CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Stop it.” Theresa’s dark hair, still wet from her shower, had tumbled all over her shoulders and down her back in thick spiral curls that made Ilya want to tug them just to watch them spring back into shape. “That’s low.”
“I mean it.” Ilya drank half his glass of wine. He looked at the crystal glass. It had been a wedding gift from someone on Alicia’s side. He’d never liked the pattern.
Theresa dropped into her chair. Behind her on the stove top, a bit of steam drifted off the golden challah. “Please don’t mess with me.”
“I’m not. Let’s say I had an epiphany. A sign.” He thought again of the shadow in the water, the push of it against him. The flash of orange and black. “Do you believe in signs?”
“I don’t.”
He smiled faintly. “Babulya used to do that thing with her fingers, remember that? She’d poke her fingers at you and spit to the side. Pfft, pfft, pfft. It was supposed to ward off bad luck.”
“I don’t remember that,” Theresa said after a reluctant second. “But I believe you.”
Ilya sat back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair, scratching at his scalp before clapping both hands onto his thighs. “Do you remember Chester?”
“The goldfish,” Theresa said at once. “The one Jenni threw into the quarry.”
There’d been women over the years. So many he’d lost count. Not one of them would’ve known about Chester, other than Alicia. Not one of them would’ve known about Jennilynn, except perhaps maybe as a long-ago memory of a tragedy that lingered.
“What about him?” Theresa asked, when Ilya had said nothing more.
He studied her face. High, arched brows as dark as her hair. Had he ever known her eyes were such a clear, rich amber? Or had he only paid attention when he got her up close? The memory of kissing her pushed to the surface of his mind; he should be ashamed of that. Regret it. It should certainly feel like it had been a mistake.
It didn’t.
“I saw him the other day, when I was on a dive. He’s enormous.” Ilya held his hands a foot apart, then moved them wider.
Theresa laughed, incredulous. Not that he could blame her. It was a pretty ridiculous story, one he could hardly believe now even though he’d seen the damned thing.
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“I mean it,” he told her seriously. “For years, we’ve been telling divers to look for him. Like a gimmick. I think, in a way, it was how Alicia and I could talk about her without talking about her, you know?”
“Yeah. I think I do.”
Ilya wiped a hand across his mouth. “But there he was, even bigger than I could have ever imagined. Scared the shit out of me. I’ve never panicked underwater, Theresa. I’ve had a few close calls. Some scares. But in all my years of diving, learning, instructing, all the places I’ve gone, including our quarry . . . I’ve never been so startled or scared that I lost control. I could’ve drowned. If I’d gone in solo the way I’d thought about it, if someone hadn’t been there to grab me, I might’ve.”
She looked solemn. “Wow. That sounds scary.”
“How could that fish,” Ilya said, “still be alive after all these years?”
“No predators?” Theresa suggested, but that wasn’t what he meant.
He shook his head. “Not that. I mean, you spend twenty bucks trying to win one for your girl, but they’re not supposed to live that long. They’re not supposed to outlast your relationship with her. They’re not supposed to live when . . .”
“When she didn’t?”
Ilya said nothing for a few seconds, looking into Theresa’s eyes. She didn’t speak, either, giving him time.
“We made up those stories like a joke, but they turned out to be real all the time. And this is still the first time I ever saw him, in all these years. Maybe it’s just time to give up,” he told her quietly. He closed his eyes for a moment or so, thinking of the ’dozers knocking down the pavilion. “I’ve been trying for years to make Go Deep worth something, and maybe it’s time to admit I never will.”
“It is worth something,” she told him. “That’s why they’re going to give you all that money.”
And, blinking, Ilya realized she was right.
The years of dreams hadn’t been for nothing. He and Alicia had built something from nothing, and although he would never be able to deny that his ex-wife had been the bones of it all, he was still able to take credit for being at least a little bit of the flesh.
He eyed the bottle but didn’t add more to his glass. His head was pleasantly swimming, not drunk, and it was a good place to stop. He hadn’t been smart enough to make that choice in a long time, and it made him wonder again about Theresa’s reasons for abstaining.
“Why don’t you drink?”
“My father is an addict. Pills, though he’s been known to overindulge in booze when he can’t get access to the drugs.” She cleared her throat, her voice scratchy and wavering until she steadied it. “I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”
“I like it,” Ilya said in a low voice, thinking of the times he’d dived headfirst into the drink. He met her gaze. “Do you think that makes me an alcoholic?”
“I don’t know. Do you think you are?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so.” He turned the glass around in his fingers, then pushed it away, thinking of what she’d said to him after his grandmother’s funeral. “I want it, but I don’t need it. I guess if I can say no, that means I’m not?”
Theresa tilted her head to study him. “Are you worried about it?”
“Alicia used to say I drank too much,” Ilya told her. “She wasn’t the only one to say so.”
“You do drink a lot. Maybe too much.” Her chin lifted slightly, as though she expected him to deny it.
“Does it bother you?” he asked.
Theresa looked as though she meant to answer him but stopped herself. Her brow furrowed, and her eyes narrowed for a few seconds as she looked at him. “It would, yeah. Over time.”
