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I have half a second to register it. The heat of her knuckles through the cotton. The sharp little breath she takes. Then she drags me down, rises onto her toes, and kisses me.

It's angry and clumsy and furious, her mouth hard against mine like she's trying to win an argument with it.

For one heartbeat, I don't move. I keep my hands at my sides, because I promised her she'd decide, and I need to know she's decided.

Then her grip on my shirt tightens, and she makes a small, frustrated sound against my lips, and I stop thinking.

I kiss her back.

One hand slides along her jaw, into her hair. The other finds the small of her back and pulls her in until there's no space left between us. She tastes like Saperavi and salt. She softens against me by degrees, the anger going out of the kiss and something much more dangerous taking its place. Her free hand comes up to my neck. Her fingers curl into the hair at my nape.

Six years.

Six years of standing in the corners of rooms, and she's in my arms on a cold street in Chicago, kissing me like she's been thinking about it all day.

Maybe she has.

When she finally pulls away, she doesn't go far. Her forehead stays close to my chin. Her breath is uneven. Her hand is still knotted in my shirt.

I don't let go of her. I'm not sure I could if I tried.

“That,” she says unsteadily, “didn't mean anything.”

“Okay.”

She lifts her head and glares at me. Her lipstick is gone. Most of it, I suspect, is on me.

“I mean it, Garick.”

“I believe you.”

“Then why are you smiling?”

I don't answer. I don't need to. She can feel how hard my heart is pounding under her knuckles, and she knows exactly why.

She lets go of my shirt like it burned her. Yanks the car door open. Gets in. She sits there for a second with both hands on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead.

Then she rolls the window down.

“It wasn't a date,” she says.

“Then what was it?”

She thinks about it for a long time. “A mistake.”

“Same time tomorrow?”

She rolls the window back up and pulls away without answering. But I saw her face before the glass closed. Flushed. Furious. And smiling.

I stand on the pavement with her lipstick on my mouth and watch her taillights until they turn the corner.

Arina

I wake up at seven with my lipstick on Garick Lazovski's mouth.

Not literally. Obviously. But that's the first thing my brain hands me when I open my eyes, before I remember where I am or what day it is or that my father is dead.

Pink lipstick. Smudged across his bottom lip under a streetlight.