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Alina Starkov, earthworm cutter and constellation denier, was incapable of sitting still.
Aleksander Morozova sighed in frustration. “Will you stop twisting your fingers? It’s messing me up.”
Washington Square Park was bustling around them, throngs of bushy-tailed NYU freshmen having just arrived for the new school year. He barely noticed.
“You never told me how to pose them,” Alina said. “I’m trying to find something natural.” She settled for folding them demurely in her lap.
“Who cares if they’re natural?” he asked, confused. He never told models how to pose for portraits. It was against the whole point. And in all the portraits he’d made of her over the years, she’d never had trouble being anything but herself. “I don’t care if they’re natural.”
Alina harrumphed. Her short breath sent a few strands of her dark hair airborne. Aleksander caught them just in time. He thought wire, maybe. Guitar strings? “Everyone who comes to see this painting at MOMA is gonna make fun of me.”
“It’s not going to be a painting,” he reminded her. “And what makes you think this thing is going to end up anywhere near MOMA?”
Her head turned towards him, ruining all his progress thus far. “I assume all your pieces are gonna end up in MOMA.”
Their eyes met above the pad.
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “Look at the trees.”
She turned back.
“No one is gonna make fun of you.”
Alina smiled, but bit it back before he could complain.
A few moments of silence followed, and he tried to finish sketching her lips so they could talk. She did better in sittings if they could talk.
Aleksander could draw her cupid’s bow in his sleep, it was the rest of the pout that gave him trouble. The texture of her bitten lips, always caught between her teeth. The way her bottom lip curved upward to meet the corners of her mouth. The complexity of the shading could only be captured through photography or charcoal and since Ivan had banned him indefinitely from the dark room for his liberally offered opinions, charcoal would have to do.
His thoughts lingered wistfully. Photography would be ideal though. Gelatin silver print. Human, like DeCarava, but with a sense of objection, like Rodchenko. Photograph and be photographed. Aleksander had adopted the manifesto with new vigor after moving to the city. He’d just have to bother Ivan enough to let him back in the studio.
He left her lips unfinished and moved to her shoulders.
“You have a shift at the café tonight, right?” Aleksander asked.
“Yeah,” Alina said. “But more like the afternoon. I’ll be back in time for dinner and movie night.”
He didn’t respond. Uh huh.
“I will,” she insisted, as if she could hear the skepticism in his thoughts.
Alina’s shoulders were interesting because of their geometry. It was nearly an equilateral triangle from the point of her chin down to the edge of each shoulder. There was a long list of things that everyone noticed about her, aspects of her physical appearance or traits observed from spending time with her. Things like her laugh or her eyes or her wit.
But no one else knew the angles of her chin and her shoulders formed an equilateral triangle. No one else even cared to check.
Check…check…
They were broke in New York. It could be clever to shred some of their cashed checks and paste them to make her shoulders.
“Don’t say things you aren’t actually sure of,” he told her, scribbling the idea down. “It’s okay if you won’t be back in time, I’d just prefer to know now so I can spend my evening working, not worrying why you’re five hours late for dinner.”
“I’m going to be back in time,” she said authoritatively. He let it go.
“Do you have any old checks from your mom I could use?” If anyone had them it would be Alina. She never threw away anything.
Alina visibly jolted. Her eyes flickered over to him briefly. “I think so, yes. Why?”
“Just an idea. Lift your chin slightly?” She did.
“Maybe not though, actually,” she added suddenly. “I usually throw them out as soon as they come through and Hae hasn’t really been helping out much lately.”
Aleksander frowned, pencil pausing. This was the first he’d heard of this. “What?”
“It’s no big deal,” she quickly clarified. “I’ve just had to take a few extra shifts. I won’t fall behind on rent—”
Aleksander’s relief that he wasn’t the reason she’d been gone so much lately was quickly overshadowed by acidic anger at the woman who was still screwing her over a thousand miles away. “But we had a deal. A little extra help once a month for the first year and if by the end we aren’t financially self-sufficient, we move back home. It’s only been nine months.”
“I move back home, you mean. The deal doesn’t apply to you.”
He scoffed. “Like I’m going to stay here without you.”
“You should,” Alina said gently. “You love New York.”
“I’ve loved you longer,” Aleksander pointed out, annoyed at the suggestion. “And besides, it’s not like I can afford our place on my own.”
Shit. He made her eyebrows too thick. While rustling through his jacket pocket for the good eraser, Aleksander considered the merits of using grass for the final product. He’d have to have his mom ship it from home, of course. From his overgrown backyard, where they’d buried all of Alina’s dead hamsters.
“You could totally find a new roommate if you needed to,” she countered. “Plus you’d get to have the bedroom.”
Alina had won the one bedroom in their one bedroom apartment in a coin toss and had spent every moment since feeling guilty about it. Well, every moment she wasn’t having loud sex with strangers behind the locked door. Aleksander had taken the sofa bed in the living room. He was not having loud sex. Or any other kinds, for that matter.
