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It feels a lot like I screwed up the next morning, as the sun’s too bright, the day already half-gone and having gotten away from me as I struggle to make sense of the time, and my place in it.
Right, so Elena never came home, and I’m alone in the apartment and I can’t get her to make me something delicious for breakfast.
I’ll be alone forever if I keep this up...
I sigh loud and long since no one can hear me, spreading my arms and legs out in my bed, taking up as much space as possible, nearly throwing my laptop off the mattress, and hence my precious John Wick.
I’m able to keep it from falling completely onto the floor and I’m taking that as a good omen that everything will be all right, that everything’s going to be fine.
Russia just needs to make up his mind.
Who does he want—me or the perfect Sera Delos?
Who’s he gonna choose, once and for all?
It’s not my problem if he wants to pine after a married woman, one he insists will never let him see the light of day (and she said just as much, too), but it is kinda sad, and I’m mad as hell that it’s making me sad.
Hearts are stupid things—they should just keep on keeping on, doing the whole shuttling the blood to the rest of our bodies, not getting involved with other human beings, being weak and fragile and in love.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense, no, least of all to me, but here I am, in my bed, pining for a man who has to come to the decision if he wants me or the perfect Sera who will never look at him because she’s happily married.
Why am I letting this happen? Why am I letting him make the decision?
Am I going to go crawling back when he says he chooses me? Will I ever trust his word?
What the hell, Sophie, what did you do? What did you do?!
I hear the door unlock, Elena calling out a hello into the apartment, padding over after some time to knock on my bedroom door. I grunt an affirmative sound, doing it a second time until she comes inside my bedroom, looking at me as if I’m roadkill and she’s pitying my lost life at the hands of a set of wheels.
Nice.
I flap a hand at her, and Elena comes closer to my bed, to the burrito I’ve rolled myself in the constricting kind of comfort that might make me panic in a couple of seconds, fighting to get loose. But right now I’m swaddled like the baby I’m acting like and wishing things were simpler, back to that time before I met Russia, before I tattooed him, before I lost my ever-loving mind.
And my heart.
Can’t forget about my stupid, stupid heart.
“Hey, you’re off today?” Elena asks, and I nod at her, making another groaning sound. “I’m gonna make French toast, you want some?”
As if I’m going to say no to French toast when I’m feeling lower than low. Yeah, right.
“I’m not going to make you some if you don’t talk to me, though. What’s wrong?” she asks, heading out into the kitchen, knowing that the mere mention of French toast will lure me out of my room like brains lure zombies out in the middle of the apocalypse.
I groan even more loudly, just to be making a sound than anything else, head to my bathroom to wash off the night sweats, wash my face, brush my teeth, making myself feel human despite the gaping hole in my chest, despite my heart hurting.
Isn’t it better though, if you never see him again?
Why play second fiddle? Why?
“How was last night?” I ask, watching Elena’s pale face get taken over by an epic blush, one that crawls down her throat and chest through the V-neck she’s wearing.
“Huh. That good, yeah? Cheers to Beckett,” I say, lifting my mug of coffee that has been set in front of me like you’d throw a steak at an enraged guard dog, hoping he takes the bait. I do take the bait, take a big slurp, scald my mouth, and my chin starts to wobble at the pain, the pain all over my body, and I duck my head, put my coffee down so I don’t drop it on myself, and wipe at my tired, gritty, swollen eyeballs.
Didn’t I cry all my tears last night? Didn’t I do this already?
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong, what happened? Did I ruin the coffee for you? What, what?” Elena asks, coming around the island to stand in front of my stool, her hands coming down to my shoulders. It’s enough prompting to claw my arms around her and squeeze her tight, my tears soaking into the shoulder of her shirt.
“I’m sad,” I say between tears, heaving in breaths, my mind stuck on the moment where Russia kept saying my name yesterday, kept saying it in that way of his, so very different from Sera’s. “My heart, it hurts.”
Elena’s arms come around me, too, and she ends up rocking us from side to side, and I wonder if this is how she hugs her students when they’re having a hard time, if they seek that kind of comfort from her.
I hope they all know that they’re lucky little shits to be getting an Elena-hug, one where you feel every cell in your body coalesce and be present in the moment, and despite the pain, her hug’s an anchor to the present moment, reminding me that I’m still here, despite whatever it is I’m feeling.
