CHAPTER TWENTY
Ilya and Niko had gone together to pick up the pizza while Alicia and Theresa dug through the cabinets in the den to pull out a selection of old board games. If Alicia or Niko was upset that Theresa had invited Ilya to join them, neither showed it. Still, she thought she’d better make sure.
Theresa swiped dust off the lid of an ancient version of Clue. “I should’ve asked first if you’d be cool with me asking Ilya to come.”
“No problem.” Alicia shrugged and held up Monopoly. “We used to play this for days.”
“I’m not sure why I did,” Theresa admitted as she set a battered game of Stratego on the table. “He called me to follow up on the offer, you both had just asked me to hang out . . . I don’t know. I guess it felt like I should. Kind of like . . .”
“Old times?” Alicia nodded. “Yeah. I get it. Don’t worry. Really. Ilya’s the one who has to deal with me and Niko being together. It’s not like I’m holding on to any lingering romantic feelings for him.”
“That’s good.” She’d said it too quickly, so that Alicia looked up curiously. Theresa didn’t want to remember Ilya’s kiss or the way his fingers had felt in hers or the fact he’d sort of asked her on a date. Or anything else about him in that way, really. “It’s got to be a little weird. But only for a little while, right?”
“I hope so.” Alicia sat back to study the array of games they’d pulled out of the cupboard. “I haven’t seen any of these in forever. So much stuff in this house . . . it’s going to be a huge project to get rid of it all.”
Theresa looked up. “Oh?”
“Yeah . . . so, I’ve been thinking about selling the house. Not right away,” Alicia said quickly, although Theresa hadn’t made so much as a murmur of protest. “I’d have to clear it out first. Lots of years of stuff here.”
“And you want to move on,” Theresa said. “I get it.”
“I didn’t want you to think I was going to kick you out after I just told you it was cool to stay, that’s all.” Alicia got to her feet with a small groan and a crackle of her spine as she stretched.
Theresa stood, too. “I appreciate it. So much. It wasn’t ever supposed to be long term anyway.”
Alicia nodded. “It’s going to be a lot of work, though.”
“I can help. I’m pretty good at figuring out what you need to take and what you can easily leave behind.” Theresa tapped the lid of one of the games. “I’ve had some experience.”
“I’d like to live somewhere I can get a pizza delivered instead of having to go out for it,” Alicia said. “You know? I’d like to have a movie theater with more than two screens.”
Theresa chuckled. “No kidding. Before I moved in with my boyfriend, I lived within walking distance of a couple nice restaurants, and I had three pizza places that delivered, along with a horrible Chinese place. Once I moved in to his house, it was back to flipping a coin to see who’d have to go out to get the food, and he somehow always managed to have an excuse about why it wasn’t his turn.”
“Maybe that’s why you didn’t want to marry him,” Alicia said matter-of-factly. “If he’d been the one who offered to go, you might have thought differently.”
Theresa laughed at first, then paused. Alicia wasn’t kidding. She also wasn’t wrong. “I couldn’t stand the way he chewed. It made me insane with rage.”
“Ilya couldn’t find anything,” Alicia said suddenly, sharply, as though the words hadn’t meant to slip out of her. “Flat out refused to look, sometimes. Just said he didn’t know where it was, whatever it was. It was infuriating.”
“Is that why you broke up?” Theresa coughed lightly into her hand, trying not to sound too nosy.
“It seemed like it at the time. I don’t think anyone gets divorced over one small thing. I don’t think anyone necessarily gets divorced over one big thing, either. It’s all the things together.” Alicia frowned. “But what’s done is done, I guess. It’s not like I can get away from it. The only thing I can do is keep moving forward.”
“Yeah. Forward.” Theresa thought about that for a second, hating herself for asking the next question. “Do you think he cheated on you?”
Alicia didn’t seem insulted or angry. She gave Theresa a thoughtful look. “No. No matter how much of a ladies’ man he’s been since we split up, I don’t believe he cheated on me. Maybe he cheated with me, I guess, if you want to count the memory of a ghost.”
“Jenni.” Theresa frowned, sorry to have brought it up. “You don’t think he’ll ever get over her?”
“I don’t think he wants to,” Alicia said. “But he sure needs to.”
“Behold, I am the bearer of beverages!” Ilya’s voice rang through the den as he appeared in the doorway holding up two six-packs of what looked like craft beer. “My brother brings the pizza. And, ladies, hold yourselves back. We got a Caesar salad and garlic knots! So you may worship us as the gods we are.”
“I’m so not worshipping you,” Alicia told him wryly, but with good humor.
Ilya rolled his eyes and looked around her at Theresa. “I got some fancy iced tea for the teetotaler.”
“Thanks.” Theresa caught Alicia’s surprised look but didn’t say more than that.
“Oh, you got anchovies? Thank you, baby.” Alicia offered her mouth to Niko for a kiss.
Ilya made a disgusted face and grabbed Theresa as she moved toward the cupboard to pull out plates. Laughing, she tried to pull away, but he was dancing with her, making goo-goo eyes. She gave in after a second, letting him twirl and then dip her.
“Ooh, baby, thank you-u-u,” Ilya said in a sickly sweet falsetto.
“Jerk,” Niko said without rancor, and planted a long, involved, and exaggeratedly sloppy kiss on Alicia’s mouth.
Theresa turned her face at the last minute so that Ilya’s attempt at doing the same landed on her cheek. “Don’t be a cretin.”
He made sure she was steady on her feet before he let her go. “Damn, Theresa. A cretin, really? That hurts me right in the feelings hole.”
“I said don’t be one.” She nudged him with an elbow. “C’mon. Food.”