(He didn’t actually know if they were strangers to her. To him, they were strangers. They made a stranger out of him.)
“Stop trying to make this okay,” he snapped. “It’s shitty, Alina.” It was classic Hae. Broken promises he’d have to piece back together.
Aleksander started putting together a plan of action, portrait momentarily forgotten. “I’ll call her. And maybe I can get Baghra to stop by and put on a little pressure so—”
“Don’t,” Alina blurted quickly, harshly. He recoiled the slightest bit. “We’re just—going through a phase right now. It’s fine. She’ll come around eventually.”
She was clearly lying and Aleksander felt the sting of it keenly. They didn’t used to lie to each other. Not before New York.
His eyes returned to his pad. The grass idea was stupid. It’d be brown and dead within days. He’d have to come up with something else for her eyebrows.
“I have a question,” Alina said, infusing some pep back into her voice.
“Ask,” Aleksander returned, allowing her to change the topic.
“Are the pennies gonna be part of this piece?”
After a strange dream he now couldn’t remember, Aleksander had tasked them with collecting every street penny they encountered. The growing stash sat in a huge jar in their kitchen. He knew the dream had directed him towards some greater vision, but he didn't know what. It all made him feel a little like a surrealist, even if he lacked the temperament for it.
“Maybe?” he said, scratching his cheek. Her eyes? Hair? He’d already sketched both, and they would require more fluidity than metal that thick could offer. “No, actually. I think they kind of have to be their own subject.”
She nodded in understanding. The scar on her forehead, the one she’d gotten at fourteen from sneaking over to his place while grounded, was very clear in the late morning light. She’d cut her face climbing through their rusted fence. The next day he’d earned its twin climbing through it on his way to her . Baghra had pulled the fence out after that, muttering something about violent delights and tetanus shots.
Aleksander’s mind drifted to Frida Kahlo’s Henry Ford Hospital and wondered how horrible it would be for him to render his scar in the portrait and tie it to her. To assign her the ache of it.
“You’re not even drawing anymore,” Alina complained. “You’re just staring at me.”
“I stare at everyone,” he said, brushing the eraser shavings off his pad. “You’re not special.”
“Wait, oh my god, Jesper made this hilarious joke last night, it made me think of you.”
Aleksander highly doubted he would find it as hilarious. And not just because she’d canceled their Wings of Desire movie night yesterday to hang out with Jesper and the rest of her Brooklynites. “What was it?”
She shook her head. “I won’t be able to tell it right, you have to wait for him to do it.”
Aleksander also highly doubted he would ever let that opportunity arise.
“Alright.” He closed the pad. “I’m done.” He’d make copies of the sketch at the library so he could try out different materials before assembling the finished piece.
Alina stretched her limbs out in every direction like a cat. “Fuck yeah,” she said. “Okay. I’m meeting Inej at Joe’s for lunch. I’ll see you tonight at the apartment for a make-up movie night?”
“If you say so,” he mumbled, letting himself be dragged down for a peck on the cheek.
“I do,” Alina replied. “I do, in fact, say so.”
She scurried off in the direction of the restaurant and Aleksander watched her go, briefly considering whether or not he should superimpose a photo of her back onto the portrait. It had become a familiar sight since they moved to the city.
Too cubist, he thought morosely. Or maybe just too pathetic.
<+>
Evening arrived as quietly as evenings did in Bushwick. Which was to say, not quietly at all.
Trucks and buses hauled people and cargo back and forth on the streets below their third floor walk up, street drummers banged out complex polyrhythms on all manner of buckets and bins, and the boisterous sound of friends talking and laughing drifted all the way up to Alina and Aleksander’s small corner of the universe. Their very untidy corner.
Scattered across the original oak floors of their apartment was an assemblage Aleksander might call a portrait as much as a still life. Earbud wires tangled with the straps of one of Alina’s totes. A half dozen of his sketching notebooks lay discarded in a heap, a wooly vest he’d thrifted from Crossroads joining them. Wine bottles turned candle holders stood at varying heights surrounded by hardened wax puddles, their bikes rested against a spare wall and their shoes in a personless crowd by the front door. The walls were not spared either. The space not taken up by old movie posters, Yoshitomo Nara prints, and pictures of them over the years—Aleksander’s favorite being of Alina’s six-year-old smile, milk teeth conspicuously missing—was filled by small projects of his. An apple painted over the light switch, a cluster of melting stars underneath the windowsill, a small, cartoonish crayon drawing of Alina as Matisse’s Femme au chapeau on one of the kitchen cabinets . Nine months since they’d moved in and it already felt more like home, more like them , than anywhere in their hometown.
Aleksander winced when his foot caught the edge of their coffee table on the way to the kitchen. In Alina’s absence, the apartment looked a lot less like art and a lot more like chaos.
She’d promised to be back two hours ago.
Dinner was a depressing grilled cheese, sharp cheddar sprinkled with salt on sourdough and eaten standing up.
