He lets out the faintest snort of a laugh. “That all depends on what Roman asks of me. Now, come, Sasha is waiting for you.”
“Wait, I thought he didn’t get up until seven?” I check my phone; it’s five minutes before the hour.
“Sometimes he wakes up early, works on his art in his room, has breakfast. But don’t worry, you’re not on the clock until seven-thirty.”
He folds the paper, tucks it under his arm, and stands up. Without waiting to see if I’m going to follow him, Andrei starts down the hallway, his footsteps echoing through the vast space.
He leads me to a bright, sun-filled breakfast room with big windows and cream-colored walls. In the center is a table set with plates, silverware, glasses, and mugs. Sasha is already there waiting for me, a big stack of pancakes on the plate in front of him, a piece of paper to his right, markers close at hand.
When Sasha sees me, his shy expression softens into something bright. “Hi.”
I smile brightly at him as I slide into the chair next to him. “Good morning, my little artist extraordinaire. Pancakes, huh? I like your style.”
He giggles quietly. That must be out of the ordinary, because one of Andrei’s eyebrows raises a tick at the sound. My heart melts.
The door opens, and a member of the house staff enters, placing a plate with two fresh, perfectly golden-brown pancakes in front of me.
“If you’d prefer something lighter,” she says, “please ask. Master Sasha requested pancakes.”
“If pancakes are good enough for this little dude, they’re good enough for me.”
She nods, then exits. I spot a small pitcher of syrup near Sasha’s plate.
“May I?” I ask, nodding toward it.
He nods quickly, as if the matter of who gets the syrup is no small thing. I take it, pour a little over my pancakes, then take a bite.
“Oh my gosh,” I whisper. “These are incredible.”
“Papa can’t make them right,” Sasha says. “He burns everything.”
That gets a laugh out of me. “Somehow, that’s a little comforting.”
Andrei, seated across the room with his paper, pretends not to hear us. But I see the corner of his mouth twitch.
I take another bite, then another, Sasha and I eating in companionable silence. Before I know it, the pancakes are nearly gone. I feel full and content—for a second. Completely out of the blue, Max appears in my mind. I think about one of our last dinners together, when I’d ordered Crème Brulé—my favorite dessert—and polished it off almost the instant it was set in front of me.
“Man, you kinda inhaled that,” Max had said.
“Well, it was good.”
“Still. Ever think of skipping dessert now and then?”
He’d made little comments like that before, but toward the end of our relationship they were happening nearly every time we saw one another. Remarks about my weight, my eating habits, the food I kept in my apartment.
I hated it. It was ironic—the comments were always about how big I was, but they never failed to make me feel small.
I push the memories of Max out of my head as quickly as I can, reminding myself that I’m here for Sasha.
I nudge him gently. “Mind if I see what you’re drawing?”
He places his fingertips on the paper and turns it toward me. It’s a soft blue swirl with lines of motion, a tree in the center. Like all of his work, it’s good.
“It’s the snow,” he explains. “And the wind. They’re going around a tree. I see it from my room when it’s cold outside like today.”
“It’s perfect,” I say. “You really doseethings, don’t you?”
He shrugs one shoulder, as if to say yes and no. “Mama said I see feelings.”
