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“So, you heard him play, huh?” He shot a sidelong look my way.
I smiled smugly as the Volvo swooshed by the twinkling, bright blue ocean, crowded promenade, and colorful gift shops, heading toward the highway.
“Couple of times,” I kept it coy.
It was one time, exactly. When I’d gone to Ryan’s house to drop off some homework one of his teachers had sent for him on a day he was “sick”. And by sick, I mean playing videogames and smoking weed. He forced me to listen to something he wrote. I still had PTSD, not because it was bad, but because it lasted twenty minutes, and I really needed to pee.
“You hang out with him a lot?” Alex asked.
“Every day at school,” I said cheerfully, feeling a lot less cheery when I thought about the fact Alex went to school, too, and I had absolutely no idea who he was hanging out with.
In my mind, all the girls in his high school looked like they’d just walked out of Playboy magazine, bunny ears and lace bras included.
“He wants in your pants,” Alex informed me, flat-out.
“How is that different from you?” I asked bravely. “I’m sure you didn’t invite me here because of my extensive knowledge of drumsticks.”
Or Mentos, for that matter.
“The difference is you want me in your pants, too,” Alex deadpanned, his eyes still on the road. I choked on my saliva. Dude actually said it. “Our interests are aligned. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”
“I hang out with Ryan, too,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, well, first of all, you do it at school, where your options are limited to teenyboppers or Ryan, who actually possesses a few gray cells, even if they’re not used in full capacity. Second, Ryan is not a class A cunt, so hanging out with him doesn’t take endurance. It is surprisingly easy to know where you stand with people when you are a jerk. I always know my options, honeypie.”
What. The…
“Honeypie?” I spluttered.
It was the corniest…most embarrassing…bizarre nickname I’d ever been called by someone in my age bracket.
Honeypie. Who even said that outside of banal ’80s movies? My grams, maybe.
“Yeah.” Alex scowled, his eyes darkening. I could practically see his walls rising. “What’s wrong with Honeypie?”
“What’s good about it?” I couldn’t stop laughing.
It was an honest-to-God heaven-sent icebreaker. His face turned serious and a little flushed, and sobered up quickly. I realized that he called me that because he didn’t understand the context of the word in the language we were speaking.
He was, after all, an immigrant from Russia. Sure, he came here when he was eight, and his accent was faint, barely there—maybe just a lilt around the vowels every now and then—but he was, for all intents and purposes, still a bilingual person who wasn’t completely well-versed in the local lingo.
His world was different than mine. His brain was a multi-lane highway.
Suddenly, I felt like complete and utter shit for my remark.
He looked annoyed now, the shells of his ears pink, and it made my heart pinch.
The look on his face put a dent in his immortal, unshaken confidence. It allowed me to take my guard down a notch.
“No, you’re right. Honeypie is…great.” I breathed through my nose, careful not to laugh or even smirk. “Please, continue.”
He shot me a look from the corner of his eye. “I don’t even remember what we were talking about.”
“The merits of being an asshole,” I reminded him dutifully.
“I have nothing more to contribute to this subject. Other than the fact that I am one. What are you, anyway?” he asked, his voice hard and unwavering. He meant where I was from.
“A human.”
“No, really.”
“Okay, a Martian.” I sighed. “But don’t tell anyone. I’ve seen how they treated ET. Appalling, if you ask me.”
“You’re fucking exasperating. Just answer the question, Lara.”
“Honeypie,” I corrected primly. “I demand to be referred to by my new pet name.”
“What’s. Your. Damn. Heritage?” he ground out.
“Half Russian, half Moroccan. The Russian side traveled a lot and my great-grandmothers liked to keep their options open, so there’s some Polish and Bulgarian mixed in, too. From the North African side, I have some roots in Tunisia, too. Very worldly, I am.”
“Speak any Russian?” His eyes lit up with hope.
“Only profanity.” I chewed on my bottom lip.
“Those are the most important words.” He cracked another devastating smile. His smiles were rare and far-between, but I knew I would sell my soul to see just a sliver of them. I was such a goner for this guy, it was pathetic. “Start talking.”
And so I found myself sitting next to Alex, shooting curses in Russian for a couple minutes, making my grandmother from heavens above cringe in her furry pink house robe and cup of homemade vodka. He laughed at me, because now, I wasn’t the one with the dialect advantage. He was the one fluent in the language we were speaking. And before we knew it, we were at a music shop bang in the middle of the big city.