A text notification appeared on his phone just as he finished eating.
Alina (8:30 pm) something came up im so so sorry i won’t be back until late pls don’t hate me
Well. At least she’d remembered to text this time.
Aleksander picked up the copy of Norwegian Wood he’d abandoned months prior and tried to remember the plot before giving up and setting it aside. He thought about calling Alina’s mother despite her objections to the idea but decided against it. It seemed more disturbing to him than to her that the move they’d—or more accurately he’d —saved for years to make could come to an early end. They’d been dreaming about New York forever, about escaping middle of nowhere, Missouri to the center of everything, here. Neither of them had any crazy successes to speak of yet but he’d thought things had been working out okay. They both had steady jobs, him at Little Palace Booksellers and her at the 24 hour coffee bar. He’d managed to finagle his way into an apprenticeship at Ivan Ivanov’s downtown photography studio and Alina had…well, she was figuring her shit out.
She was right, he loved New York. He loved skyscrapers and people watching on the subway. He loved the history and the museums. He hadn’t exactly been able to shed the sullen, emo kid Alina had spent nearly their entire lives looking after, but here he had grown bigger than him. He was growing, flourishing, and he was doing it in the greatest city in the world with his favorite person in the world.
As the sun fell behind the skyline, Aleksander wished he wasn't the kind of anti-social prick who waited around with nothing to do until his only friend texted him with plans. He’d always considered them soulmates, albeit secretly, but that was so much easier to believe when his biggest competition was the dimwitted running back for their high school football team. Here, one need only walk outside to meet half a dozen better bodies.
Inexplicably bothered by this, Aleksander decided to shower.
Under the hot water, he followed his usual routine. After rinsing the suds off it took only a moment’s worth of deliberation before his hand was wrapping around himself and his mind was conjuring up the night’s fodder.
“Shit ,” he grunted, fist tightening around his rapidly hardening cock. The only bonus of his best friend not being around was that he could do this without muffling her name.
A dozen visuals flew through his head, some real and some imagined. Alina in a bathing suit. Alina bent over their kitchen counter. Alina in her red dress. Alina topless in his childhood bedroom. Alina sitting for her portrait earlier in the day. Alina sitting on his lap, riding him. Alina at their movie night. The time they made out in high school, just to see what it was like. The time they made out drunk, because they finally found another excuse.
Aleksander shuddered under the water.
He didn’t know why this was the most efficient way for him to jerk off, only that it was and always had been and that he really didn’t want to examine it any further.
He saw her nails scraping against his back. He saw his hand pressing against her abdomen while he fucked her silly, her orgasms so easily pulled and their lines so easily crossed.
Aleksander’s head fell forward against the tiles of the shower.
69’ing in their bedroom. Reverse cowgirl on the floor.
His fist grew tighter, his strokes faster.
He’d been doing this long enough that the shame had dulled significantly, though never entirely. It was lewd and dirty and fast the way he masturbated, but the knowledge that she would never know about it absolved him of some of the guilt.
Before long his orgasm was rearing up, his spine fuzzy like static.
He thought about her tits and what a pretty picture she’d make if he painted them. He thought about her sitting on his face and what a pretty picture she’d make painting him . He thought about them in New York forever.
Aleksander gasped helplessly before cumming onto his stomach.
He caught his breath and watched the water wash it down the drain.
<+>
She got in around one in the morning, long after he’d retired to the sofa bed.
He heard her careful steps on the creaking floorboards, trying—and failing—to recall the least noisy path to her bedroom.
The door was directly by his bed and Aleksander, who was pretending to be asleep, waited to hear the sound of the door opening and closing.
Instead, he felt his covers lift and a warm body slip in beside him.
She smelled faintly of alcohol, not enough to suggest she was drunk, but enough to suggest she hadn’t come straight from work. Which he already knew.
“Aleksander,” she whispered, fingers finding the nape of his neck and nestling in there. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he lied. Have you outgrown me? he thought.
It was too dark to make out the details of her face but he knew it was right in front of him. Every once in a while he swore he could feel her lips brushing against his.
“You have your own bed,” he told her quietly, when she didn’t seem to be leaving.
“I just want to be in yours,” she said, and he could hear her exhaustion.
And though Aleksander detested the idea of sleeping in clothes one wore on the A train, there was a girl in his bed who overrode all of his best instincts.
He gathered her close to him.
“Alina?” he whispered. She hummed in response.
There are things you can say in the dark that will stay there. It’s why you say them.
“I love you.”
“I love you,” she whispered back, settling into his arms.
His face buried into her hair. For some reason, it didn’t feel like always.
<+>
Aleksander was used to waking up bathed in buttery light. The trickling end of a sunrise would catch under the crescents of his eyes and in the hollows of his throat, rising just to collapse like waves against the shore, blue-white and inevitable and back again.
His nose wrinkled. Sleeping on a sofa bed tended to make one appreciate the little things. It was, however, not quite enough to distract him from his empty arms. Or the smell of charred food.
