CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Theresa had been thinking about Ilya’s suggestion that she work at the diner, re-creating and preparing Babulya’s signature recipes to give the restaurant its own unique menu. It made no sense. She could cook, but not on that scale, and it was something she did for love. Not as a career. More important, aligning herself with him, tying herself to him, even in the least personal of ways—that could not be something she was considering at all.
Could it?
Staring at the ceiling of the room in a bed that did not belong to her, in a house she did not own, and in which she was only a guest by the grace of a woman she’d known long ago, Theresa folded her hands on her chest and took a long, deep breath. Agreeing to this would be insane, but she hadn’t stopped turning over the idea in her head since Ilya had offered it.
With the money from her commission, she could pay off a good portion of the credit-card debt, making the rest manageable. She could continue her freelance work and put in hours at the new venture and possibly end up with a decent income. More than that, she could work at something that went beyond the daily grind. Something that left her feeling fulfilled. Excited. It could also leave her financially busted, stressed, and . . . well, she wouldn’t go so far as to say brokenhearted, because that meant a level of emotional investment she wasn’t willing to admit to. But definitely it could mess with her mojo, and she was only beginning to get back on her feet.
Briefly, she heard the murmur of voices from down the hall, and she turned onto her side, ready to cover her ears with the pillow if she had to. She didn’t begrudge Alicia and Niko their rampant lovemaking. How could she, when Alicia had been so generous as to let Theresa move in here? But she’d never been much of a voyeur, and even though she knew they tried to be quiet, the walls were thin.
She’d turned her phone to silent, not worried about missing anything important, but now it lit up and cast a faint blue-white light against the wall. If she’d been sleeping already, she might’ve missed it. Since she wasn’t, she looked to see who had the audacity to text her at this hour. She shouldn’t have been surprised. For as long as she’d known him, Ilya hadn’t paid much attention to whatever it was he was “supposed” to do.
You know you want to.
She wanted to do a lot of things. Signing on to run a diner with him wasn’t necessarily at the top of her list. Then again, it wasn’t exactly at the bottom.
I’m sleeping, she typed in return.
His answer came within seconds. You’re not. You wouldn’t answer if you were.
Theresa pressed her lips together on a laugh, because of course he was right. She thumbed in another message. ZZZZZZZZZ
You’re not sleeping. What are you doing?
Thinking about the diner.
A pause. She watched the bouncing dots that indicated Ilya was typing. She should put the phone down and turn over so she didn’t see it light up. Instead, of course, she waited with her teeth pressing into her bottom lip to see what he was going to say.
Meet me outside?
Theresa let out the breath she’d been holding. She held the phone in two hands, thumbs poised to reply. No was a simple answer, and she owed him no more than that, really.
It’s late, she said.
The next message that came through was a blurry close-up of Ilya’s pouting face. She burst into a flurry of giggles at the sight of it and clutched the phone to her chest, a parody of a swooning schoolgirl. Her phone throbbed in her palms with another message. She looked again.
You know you want to.
It was as true now as it had been a few minutes ago. She did want to, the same way she wanted to throw all her cautions to the wind and dive into this business project with him. Agreeing to help him with the diner could potentially ruin her financially . . . but somehow agreeing to meet him outside at just past midnight on a warm Wednesday evening at the end of April seemed ever so much more dangerous.
Ten minutes, came the next text, again before she’d replied. Outside.
With a groan, Theresa kicked off the covers. This was stupid, yet there she was, getting out of bed, rustling in her drawer for a sweatshirt to pull on over her tank top. She found a pair of flip-flops and slipped them on. Her hair had been bundled into a loose bun on top of her head for sleep, and she contemplated tugging it free of the elastic band, but it would be kinked and messy, maybe a little damp from the shower she’d taken before bed. Better to leave it up. Besides, it wasn’t like she was rushing to meet a lover, she reminded herself. This was Ilya.
Ilya, who’d kissed her in the front hallway of his house. Who’d made her laugh hard enough to forget the last time she’d cried. Ilya, who was asking her to meet him outside in the middle of the night.
