“How’d you get a key?” He had a sinking feeling that now that his grandmother had procured a key, he could kiss the rest of his weekend with Sadie goodbye.
His grandmother held up the keycard in question. “I asked.”
He made a mental note to start using the deadbolt and the privacy latch.
“I was just heading out,” he said to his grandmother, doing his best to shoo her back toward the hallway. He kicked Sadie’s shirt under the bed with his foot on his way past.
Babushka wasn’t having it, instead plopping on the edge of the bed and turning on the television.
“Your father, he drives me mad.” Babushka withdrew a peppermint candy from her purse and slowly unwrapped it. The crinkle of the wrapper coming off at the pace of a snail set him on edge. Each little rustle acted as an audible reminder that Sadie was shoved shirtless in the closet.
“He does not understand that I vill be dead soon and he vill feel so bad for being such a big jerk,” Babushka went on, finally popping the candy in her mouth.
Roman knew, heknew, he shouldn’t ask questions when it came to Babushka and family matters. So why he opened his mouth, he really couldn’t say. Yet, he heard his own voice ask, “What did he do this time?”
Babushka sucked hard on the candy, making a slurping noise. “I vill tell you. I find stray on the street. He is sad. I bring him home, and your father, he makes big fight over this.”
Roman glanced toward the closet door, ignoring whatever his grandmother was going on about.
“So I say, no, you vill not tell me to do this or that.”
“Uh-huh,” Roman replied, willing Sadie to find one of his shirts in his bag, put the thing on, open the door, and show herself. It couldn’t be comfortable in that cramped, dark closet.
“Next thing I know, he’s flying around the kitchen. Feathers everywhere. Your father screeching at him to go back outside.” Babushka threw her hands wide.
Huh?
Roman did his best to figure out how his grandmother had gone from point a to point z in her narrative, but somehow, in the ten seconds he hadn’t been paying attention, her story had taken a turn he wasn’t expecting.
Thirty-two minutes later—he’d counted down the seconds as he moved his gaze between his babushka, the clock on the nightstand, and the closet—Babushka’s purse was six peppermint candies lighter and she finally came up for air. “Excuse me now. I must use ladies’ room.”
She shuffled to the bathroom. As soon as the door clicked closed, he grabbed Sadie’s shirt from under the bed and yanked open the closet door to find her crouched in the corner. One of his gray T-shirts covered her small frame, and the contents of his travel bag had been dumped on the carpet in front of her. His socks, underwear, shirts, and jeans were all folded with precision in stacks by her knees. She was counting the contents of two large boxes of condoms he’d snagged at Walgreens into what appeared to be stacks of ten.
The hinge on his jaw seemed unable to work.
She gazed up at him with huge eyes. Realizing the time had come for her getaway, she tried to stand but looked like a baby colt finding her feet.
“My feet fell asleep,” she whispered, clearly willing them to function long enough to escape.
She’d nearly made it up when the door to the bathroom opened.
Sadie grabbed her shirt from his hands. She squeaked like a mouse again, dropped back to her crouched position, and pulled the closet door closed with her fingertips under the bottom edge.
“Vhy don’t you stay at home vith family? Hotel is not comfortable,” Babushka said. “You come home to see family. Then you stay in place like this. You come home but don’t even come home.” Babushka started to settle back into her spot on the edge of his bed, but he caught her arm before she could plop down and get comfortable.
“You spent the past half hour illustrating exactly why I stay at a hotel.”
“Next time you visit, I’ll book the room next to you,” Babushka huffed.
He stealthily shooed her to the door. “What if I come over later tonight? Help calm things down with Dad?”
Then he could get all his goodbyes in at once and get back to Sadie.
Babushka patted his cheeks. “That vould be lovely.”
With a quick glance toward the closet, Roman escorted his grandmother to the door. Once she was safely in the hallway and on her way, he flipped the privacy bolt.
Roman’s arms.Nope, there wasn’t a much better way to wake up than wrapped up in all that was him. The muscles of his thick biceps flexed as he pulled Sadie closer to him.
