“Just some reading.” I keep my voice light. Bored, even. “Keeping my brain busy.”
He looks at the cover again. Then at me. Then back at the book, and his expression shifts into something worse than anger.
Amusement.
“This isn’t light reading, Natalia. This is a textbook.” He holds it up like evidence. “What, you think you’re going to be a doctor or some shit?”
“It’s just to pass the time, Nikolai.” I reach for the book.
The amusement drops off his face like a light going out. His fingers lock around my wrist before I’ve closed half the distance. His grip tightens until the bones shift against each other, and my vision narrows to the space between his eyes. My breath goes flat and controlled, the kind of breathing you learn without anyone teaching you. The kind that saysI’m small. I’m still. There’s nothing here worth hurting.
“Did I say you could take it?”
The vodka is still on his breath. This close, I can see the broken capillary at the corner of his left eye.
Somewhere deep in my body, a very old alarm is sounding, the one that learned a long time ago what comes after this if I give the wrong answer.
“No,” I whisper.
He holds on for one more second. Then he lets go and drops the textbook on the counter. It lands hard enough that a few tabs fall out. He pulls his jacket on and opens the door, easy as anything, like the last ten seconds didn’t happen.
“Oh, and a word of advice. Restrepo’s been married before, you know. Couple of times. Neither one’s around anymore.” He glances back at the textbook on the counter. “So maybe brush up on something actually useful, like keeping your legs open and your mouth shut.”
The door swings shut behind him. A few seconds later the engine starts, tires grinding over the shell drive, and the sound shrinks until there’s nothing left but the wind pushing through the screens and the low, steady shush of the ocean beyond the dunes.
I lock the door and stand there with my hand on the deadbolt, waiting for my body to get the message that he’s gone. It takes longer than it should. My wrist throbs where his fingers were.
I cross to the kitchen and press both palms flat on the counter. The stone is cold and real and I focus on that: the temperature, the grit of dried salt air that coats every surface in this house no matter how often I wipe things down.
I stare at the textbook where he dropped it. It landed splayed open, pages bent under its own weight. My fallen tabs lie next to it on the counter. I smooth the pages flat and tuck the tabs back in.
My fingers aren’t steady, and the tab won’t line up right, and I’m angry at myself for caring this much about a bent page when there are bigger things to be angry about.
But this book is mine. I bought it with money I scraped together from the grocery budget my father deposits into an account he monitors. I highlighted every page myself. And Nikolai held it up like a joke.
I shouldn’t have left it out. Maybe Nikolai won’t mention it to my father. Maybe it wasn’t worth remembering by the time he started the car.
My vision blurs. I grip the counter and breathe the way I taught Johnny the night of his panic attack. Slow. Through the nose. Let the diaphragm do the work.
It helps. A little.
Maybe brush up on something useful.Like staying alive inside a marriage to a man who’s buried two wives is a skill you can cram for.
I pick up Nikolai’s glass from the coffee table. Wash it. Dry it. Put it away. Then I wipe the vodka ring off the table with a damp cloth until the wood is clean and there’s no trace of him left in my house. Just like Johnny. Erased. The only difference is that I wanted to keep one of them.
Heat builds behind my eyes. Not tears. I’m past tears. This is the thing that comes after. I hear Johnny’s voice from last night.
He doesn’t get to come into your space and make you feel like that.
I wanted to believe that. I still want to believe it. But wanting doesn’t change the math.
Two months.
That’s what I have. Two months until I belong to a man who goes through wives the way my brother goes through vodka. And whatever this thing is with Johnny, this stupid, reckless, warm thing that makes me feel like an actual person, it now has an expiration date.
I remember Johnny doesn’t have a key, so I leave the back door cracked so he’ll know it’s safe to come back. The afternoon light is flat and gray through the doorway, the sky hanging low over the water like it can’t decide if it wants to rain or just threaten.
In a few hours, Johnny will walk back through that door and this house will feel warm again. But I know how this ends. Either his memory comes back and I lose him, or it doesn’t and in two months I’m on a plane to marry a man who’s already buried two wives.
