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JUNE
I’ve been watching him for scarcely half an hour, and in that time, he’s managed to put a dozen full-grown men on their backs without breaking a sweat.
One after the next, they all fall. Kolya is not the biggest or the strongest of the bunch fighting in the gardens below my window. But he moves with a lithe grace that none of the others can match. They barrel at him, he becomes a blur of limbs, and a moment later, they’re flat on the ground and Kolya is standing tall and victorious over them.
It’s weirdly thrilling to watch someone so good at what they do. He sees the angles before they come. Anticipates every twitch of every muscle. I didn’t know this before, but it makes sense to me now, that fighting and dancing have the same kind of kinetic beauty.
The only unsettling bit is how much he looks like Adrian. I know I’m just conflating them in my head, drawing a pattern where none exists. But I can’t help it. The breadth of those shoulders, that head of dark hair tossing in the evening light—they’re one and the same.
Don’t compare me to that asshole. I’m nothing like him.
It’s weird: the further away I get from Adrian, the clearer his voice in my head becomes. I didn’t think it was possible to miss him quite this much.
I miss the oddest things about him, too. I miss the way he would call me Junepenny when he was in a good mood. I miss pressing my finger to the dark birthmark on his chin. I miss the way his eyes would darken on the few occasions I managed to make him laugh.
The Accident made things harder on us. With that pressure ripping him from me and me from him, you’d think I’d have been more prepared for his absence.
But I’m not. It hurts like it’s fresh and raw and cruel.
Look at you, getting all sentimental thinking about me. It’s almost enough to make me forget that you’re ogling another man weeks after my funeral.
“I’m not ogling,” I mutter under my breath. “The fighting is impressive, that’s all. It’s not like I have anything better to do. If you kind of squint, it looks like they’re dancing.”
Everything is dancing to you.
“You used to hear music in everything,” I remind him with a choked laugh. “Even the rain sounded like an aria to you.”
Music is one thing. Dance is another.
It doesn’t take much to imagine those words coming out of his mouth. He used to say that to me often. Right after The Accident, when our handicaps were new and we were trying to make sense of a world that terrified us both.
I repeat out loud what I used to say to him back then: “Why? Because music is yours and dance is mine?”
For a change, his voice in my head goes silent. There’s a moment of relief, followed by an overwhelming sadness. Things weren’t ever perfect between us, nowhere close, but he has been my entire life for so long that I can’t remember how it was before him.
After The Accident, when I was lying helpless in that hospital bed, being poked and prodded awake every three hours of the night, I started making lists. Lists of all kinds of things. Objects in the room, colors I could see, dreams I had, foods I loved.
The one I came back to again and again was a list of things I was grateful for. I wrote “dance” and crossed it out so many times that the top line just became a black skid mark on the page.
I didn’t have it anymore, not truly. The Accident had taken it from me.
The second line, though, read “Adrian.” I still had him.
Now, though, that’s a skid mark of its own. So what’s left?
My hand floats to my belly. I try to feel the life inside me, but I feel nothing. Ever since the fleeting morning sickness faded away, I’ve been hard pressed to remember that I’m pregnant at all. I almost miss the nausea.
Sometimes, though, it’s easier to forget. Funny how fucked-up that is—I prayed for a baby for so long and now I have one, and all I want to do is go to sleep so I don’t have to remember that fact.
“You were always meant to be here for it, though,” I whisper to an unseen Adrian.
This time, his voice says nothing.
Kolya is still in the garden down below, sparring with another shirtless man who’s half a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier. It goes the same way as all the others: a roar, a tangle of arms and legs, the grunting of men at war. Seconds later, the hulk is eating grass.
I tear myself from the window ledge and drift to the bed. My stomach is full now, and ironically, that’s freed up extra brain space in my head. Space for nasty thoughts to take root and fester.
I keep reliving the last few days, starting with that godawful dinner with Kolya’s unsavory goons. No matter what he tells me, I can’t take him at his word. That dinner was about intimidation and manipulation. He wants me to be so scared of him that I stop resisting his attempts to control me.
