Chapter 4
As I followed her downstairs and out the front door of her building, she went back into silent mode, and I knew if I didn’t get her talking again, I’d lose her.
“What do you mean you have to work?” I asked her.
“Not all of us have rich parents to pay our way through school,” she said.
“Maybe the Cold War wouldn’t have been so cold if Russians weren’t so rude and judgmental,” I shot back.
Impolite. I know. That was the point. No normal conversation was going to get her attention. I’d begun to realize that in order to do that, I’d need to shock her. My Cold War statement did the trick.
“What did you say?” she asked, spinning around to face me.
I took her hands in mine and laughed.
“I had to say something to make you stop and listen,” I replied.
Surprisingly, she didn’t pull away. Her angry expression melted away and her lips turned upward in a grin.
“That wasn’t funny,” she said.
“Not even a little?” I asked.
“Maybe a little. But I’m really going to be late.”
“Then let me drive you,” I said.
“I like to walk. It’s not very far,” she replied.
“Can I walk with you then?”
“Sure,” she said. “I think I’d like that.”
She refused to tell me where we were going but allowed me to accompany her. I took her hand in mine and she kept it there the entire time. We talked about many things during our stroll. It was mostly idle chatter, nothing substantial on its own, but all together it brought her wall down piece by piece. She wasn’t a bitch. She wasn’t cold. She was a princess. Or at least that’s how her father had raised her. She didn’t want anyone to walk ahead of her and toss out rose petals, but she expected to be wanted, desired, and treated with respect. Unlike her cousin who was constantly looking for a suitor, Natalia was in the United States to graduate and hopefully land a gig with one of the big orchestras. If she happened to meet a guy, he would need to be something special in order for her to make room for him in her hectic life.
We were in the middle of a casual discussion when she stopped walking and turned toward me. Looking directly into my eyes she asked, “What do you want from me?”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“What is this?” she asked. “Are you courting me?”
Courting wasn’t a word I’d ever used. I supposed I was courting her.
“I guess I am,” I said.
“You guess?”
“You make me nervous and you excite me. After I saw you that first time, I kept my eyes open for you hoping I’d see you again, and I never did until tonight at the party. I’ve been waking up thinking about you and going to bed thinking about you. I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you, but I want you. So, if that’s courting…then tell me what I need to do next because you make me lose my balance and you make me stumble on my words and you make me…stutter and say stupid stuff all because I’m searching for that one thing that might make you want to stop and listen. So, tell me what to do next. How do I court you?”
She smiled, stood up on her toes, and kissed my lips quickly. It was only a peck. It was sweet and I wanted so much more.
“If you mean the things you say,” she said. “Then I will date you.”
Her declaration wasn’t something I was used to. I hadn’t asked a girl to be my girlfriend or had one tell me she would be since…middle school maybe. Even in high school it had been assumed you were an item at some point. When you started spending all your time together and especially once you started fucking, the fact you were an item was pretty much established.
Dating in her country might have been entirely different from what it was in mine. Hopelessly ignorant, I was worried that maybe I wasn’t prepared to be the boyfriend she expected.
“Can I be honest with you?” I asked. “I don’t know what that means.”
“You don’t know what it means when a woman says she will date you?”
“Well…do you mean like we’ll go out on a date or two…or we will be exclusive…”
“Relax,” she said. “It only means that if you want me to be your woman, I’ll give it a try. If you cheat on me or lay a hand on me or do anything to embarrass me in front of your brotherhood thingy, then I will cut off your balls.”
With that, she winked, and walked ahead of me.
“So if you’re my girlfriend,” I said, “Shouldn’t you at least tell me where we’re going?”
“There,” she said.
She pointed at the end of the street where the main campus road joined a busier street and provided easy access to the neighboring town’s bars and nightclubs. At this time of the evening, it meant she was moonlighting as one of three things. She was either a gas station cashier, a waitress, or a stripper. It turned out she was so much more than any of those.