“It was very secretive.”
She hummed and ran her fingers wistfully over a pair of German boots. “So how much do you like him, really?”
I bit my cold-stricken lip. “A bit.”
“Are you really doing this?” She snorted. “Come on, Katenka.”
“He makes me think that maybe I’d waited so long for a good reason,” I said.
“Are we shopping for leather pants or a wedding dress?”
“He could probably import me one from France.”
Her hand on my arm jerked me to a stop.
“You don’t believe it, do you?” she asked. “That he works in a warehouse?”
“I have no reason not to.”
She blinked as if I’d spoken a foreign language. “Katya. My papa works ten hours a day at the factory and barely makes enough to buy us chicken once a week. I sneak money in the pockets of his laundry so he doesn’t feel like it’s a handout. Mama xeroxed a bus pass so she could get to work and back on one ticket. And Vitali took you to a secret restaurant and bought you oysters and champagne. You aren’t stupid, I know you aren’t stupid. You have to understand that.”
Was I not?
“He deals with a lot of foreigners…” I muttered. “It’s different out there. They pay different.”
“Ah. So for sure stupid, Katya.” Elena allowed us to keep walking, but linked her arm with mine, assumedly so I couldn’t bolt from her questions. We passed a round, balding man who smacked his lips at us from behind a stand stacked with dustypots and pans.
“Mama likes him.”
She nodded knowingly. “That’s important. I’m surprised he met her already. Usually, men like that don’t want anything to do with your family. Makes it feel too real.”
“I don’t think he is like that.”
“They don’t always come out and show you, just be careful. Only a portion of them are idiots, and even the idiots can still ruin your life.”
“Yeah…”
There was quiet between us, and I took the opportunity to slip in the question that’d been pecking at my mind. “So, he said you know each other through mutual acquaintances?”
“Not that I recall.” She shrugged. “But I see a lot of people when we go out—mostly the same ones, they hover around this city like flies. But I feel I’d recognize a good-looker like him.”
I believed her. Elena was the first to nose out a party and made it a point to meet anyone of interest.
The gross feeling in my chest bitterly gloated that I saw him first, and she never had the chance to talk to him. Not that I thought she’d be in my shoes now… of course not. That would mean I was insecure and I was not insecure.
It took us seven rows to find the leather stalls, and an honorable five minutes of fighting through the crowds to reach the ones from Turkey—with the good lining. Every merchant tried to lure us over to their tables, but I couldn’t afford to be cheap and have the seams come apart on me at an inopportune time.
The image of those pants ripping as Vitali had me against the wall with his face buried in my neck sent shivers up my spine and clouded my vision. God—but we hadn’t even kissed, andyet in my mind, he’d ravaged me on every surface known to mankind. He probably wouldn’t care who was watching. We’d do it on the windowsill with my butt cheeks pressed against the glass. He’d tell me when to—
“What color?” Elena asked. The Turkish salesman had his arms crossed, watching me from underneath bushy brows with one finger impatiently tap-tapping.
“Black,” I said. “They have to be black.”
He pulled an absurdly small pair out of a box and offered them up for my inspection. I didn’t want to—but still had him hold up a makeshift curtain while I balanced on a piece of cardboard at the back of the stall to try them on. Miracles happen, they fit, but not without damaging my self-esteem.
I didn’t think he spoke Russian, but knew enough to haggle with me for five minutes before we settled on a small discount and an addition of a black, leather choker like I’d seen the girls wear.
Elena grabbed it out of my hands just as I handed the money over.
