CHAPTER THREE
Then
They’d made out for hours, but that girl was never going to let Ilya in her pants. He was going to spend the rest of his life with his balls aching. He should have given up long ago. Gone out with someone else who’d at least agree to jerk him off. When it came right down to it, though, Ilya knew he could date a dozen—no—a hundred other girls, and not one of them was ever going to be Jennilynn Harrison. He’d never met anyone else like her, and even at seventeen, he somehow knew he never would.
What if he asked her to be his girlfriend, like be legit? If they held hands in the school hallway, went to dances? She’d wear his class ring, he thought as Jenni easily slipped his hand away from between her legs with the same skill she always did. Kiss him at the lockers before the homeroom-bell rang.
When he asked her that question, she laughed aloud. “Us? Dating? Like a real thing?”
“You don’t have to make it sound like such a bad thing,” Ilya answered, irritated. “Yeah, us. A real thing. Dating.”
“Out in public?” She’d snuck in through the back door when everyone else was asleep. This had always been a secret.
Ilya sat back against the couch. “Yeah.”
“Don’t you like us being like this?” she purred, reaching for him, her mouth open.
He held himself away. “Look, if we’re going to keep doing this in secret, but you won’t even let me touch you, and you won’t touch me, what’s the point, Jenni?
She got quiet. Her face was hard to see in the shadows, but the soft snuffle of her breathing told him she might be crying. He didn’t want to make her cry, but on the other hand, she pissed him off. She was always doing that. Teasing him, then getting angry when he called her on it. She tried to manipulate him with some kind of emotional response, and Ilya wasn’t into that, not at all.
“See, I knew that was all you wanted,” she said.
“Of course it’s what I want,” Ilya snapped with a tug at the crotch of his jeans, trying to make some room. “What guy doesn’t want to get laid?”
“But you want me to be your girlfriend?” she shot back. “Go on dates? Be a couple?”
Ilya frowned. “What’s so wrong with that?”
“If all you want is to get laid,” Jenni muttered, “why bother with the rest of the bullshit? All that hearts-and-flowers crap. So, what, you can get your dick sucked on the regular? And after that, what? When you figure out that you’re done with me, you can dump me and go get laid by someone else?”
“What’s your problem?” Ilya put an arm’s length of distance between them in case she decided to smack him or something. “What, are you on your period?”
Her reply came on a hiss, the sneer he couldn’t see on her face clear in every word. “Oh, right, because a girl gets mad, that means she’s on her period. Did it ever occur to you that maybe I’m just tired of all this shit from guys like you?”
“Guys like . . .” He knew she’d been out with a few other guys, but hearing her actually admit it put his stomach in knots. “Guys like who?”
“Just . . . all guys.” Jenni flapped her hands at him, shadows upon shadows. “You all want sex, and that’s it.”
Ilya leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees so he could scrub at his face. “I just told you I wanted to make you my girlfriend, Jenni. Take you out. Make it a real thing, not some kind of secret sex thing. Why do you have to twist it around like that? You’re the one making this into that sort of thing. Not me.”
“And what happens when you want to break up with me?”
He looked at her, trying to turn the shadows and darkness into a face, her face. “What makes you think I’d want to?”
“It’s what happens,” she said in a small and broken voice. “And then what?”
“Jenni . . .” He reached for her, but she kept herself out of reach, so he stopped reaching.
“It’s what happens,” she said again. “So we’d have this thing for a little while, and then you break up with me—”
“You could break up with me,” Ilya retorted.
None of this was going how he thought it would. He had to swallow hard against the rush of nausea and the chills. He clenched his fists, digging the knuckles into his knees. He wanted to kiss her, that was all, but the way she looked at him made him think she might bite him if he tried.
Jenni swiped at her tears. “Whatever. Then we hate each other.”
“How could you think I would ever hate you?” Ilya shook his head.
“Well, it’s not like you love me,” she spat.
The words had been there, on the tip of his tongue. If only they’d been able to move past his teeth. But . . . love? That was a huge thing to say out loud. And what happened then, Ilya thought, once he said it? He wouldn’t be able to take it back.
Love was forever.
“I have to go.” Jenni got up. “This is all bullshit, Ilyushka.”
He frowned. “Don’t call me that.”
“Maybe I just won’t call you anything,” Jenni whispered, not moving away. She stood in front of him.
He could have reached for her again. She might have let him touch her this time. He thought that if he did, they could fix this thing between them that felt so determined to be broken, but he couldn’t quite make himself do it. It was too much like giving in to her, when he didn’t feel like he was the one who needed to surrender.
Without another word, Jenni left him there. He heard the whishing noise of the back sliding glass door open, then close. After that, silence. He waited a few minutes more to get his body under control before he decided to go upstairs to bed, where he suspected he wouldn’t find it easy to sleep.
In the kitchen, a dark silhouette startled Ilya enough to shout. “What the—”
“Shhh, you’ll wake your mother, and I’ll have to explain to her what you were doing down here in the middle of the night with a houseguest.” Barry sat at the kitchen table in nothing but a pair of sagging boxers. He had a bottle in front of him. Clear liquid inside. An empty shot glass that he filled while Ilya watched. He pushed the glass across the table toward his stepson. “Here. Sounded like you could use that.”
“You were listening?” Worse, maybe he’d been watching? A rush of disgust had Ilya crossing his arms.
“I came down because I heard a noise.”
“Did . . . did Jenni see you?”
Barry shrugged and tipped back the vodka from the shot glass with a smack of his lips. “She went out the back door, but yeah. Probably.”
“Dude . . .” Ilya was at a loss for what to say. His mother had married this guy, who seemed decent enough, but he was hardly a father figure. If Barry thought Ilya needed some kind of advice, he was going to be disappointed.
“She called you Ilyushka,” Barry said. “Isn’t that what your grandmother calls you?”
Ilya gave him a wary look. “Sometimes. Yes.”
“In Russian, it’s how to talk to someone with fondness, right? Like a nickname.”
Ilya shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Ilyushka is what you’d call someone you love,” Barry said, and poured himself another shot. He didn’t offer it to Ilya this time, merely tipped it up in a salute before downing it. “Just saying.”
“I’m going to bed.” For a moment, Ilya thought Barry would call him back, but he climbed the stairs in darkness and silence and made his way to his bedroom, where he tangled himself in the sheets and was asleep, despite his fears of insomnia, within minutes.