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So, as he comes back down the hallway with half a dozen leather duffle bags in his muscular arms, I pop the question. “What are we, anyway?” I’m sure there’s a more graceful way to ask, but elegance escapes me at times like these.
Pasha predictably frowns, slowing down and craning his neck to hear me better. “What’s that?”
“What are we… I mean, we’re dating, right?” I ask, shuffling my feet as I avoid his eyes. He always makes me so nervous. I’m not the most confident person in the world, but sometimes talking to Pasha is damn near impossible.
“Of course, we’re dating, and perhaps one day it’ll be much more,” he assures me with a warm ring to his voice. He drops the bags at my feet and puts his finger under my chin, tilting my head up and looking me in the eyes. “You’re everything to me, Valerie. I don’t want any other woman.”
I take a sharp breath in, lost in his gaze for as long as it takes to tear my eyes away from him again. I breathe out deeply, emptying my lungs as I try to process what he just said to me. He’s really committed to this relationship, and I’m still trying to figure out why I like him. It’s imbalanced and uncomfortable.
“You don’t need to concern yourself with thewhysandhows. Just follow me and everything will be clear,” Pasha says, picking up the bags of money again and walking toward the door. “Let’s get you driving, darling.”
The warmth and energy in his voice is all I need for assurance. I skip out of the house after him, walking with him through the cool night air toward his jet-black Bugatti. It’s so perfect it almost doesn’t seem real, the paint reflecting the lavender moonlight like a mirror.
“You can ride in the passenger’s seat for now. We’ll move you over once we’re on the main road,” Pasha says, opening the door for me.
“Thank you,” I say softly as I slide into the leather interior. It’s always so comfortable in Pasha’s car, which is why I wanted one of my own just like it. I fear it won’t have the same charm to it, though, unless Pasha starts smoking his cigars inside while I’m driving.
“Take these,” Pasha says, handing me the bags of money.
There’s not much room for them, but I manage to fit a few down at my feet with the rest on my lap. I’m still unsure what the money has to do with learning to drive, but I guess I’m about to find out.
Once we’re out of the estate and past the looming iron gate, the road turns to a black sheet of glass beneath us. We’re gliding along in the pale moonlight, engine roaring like an angry beast as we eat up the road ahead.
Pasha merges onto a close by highway, and as he assured me, it’s completely empty. I’m overcome by a strong sense of awe mixed with a slightly unearthly edge of danger. It’s a liminal experience, like walking through the halls of your old high school in the middle of summer when nobody’s there.
Pasha presses hard on the acceleration, moving us forward with such a sudden jerk that I let out a yelp. “Faster?” he asks, grinning as he shifts gears.
“No, not faster. Slower. Slow down!”
He pretends not to hear me over the scream of the engine. The speedometer slowly moves in a semicircle, ticking up quickly toa hundred miles per hour, then a hundred fifty, and finally two hundred before Pasha eases off the gas.
The world around us is a blur, but he appears wholly unbothered by how close we are to death. I have flashbacks to the night of the accident, the way Julia laid beside me in the wreck, dying in front of my eyes as I tried in vain to help her.
It was too late when the ambulance arrived, but I suspected there was nothing they could’ve done, anyway. She was gone in a flash, and I was fortunate that I wasn’t the one behind the wheel when we crashed, or I would be held legally responsible for it.
Not that they didn’t try to send me to jail. The amount of cocaine and alcohol in my system should’ve been enough to kill me without even having to get into an accident. They made their best attempt to hold it against me, to somehow pin Julia’s death on me, but I wasn’t the one driving.
I got away without any jail time, but sometimes I wished they had put me behind bars just to save me from myself.
And here I am again, racing down an open road, late at night with another victim waiting to meet the same fate as Julia. It’s not traumatic to relive that night, though, but cathartic in a way I didn’t think it would be. Pasha is in control, and he’s far too protective of me to allow anything bad to happen tonight.
I laugh from the adrenaline as we slow down. We’re still flying, but not quite as quick, and the car handles the speed well.
Pasha pats the bag on my lap. “Open it up and toss a few into the wind. See how it feels.”
“You serious?” I ask, already reaching for the zipper.
He rolls down both windows, air billowing into the cabin and drowning out his voice. “Throw it all, baby!”
I reach into the bag, pulling out a few stacks of cash and breaking the paper band across them. They spread out in the wind as I hold them up, looking at Pasha for permission before I let go of them and allow them to flutter away.
“Do it!” he urges, and I let go of the money.
Only half of it makes it out the window, but that’s still over ten thousand dollars. Pasha isn’t the least bit alarmed, but I guess I wouldn’t be either if I was driving a car that costs more than most people’s houses.
I get into it after a few more thousand fly, grabbing whole stacks and throwing them out the window. I throw an entire bag out, and Pasha laughs, running his fingers through his hair and driving even faster.
“More!” he shouts as the engine roars in the night.