She smiled at him then, that crystal-clear gaze digging deep inside him. Somehow, Ilya was leaning over the table and finding her mouth with his, a soft and light kiss that he told himself he meant only as a confirmation. Slightly more friendly than a handshake, that was all. Yet at the whisper of her breath on his mouth, the parting of her lips, he found himself hating the span of the table between them because it meant he couldn’t get any closer to her.
She pulled away first, turning her head a little bit. Ilya returned to his seat. Theresa’s tongue slid along her lower lip for a moment before she pressed her fingertips to the curve of her smile. Her eyes glinted.
“You’re used to getting away with that sort of thing, aren’t you?” she asked quietly.
Ilya pressed his lips together, thinking of all those messages he’d deleted recently. “What exactly have you heard about me? Because I think it’s disturbing that in all this time you’ve been hearing all kinds of stories about me, and I’ve barely heard a word about you.”
“Of course you didn’t hear about me,” Theresa said sharply. “I moved out, and you all kept on going with your lives, and I simply disappeared—out of sight, out of mind. Babulya was the only one out of any of you who bothered with me.”
This surprised him. “She did?”
“Yes.” Theresa got up and went to the stove to cut the challah into thick slices. She brought over two and handed him one. She bit into the soft bread with a sigh, chewing. “For everyone else it was like I didn’t exist. Never had. But she remembered me.”
Ilya let the warm bread rest on his palm for a moment before inhaling the familiar scent. Nothing else smelled like challah bread. With his eyes closed, he could pretend the years hadn’t passed and his grandmother was standing at the stove, lecturing him. He could pretend a lot of things hadn’t happened yet.
But what would be the point? It had all happened, and he had to deal with that. Ilya bit into the bread, tearing off nearly half the slice and chewing. It felt somehow disloyal for him to like it, but damn if Theresa’s challah wasn’t as good as any Babulya had ever made.
“She never talked about you,” he said.
Theresa shrugged and took another bite of challah. “She didn’t have to. It wouldn’t have made a difference. I was still gone. We weren’t a family anymore. It didn’t matter.”
It should have, Ilya thought. “Still, you did hear stories about me.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t start hearing things until after Alicia and I became friends on Connex, and some of her friends started popping up in my timeline and stuff. You sure did manage to get around.”
Ilya frowned, imagining threads of comments regarding his manhood . . . or lack thereof. “They talked about me on Connex? Did Alicia?”
“She never did. When I connected with them, some of them remembered who I was, and they would talk to me about you. Ask me questions about you.” She gave him a shrug and a bland look and finished off her slice of challah.
“What’d you say back to them?” he asked after some silence had passed between them with nothing but the sound of chewing. He also finished his challah and dug back into the pizza.
Theresa laughed. “I told them the truth—that I hadn’t been in touch with you and had no idea what you were doing or who you were doing it with.”
This didn’t set well with him. He pushed back from the table a bit but didn’t get up. He drummed his fingers on the edge of it, instead, then frowned.
“Did they say I was a dick?”
She didn’t laugh or smile but instead gave him a slow, assessing look that ended finally with a nod. “Yeah. Sometimes, some of them did. Were you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted, not proudly. “Sometimes.”
Theresa wiped her mouth with a napkin and then took a long drink of seltzer. “I joined a dating site the day after I broke it off with my boyfriend. For a while I averaged about four dates a week. Some for lunch, some for dinner. Some were overnights, especially in December when it was too freaking cold to sleep in my car.”
Ilya blinked. “Wow. Shit. That sucks.”
“Does that make me a dick? I didn’t force anyone to do anything they weren’t willing to do,” Theresa said. “I might’ve made it seem like I was interested in more than I was so that I could get what I wanted at the time, and I’m sure I hurt some feelings. Does that make me a bad person? Or just an inconsiderate one?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
Theresa shrugged. “I never made any promises I knew I didn’t intend to keep. That’s the best I can say.”
“Are you still doing that?”
“Not making promises I think I might break?” Her soft laugh sent a thrill through him, up and down his spine.
“Dating . . . like that.”
Her chuckle faded, and she studied him. “Yes. Sometimes. Not as much, since I’ve started getting more work, but if someone looks interesting, sure.”
“Do I look interesting?” It was easy as anything for him to say it, a casually tossed-out comment. Flirting because he found it easiest to talk to women that way, and because they almost always responded.
Theresa sat back in her seat. “What would you do if I said yes?”
“Take you on a date,” he offered.
Theresa shook her head but smiled as though he’d charmed her, which was his intent. She put her fingertips to her lips, saying nothing. He couldn’t stop himself from remembering how it had felt to kiss her. She shook her head again.
“You’re not used to being turned down, huh?” she said.
He’d only been half asking as though almost helpless in the presence of an attractive woman to stop himself from taking it a step too far. “I’ve been turned down plenty of times.”
She laughed. “We’re not going to date, Ilya.”
“Nah.” He grinned. “Of course not. That would be stupid.”
“It would be imprudent,” Theresa corrected.
“It would be a bad idea.”
She rolled her eyes and bit into her pizza so that a long, gooey strand of cheese stretched from the slice to her lips. She twirled her finger around it to break it off, then stuck it in her mouth to chew. “Anyway, besides, I already have a place to sleep.”
She made him go home shortly after that, and later in his own bed, an arm beneath his head and his other hand resting on his belly while he stared up at the ceiling into darkness, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering what he would’ve done if she’d said yes.