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13
Saint
Iwasn’t expecting this to take longer than maybe ten minutes, but I have no other obligations for the day, and I really do enjoy spending time with Holly. She’s so sincere and sweet, especially in comparison to the women who hang around the bratva. She has this honesty about her that feels humble and transparent.
Seeing the inside of her house had just affirmed that she’s so much more down to earth than most people I meet in my day-to-day life. I’d love to ask her about what her life has been like, maybe just for the escapism of it all. She seems to be so well-adjusted and intelligent that I’m curious to find out what her childhood was like. I’m willing to bet her parents were normal people who supported her throughout her formative years, and I’d love to know what that was like for her. Maybe it’s just because my parents were both emotionally absent and difficult to get along with, but I try not to think about it too much.
As we walk back outside to put up the lights, I watch her walk in front of me in full daylight for the first time. I knew she was attractive, but I hadn’t realized how stunning her body was. Her ass catches my eye in the skin-tight jeans she’s wearing, and I regret not being able to see how it moved as I was fucking her from behind in the woods.
It feels a bit voyeuristic to be paying so much attention to her without her knowing, but I can’t help it. Being able to take in her beauty so much more easily like this has me even more enamored with her than I was the night we had sex. The essence of her whole self is so luminous and vibrant. She’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met, and I’m upset with myself for trying to deny it.
“So, do you have any other plans for Christmas? Like, with your family?” I ask as she hands me a string of lights to hang.
“No, my immediate family all live out of state. Besides, we all end up fighting by the fifth hour of being together, so it’s just easier to not go,” she confesses. “My parents and my sister always end up screaming about something stupid, like her dog pissing on the floor. She brings the damn thing everywhere and my parents think it’s weird.”
I laugh, maybe a little more than I should. “Yeah, sounds about right. My parents are Russian immigrants, and they’re just as argumentative as any family. It’s the only normal thing about them, I think.”
She glances over at me and smiles, her eyes sparkling a bit in the setting winter sun. “Yeah, maybe it’s just who you become when you’re old. How about you? Do you have any plans?”
I shrug. “No, not more than the party. Honestly, that’s all the holiday involvement that I think I need. Seeing the way it stresses everyone else out puts me off a little. I mean, a lot of it seems self-inflicted, but if you don’t put forth as much effort as everyone else, they think you’re half-assing everything. I hate all the pageantry.”
She laughs, rolling her eyes as if she understands on a deeper level. “Please, my mother is the queen of dramatic Christmas pageantry. Every single year, she calls me at least once to tell me that she thinks the neighbors are trying to out-do her decorations to make her look bad. I don’t even think she’s spoken to them more than once, and she never says anything about them any other time. She just goes a little insane during the holidays.”
“I guess that’s an American thing. My family has always taken holidays as a free pass to get hammered, but it’s not like we couldn’t justify it any other time. To be honest, though, it would be nice to have someone to spend Christmas with who wasn’t a raging alcoholic. It’s fun for a while, but as I get older, it’s just exhausting,” I reply.
“Yeah, I can understand that. I was really hoping I would have someone to spend the holidays with, but I’ve been trying to get a promotion at work, and all the extra bullshit from that has kept me from dating much. Most of the time, I just come home and sleep,” she replies with a note of bitterness. “It’s a job I’ve wanted for so long, something I couldn’t have dreamed of doing in college, but now that I’m chasing it, it’s just consuming my whole life.”
It’s so strange to me to see someone as beautiful as her being dateless and single. In a way, I feel extremely lucky to have met her while she’s alone, but it still feels wrong somehow. If I were one of my friends, I would assume it was because she had something extremely wrong with her. But now I know that she’s just chasing her dreams, even if it’s crushing her. I hate to see her suffer for it, but it really is admirable. She’s nothing like Vanya, who has tried trapping each of her boyfriends with a baby to avoid ever working a single job.
“There isn’t even someone at your job that you’d go out with?” I ask, regretting the decision and bracing for the answer.
“No, all the guys at my firm are assholes. All of them. Trust me, I’ve tried to find some redeeming qualities in them, and I haven’t been able to come up with one,” she replies as she carefully climbs the ladder to secure the first set of lights. “They’re the kinds of guys who try to debate with you about a topic that you know nothing about just because they skimmed an article about it and want to seem intelligent. Absolutely idiotic behavior.”
Sounds like I might be the only guy she’s liked for a while.
I sigh deeply in relief. “I’ve just spent so much time taking care of everyone else that I haven’t been able to remove myself from my obligations. Every day there’s a new one. It would be really nice to have someone to come home to. It seems like there’s been a crisis for me to solve every day since I was eleven.”
“Oh my god, since you were eleven?” she asks with concern.
“Yeah, I’m the oldest of six siblings, and most of them are guys, so I was in charge of settling disputes pretty frequently. One of my brothers was notorious for talking shit, and he’d have people running up on our house all the time. It stressed my mom the fuck out.”
She turns her body all the way towards me, a slightly devious expression on her face. “Well, maybe it’s time that you took care of yourself a little better.”
I want to tear her off the ladder and fuck her in the snow, or maybe against the side of the house, but I need to show some self-control. After all, we wouldn’t need to settle for fucking outside. I want to know what her warmth really feels like when it isn’t being stolen by the elements. “Yeah, maybe I do.”
Even though I don’t know her that well, Holly seems like the kind of woman I could really trust if we were together. I’d be able to depend on her to support me when the world feels too heavy on my shoulders. She shows no capacity for selfishness or vanity, which is something I’ve been conditioned to navigate throughout my dating years. It’s seemed like every one of my past girlfriends has been obsessed with money and status without wanting to get to know me well enough to get them from me. They always want to skip to the fun part where I take them out to exclusive restaurants and show them off on social media.
Holly would be a fantastic wife, but I can’t expect her to commit to me if I’m still a part of the bratva. She’s already been traumatized by it, even if she looks like she’s coping well. I’d never want to put her through something like that again. It would be too much of me to ask her to put her better judgment aside for me like that, even if she wants to be with me as well.
We finish putting the lights up, and I expect her to say goodnight to me and leave it at that. I guess I wouldn’t consider that a loss, since I still got her to agree to go to the party with me.
But to my surprise, she asks me to come back inside with her without giving a reason.
“Here, I want you to stay in the living room for a few minutes. Just wait here, okay?” she says in that same smokey voice she spoke with before we fucked the first time.
I don’t want to create expectations in my head, but I can already feel my dick getting hard at the mere prospect of having sex with her again. It would be extremely awkward for both of us if it didn’t pan out this way, but I hold on to the fantasy.
After about fifteen minutes spent looking through her book collection, she emerges from her bedroom in a red lace bra with matching panties and a garter belt.