“Alina,” he called, draping an arm over his face to block out the light and the smell and the consciousness. “Your toast is burning.”
“Shit!” she cursed from her bedroom. “Coming!”
Aleksander dropped his arm in time to watch her rush out in one of his t-shirts, yank out the blackened bread from their toaster oven, hiss at the temperature, and chuck them onto a plate. She grabbed peanut butter from the fridge and a banana from the fruit bowl.
With one toothy smile from her, last night became history.
“Logically, it should be possible for me to not burn my toast,” Alina said, scraping peanut butter onto her supremely toasted toast. Aleksander wondered how long ago she’d left his bed.
“And yet,” he said, then yawned. “Why are you up this early anyway?”
Alina looked at him in that way she sometimes did, as if she wasn’t seeing the twenty something in front of her but rather the scrawny six-year old with the 150 piece Crayola colored pencils pack and zero social skills. She always said he looked younger in the morning.
“Sleepy boy,” she said, lips turning upwards. “I wanted to catch you before you left for work.”
He was a little bit surprised she even remembered he was opening Little Palace today, then felt shitty for his surprise.
Alina’s hands reached past the sink and the avant-garde of her Sonny Angels lined up behind it to fling an envelope at him. It landed on his covers. “This was buried under so much shit so I’m not sure if you’ve seen it yet.”
Aleksander picked the envelope up, read The Whitney Museum, and quickly tore it open.
He pushed himself up to a seat, covers slipping down his bare torso. “Holy shit,” he said. “Holy fucking shit.”
“What?” Alina asked, breakfast forgotten.
He looked up. “They’re offering me a solo exhibition.”
Her eyes widened. “What? Really?”
He tossed the envelope aside. “No. Alina, I’m just on their mailing list.”
She gave him the finger, bringing her peanut butter toast and banana over to their kitchen table and plopping down. “I hate you.”
Aleksander laughed. “And I love you for believing in me beyond all reason and sense.”
She shook her knife at him. “You know if I had half as much talent as you I wouldn’t spend nearly as much time pranking my very supportive, very gullible friends.”
He snagged on that. “If you had half as much talent? What are you talking about?”
Alina rolled her eyes. “Come on. You know what I’m talking about.”
He folded his arms. “I don’t, actually.”
“You are, objectively, very talented. You know this.”
He did know this. “And so are you.”
“Mhm.”
“Alina. You’re extraordinarily talented.”
She set her toast aside, brushing off crumbs. “Yeah, okay. At what?”
Aleksander thought about it. “You’re good with people. And your sense of direction is better than mine. You understand things.”
She did not look consoled. “I understand things?”
“You’re smart, I guess is the word,” he amended. “You see things clearly. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.”
Alina picked at her toast, chuckling humorlessly. “Any idea how to make a career out of that?”
“Sorry,” he said, unworried. Alina was just brilliant. She was extraordinary in ways that were harder to quantify than something as mundane as being “good” at something. She transcended that.
She cleared her throat. “Anyways. I actually had an idea that I wanted to run by you.”
“Oh?”
“A party,” Alina said. “Here. This Friday.”
Aleksander nodded slowly, not enthusiastic about the idea, but never one to stand in her way.
“Fine,” he replied. “Just tell me the time so I can be sure I’m gone.”
She shook her head. “You would be in attendance at this party.”
“Oh,” he said. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Alina, no.”
“Aleksander, yes.”
“Is this because you feel bad about ditching me last night?”
She nibbled at her peanut butter. “Not mostly.”
Aleksander sighed. “Look, I know you need other people. I don’t begrudge you for it, really. I’m fine. I just don’t need people like you do.”
“You need me,” she pointed out. “I’m people.”
He shook his head. “You’re not people. You’re me.”
She huffed. “Everybody needs people, Aleksander. I want you to know the ones I’ve met here. I think you’d really like them! Plus…” Alina trailed off guiltily.
“What?” he asked, eyes narrowing.
“Plus, I feel bad you never get any,” she said so quickly the words slurred together.
Aleksander’s mouth dropped open. “You’re throwing a party so I can get laid ?”
She winced. “Well…”
The hits just kept coming. “Are you humiliating me on purpose? Or is this just a happy accident?”
“The party isn’t really for that,” she assured. “I’m just—I want—”
He just stared at her. Her hands were grasping at some invisible, necessary answer, her forehead notched in frustration. For some reason, this was important to her. She felt like she needed it.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said. “I’ll be around.”
She almost collapsed in relief. “Good. That’s good.”
Thinking the conversation had ended, Aleksander stood, running a hand through his bed-mussed hair and searching for his phone. He had to start getting ready for his shift.
“And, um, one more thing,” Alina squeaked, as if with one wrong word he’d run right out the door. “You’re gonna be nice, right?”
He looked at her blankly. “I’m always nice.”
She swallowed. “Well, no.”
He sat back down. “I’m never mean.”