She brushed her teeth quickly, trying to make as little noise as she possible. If she could hear Niko and Alicia in Alicia’s bedroom with the door closed, it was conceivable they’d hear her messing around in the bathroom and wonder what she was doing up so late. Heart pounding, she slipped down the hall and the stairs and paused at the front door to slowly, carefully, and as silently as possible, click open the lock so she could ease her way outside.
“Hey,” Ilya said with a grin, not even trying to whisper.
“Shhh!”
“What? Nobody’s even awake.”
She frowned and gently closed the door behind her. “And I don’t want you to wake anyone up. Okay?”
“It’s not like they’d care.” In the darkness, lit only by the half-moon overhead, his grin flashed white. “Wait a minute. You care?”
“Yes. I do.” She tugged his sleeve to pull him away from the house. “I’m out here, okay? What did you want?”
“Remember how we used to sneak out at night? All of us?”
Theresa could recall a couple of times, no more than that, but something about how Ilya had automatically included her in his memories warmed her. Against her will, but it did. “You all did that.”
“You were with us. I remember. It was the end of the summer, right after you and Barry moved in.” Ilya bounced on the balls of his feet. “We went out to the quarry. It was a full moon. We skinny-dipped.”
She burst into laughter she quickly muffled behind her hand. “We did not!”
“I did. I remember.” Ilya grinned.
“You probably did. That sounds like something you’d do. But I know I didn’t.” She tilted her head, studying him. Like on that long-ago night he’d been trying to get her to remember, tonight’s moon was full and bright, the sky cloudless. “It can’t have been very impressive, I have to say, since I can’t remember it at all.”
He put a hand on his chest, fingers clutching. “Ouch. Boy, you really know how to dig, huh?”
She smiled but said nothing.
“Well, come on then,” he said.
Her eyebrows lifted. “Come on then, what?”
“You and me. The quarry. Skinny-dipping. Right now.” He stabbed two fingers downward. His grin got bigger and also more challenging.
Theresa blew out a breath that wafted her bangs off her face. “You’re on.”
Ilya looked surprised, but only for a second or so before he jumped in place, clapping his hands together. “Aw, yeah. C’mon. We’ll freeze our nuts off, but let’s do it.”
“I don’t have nuts, and I’m sure we’ll get arrested for trespassing,” Theresa said as she followed him across Alicia’s front yard and onto the street toward the woods. “You don’t own it anymore, remember? And that’s if we don’t—”
She cut herself off. She’d been about to say “kill ourselves falling off the cliff,” but that would’ve been bad. At the least, insensitive. But more than that, she knew without having to say it how much it would hurt him.
“Come down with the flu,” she said instead. If Ilya noticed the momentary awkwardness, he didn’t mention it. “But, hey. Let’s do it. Why not?”
“Why not!” Ilya cried, too loud, and ducked at her swinging punch that she pulled at the last second. He stifled his laughter and danced away from her. “Sorry, sorry.”
“Just go, before you wake the entire neighborhood.” She shot a glance over her shoulder at the Guttridge house, anticipating the lights turning on and Dina peeking out through the curtains, but if the nosy neighbor was spying on them, Theresa could see no sign of it.
Together, they jogged to the end of the street. In the past it had ended abruptly, no curb, just cracked asphalt blending into scrubby grass that became the woods surrounding the quarry. At some point, improvements had turned the end into a paved cul-de-sac with a nice curb that nearly tripped her up as she followed Ilya into the trees. Ilya caught her as she stumbled, holding her by the arm. The pair of them dissolved into hysterical, snorting laughter that rang throughout the patch of woods despite her attempts at keeping quiet.
“Watch yourself,” he said. “I got you.”
She lingered a moment too long in his embrace before pushing herself away. “I’m okay.”
“I know you’re okay.”
