I gape at him. “Sometimes, I find it hard to believe you’re real.”
In response, he reaches down to grab my hand and pull it up to rest flat on his chest, right over his beating heart. “Does this feel imaginary to you, dikarka?”
He waits for me to answer. He’s so good at that, at just standing in the middle of a moment without rushing it.
I’ve never met a man who could be still the way Matvei is still. Raymond can’t be still for two seconds together. Raymond is a foot tap, a phone check, a watch glance, a recurring throat clear.
Matvei is the pause between two notes of a song.
I look up at him in the buzzy amber light, in his thin black tank, his bare feet, his ink half-hidden, and I think: In eight months, you’re going to be someone’s father.
I don’t say that, though. I tuck it under
