Aleksandr stares at her, and then laughs, shaking his head.
“What?” she asks.
“I have a house there.”
“What, in Cassis?”
“Near the water, yes. That was one of the places I was thinking we could go, when I mentioned taking a trip.”
“Oh.” That morning he’d left for London, before she tore everything down. But before it can darken this light moment, now—he speaks again.
“Tell me about the trip,” he says. Against her back, his fingers trace over her spine.
“I kept seeing you. Kept thinking I’d seen you, I mean.”
“In what sense?”
“Everywhere I went, I kept thinking I saw you—someone your height, or with your hair, or your clothes—up ahead of me. In the streets, bookstores, cafés. There was this one moment, right after we landed in Paris. Near the Armenian church in the third. I was convinced for a moment that it was you. That you had come after me.”
“Ah.” He hesitates. “Was that before or after you tried calling?”
“Before,” she murmurs. “Before.”
It’s quiet again, then. Questions, too, that she wants to ask.
Vulnerable with hesitancy, Lili draws patterns on his chest. Soft touch, loved skin. The windows are open, sex lingering in the air. “What... what was it like for you, really?” she asks, finally. “The last few weeks.”
Aleksandr gives a laugh, close to a wince. He settles her hand against his chest, thumb brushing over the hollow at the base of her wrist. “I wasuseless. The first few days, I just worked and drank cognac and listened to Vysotsky. Michael almost called my mother.”
“He cares about you. He loves you, a lot.”
Aleksandr hums a sound of assent, grudging. Lili hides a smile.
“He thought this might happen,” he says, after a few moments.
“What?”
“Michael did. Or rather, I think he hoped.”
“That... surprises me,” she says. She slides her fingers between his, fiddling with his father’s ring. “I’d have thought—I’d understand if he hated me, now.”
He shrugs. “Michael isn’t predictable, not really. He tried to talk to me about this. Told me to swallow my pride about forgiveness.”
“What—what do you mean?”
“He came to me, after seeing you. He told me what happened, then he told me to talk to you. I was angry—God, I was so fucking angry. At you, but also at him, for telling me to consider talking to you, after what you’d done? As the weeks went on, he’d keep coming to the loft in the mornings, waiting outside my car when I was trying to get to work—he saw other women leaving, and thelookhe’d give me, Christ... like he had any right.
“I think I tried to fire him at one point. When I found him waiting for me in my office, after some exhausting client dinner—and he tried to tell me how life is messy, and forgiveness is never clean, and guilt isn’t something that you weigh and balance between you and a person you love.
“I don’t know, I thought—God, I thought it was suchbullshit. Him talking about how forgiveness isn’t a transaction, confession and apology aren’t things you heap onto scales to assess; you don’t earn forgiveness, you can only give it, and forgiveness isn’t weakness. All these stupid fucking metaphors—and he kept trying to emphasize that it’s not always selfless, that forgiveness can also be hope for what you want.
“But in the end, he just said he didn’t care if I decided to be with you. If we worked things out, if I forgave you, but that hate—my hate would only ruin my life, not yours.”
Lili can barely breathe.
Between you and a person you love.
“Did you hate me?” she whispers, instead.