“Not mean exactly,” she said. “Just sort of aloof.”
“I thought you liked me for who I am.”
She nodded. “I do. I love you for it. But—”
“Just the word everyone wants to hear after I love you. But.”
“ But , you can’t share me very well.”
Aleksander blinked. “I share you.”
“You share me,” she clarified. “Just not very well.”
“You’re my best friend,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“But everyone you meet thinks you’re their best friend.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
“It is.”
“Well, maybe it is. Is that why you never like my friends?”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe they’re just unlikable.”
“Sasha,” she pleaded, looking at him with good old fashioned puppy eyes.
He stood again. “I’ll be nice to your friends.”
“Thank you!” she exclaimed, pumping her fist. “Have I ever told you how hot and sexy you are?”
“You say that to all the girls. I want everyone gone by 11.”
She bounded over to wrap her arms around his middle. “Okay, my sour little curmudgeon.”
He kissed her hair then pushed her back to her breakfast. “Whatever. Eat before I change my mind.”
<+>
It should be said that Aleksander had every opportunity to mentally prepare for Friday night’s gathering.
He and Alina had used much of their time physically preparing, cleaning and organizing and stuffing their shit into the closet.
She’d asked if he’d be willing to get his needle and ink back out for free stick-and-poke and he’d done so, even going so far as to sketch a few doodles for people to choose from if they felt so moved.
He’d gone down to the liquor store around the corner to pick up drinks and spent an hour playing tetris trying to fit everything into their fridge.
So though Aleksander was very much aware there would be around thirty or so people in the apartment that was barely big enough for him and Alina, when faced with the reality of it, the bodies packed like sardines around him, the wall of continuous conversations pierced only by the sound of Pavement and The Sundays and Wilco and Björk pulsing out of their speakers, the smell of a dozen different androgynous perfumes (each with varying degrees of musk), and the sight of people sitting on the sofa which was also coincidentally his bed, Aleksander really felt like tearing his hair out and eating it.
In their kitchen he was wedged between a blond dancer who had remarkably little sense of space and bespectacled advice columnist who, frankly, seemed a bit too dumb to be giving advice to anyone.
Usually anytime Aleksander felt irritated or out of his comfort zone he could at least reassure himself that the experience could be funneled into his art somehow. He’d use anything; a memorable remark, the color of someone’s hair or skin or eyes, the way a hand draped or the way a bracelet shone, it was all material he could use for his projects.
However he was having a hard time taking notes about anything but the crowd that had formed around Alina, watching her gesticulate animatedly, lighting up the room without even realizing it. He recognized a few faces, some of the regulars who he’d been introduced to over the past nine months. Nina, Matthias, Inej, David, Genya. Jesper too, and against his will Aleksander had heard the joke that Alina had said reminded her of him. Something about “shadow daddy”. He hadn’t understood it.
Instead he had felt a hollow ache in his chest, the absence of something that no one else was missing. He still felt it, watching her shine and basking in it, practically indistinguishable from the rest of her ardent admirers.
Every once in a while her eyes would find him and the dancer and she would raise her eyebrows suggestively. Something about that he didn’t like either.
“Aleksander!” she called, waving him over. He obeyed.
Alina took his hand and clutched it to her heart, like a teddy bear or some other precious possession. “This one does the tattoos. I can vouch for him.”
“I didn’t even know you had tattoos,” Nina said, surprised.
Alina nodded, grinning. “I’d show you, but then I’d have to flash everyone.”
“I’m sure we’d survive,” quipped Jesper, smirking playfully. Aleksander didn’t think that was very funny either. Alina just laughed, then patted her pockets.
“Shit,” she cursed. “Sasha, could you grab the pack and lighter from beside my bed?”
He nodded stiffly, before retreating to her bedroom.
Alina had decided to open that room up to guests as well in an effort to maximize space and so he had to navigate around three different passionate couples before he made it to her bedside table.
There was no pack or lighter on top of it, so he started rooting through the drawers underneath until the items revealed themselves amongst the cough drop wrappers and cd cases.
When Aleksander took them out of the drawer, what he found beneath made him pause.
Checks. Checks from Hae for the past three months. He turned them over looking for Alina’s signature and found nothing. They’d never been cashed.
A torrent of emotions rose from his chest to sit uncomfortably in his throat. She’d lied about Hae flat out. To what end? There was so much he didn’t understand, that she had purposefully been keeping from him. Coupled with her words from the other day, when she had tried to convince him to stay in New York without her, the act seemed even more duplicitous. Was she trying to sabotage their future? Was she planning to abandon him here, at this party, in this city full of strangers?
Aleksander wanted everyone out of their home. That wasn’t possible, so instead he took Alina’s pack and lighter and climbed out her bedroom window onto the fire escape.
Twenty minutes later she found him out there, stone-faced and chain smoking.
“There you are,” she mused, climbing out the window and moving to stand beside him. He faced the apartment building across from them but she leaned back against the railing, facing him instead.
