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By the time I located my shirt and tugged it on, Sasha was in the kitchen with me, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer-briefs.
I avoided looking at him as much as I could, but it was almost impossible. His big frame filled up the tiny space and his eyes followed me everywhere, his disappointment almost palpable. Too bad he couldn’t sense mine the same way.
“Tuesday at three. Meet me at the coffee shop across from the bank,” I said, hoping he didn’t hear the tremor in my voice.
“Roan.”
Ignoring him, I yanked the door open and stepped out, closing it behind me as he said my name a second time.
I didn’t want to go through the restaurant again, so I followed the exit signs to the main staircase, moving as quickly as I could in case he decided to follow me.
At the top of the stairs, I nearly crashed into a little old lady with a kerchief on her head, a paper sack in each arm.
“I’m so sorry! Here, let me help,” I said quickly, taking the bags from her while she yelled at me in another language. It was then that I realized it was the Ukrainian woman Sasha exchanged words with earlier.
She might have been mad, but she didn’t take the bags back as she stomped down the hallway, shaking her fist at Sasha’s door. I felt a surge of kinship with her in that moment, except I wanted to do more than shake my fist at him. I wanted to beat the bigotry out of him until he saw reason.
“Where would you like them?” I asked as the old lady shooed me into her apartment with a flap of her hand, untying the kerchief with the other.
She kept shooing toward the kitchen, so that’s where I went.
Unlike Sasha’s cold, empty apartment, hers was warm and homey, stuffed with knickknacks and crocheted blankets. It smelled like dill, which was strangely pleasant.
I set the bags on the countertop and started unpacking them out of habit. She shuffled around behind me, pulling out a stock pot from one cabinet and setting it on the stove before moving over to the fridge. Apparently she didn’t mind help from a complete stranger since she didn’t even look twice at me.
“You hungry?” she asked, pouring water into the pot. In truth, I was starving. Whatever meal Sasha had tried to serve went completely uneaten once we got... distracted. I didn’t even get a chance to answer before she poked my arm with a frown. “Sit down. I cook.”
“You really don’t have to do that, ma’am.”
“Sit!” She pointed a wooden spoon at me like a weapon and I obeyed, immediately. “How you know the Moskal?” she asked, dumping something into the pot.
“The what?” I blinked.
She whipped the spoon in the direction of Sasha’s apartment.
“Sasha?” I clarified.
She ‘hmphed’ and turned her back to me.
“It’s a long story,” I replied with a sigh, studying the collection of brightly colored, patterned eggs that lined the half-wall between the kitchen and the living room.
“He bad man.” She plunked a plate down in front of me. “You nice boy. You stay away.”
“He’s not that—” I stopped abruptly at the look she gave me, the lie dying on my tongue. How could I say he wasn’t a bad person? He was a murderer. An unapologetic murderer, at that. A career criminal who worked for some very dangerous people. He was everything society taught you to fear — to hate, even — and I had more reason than most, considering our introduction to one another. So why didn’t I hate him? Why was I so fucking drawn to him? And why was the thought of never seeing him again so damn depressing?
The old lady didn’t speak again until she flopped a couple of giant crescent-ravioli looking things on the plate with a scoop of sour cream.
“Are these pierogies?” I ventured, vaguely recalling one of our Polish cooks from my childhood. She’d made piles of food with names I couldn’t pronounce, but it was all delicious.
“Varenyky.” The little old lady sat down across from me and spread a napkin over her lap. “I’m Ukrainian. No Polish. No Russian. Ukrainian.”
“American mutt,” I said, pointing at myself with the fork before diving into the doughy pillows.
She laughed and snapped her fingers suddenly, shuffling over to the fridge, muttering to herself in Ukrainian. Pulling a large, purple berry pie out of the fridge and a jar of pickles, she returned to the table with a smile. “I have plenty,” she said, spearing two pickles and dumping them on my plate before I could politely decline.
“I’m good, thank you.”
“Eat up. I have ice cream.”