“Tell me what’s wrong, won’t you? I swear, I leave you alone for one night and everything goes to shit.”
I wheeze out a half-laugh. “No, I can be left to my own devices,” I say, pulling my head back, and Elena leans over to grab the roll of paper towel, ripping off a couple for me to mop up my face and blow my nose.
“Clearly not. Look at you, you’re a mess.” She says it with an affection that’s deep as the Marianas Trench. “Come on, French toast will help a little, and you can tell me about it.”
I help make the mix for our breakfast, Elena keeping the conversation light, being as she’s private about what happened with her and Beckett last night, and that’s fine, as long as she’s happy.
And she is, I can tell, the way she keeps humming under her breath, a dreamy smile on her face as she goes about frying the bread in a buttered pan, the smell driving me crazy, the vanilla extract and cinnamon we put inside the egg mixture making the ultimate difference—my idea, naturally.
There’s a choice of powdered sugar or maple syrup—or both—and since all I want to do is get high on the sugar and head back to bed. I’m glad that it’s my day off and that it coincided so nicely with my heartbreak. It means I don’t have to put up a front in front of anyone at work, so it’s fine to get my sugar high.
“So...” Elena prompts, and I slurp down some more coffee, delaying the inevitable.
“Yeah, Russia and I aren’t a thing anymore, even before we got really started,” I blurt in one rushed breath, getting it out as fast as possible, like ripping off a bandage.
Elena ducks her head down, rubbing at the middle of her forehead, like she’s rubbing away a sharp pain. She lifts her head and squints at me, all Italian-Canadian attitude that has bloomed day by day since she got away from her family (the idiots). “So I really can’t leave you alone by yourself for one night.”
“Hey!” I jab my fork in the air, which she only squints at, daring me to do more. I gulp down my delicious French toast, ignoring the way I can’t seem to really taste-taste it, but my brain’s filling in the gaps in sensation. “It’s not my fault.”
“Yeah, but I know you, you’re the one that did the talking and the convincing that you shouldn’t be together, right?”
I narrow my eyes at her, thinking back to a time where I pulled the same card. Am I a serial breaker-upper? Is that me? I shake my head.
“Yeah, well, this time, I’ve got a proper excuse, yeah? Russia, he’s in love with someone else. You know it, I know it, all of Montreal knows it, too. Okay? Okay?! And I’m better than that, chasing after a guy who can’t love me back because there’s nothing left to give.”
Elena sighs, pushing her plate away and I know she means business. Nothing can turn off a DiNovro off food unless it’s real serious business.
“Explain it to me again, using words this time.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”
Elena’s dark eyes flash, getting bigger in her face, handed down by generations and generations of Italian grandmothers that wielded all the power in their respective houses.
“I’m not talking to you like you’re stupid, but I’m not understanding. So help me understand by explaining it to me.”
I drop my fork on my plate with a clatter, startling at the sound.
“Look, Russia loves Sera. The great Sera Delos who’s actually a really amazing person that I wish I could be friends with. Like, she brought fucking muffins and donuts just because the other day at the shop and wanted to book a piercing appointment with me. Which I’m going to have to cancel because I can never look her in the face again after dumping Russia—for good reason, though, don’t get me wrong.”
“Who told you that Russia’s in love with Sera?”
I blink at her, like I’m four chapters deep into a book and she’s still asking me about the opening paragraph of the story. “Huh? Katie, Sera, hell, Russia says her name like it’s a prayer.”
Elena keeps blinking at me, rubbing a hand over her mouth, slow enough that I can see a smile creeping over her lips.
“Why are you smiling, why the hell are you smiling? You’re supposed to be sympathetic with me right now. I want chocolate chip cookies. I demand chocolate chip cookies. Please? Pretty please with a cherry on top?”
“You’re kidding me, right? You’re kidding me right now,” she deadpans.
I shake my head at her, my belly swooping at her words. “Huh?” I say eloquently.
“You’re basing this off the way he says her name? What the hell, you think you’re Shakespeare or something? Sophie, oh my god, oh my god.”
“What? What is it?” I can feel my stomach starting to sink down to my toes, my whole body slumping with the weight of it, with the knowledge of it. I chose this, nobody else, I made the decision for him. I chose me over wanting to be with him, I did this, me.
