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“Is that all I am to you? The mother of your child?” I ask, feeling tears beginning to form in my eyes and wishing that I could will them away. Crying in front of him is so fucking embarrassing because of how unemotional he is all the time. Sometimes I appreciate how stoic he is, but other times, I just feel like he doesn’t take my feelings seriously at all.
“No, you’re obviously more than that. Don’t start getting pedantic with me. You know I haven’t exactly had the time or the mental energy to dedicate toward making you feel like the most beautiful girl on the planet. That will come eventually, but for now you really just need to suck it up.”
I scoff at him, practically spitting venom. “That’s so shitty of you to say! I’m not asking you to treat me like a princess, I’m asking you to address me like a human being with needs! Whether you want to deal with it or not, I still need to see a doctor for this baby. At least think of what the baby needs if what I need isn’t important enough for you.”
He rubs his hands over his eyes as if I’m the most exasperating, impossible person he’s ever encountered. Heneedsto understand that he’s being unreasonable to some degree or another. It makes me wonder how he would have treated one of his past girlfriends if she had gotten pregnant. I’m certain there’s an ex who got away that he would do absolutely anything for, and maybe he resents me for not being just like her.
Whatever. I need to get the hell out of here if he isn’t going to respect me.
I go upstairs to the master bedroom without hearing his retort, or if he even has one. He might have just heard what I had to say and shrugged his shoulders. It’s something he does whenever he’s exhausted of the conversation we’re having and chooses to disengage, which pisses me off to a monumental degree. I just want him to take my concerns seriously instead of treating me like I’m a prop.
I’m not here to just be his cute little baby mama while he tries to save the world. I need to have value to him, and ever since we moved into this little house, I’ve felt totally cast off by him. All I want is to feel seen and heard by him, and now I’m wondering if I regret telling him about the baby in the first place. It makes me wonder if he would be treating me differently if I were still just cool and fun, not a potential mother. I never thought that a Madonna-Whore complex would affect me personally.
When I get up to the bedroom, I fall onto the bed and begin to weep into my arms. I don’t want him to hear me, because if he does, he’ll probably come up here to tell me that I’m manipulating him by having legitimate emotions. The situation has been difficult, and I feel like I’ve been taking on all of his bullshit gracefully until now. I need a reprieve from all of this, and I don’t know where to find it.
I never wanted to have children with Cody, of course, but even when I was with him I imagined what my future would be like with the next person I dated. I figured I would marry that person, settle down and have children eventually in a cute little house in a quiet neighborhood. I’d daydream about it, admittedly while I was still with Cody, and now I’m wondering if the universe is punishing me for being too selfish.
I lie on the bed for what feels like hours staring up at the ceiling, but it doesn’t feel serene or safe the way it did in the old couple’s house. I want to be set free from all this, and now it’s far too late. I should have known better, but now I’m going to suffer the consequences.
22
Aleksander
Idon’t know if it’s the pregnancy or not, but Faye has been driving me insane with the way she’s been overreacting to absolutely everything. Every single word out of my mouth starts a fight, and I don’t even think she knows that she’s doing it. I know she’s worried about the baby, and for that I thank her. However, everything else surrounding my brother’s disappearance and Grisha’s involvement with the research chemical makes me want to hit my head against a wall for some relief.
She has absolutely no idea how any of this shit works, and I suppose I only have myself to blame for that. I haven’t taken the time to properly explain a lot of it to her, but I’m not entirely certain how much of it she could even understand. It feels bad to underestimate her intelligence, I admit, but I don’t have the ability to soothe her if she finds aspects of the work unpalatable.
I know she would freak the fuck out if she knew just how bad some of these jobs have been in the past. She probably still has this mental image of a rogue, mysterious Russian man taking down organized crime syndicates in the underground world of the black market. What she doesn’t understand is that a lot of that work involves getting rid of recurring enemies, of which I have had many in the years I’ve spent in the Bratva. If she knew just how many, she would fall to her knees and lose her mind.
I can’t really blame her that much. The background that she came from is so far removed from the life I lead that my expectations of her are always going to be too high. I can’t even wrap my head around how boring her life must have been before now. The worst thing that ever happened to her was being forced to perform well in school to make her mother happy. If that was my only objective when I was a teen, I would probably be a neurosurgeon or a rocket scientists by now.
But unfortunately for me, I had to take care of my siblings for all of my developmental years, and that has lent me to a pretty bleak mindset. I would never want to belittle her struggles, especially if she feels like her sister took all the love and attention that her parents had for her. But I do resent her a bit for lacking perspective the way that she has been.
