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But he can’t let her go just yet.
And so, with the sunlight coming in through the window and surrounded by blood, just as he’s been for so long, he holds the body of the woman he loves, and cries.
One last time.
There will be no tears after this.
Only more blood.
Lidiya
Moscow in the winter is bitterly cold.
Not just cold in the sense that you need to bundle up, but to-your-bones, sink in deeply and stay there, in a way that only a hot bath and a fire and a steaming drink can fix, cold. It’s raining today too, which means that it’ll be even harder to shake the chill once I get home.
As if to add insult to injury, my radiator is broken. It’sbeenbroken for most of the winter, but it didn’t matter, because I spent most of my nights at my boyfriend’s apartment in the better part of the city.
Well,exboyfriend, now.
Hisheat never stops working, and the tub in his ensuite bathroom is big enough for two. I should know, we spent enough nights in it together. Bubbles, rose petals, champagne, the works. He was good at romance, until he wasn’t. Or rather, until I figured out that what I’d thought was romance was really just a way to keep me from picking up on the fact that he had a girl on the side.
Not a girl. Awife.
Kids.
It makes me sick. Really, seriously sick—I threw up in his meticulously twice-weekly cleaned foyer when I found out. On her shoes.
Expensive shoes, as expensive as a month’s rent on my flat probably, which made me feel a little better.Good luck getting that out of leather.
She isn’t really who I should be mad at though—and I’m not. Not really. I’mfuriouswithhimfor being a lying, cheating cad, and mad at myself for not seeing it. For letting myself be swept up in expensive dinners and nights in his giant bed and champagne bubble baths.
After all, who wines and dines a fuckinggrad studentlike that?
He’d said he wanted someone intelligent and charming, someone who could both look pretty on his arm and hold a conversation with his business associates. He’d taken me to a couple of those dinners and events, and of course I’d been able to hold a conversation—I’m in graduate school for fuck’s sake—but I don’t think I wascharming. But then again, his wife didn’t look particularly charming either, even if she was quite pretty. She just looked—sad, and even though he’s the one who lied, I feel like that’s my fault. It shouldn’t be, but I can’t help feeling that way. I don’t understand what I have, exactly, that she didn’t, or why he would choosemeto be the one to put in that position. We’d met at a party for my department, some research mixer where we were introduced to various donors, and he was one of them. I remember being surprised, because he seemed young to be a donor. As it turns out, we had a fifteen-year age gap, but that hadn’t mattered to me at the time. And unsurprisingly, it hadn’t mattered to him.
I’ve been told I’m beautiful, but I don’t see it.Beautifulis the ballerinas that I pass on my way to class every day, catching glimpses of them through the arched windows in the stone building where the bulk of their classes are held.Beautifulis the voices of the opera singers I hear practicing when I head to the adjunct offices after class.Beautifulis the art I see on the walls of the department across from mine.
My blonde hair is frizzing from the humidity, my eyes are swollen from crying, and my cheeks are stained permanently red from the cold and wind, it seems like. I study archaeology, as much from a desire to spend months in a dry, hot desert as a real need for discovery. Especially this time of year, I’d give anything to be picking shards of pottery out of a dry riverbed with sweat rolling down my forehead.
I have enough layers on to constitute an entire other person.
And I’m fucking running late.
I barely make it onto the train. I leap across the gap, pushing through the crowd of morning commuters and clinging to the overhead rail as the train jerks and moves forward, the crush of bodies feeling more suffocating than usual. I want to be home, curled up in my bed and alternating crying and seething over my ended relationship-that-was-never-really-a-relationship, but I also don’t, because there’s not enough blankets in the world to make my apartment habitable today.
Tonight is going to be even worse.
I force the thought out of my head, because there’s no point borrowing trouble, as mybabushkaused to say. It’ll be frigid tonight whether I think about it or not, so I might as well not bring myself down anymore than I already am.
She would have hated Grisha, my ex. She would have said there was something not quite right about him, and she would have been right, because there definitely wasn’t. I’d even sensed it at first, but I’d written it off as him being someone out of my league. Someone wealthy and cultured, while my idea of a nice meal prior to our first date was getting the ramen noodles with the little shrimp instead of chicken from the corner store.
Being a grad student is hard. Being anorphanedgrad student with a sickbabushkaback home is even worse. I know I should be with her—Iwantto be with her, but she’d beat me with her cane if I tried to drop out and go home to take care of her. My education is everything to her, and she’s immeasurably proud of me for getting this far, farther than anyone else in our family ever has. So I have to shove down the guilt and be satisfied with going home on weekends to see her, bringing her the money I have leftover from my stipend and the extra I make tutoring, and soaking up every bit of time I get.
That, now that I think of it, should have been another clue as to what was really going on with Grisha. What kind of boyfriend never asks why his girlfriend is gone every weekend, or ever complains about it? It wasn’t like he knew about mybabushka, I never said anything. I didn’t want him to think I was angling for him to help me financially, so I just kept it quiet. But he never once asked me to do anything on the weekends, or complained that I was never available, or wondered why I was gone.
Now I know why, of course—he was spending those weekends with his wife and children, wherever they live. Some upper-crust house outside of the city, probably. He never asked because he was probably just grateful to not have to fucking worry about it, probably a little bewildered that he never had to make excuses, but not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I’d been the perfect fucking side piece and I hadn’t even known it.
