“Katya, if you only knew the kind of restraint I practice around you,” he said, and his hand tightened, still under control but hard enough that I knew it would hurt if he snapped. A part of me wanted to test that. It had been the new year for less than an hour, and I already had a death wish pulsing between my thighs.
“So don’t…”
He shook his head with certainty this time. “I have to be somewhere. I’ll take you home.”
“Where?” I squeaked, almost cryingas he trapped my arm under his. “Wait! Where?”
“Business.”
“Business!” I cried out, too furious to mind my tone. “What business! It’s New Year’s and you are here. You’re here, Vitali. With me!”
His jaw tightened, the car lights only accentuating the motion.
“Is it someone else?” I demanded, and the horror spread through me that the words left my mouth, but it was too late to stop. I could already imagine someone awaiting him, and she’d also be told he was busy with ‘business.’ “Are you seeing someone else?”
The car door shut with me inside. This only fueled my rage. This was the night. My perfect night. Our perfect night.
“Please,” I begged furiously, but he wouldn’t look at me.
When we pulled up, he did the gentlemanly routine while I begged him not to go. I refused to go up the first flight of stairs, blocking his way and not allowing him to walk me to my door if it meant him leaving.
“Why do you always have to go?” I sniffled, and in the darkness of the stairwell, his face almost looked pained.
“Are you going to let me walk you to your door?” he asked quietly. “There are only two ways tonight is going to end, Kotik. I walk you to your door or I leave you right here, but I have to go, and I have to go now.”
“Then leave me on the staircase.”
“If that’s how you want to remember it.”
He turned, and the podyezd door fell shut behind him, louder than it ever had.
The hurt thrummed through my chest, and my mind refused to process anything beyond the concrete darkness. It only manifested one word.
‘Elit.’
12
Elit
Iraninside for long enough to snatch the purse and a pair of heels from my room, and then I was on the move again.
The stairs were slick with melted snow from countless boots, and I passed three sets of people who yelled something at me and it was possibly‘Happy New Year!’
He’d gone silent once I asked him if he was seeing someone else—and never actually told me he wasn’t. He always reassured me—why didn’t he reassure me?
“If this is how you want to remember it,” I repeated in the most nasally voice I could, to make myself feel better. It didn’t help.
Flagging a taxi down was easy, as long as I didn’t question the driver’s sobriety. I chuckled madly at the thought that I would be paying for it with Vitali’s money.
Elit.
The most popular club known to be frequented by the New Russians. Undoubtedly packed wall to wall on New Year’s, and impossible to get in. Of course, not for Vitali and whoever came trailing after him like a damned mother duck.
I wasn’t very good at being angry. Even in my head, I couldn’t bring myself to really swear. A homeless man got shot in front of me, and then my best friend told me the man I’m in…fatuated with is lying to me, but I was still a lady, damn it.
“Blyad,” I whispered, trying the word on.
“Eh?” the taxi driver spat.
