“No, not like that—I just meant, with you.”
A little pain lurches, but she breathes, and it passes.
“What about you?” he asks.
“Just writing, I think.” She feels fragile after yesterday, wants to gather herself through work.
“How’s your thesis?”
She nods. “Good, yeah. Actually—could you—” Lili bites her lip, hesitating. “Could you read it?”
Aleksandr raises an eyebrow, with a mischievous smile.
“Not to edit it, or anything,” she says, firmly. “And don’t try to make me see the glorious neoliberal light. You just said some interesting things, last weekend. Not that I agree with you, obviously, but to, like, defend against counterarguments, that sort of thing...”
Aleksandr’s smile only grows. “I’d love to,” he says.
Sentiment she can’t express hovers on her tongue.
The way he looks at her: Could she be worth this? Past today, past tomorrow?
Here, in his bed, under morning light, she feels more herself and less herself than she ever has before. Like she can watch herself think, watchherself feel.I’m allowed to have this,she tells herself. Something shaped like happiness.
But she isn’t sure.
She isn’t sure.
Lili clears her throat, looking away to the window where morning is growing brighter. Under her fingers, the bare skin of his shoulders is warm.
“Want to go on a run?” he asks.
Lili frowns. Aleksandr is also looking out the window, evaluating the morning.
“Excuse me?”
“A run. It usually clears my head.”
“What are we running from? Is someone chasing us?”
“Is that a no?”
Lili stares at him. “No,” she confirms. “No, I’ll stay and read, like a normal person at six on a Friday.”
“Would you like me to stay with you?”
“No, no. Go torture yourself, it’s fine.”
Aleksandr grins, getting out of bed. “I’ll be back in an hour or two.”
“An hour or two? Are you running around this entire island?”
“Hardly,” he says, heading into his closet. “Text me if you need anything.”
Sitting up in bed, Lili reaches her arms above her, stretching. Taking a long drink of her coffee, she closes her eyes for a moment: the morning light, the hot mug in her hands, the sounds of Aleksandr opening and closing drawers as he gets dressed.
On his nightstand, the copy of Solzhenitsyn rests, the last few chapters unread. She’d left it here when she went upstate. Nestling into the warm sheets, Lili leans against the headboard and finds her page.
Aleksandr kisses her, quick, before he goes, and she smiles. Listens to the sound of the elevator, as he leaves. A few moments later, hearing the front door open downstairs, the growing sunshine coming through the window, some exchange with Louis, and Aleksandr’s laugh; and Lili closes her eyes, again, just a moment, in the steadily strengthening light of morning, and holds onto the drift of his voice.
