put a hand on his knee, and a shot of pure pleasure zinged from his leg straight to his penis. The latter grew and stiffened in his pants, and he was fucked, fucked, fucked because there was no way he could keep his hands to himself for long, but he wasn’t going to lose his only real friend, even if he had to chop off his own cock.
“I can’t wait to share them.”
____________
A few months later, he crawled through her window, bruised and bloodied. His lip was split, his eye was swollen, and there was a gash along the entire right side of his face. His hands trembled so hard he couldn’t gain control over them. She didn’t ask any questions. Just ran a warm, wet cloth over the injuries on his face, standing between his legs as he sat on her bathroom counter. She did it again and again until the blood tired of spilling.
Achilles whimpered each time the fabric kissed an open wound. He didn’t normally allow himself such blatant displays of vulnerability, but he knew, deep inside, that she didn’t think less of him for hurting. Just like he didn’t think less of her when those nightmares made her thrash and scream in her sleep.
“I did a terrible thing tonight,” he croaked.
