“Stop.”
“How long…” I whispered.
Tap-tap-tap,his fingers resumed.
“You didn’t have to… we could have started out as friends…” I choked, the reality of it all coming at me at once. You can push down the thoughts when they’re someone else’s thoughts. But he was here, and he wasn’t looking at me. His silence admitted everything.
And then he blew up.
“Friends?” He whipped around so suddenly that the electric kettle went propelling into the wall, bounced, and toppled off the counter. It clattered against the floor, its contents spilling. “We were never going to be friends, Katya!”
I let out the breath held painfully in my chest and scooted the chair further back as he took a step toward me.
“From the moment I saw you, we were never going to be friends. We were going to fight, fuck, love, butnevergoing to be friends.” Another step, his words accentuated with shaking hands turning to white fists. “I wanted you, and I wanted you until you became mine—a part of me—and God willed that it was before we ever spoke. But that’s my reality—it’s how it has to be—that’s how long it takes. That’s how long it takesME, Katya.Because. I’m. Broken. Because not everyone’s home—” his finger rattled against his temple “—up here,Katya!”
I rapidly shook my head, trying to rid it of all the thoughts cluttering my vision.
“I gave you, and I’ll continue to give you all the time in the world, on your terms, for whatever you want. But could you say you would have done the same for me? Be honest with yourself. Would you have had the patience? For years?”
“Yes…”
“No. You wouldn’t have,” he spat, stopping just short oftouching me. His jaw shifted with tightly coiled emotion. “You cried when you tried to kiss me and I flinched. Blamed yourself—like it was your fault, when it was allme. And what was I supposed to do? What would you have had me do, knowing what you know now? Fuck sake. It took six months and look what still happened!” He swept a hand toward the hallway leading to the bedroom. “Do you realize that is whatcontrollooks like for me?”
His chest heaved, and my own trembled with tears I couldn’t allow.
“We were never going to be friends, Katya,” he said, quieter. “Because I can’t be friends with you. I can’t fucking be friends with you—because I am who I am—and there is something deeplywrongwith me—but it didn’t stop me from being in love with you from the second I saw you. From knowing that I’ll be in love with you until my last day on Earth. Deeply, world-shatteringly in love with you. You want to know how long? Do you?”
For a split second, I faced a choice. He was right there, face flushed and muscles shaking. His eyes dared me, pleaded with me, loved and hated me all at once. And I already knew that I had made the choice before, and I would continue to make the same choice for the rest of my life.
“No.”
I chose him.
Like I had done again and again since I met him. After that first missed date. After Elit. After the secrets. After Clipboard.
After what happened that night.
I chose him.
The intensity did not fade, but his muscles lost some of the tension. He searched for the trick behind the word.
“I wanted to give you the person you’d want. One you deserve. And it wasn’t me,” he said, the fire dying down. “I’m willing to be the person you need, I’m willing to do whatever I have to, to have you. Are you leaving?”
He had the human look of shattered glass.
“I already told you, I’m not leaving,” I whispered, “and I wish you would stop asking me that.”
Before me was a man, his soul open to the world, and all the hidden colors of his heart exposed—but mostly red—and bleeding all the beauty and ugliness a person could hold. He was right—very broken, but ticking along. Moving my life forward one second at a time.
“You’re not leaving..?” he repeated hoarsely. “Why aren’t you leaving…”
I reached a hand out, but it took him another step until we could touch.
“You sleep with a guy twice, and he starts swearing in every other sentence,” I said, rubbing my thumb over his cold knuckles. He gave me a weak, forced grin. “They kept telling me sex changes everything.”
“I’m sorry… for swearing, Kotik,” he said. “I won’t ever swear in front of you again.”
I nodded. There was no room for relief in that conversation, yet nothing would ever be worse than the unknown, so finding out about Vitali did not feel like the end of the world. It was just… a different world. One where broken things got left behind. They existed with different rules that didn’t quite fit, no matter how hard they tried.
