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Mariya sighs and turns for the door. “You may call all the shots—but sometimes, you are really fucking clueless.”
She leaves the door open behind her.
After a few seconds, I get up and slam it closed.
65
LUNA
“I don’t get why you would want to sit and listen to someone chew and slurp their food.” I made Mariya put on headphones an hour ago, but every time I catch a glimpse of her phone, I feel nauseous. “Even when I’m not… sick, mouth noises make me want to rip my ears off.”
Mariya slides one headphone off her ear and shrugs. “Mukbang is relaxing.”
“Watching someone eat a pizza and a gallon of ice cream is not relaxing.” I jab a finger at the reality TV show I’m watching. “This is relaxing.”
The only thing that has gotten me through the last two days of nausea so crippling I can barely sit up is a nest of blankets on the living room sofa, a nonstop stream of mindless reality television, and the gingersnap cookies Hope baked in bulk.
Hope said the cookies were the only thing that saw her mom through all of her pregnancies. So far, the same is true for me. Even when I try eating something else, the cookies are the only food I can keep down. Thanks to Hope, I’ve been waking up to them stacked on my nightstand.
Mariya pulls off her headphones and grimaces at the TV. A wide shot of the massive yacht fills the screen. “The guys this season are super mid and the yacht isn’t even that big.”
My jaw practically unhinges. “It’s one hundred feet long!”
Mariya shrugs. “Yakov has a superyacht.”
“Yakov has a what?”
“A couple, actually,” Mariya says. “Unless he sold the one, but—No, I think he still has them both. You never know which coast you’ll be closest to. It’s easier to have two.”
“I have no idea why I’m surprised. At this point, you could tell me he has a magic chocolate factory and a portal to another world hidden in the back of his closet and I would believe you.”
“We briefly owned a French patisserie that my father won in a game of poker, but it wasn’t magical.”
I’m still digesting this new information when Hope runs into the room. “There’s a doctor.”
Mariya and I stare, waiting for more of an explanation. Hope is breathing too heavily to give one, her eyes wild.
“What?” Mariya asks.
“Doctor. Here,” Hope repeats. “Now. There’s a doctor here. To see you.”
Mariya frowns. “Me?”
“No. He said he’s here for you, Luna.”
A doctor is here to see me. Why would a doctor be here to?—?
I can’t even follow the train of thought before I sit up straight for the first time in hours. Any thoughts of mukbang or hot people on yachts are cleared away to make room for the sheer panic roaring through me.
I turn to Mariya, but she’s already shaking her head. “I didn’t say anything. I swear.”
“Me, either,” Hope adds.
Mariya looks from me to Hope and back again. “Wait. Hope knows?”
“I figured it out,” Hope whispers. “But I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Neither would I,” Mariya says again. “I’ll take your secret to the grave, Luna.”