In the bright moonlight, his eyes looked darker than usual, or maybe it was simply that his pupils had dilated so much they blocked out the color. He looked at her for less than a minute before taking her hand. Their fingers linked loosely, and she let him hold tight while they wove their way through the scrub pines. Once they were past the first row or so, a curving path of dirt and pine needles opened up, heading toward the drop-off.
“I don’t remember a path,” she said.
“I made it. C’mon.” He tugged her hand.
She followed. “You made it?
“Well . . . yeah. I’ve lived here my entire life, spent countless hours trekking through the trees to get to the swimming spot. I got too old to keep fighting my way through the brush.” He ducked to slap a hanging tree branch out of the way, then held it back so she could pass. Doing so meant he dropped her hand.
She wished he was still holding it.
“Back then, we were the only ones hanging out there. Everyone else went around to the other side,” she said.
Ilya shot her a grin. “Yeah, where the shop is. Easier access there. Maybe I should’ve made more of a beach, you know? I thought about it. Bringing in a couple tons of sand. Setting up a hot-dog stand. Maybe if I had, it would’ve worked out better.”
“Things work out how they’re supposed to.”
Ahead she glimpsed something looming. It turned out to be a fence, not the rusted, sagging chain-link fence she remembered but something newer, with a gate secured with a heavy padlock. Ilya pulled a key from his pocket to open it.
“I wanted to keep people out,” he said, although she hadn’t asked him or even said a word about it. He pushed open the gate and stepped aside for her to walk through, then followed. “I tore down the old equipment shed, too. It was a hazard. And . . . bad things happened there.”
It was her turn to reach for his hand, and she barely snagged his fingers, because he was moving away. She managed to catch him, though. She waited until he’d paused to look at her.
“I do remember that,” she said.
Ilya nodded. “If anyone remembers anything about her, it’s usually that.”
She was quiet after that. They reached the smooth, flat area and the rocky outcrop a few minutes after that. It hadn’t changed. The moon glinted off the water that rippled in a faint breeze. Her toe caught a rock, which leaped across the ledge and through the air to the water beyond. She waited for the sound of it hitting. Ilya had moved on ahead of her to stand at the edge.
“Funny how it never freaked me out how high this was, back then,” he said quietly. “We’d jump off it like it was nothing.”
“That’s what you do when you’re young. You jump without thinking. When you get older, you start to be afraid of breaking something.” Theresa stood beside him, looking down into the water. It was going to be cold, she thought. And there was no way she was jumping from here.
“The rope’s gone.” He jerked a thumb back toward the closest tree. “But you can still get down the path there to the water. If you don’t want to jump from the ledge, I mean.”
She looked at him. “Do you want to?”
“It’s dangerous,” Ilya said.
“Yes.” She waited for him to continue and, when he didn’t, added, “but we’ve come all this way.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t change our minds.”
She thought about the truth of that for a few seconds before she answered. “Are you saying this because you’re afraid I’m going to laugh at your junk?”
“Because I’m . . . damn, woman. Again with the jabs about what I’ve got going on in my jeans. If you’re not careful, I’m going to start thinking you’re dying to find out.”
She laughed at that. “Dream on.”
Staring her down, Ilya stripped off his shirt and let it fall to the ground. She wanted to look away but refused to give him the satisfaction. His gaze stabbing hers, he undid the button of his jeans and pushed them over his hips to stand in front of her in a pair of tight red briefs.
“What?” Ilya said, throwing out his hands and giving her a head wag. “What, you can’t handle it?”
Without a word, Theresa unzipped the hoodie to reveal the thin tank top she’d been wearing as pajamas. The night air was much warmer than it had been for months, but nevertheless her nipples peaked against the soft fabric. Ilya was no longer snaring her gaze; he was checking out the front of her shirt. More warmth flooded her, even as gooseflesh rose along her arms and the fine hairs at the back of her neck. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her pajama bottoms, then slipped them over her thighs and stepped out of them to stand, clad in only the tiny lace panties she’d been wearing when he texted her.
“Are we doing this?” she asked him. “Or are we just talking about it?”
