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I stroke his face with my finger, feeling suddenly too emotional.
Because he’s home.
Home has acquired a different meaning lately.
37
LU
I press “publish,”and my heart does a cartwheel as my newest chapters get uploaded to Story Den.
I’ve never felt so vulnerable. There’s too much of me in it, too much of Jace. A lot of made-up stuff, but at its core, it’s a story of falling in love, and I write it on the same timeline with my feelings.
The readers’ response makes it worth it. My followers have tripled. I get dozens of messages every day.
Even now, as soon as the chapters go live, I look at the stats on my dashboard. Twenty-five people are currently reading them.
I knock on Jace’s door. “Hey.”
He opens it in sweatpants and a T-shirt that hugs his biceps, vines of tattoos peeking out from under it.
“Dinner? Wanna keep me company while I cook?”
I feel at peace being in the same personal space with him. But the feeling is laced with slight excitement at his closeness.
It’s an oxymoron, but that’s how he makes me feel—cold and hot, calm like I’m with my best friend and slightly nervous like I’m on a date, safe like I’m with a powerful man and edgy like I’m about to discover some secrets I don’t want to know. There are a lot of things Jace doesn’t tell me, and it strangely reminds me of the plot twists in my novel.
“Baked chicken with onion and garlic in a mayo-sriracha marinade,” I tell Jace as he follows me into the kitchen. “Boiled potatoes and a vegetable salad on the side. Sounds good?”
“Anything you make sounds good,” he says as he takes a seat at the kitchen island and watches me.
He asks me about Eastern-European food and the differences in Russian, Belarusian, Polish, and Ukrainian cooking. I tell him what I know, then ask him about his favorite food while I’m making dinner.
“Anything, really. I like trying new things. I never got to eat anything different from what they served in the group home. Not even fast food. And the army didn’t have many choices. Believe it or not, I spent my first allowance on food. And silly things, like movies and books and gadgets. The first time I went to a movie theatre, I was seventeen. The first fast food—same, both courtesy of Ruth, our janitor at the group home, who took several of us to a movie and then bought lunch. So I like it all.”
I can’t imagine what it’s like to consider a movie theatre trip special or fast food a treat. I curse at myself, wishing I’d cooked something more elaborate.
An hour later, Jace takes the plates and bowls of food out to the terrace as I follow with glasses of water and a bowl of food for Pushkin.
“It’s dinnerà trois1,” Jace announces as we sit down at the table, and Pushkin’s bowl dings against the floor as he chows down his food.
The sun is setting over Manhattan, coloring the East River with an orange-pink glow. The buildings across the river drown in luminous colors. This feels like a date.
I try to start conversations, but they don’t go anywhere. There’s this subtle tension between Jace and me. Every time I look at him, his lips remind me of our kiss days ago. And he keeps his eyes down, unusually quiet, occasionally leaning down to fix the bowl with dog food that Pushkin keeps pushing all over the place.
We finish dinner without much talk.
“Did you like the food?” I ask. “It’s my mom’s favorite dish.”
“Yes. It’s the best chicken I’ve ever had.”
“Noooo. You are so flattering me.”
“I’m not. And the best boiled potatoes. And salad. And…”
“The best water.”
We laugh.