He took a drag. “Here I am.”
Alina tried to read him. “Everyone will be gone soon,” she said.
Aleksander didn’t respond. Didn’t even look at her.
She gestured to the pack in his hands. “Those were supposed to be for me, you know.”
He handed them to her. Then dug into his pockets for the uncashed checks and handed those to her too.
Her face fell. “Oh.”
“Yeah, Alina. Oh.”
She pressed the heels of her hands into her cheeks like she always did when someone was upset with her. As if by hiding her face she could vanish. “Look—”
“If you hate being here with me so much you could have just said so.”
“No, Sasha, that’s not it at all—”
“What else am I supposed to think? Unless you’ve gotten another job that pays more than $18 an hour, those checks are the only thing allowing us to stay in New York right now.”
“If you would let me explai—”
“Some of us don’t have parents that can send over a couple thousand every month, some of us actually have to work two jobs, Alina.”
“Stop,” she snapped, hurt. “You know I know that.”
He met her stare, hard. “What the fuck is going on then? Cause it seems like you’re trying to get yourself sent home.”
Alina turned from him, shining eyes reflecting the light from inside the apartment. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said quietly.
Aleksander’s shoulders fell, anger deserting him. He was stranded somewhere else. “I want to.”
He watched her gather her words. Maybe even some strength too.
“You’ve always known what you wanted,” Alina said, eventually. Her cheeks were wet but he hadn’t even seen the tears fall. “Even when we were little. You’ve always had your thing. Art. You were always gonna end up in New York. It was inevitable. And I was always just happy to be able to tag along, to be a part of all you became and were in the process of becoming. It was another adventure, and adventures with you are sort of the only things I find worth doing.” She laughed, but it was self-deprecating, it was pained. He reached for but she stepped back.
“But…but…” she continued wetly. “I don’t belong here. Everyone is so much smarter and more interesting and driven. Everyone here has something to say, something to do, and you fit right in and I stand completely out.
“I can’t say no to plans with them because I’m scared that if I miss anything everyone will realize how far behind I really am and just leave me there. But then I miss things with you and I feel like shit because it’s like I’m already losing you to this place. I feel like I’m just holding you back.”
Aleksander shook his head vehemently. He put out the cigarette on the railing. This was all wrong. “I feel like I’m holding you back.”
It was Alina’s turn to look confused. “What?”
“I wish I could be different for you, he said, voice strained. “I wish I could be a better version of myself. More open. Less slow. You were always so quick and I’ve always been so slow. New York moves just as fast as you do and I’ve been so terrified you found people who could keep pace with you better than I ever could.”
Alina wrinkled her nose and the desire to lean over and kiss it hung over him like the sun. Like he’d have to cross the planet to escape it and even then, it’d be back in a few hours, warming him from the inside out.
“That is so stupid, Aleksander,” she said.
“Yours was stupid too,” he pointed out. “You have so much to offer this city, to the whole world. Just because you don’t know what you want yet doesn’t mean you never will. You’re only twenty one.”
“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly, like she wasn’t totally sure but would take his word for it.
“And you belong with me, always, wherever,” he added. “I wouldn’t go somewhere you didn’t belong.”
Alina stepped face first into his chest. He thought she said “I love you,” but the words were so muffled he couldn’t tell. He just wrapped his arms around her and enjoyed the absence of anything between them.
Except it hadn’t all gone away. He realized there was still something tight in his chest, a matter still unresolved.
“Why did you never give me a chance?”
“What was that?” she asked, pulling back.
Aleksander had the chance to take it back, to return things to the only normal they’d ever known.
“Why did you never give me a chance?”
Instead of meeting his eyes, Alina seemed fixed on a point on his face very near to them. “I—well, I—you were never interested.”
“Bullshit,” he said, and she actually jumped a little. “I’ve never even looked at anyone else and you know that.”
“Not true,” she objected. “You slept with Zoya Nazyalensky in senior year. And you were looking at Reagan not an hour ago.”
Aleksander’s brow furrowed. “Who is Reagan?”
“The dancer,” she said. “The blond one. You were standing next to her for a while.”
“Standing next to someone doesn’t mean I was looking at her.”
Alina looked down at her feet. “She was sort of all up on you.”
Aleksander looked down at her and wondered if there was any possible way her heart was nearly as fit to burst. Love teeming against the red seams.
“Well,” he said. “The sofa bed was already full.”
Her head whipped up, eyes wide at his gall, then filling with relief at the humor in his face.
He took one of her hands in both of his. Brought it up to his chest. “Why do you want me to sleep with someone, Alina?”
She played with their fingers. “I don’t want you to, I just sort of…want to know why.”
“Why what?”
“Well,” a flush colored her face violently, “I just want to know why you never really wanted to see anyone. I want to know the kind of person you do want to sleep with and, maybe, be with, and then—and then—”
“And then what, you silly girl?”
Alina practically melted into him. “And then I want that person to be me .”