Ilya looked toward the water. The moon at this point had risen high enough so that their shadows stretched out long and dark in front of them. It cast a shimmer on the rippling waters below.
“If we’re doing it, we’re doing it together.”
“Deal.” Theresa moved to the edge and held out her hand for him to take. He did, standing beside her with his fingers squeezing hers. Together, they peered over the edge.
She did not want to jump.
She could think of at least a hundred things she’d rather do than leap off this ledge and plunge herself into the frigid quarry waters. Yet here she was, and she was the one who’d urged him to do it. The same way she’d convinced him to sell the quarry to begin with, then had led him toward buying the diner. She wasn’t going to back out now.
“Are you scared, Theresa?”
“Yes.”
“You never liked to jump,” Ilya said. “You always went down the hill.”
She straightened, lifting her chin. “So tonight’ll be a first.”
“Your first time,” Ilya said with a lilt in his voice, laughter that faded into a smile. “I’m honored.”
“Let’s go,” Theresa said. Before she lost her nerve.
They put their toes over the edge, looking down.
“One,” Ilya said. “Two . . .”
“Three!” They both cried at the same time, leaping together.
Hurtling through the air, Theresa was convinced she’d made the wrong choice. She would bounce off the rocks, break her bones. She would drown and die here in the same spot Jenni had so many years ago, but this would not be an accident. She’d done this to herself, her own bad decisions . . .
Somehow, she hadn’t let go of Ilya’s hand. When they hit the water, Theresa tried to scream, but nothing came out beyond a startled squawk. She’d forgotten to hold her nose, and grabbed for it at the last second as the water engulfed her and everything went dark. She’d closed her eyes but opened them as she kicked, frantic to get herself to the surface. Panicking a little.
She broke the water with a gasp that became a delighted shout. “Yeah-h-h-h!”
Beside her, Ilya surfaced. He sprayed a long blast of water and kicked to end up on his back, arms spread. “Nice.”
Theresa treaded water, pushing the hair out of her face. Her teeth started to chatter, chipping her laughter into tiny shards like crushed ice. She splashed at him. He splashed back.
“We didn’t bring any towels,” Theresa said.
There was no question of them lingering in the water. In the hottest days of August, the temperature would’ve been barely tolerable for a long period of time. In late April, even after a mild winter, the water was already turning her toes numb. She struck out for the shore, finding her rhythm after a moment or so. It had been a long time since she’d gone swimming.
They made it up the hill to the ledge, where she grabbed up her hoodie and slipped into it with a grateful sigh. Her pj bottoms next, though the fabric clung to her wet legs and made it hard to get them on without a struggle.
Ilya was having similar problems with his jeans, but finally they managed to get dressed. He sat with his legs over the edge, and after a minute, Theresa joined him. Hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder. She was far from dry, but her teeth had stopped chattering.
“I haven’t done that in a long time,” Ilya said after a while. He shrugged, not looking at her. “I’ve been in this water thousands of times since . . . then. But never from here. Never off the ledge like this. I’ve come out here so many times, but I was never able to do it.”
The hitch in his breath alarmed her. When he bowed his head, shoulders hunched, and let out a long, low sigh, she did the first thing she thought of—she put her arm around his shoulders. Ilya pressed his face against her shoulder.
“I loved her so much, Theresa.”
Her throat closed, hot tears sparking the backs of her eyes. She blinked them away fiercely and half turned to press her lips to his wet hair. “I know you did. She was easy to love.”
He laughed hoarsely. “No. She was fucking hard to love, Theresa. Nobody else seemed to think that. Only me. And by the time I figured out that it didn’t have to be so hard, it was too late.”
Theresa stroked a hand over his hand and the back of his neck. She let her hand settle between his shoulder blades. His shirt was damp, but the heat from his body came through it. She listened to the sound of him breathing.
“I thought for a while that it was my fault. That she’d done it, you know, on purpose. To herself. Because of me.”
“Ilya . . .”
