Looking forward to court day!
Jenna Davis.
Three hours.
That’s how long until I stand in front of a judge who will decide if I get to keep my daughter or not. Three fucking hours, and my apartment is suddenly full of people who are trying very, very hard not to talk about it.
“Koltun,” my mother’s voice cuts through my thoughts.
She’s holding out a plate of something that smells like home—real home—not this New York apartment. Like Russia. “Eat something.”
I take the plate without looking at it. “Spasibo, Mama.”
The Russian slips out before I can catch it, which happens more and more these days. My brain is too full to keep track of which language I’m supposed to be speaking apparently.
Two hours and fifty-nine minutes, to be exact.
“Your lawyer, she is good?” My father asks, dropping onto the couch beside me like he’s trying to be casual about it. The cushion sinks under his weight, and I nearly spill the beer I’ve been nursing for the last forty minutes.
“She’s...” I search for the right word. “Tough.” It’s not the one I want, but it’s the only one that feels safe with all these people listening.
Across the room, Riley’s throwing darts at the board I hung a couple of months ago. He’s missing on purpose; I can tell by the way he’s holding his wrist. Professional athletes don’t miss that badly unless they’re trying to. I guess he’s listening to what I’m saying, in case I do spill more about the case.
“You should see the other lawyer she destroyed two months ago,” Jay says, dropping onto the arm of the couch. He’s the only one drinking water. He had serious alcohol problems after his injury that cost him his hockey career. After, we almost lost him because he almost drowned himself in liquor. But he got over it and Rosie, Riley’s sister, helped him a lot with it. We’re all happy she saved him. “Sent him running back to whatever fancy law school he came from.”
My mother’s eyes light up. “This is good! You need...” She turns to my father, rapid Russian flowing between them as she searches for the word.
“Pit bull,” my father supplies, and everyone laughs except me. Because my lawyer isn’t a pit bull—she’s the girl I used to call Blueface when we were sixteen and I was too stupid to know how words could stick.
The doorbell rings again, saving me from having to keep talking about Jenna. It’s Liora, Riley’s fiancée, trailing the scent of expensive perfume, and carrying a bakery box that makes my stomach turn. More food I won’t be able to eat.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says. The height difference between Riley and his fiancée is wild. She’s like tiny against him and has to stand on her tiptoes as she presses a quick kiss on Riley’s lips before turning to me. “How are you holding up?”
The petite blonde is always straightforward. The others have been dancing around the elephant in the room since they arrived. Not Liora. No, she’s studying to become an attorney herself. But her question hangs in the air for a second too long.I shrug, the universal athlete response to any emotion more complicated than “hungry” or “tired.”
“Fine. You want a drink?” I stand before she can answer, needing the movement more than anything.
“No, thank you,” she says, looking me over with that familiar worried expression.
From the kitchen, I can see everyone—my mother, arranging yet another plate of food, my father, watching a baseball highlight on mute, Jay, showing something on his phone to Riley that makes him laugh—normal Saturday afternoon things. Except for the court date. The reason everyone’s here. Livy is playing in her room while everyone tries to comfort me even though no one can. Not today.
Riley follows me, grabbing a beer from the fridge without asking. We’re all like family and I love that about my friends. “You need to eat something that isn’t beer,” he says, nodding at the bottle in my hand.
“Not getting drunk,” I tell him.
Back to short answers. Neat, contained, impossible to misread. It’s how I talk around everyone else—even my friends, the best people I could’ve ended up with. But it’s not how I talk around Jenna. With her, the words come out longer, messier, like I forget to filter them first. Like I forget to be careful.
I don’t sound like that with anyone else.
“Your mother is calling your lawyer ‘Solnyshko,’” he says, changing the subject when he sees my face. “What’s that mean?”
I glance over to where my mother is chatting with Liora now, her hands moving in the expressive way that means she’s telling some story about me. Probably an embarrassing one. My parents still have the thick Russian accent. Something I always wanted to get rid of.
“Little sunshine,” I translate.
And it fits. She is my sunshine. I don’t know what I’d do without her right now.
“She seems more like a shark to me,” Riley says, which is closer to the truth, maybe. I’d seen her in court, tearing apart some poor bastard who’d showed up without proper documentation. No mercy, just cold, precise questions that left him stammering.