He caught her up against him, hand finding the nape of her neck and squeezing. The past few days felt utterly ridiculous now. Of course he had her. They had each other.
“Oh thank god,” she breathed into him. “We’re the same about this.”
“Equally silly,” he reassured her.
“Okay good, cause I was thinking, like, this is so weird and new and I’m not sure if he’ll feel the same, or, like, even if he’s straight or not, cause I remember that time you slept with Zoya, but you hadn’t seemed all that enthusiastic about it afterwards so I thought maybe—”
“Alina. I don’t want to talk about Zoya.”
She smiled so wide. “Me neither, me neither. Baghra is gonna be so mad at me. I told her my intentions for you were totally pure for so long.”
Aleksander laughed, ruffling her hair. “I really don’t want to talk about my mother. And your intentions were never totally pure.”
“Fine,” she relented immediately, hands finding his sides. “My intentions were mischievous at best.”
“I would have gone along with anything you told me to,” he whispered.
She threw her head back on a cackle. “You did.”
His hands weaved into her hair to bring her head back to him. “I’ve been trying not to kiss you for like four years.”
Alina’s lips parted. “You can stop trying now.”
Then she kissed him. And he kissed her.
It wasn’t the first time they’d done it but it might as well have been, the way Aleksander felt baptized by it. It was a reformation of a kiss, a new world order to abide by, a new hierarchy of needs. She tasted of grocery store rosé and saltines and it was the closest thing to communion he had ever taken. He thought of canvases with paint splattered across them, divine, every drop in its perfect place.
When the kiss ended they took each other in stupidly. Four dilated eyes and two heaving chests. They turned to look at their apartment next.
“These people need to leave so we can have sex,” she said aloud. He had been thinking the exact same thing.
Aleksander looked at the watch on his wrist. “It’s eleven anyway.” He offered her a sideways grin, too ecstatic to fake remorse. “Party’s over.”
<+>
After practically shoving their guests out of the apartment, Alina promising to schedule new plans and Aleksander already picturing her naked, they were alone at last.
“Your bed or mine,” she said, giggling.
He pinched her for that. She yelped, then all but hauled him into her bedroom.
It was a clash of teeth and tongues all the way there, their hands taking zero chances, leaving no area unscathed.
“I’m starting to think you never felt all that bad about making me sleep on the couch,” he said as she gasped, falling backwards onto her bed, him above her. Aleksander aimed for her neck, kissing and sucking evidence that would reassure him of this later when his mind tried to convince him it had all been a dream.
“Whatever would give you that idea?” she panted, arching up into him and his hot mouth. He took the opportunity to wrestle her more firmly against him, till they were both on their sides and rocking into each other. He hitched her leg around his side, groaning when that brought their centers together in delicious friction. Through her thin dress, the warmth of her skin was scalding.
Alina made all sorts of perfect, small noises in his arms, pulling at the strands of his hair on his nape with too much intention to be a mere symptom of her passion.
Aleksander pulled back from her neck, desperately trying and failing to catch his breath. “What is it?”
Alina couldn’t seem to catch hers either, merely pressing his shoulders back into the pillows and climbing on top. She tugged impatiently at his shirt, whining rather using her words.
He didn’t immediately recognize her intentions, too taken by the sight of her swollen pink lips above him and the way the lamp in her bedroom turned her black hair red, but when she finally pulled his shirt up and over his head, the feeling of her hands on his bare chest made him shiver. A movement Alina practically devoured and tried to inspire further, moving down to fumble with his belt and begin palming his hardness through his underwear.
“Jesus,” she said, airborne.
“Sorry,” he panted, feeling distinctly animal-like. His body had spasmed intensely, without his permission. Good thing her bed was home to an inordinate amount of pillows. “Sorry, wait, come back.”
Alina clambered back over him, grinning. “It was kind of fun. Like when we used to catapult each other on my trampoline. I kind of want you to do it again.”
The weight of her against him was grounding as always and Aleksander stared at the rising and falling of her chest, feeling nothing but reverence.
“Pull your dress down,” he said. “That will be fun.”
“For you,” she teased, then let the straps fall down her arms and the dress gather around her waist, bare breasts revealed.
His first instinct was not to touch, to marr, but to observe. The shade of ivory she was there, untouched by the sun. The curve of her, evidenced by the shadows her breasts created, soft and delicate looking. The precise shade of her nipples, something he knew he could never find off the shelf. Something that could only be replicated on a palette by hand, by his hand, with the smallest smudges of every other color on the wheel. Deep taupe nipples, pert and welcoming.
She squirmed under his gaze.
“Stop moving,” he chastised, distracted. “Will you let me draw you like this?”
“Now?!” Alina cried.
He ducked his head to set his first kiss right in the center of her chest. She shook.
“No,” Aleksander said. “Later. After.” He set the next one on the swell above her left breast. It was wet afterwards and he liked the look of it.
She narrowed her eyes. “Only if you agree to stop looking at me with your ‘I need to jot this down’ face.”
