Chapter 5 Episode 5

That’s not the kind of special I ever aspired to be. I always wanted to be special for what I could do, not for what had been done to me. It’s gruesomely funny that Adrian took one kind of specialness away from me, but here he is, giving me back another kind I don’t want and didn’t ask for. I force those thoughts aside and smile politely. “Thanks, Doctor. I’ll think about it.” He gives me a disappointed smile, but he doesn’t push the idea, which I appreciate. Instead, he rolls away on his stool and checks my file. “Everything else seems to be fine, June. The baby’s healthy and so are you. Keep taking your vitamins. And don’t neglect your mental health.” I swing my legs down and grab my satchel. It still has the lame bumper sticker that I impulsively plastered over the label way back when I first bought it: DANCE IS LIFE. I’m not sure why I never peeled it off. These days, it’s just a brutal reminder that, if dance is life, I pretty much lost mine in The Accident two years ago. I swing the strap of the bag over my shoulder, give Dr. Miller a wave goodbye, and head out of the examination room. My next OBGYN appointment is not for another few weeks, and I’m grateful for the respite from being poked and prodded like an alien abduction. I’m rounding the corner after leaving the obstetrics wing when I nearly crash into a person-shaped wall. “Argh!” I cry out. Then the scent of vanilla hits my nose. I take a slow, cautious step backward. My eyes track upwards. From tailored pant legs in a jet black suit fabric. To the open collar of a snow-white button-down shirt. To the tattooed hollow of a man’s throat. And then up into a pair of icy blue eyes. My voice, when it comes out, is rasped and croaky. “Kolya?” He looks completely unsurprised to have run into me. “June,” he says simply. “What are you doing here?” “I came to see a friend.” He arches an eyebrow at me. Another silent question. What are you doing here? he asks without asking. It’s spooky how he can do that. Whole conversations with just a brow. I put a hand on my stomach, which is starting to pop a little bit even with clothes on. “Had an appointment with my OBGYN. Routine check-up for the baby.” I blush and glance down at my toes. “Everything’s fine. The baby’s healthy.” “I’m healthy, too. Physically, at least.” He frowns. “What do you mean?” I cringe internally. “Nothing. Bad joke. Continuation of a bad joke, really.” Forcing myself to look back up at him and smile, I ask, “So, um, you said you were here to see a friend? Nothing too serious, I hope.” His frown doesn’t dissipate, but he doesn’t press the issue. “He was shot.” I laugh, but my laughter breaks off when his glower remains in place. “Wait. You’re not kidding.” I decide that it would be impolite to point out that he doesn’t seem all that concerned with his friend’s condition. “Do you mind if I ask how he got shot?” “Ah. Right.” I start out trying to pretend like I know what he’s talking about, but then I realize that I actually do know what he’s talking about. Hadn’t a doctor said those exact words to me two years ago? You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, honey. Nothing to be done about it. I’d carried those words around with me for months after The Accident, trying to make sense of them. Trying to make them work for me instead of against me. Coping with them, you might say. In the end, they didn’t do me much good. I fidget in place, running the heel of my shoe up and down a groove in the tile. The conversation has reached a dead space, and it’d be perfectly acceptable to say my goodbyes and be on my not-so-merry way. But I’m staying, and I don’t quite know why. I tell myself it has nothing to do with Kolya specifically; it’s about what he represents. He is about my last lifeline to Adrian and all those little secrets, those tucked-away memories that he’d taken to the grave with him. I’d always taken it for granted that I’d get the answers eventually. After all, we were going to spend the rest of our lives together, right? I didn’t need all his secrets right off the bat. They’d come out when the time and place were right. I open my mouth, let it fall closed, open and shut it again. I feel like a dying fish. I probably look even dumber than that. Kolya watches me coolly. Then his expression shifts just a little. His eyebrows slant down, along with the corners of his mouth. “You want to talk about Adrian,” he rumbles. I wince. “Is it that obvious? It is, isn’t it? And it’s selfish. I know you’ve gotta be so worried about your friend. This was super inappropriate of me to even think of asking, right? Forget it then. I’m sorry. I’ll just—” “Do you always do that?” he asks abruptly. I let my shoulders sag forward. “I need a cup of coffee. Do you need a cup of coffee?” I raise my eyebrows, my cheeks reddening with embarrassment. “Oh, wow. I am. Duh. This makes me sound like a horrible mother, but honestly, I really do forget sometimes.” He gazes down at me for a moment longer. Then he lets a soft, minty exhale pass between his lips before he turns and starts to walk down the hall. “Come on,” he calls back over his shoulder. “I’m sure the cafeteria will have some non-toxic swill you can imbibe.” He takes long, confident strides and I have to jog to keep up. By the time we get to the cafeteria, I’m winded. I choose the closest table and sink down into the uncomfortable gray chair. “I’ll get you something to drink,” he says, walking off before I can tell him what I’d like. Sighing, I sit there, scratching at my cuticles, wondering what on earth I’m doing here. I’m lost in thought when I hear a metallic plunk and look up to see him setting a can of lemon soda down on the table in front of me. My one weakness. “Oh my God,” I breathe. “This is lemon soda. How did you… How did you know?” He sits down in the chair opposite, looking as impassive as ever. “Lucky guess.” Eerie, I think to myself. He responds to that with a tiny quirk of his brow. I realize that he’s not going to just supply me with information. I’m going to have to ask him what I want to know. Which is a little tricky, since what I want to know is everything. “When was the last time you spoke to Adrian?” I ask, figuring I can start off easy and work my way up to the harder questions. “A while ago,” he replies vaguely. “A while as in months or a while as in years?” I frown. “Adrian never mentioned meeting you.” “We didn’t always get along.” “Still…” I trail off into silence. Kolya wouldn’t be the first thing Adrian neglected to mention to me. I never really pushed him for certain answers. My thinking was that if I gave him space, he would eventually come to me. I was trying to earn his trust, when it should have been the other way around. Not that he’d ever really needed to try to earn mine. I’d given it to him like a cheap prize at a carnival. “To be fair, he didn’t get along with most people. At least in the last couple of years.” Kolya doesn’t offer anything, so I sit there, nursing my lemon soda between both hands, watching the cold beads of condensation sweat onto my thighs. “The Accident changed everything,” I say softly. “Did he tell you about what happened?” There’s a lot contained in that one little word, though it’s packed up tightly and locked. I look up, wondering what he’s thinking. It’s unnerving not having the faintest clue what’s going on in his head. Is he humoring me? Is he killing time? Is he just bored? “I like to blame The Accident,” I say. “But the truth is, he was struggling long before then. He didn’t have any family… But then, you probably know that already. I was his whole family, and sometimes… Sometimes, I don’t think I was enough.” When I look up, Kolya’s eyes are fixed on me. His blue irises look like ice, but they’re not what I would describe as cold. Just… neutral. Maybe that’s why I feel like I can tell him these things: because I don’t think he’s going to judge me. I don’t think he cares enough to judge me. “He liked drinking.” My forehead wrinkles as I remember just how much. “At first, I barely even noticed. When we first started dating, it was just social drinking, you know? But then I realized that it didn’t matter if we went out or not—he needed to have a drink every day. He said it calmed his nerves. I never asked what he had to be so nervous about.” It’s rude of me to blabber. But Kolya seems content to just sit there and listen.