“Bohdan. My brain doesn’t fucking work.”
“No. It worksdifferently.” He pulls back and emphasizes the word, like it’s somehow special and wonderful, lovely and effervescent, and not the thing that’s made me feel alone in rooms full of people and haunted me when I was a child, peeking out of my backpack to whisper to me like some sort of monster that lived under the bed, always there to remind me of the ways I was wrong.
I start to roll my eyes, but he grips my chin again. He shakes his head, one wayward piece of hair curling over his ears, left side of his mouth lifting just so, sharp planes of his face and stubble peppering his jaw.
He’sspecial and wonderful, lovely and effervescent.
I’m none of those things.
“Sloan. Zlatícko. Listen to me,” he states, like he’s ready to make a declaration. “I’m not going to get sick of you, or the way your brain works.”
“You probably should.” I sniff. “You’re what—the top-ranked hockey player in the world? And you look like that?” He grins when I gesture wildly at him, his smile splitting me open, shining a light and chasing away the shadows in this dark kitchen, and maybe, some of the ones that live in me. “You should be with someone who has cute, curated outfits and knows exactly what she’s going to wear to all your games and coordinates with the other partners. A blonde, maybe.”
Bohdan lifts a brow. “I don’t like blondes.”
I do roll my eyes this time. But my words don’t have the same bravado. They’re small and sad. “Someone who can show up for you, the way you show up for them. You’re always doing things like this—rushing into the kitchen of my apartment or helping me count and learning new languages. What do you get out of it?”
“You,” he says simply. “You, and all the things about you that you don’t see. How curious you are. How thoughtful. How intentional in your actions you are. How funny you are. The way you snort sometimes when you laugh too much. The way you get excited when you flip through pictures of artefacts, and how that excitement brightens everything it touches. How your brain might be mean to you, but it actually makes you more understanding and lets you offer kindness to people who might not otherwise deserve it.”
“Those sound made up,” I whisper.
Bohdan’s mouth tugs to the side in a rueful line. “I imagine they would to you. But they’re real to me.”
“What if it’s always like this?” I ask quietly, afraid of the answer. “You giving more than you get?”
“It won’t be. I can hold you up now, you can hold me up later.” He presses his thumb to each of my freckles. “We’re a team.”
“A team?” I wrinkle my nose. “What position do I play?”
“Left wing, like Talon, but I’ll probably make you ride the bench during the important games. I’ve seen you try to skate and shoot a puck at the same time.” He gives me a wry grin.
I shove at his shoulder, and he grabs my wrist, brushing his mouth across the sensitive skin before he tucks me into the crook of his neck, and drops his head back against the cupboard.
“How’d you get so mature for your age?” I place a hand across his chest, moving it around until I can feel his heartbeat against my palm.
“Slavic stoicism,” he deadpans, pressing his lips to the crown of my head. “Do you want to leave the kitchen? We can go to your room, or I’ll take you back to my place. But I think Talon and Jay were planning on throwing a party.”
“No.” I sniff a laugh. “I live down here now.”
“I guess I’ll have to move in, too.” I feel him grin into my hair. “Good thing because I don’t think I’ll be able to move my fucking legs.”
“Should we start decorating then? You’ve got a good eye.” I pull back, smiling softly up at him.
He nods, eyes sweeping across the kitchen like he’s being thoughtful about the whole thing. He points to the fridge. “That’s too empty. I’ve got the perfect thing we can hang there.” Reaching into the back pocket of his suit pants, he pulls out his wallet, flicks through the bills and plastic cards, until he pulls out something from behind his ID, and holds it out to me between two fingers.
I take it, hesitant, running my fingers over the softened edges, and the black ink with my name and number scrawled on the back that’s starting to smudge. The picture of eighteen-year-old me, frozen in time with tears in her eyes and absolutely no idea how lucky she really was that day. I take a tiny inhale, glancing back up and blinking at him, another tear slipping down my cheek. “You kept the Polaroid?”
“Yeah, Zlatícko. I did. Start of the rest of my life, the night I got that.”
Bohdan might be the special, wonderful, lovely, effervescent one.
But he’s never, not for a single second, made me feel alone.
Sloan
Colourful buildings peek out from behind towering trees along the coastline, visible and brighter in the morning sun, where it sits heavy in the blue sky, wisps of cloud tumbling along.
I keep my eye on the horizon, the ocean sparkling, water churning into whitecaps as the ship moves closer to the port.