Ilya sighed and shook his head, but if he was truly put out by the sight of his brother and ex-wife snuggling, he didn’t show it. “Both of you, just so you know, that’s how germs spread.”
“I’ll take my chances.” Alicia, eyes bright and cheeks flushed, laughed. “But I’m with Theresa. Let’s eat.”
Theresa hung back a bit, letting the others go first. When Alicia and Niko had taken their plates into the den, she snagged Ilya’s sleeve as he loaded his plate with a couple of slices of pizza. “You okay?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Huh? Oh. Sure. I mean, it’s weird, right? Tell me it’s weird.”
“It’s a little weird. Yes.” She took a bottle of the iced tea he’d brought her and cracked off the top to take a drink.
They’d moved toward each other without making too much of it, their voices lowering so Niko and Alicia wouldn’t overhear. This close to him, she could see the rim of indigo around his grayish eyes. He smelled like fabric softener, a sensory memory, again of that time so many years before when they’d shared the same house and the same detergent. So he might not ever get over Jennilynn Harrison, Theresa thought. There were plenty of things she wasn’t quite able to get over, either.
Ilya smiled. “Whose idea was it to ask me to come over?”
“Mine.”
He nodded. “I haven’t played board games in a long time.”
“Me neither.” She grinned. “I bet I kick your butt.”
Ilya leaned close and closer, until the soft whiff of his breath gusted along her cheek. “Bring it.”
Watching Niko and Ilya square off as team members, one trying to get the other to guess a word on a card without using a series of forbidden words, was the funniest thing Theresa had seen in . . . well, a long time. Her stomach hurt from laughing, and she was sure her mascara had become a streaked mess, but none of that mattered. She hadn’t been convinced the game-night idea was a good one until now, but man, was she glad they were doing it.
“Time’s up!” Alicia slapped the buzzer to turn off the annoying sound. “Losers.”
Ilya flipped her both middle fingers as Niko did the same. Then the brothers gave each other high fives. Alicia made a face, and when Niko crossed the room and tried to kiss her, she fended him off. At least for a second or so, before she dissolved into laughter and gave in.
“Gross,” Ilya said conversationally as he plopped onto the couch next to Theresa. “You’re going to get mono.”
“That was the game,” Theresa said. “We won.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Ilya said. “We gave it up to you.”
Alicia shot him the bird. “L-l-loooooooser.”
It was a lot like it had been back in the day, even if at the same time it was completely not. Theresa recalled a lot more f-bombs being thrown around back then, along with noogies and wrist burns. The good feeling was the same, though. Back then they’d enfolded her into their group effortlessly, if only briefly, and she felt the same way now.
Part of something.
Belonging.
Included.
But only briefly.
She caught Ilya watching her and quickly smoothed whatever expression she’d had that had made him frown. “Rematch?”
“Not for me. I’m beat.” Niko shook his head.
Alicia stood. “Me, too.”
Theresa and Ilya shared a look. It was obvious that Niko and Alicia had plans that were going to keep them up at least an hour longer, if not more. Not that she blamed them or anything, but the walls were thin upstairs. She wasn’t going to go up there for a while. Theresa busied herself cleaning up the game pieces while Ilya, unbidden, took care of the dirty plates and bottles. She followed him into the kitchen when she’d finished.
“So . . . I’m going to watch a movie,” she said. “You want to hang out a little longer?”
“You don’t have to work in the morning?”
She shrugged. “I make my own hours, and I don’t have any appointments until the afternoon. It’s only eleven now.”
“Yeah, I guess I could hang out. Watch something. Sure.” He didn’t move, and neither did she.
He hadn’t shaved in a few days by the look of the scruff on his chin and cheeks, and suddenly all she wanted to do was rub her palm over the bristles. His hair was silky smooth, his face rough. It had tickled her earlier, and she touched her cheek, remembering. She should’ve felt caught by his gaze but instead felt only embraced.
He was going to kiss her again, and this time they were alone, so she would let him.
He didn’t, and the sweet anticipation tinged with anxiety eased within her. She hadn’t misread him. He’d changed his mind. She saw it in his eyes and the tilt of his small smile and the way he let one finger twist into one long curl that hung over her shoulder.
He wanted to kiss her again, and maybe that was going to be all they’d ever have. Wanting. Better off for it, she told herself as she let out the breath she’d been holding. They knew there was no good that could come out of acting on this.
In the den, she let him pick the movie while she rearranged the cushions and knitted afghans on the back of the couch to give them both room to sprawl. He chose a recent release full of gunfire and car chases, and despite the action and noise, less than halfway through it, he was yawning broadly. Shortly after that, Ilya had twisted on the couch to lay his head in her lap. Her fingers found the softness of his hair, threading through it. Every so often she let her hand caress downward, giving in to the urge to rub his bristly cheek before moving up again to stroke his hair.
In the TV’s flickering blue-white light, she could let her gaze fall to his face every so often. She could trace the line of his brows with her fingertips. She could feel the weight of his head in her lap and see the gleam of his eyes when he looked at her. Neither of them spoke. Words would’ve ruined this, whatever it was. Speech would’ve forced them to acknowledge it.
She watched him fall into sleep.
The movie ended, and the room went briefly dark after the credits had finished scrolling. In the darkness, Ilya moved on the couch, shifting to press her back along his front so the two of them were spooning. His breath heated the back of her neck, her hair a barrier to the touch of his lips.
“Thanks for asking me to come over,” he murmured.
Theresa didn’t answer him. She closed her eyes, listening to the slowing in-out of his breath and relaxing against him. And then, sometime before morning light began its creeping crawl through the windows, she got up and left him there while she went to her own room and her bed, but she wasn’t able to get back to sleep.