“This isn’t that face,” he told her. He licked a hot circle around her nipple, enjoying the sound of her whimper immensely. “This is a completely different face.”
“Oh?” she breathed, hands finding his hair again while his mouth lapped at her chest. Satisfied with the puffiness of one pretty areola, Aleksander switched to the other. “W-what face is it then?”
He could feel his effect on her, the way her lungs heaved to take in air while his mouth and tongue worked extra hard to steal it. “It’s my ‘this is even better than I pictured it’ face.”
“You pictured this?” she asked, pulling back from him to return to unfastening his belt.
“In great detail,” he answered, pushing her hair out of her face while she worked. “For too many years.”
“Me too,” Alina said, and it felt like Christmas.
The rest of their clothes were removed piece by piece until there was nothing separating them except the condom Aleksander was wearing and the socks Alina had jumped up to put on while he handled that.
“I can’t come if my feet are cold,” she explained sheepishly at his inquisitive look.
He made a mental note.
“You’re making the face again,” she complained.
“Some things must be remembered,” he defended.
He could see nearly all the tattoos he’d given her over the years. A small heart on her hipbone. A swirl of a galaxy beneath her right armpit. The only one he couldn’t see was the one they shared. A neat white clover, a Missouri weed, on her lower back. The less neat version she’d poked onto his own.
Aleksander allowed his eyes to fall down to where she was already weeping for him, already ready. Or, wait, not ready.
Aleksander tried to slide out from under her, but she wouldn’t allow it.
“I need to prepare you,” he said. She shook her head.
“No, I’m too impatient. I just want to have you inside already.”
Studying her face he found nothing but honesty and urgency, so he let her position herself where she wanted. He took himself in hand and, with her guidance, pointed at her entrance.
Alina sank down slowly, mouth opening as she ruined him from the inside out.
“Shit,” Aleksander grunted, grabbing at her hips then releasing them, worrying about holding her tight, then grabbing them again when he couldn’t help it. “So—fucking—tight—”
Alina laughed breathlessly, even as her nose scrunched up in concentration and the slightest bit of pain. “Alright. M-maybe I was being a little ambitious about the whole ‘no preparation’ thing.”
His eyes darted to hers immediately. “Do you want to stop?”
“No, just—” she shifted around a bit, seemingly unaware of how the movement made him choke. “Hold on, let me just—”
Alina found an angle that allowed her to sink down on him the rest of the way, sighing while she settled onto his lap, onto his cock.
“Okay,” she said, a little dizzily. “We can go now.”
Aleksander felt like had already gone somewhere and would never come back.
He canted his hips up experimentally towards hers and was rewarded with the shakiest breath he had ever had the pleasure of hearing her take. Alina resumed moving too, the drag of his cock sliding out of her like pure electricity before she took back every lost inch with the same scrappiness he had come to expect from her in all their years together. She did it again and again, working up a tempo all their own.
Aleksander’s eyes rolled back on one particularly devastating stroke, hands failing to do much else besides press bruises into her skin.
“There you go,” he told her, watching the beautiful machine they made, her torso struggling to stay upright while he met every one of her hips’ movements with a forceful thrust. “You’re perfect like this, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Aleksander didn’t consider himself to be a particularly effusive person but with her the praise fell easily; every adoring thought that crossed his mind also crossed the threshold of his lips.
“Pretty baby,” he crooned, seeing the glistening sweat on her chest and wanting to lick up every last drop. “Prettiest baby I ever saw. Working so hard. You look like mine.”
Alina keened at his words, faltering in her rhythm, and he took the opportunity to flip them over, hand finding her throat as he rammed into her. Hard.
“Sasha,” she moaned. “I am yours, I’m yours.”
In this position he could draw his thrusts out longer, could personally triumph in each and every wet squelch that took up all the free space in her bedroom and in his mind.
“I’m yours too,” he alerted her desperately, face finding a home in the juncture between her neck and shoulder.
Their approaching climaxes weren’t so much reached as they were accumulated, years of loving and wanting and fearing and searching coming to fruition in a tiny apartment they couldn’t really afford in a city that in equal parts thrilled and terrified them.
Aleksander knew by the way Alina’s breath quickened, by the way she started bearing down on him so tightly he wasn’t sure he’d ever get out, not entirely, that her orgasm was building rapidly. His was too; he knew it in the backs of his knees, knew it in the sweat on his shoulders, knew it in the gathering heat at the base of his spine.
He pressed his thumb into her mouth, let her suck on it until it was properly wet and dragged it down to her clit, bringing her the rest of the way there and following blindly.
She cried out as she crested and he kept fucking her, not slowing until his own orgasm came, the spasming of her cunt around him like pure magic, like a heartbeat taking off.
“I love you,” he whispered into her, as his own heartbeat slowed. It was not a conclusion he’d made, but a path they’d formed. A medium they’d chosen to create their next masterpiece.
“I love you,” she whispered back. It was a promise too.