He shook his head, sitting up but not moving away. He swiped at his face angrily, perhaps ashamed of the tears that glittered on his cheeks in the moon’s fierce white glow. “I thought I’d done something to her to make her hate her life so much that she wanted to end it.”
Theresa had never heard even a rumor that Jenni had committed suicide. “I always thought it was an accident. Nobody ever said otherwise.”
“That’s what they determined. That she was high and drunk and she came out here.” He slapped at the stone beneath them. “Here, right here, and she fell. She broke her neck, did you know that? She didn’t drown. They found drugs and booze in her blood, but I guess they can tell if you’re already dead before you hit the water.”
“If her neck broke and she didn’t drown,” Theresa said carefully, “then at least she didn’t feel anything.”
Ilya barked out a humorless, harsh laugh. “She didn’t feel anything, anyway. She was doped up and shithammered drunk. She was stupid. And it killed her.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Ilya.”
He looked at her. “It will always feel like my fault. No matter what. Because I loved her, and she needed me, and I didn’t see whatever was going on with her. I failed her, and she died.”
Theresa didn’t know what to say to that. There could be no convincing him he was wrong, because she wasn’t totally sure he was. Jenni had needed someone, and Ilya had not been able to figure out what to do for her. Theresa didn’t think that meant he needed to take the blame for her death, but she knew better than most how it felt to bear the burden of guilt for someone else’s problems. Especially about addiction.
“My dad could never get his act together,” she said after a moment. “He’s been an addict for a long time. He couldn’t ever quite commit to one thing. Sometimes it was alcohol. Most often it was pills, though not always the same ones. He’d take whatever he could get.”
Ilya looked at her. “For how long? Back then, too?”
“I’m sure. Definitely before he met your mom. It was better when they got together, believe it or not.”
Ilya shook his head. “That might be the first time my mother was ever a good influence on anyone.”
“I don’t know if she was a good influence.” Theresa gave a rueful laugh. “But they were better together, at least until things ended up going so bad.”
He nudged against her. “You know, I was never that nice to you. Back then.”
“You were okay.” She nudged him back.
“It wasn’t because I didn’t like you. I mean . . . I didn’t think anything about you. Back then.”
Theresa laughed. “You weren’t supposed to, I guess. I was just some kid that came in and kicked Niko out of his room.”
“He got the attic. That was way better.” Ilya looked at her. “He still has it, now that I think about it. The bastard.”
“Not for much longer.” She paused, thinking about whether to tell him about what Alicia had shared with her about moving in with Niko. It wasn’t her news to share, and it had already been a tiny bit of a shitshow night.
Ilya shrugged. “He’s going to move in with Alicia. I guess that means she’ll sell the house. Where does that leave you?”
Theresa shrugged, relieved she hadn’t been the one to spill the beans. “I’ll be okay. She said it’ll be months before she’s ready to even put the house on the market, and they plan to travel a bit in the meantime. That’ll give me enough time to work on some things. She’s not pulling the rug out from under me or anything like that.”
“I want to be happy for them,” Ilya said.
She pursed her lips. “I’m sure you do.”
“He’s my brother. I mean, he’s the only one I have.”
She thought about this for a second. “Yes.”
“I’m not trying to be a dick about it,” Ilya said sincerely, twisting to face her. “Galina seems to think we should all become one big happy family again, including you, apparently. But I don’t think of you as my sister.”
There didn’t seem to be a good answer to that. He was looking at her like he thought she might be insulted, but there wasn’t anything to be offended by. There might’ve been a hot second or so years ago when she’d viewed him as her brother, but that time had come and gone.
They sat in silence, both of them swinging their feet and looking out across the water. She was grateful for his warmth against her. The night was cooling as the moon moved across the sky and moved on toward morning. She could no longer hold back a yawn.
“I want to buy the diner,” Ilya said. “I want you to help me run it. Will you, Theresa?”
Maybe it was the lateness of the hour, her brain fuzzy with the desire for sleep, but she turned to him with a smile. “Yes. Okay. Fine. Let’s do it.”