The biggest problem with this whole arrangement is that I’ve developed deep, strong feelings for her that I can’t shake. It’s never been this hard for me to disengage my feelings when things get too rocky, and god knows I’ve tried. But with Faye, I feel the need to keep her in my life no matter the cost, even if I end up giving up the Bratva life completely.
Would I ever tell her that? No, of course not. If she knew that was something I was willing to consider, she would start hounding my ass to do it before I even had a chance to explain to her what we would be giving up. She doesn’t have the perspective to understand the lifestyle we could give our baby if she just trusted me. She’s used to parents who work regular jobs, probably living paycheck to paycheck at points. To her, the lack of criminal involvement is all that matters even if it ends up in a lower standard of living for her child. To me, that seems selfish.
I wander upstairs to see where she’s at, and I find her asleep on top of the bed still in her clothes from the day. She must have been up here for quite some time, and I can see the tracks of mascara running down her cheeks. Seeing evidence that she was crying, thatImade her cry, is gut-wrenching. I need to do something about this, something to save my relationship with the woman that I have the potential to love with my whole heart.
I write out a note for her, telling her that I’ll be stepping out but won’t be gone too long. For all she knows, I could just be walking outside to get some air, but she already lied to me once about where she was going. She can call us even now, even if it feels petty to say.
The note looks shitty, but I figure I might even be back before she has the chance to read it. If she does, I’m hoping that she’ll find my horrible handwriting to be charming instead of a huge turn off. I need to win some points back with her, and the best angle I have right now is to play the lovable idiot. It’s not a role I enjoy playing, but it might be what it takes.
The sunset is even more beautiful today than it usually is here, and I wish I could wake up Faye to show it to her. She’s always talking about how beautiful the pastel pink, orange, and purple streaks are to her, so I decide to take a picture that I can show her when she isn’t angry. I figure she’ll appreciate that I was thinking about her even in the midst of a fight.
My walk into the nearby shops is peaceful as everyone in the city settles in for the night. Everyone around me looks content with their station in life, which puts me at ease even though it has no discernable effect on my own life. I’d love to talk to some of them, see what their worldview is, what their opinion would be on the situation I’m in. This is part of what makes this work so hard – there’s nobody you can talk to except other Bratva members.
I’ve decided to go find some flowers for Faye. I know American men give flowers to their lovers, of course, but flowers are an entire love language to Russian men. Even if I can’t fix the problem right away like I wish I could, I can at least show her that I’m thinking about her in a way that includes no malice. I know that women like Faye can become insecure when they feel like their man is getting tired of them. I would hate for her to believe I could ever feel that way about her. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me, whether I’m ready to admit it to myself or not.
It doesn’t take long for me to find a flower shop, and from the looks of it, their products aren’t very expensive at all. I know that communicating will be much harder without Faye to translate for me, but I figure it won’t be too terribly hard to get my point across. Ithasbeen somewhat isolating being the only Americans in our area, and Faye is the only person I can speak to even if I wanted to talk with someone else. She’s amazing, of course, but I miss the regular mundane conversation that takes place in everyday life.
The inside of the shop is illuminated beautifully by the golden orange cast streaming in from the sunset outside. Every potted plant, bouquet, and seedling looks like it was stolen straight from out of a fantasy novel. I realize that I don’t even know if she likes flowers, and I feel a brief wave of guilt. I don’t really know that much about what she likes and dislikes, and that makes me feel even worse about the way I’ve been treating her. She knows that she deserves to be loved and cherished, and now it’s my job to fully realize that as well.
I approach a bouquet of red roses, which feels like a bit of a cliché, but I don’t know enough about the meaning behind flowers as gifts to choose another. I pick it up, examining it for wilting petals, and decide that it’s up to my standards. The color is a rich, velvety blood red, and it looks like they’re still fresh from being cut this morning. I figure that at the very least, she’ll be able to appreciate that I have good taste. She deserves the best of anything, after all.
I walk up to the counter to purchase the flowers, and the only person present in the shop is a little old man no taller than five-foot-three. I figure that he doesn’t speak English, so I reach into my wallet to dig for a random amount that should cover the cost. The currency exchange rates in Japan always throw me off because they sound so much higher than American money, so it takes me a minute to calculate a good estimate.
The man at the counter raises an eyebrow. “You’re fighting with someone?”