“Russia’s had girlfriends in the past, yes. I only know this because Katie has been trying to get the guys girlfriends since forever so they can stop ragging on her about when she and Dean are gonna get married—you know how she is—and Russia hasn’t been with anyone in the past two years. I don’t know about casual shit, and I don’t need to know, and frankly, I don’t think you absolutely need to know either, other than the both of you being careful, obviously.”
“Jesus, Elena, you’re not my doctor.”
“Excuse me for caring about you and that includes your lady parts.”
I snort, the aching in my chest subsiding a little, the undertow of it not quite so harsh, and I can catch my breath. “Lady parts. Ha.” I sigh, looking down at the single piece of French toast left over. I want to eat it, but I can’t. “I think I ate too much.”
“Sugar coma?”
I nod again. “Sugar coma. Leave everything, I’ll wash up later. I’m gonna go to bed and mope about my life decisions, question my existence just to add to the pile of shit I’m already going to be thinking about.”
“Sounds like fun,” Elena says, grabbing up our plates and placing them in the sink, eating the last piece of French toast so it won’t go to waste. “Mind if I join?”
“I don’t know,” I say, squinting at her when she turns to look at me, her gaze assessing. “Are you going to convince me to get back together with Russia, a man in love with another woman?”
Elena shakes her head and rolls her eyes. Rolls her eyes—at me!
“No, I’m going to talk some sense into you and then you’re going to make the decision on what you’re gonna do.”
I flap my arms up and down, like a Sophie-bird. “I’ve already made a decision! It’s been done, DiNovro! We’ve been had!”
Elena glances at me, walking towards me and pointing the way to my bedroom, as if I don’t know where it is, as if I don’t own half of this apartment. Rude, rude, rude.
I flop onto my bed like a petulant child, swiping my loose hair from my face so I can actually see her, lying down right next to me, jostling me over so that we can both have room on my double bed.
My laptop gets sacrificed to the floor (gently, gently) and we both are on our backs, staring up at the ceiling, like we could be the only two people in the world, looking up at a starless sky, looking at all of that inky black and wondering where we’re headed.
Where are we headed? Where am I headed when all of this just sort of sucks so much right now?
Did I make a mistake? Did I?
“You’re one of the coolest people I know,” Elena starts on a long-drawn breath, and I look over at her.
“That’s a given. I mean, look at me.”
“I said one of, one of, Jesus. Sera’s another.”
“Oh,” I say, as if that’s bad. I like Sera, I do. It’s nobody’s fault that Russia’s heart is a jerk that’s latched onto her. It’s fine. Fine.
“And I know you took one look at Russia and lost your shit.”
“No shit was actually lost, for the record,” I say and get thwacked in the arm for my shitty (ha!) humor. I blink up at the ceiling, letting the silence stretch, waiting for the inevitable snap.
“And most of the time, you’re pretty invincible, until you met him. You felt like the world was swaying, that you couldn’t get your bearings. It feels a lot like that, falling in love with another person, like you’re not so sure of what’s up or down or left or right until you look at them and realize—oh, I’m supposed to be here, and they’re supposed to be next to me. That’s how it is now. It can be how it is, that way you can move through life together side by side. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”
I nod slowly because it does. I just don’t know what it has to do with me—with me and Russia.
“Russia doesn’t love Sera, I know this for sure, because he doesn’t look at her the same way he looks at you, like you’re the magnet in his compass, like he’ll always come back to you.”
“Oh, shut up, none of that makes any sense,” I say with a wobbly voice.
It’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard, but I’m not going to tell her that. She’ll have one on me for the rest of my life if I do. I’m going to have to name my first born after her, if I even decide to have kids in some sort of future.
Elena leans up, putting her head in her hand so she can look down at me. I flex my double chin at her and she smiles, but it’s quick and gone in a flash, wanting me to be serious for once.
“He doesn’t love Sera, you’re just using that as an excuse to stay away from him. You know it, I know it, pretty sure Russia knows it, too.”
“He does not know it because I didn’t even know it.”
“Really? You’re gonna play that card with me now? Really, really?”
“Really, really,” I snark right back. “Fine, I pushed him, I pushed him to talk about her, and he did, and I know he loves her, Elena, I just do, I can’t explain it, don’t ask me to.”
“You know you can love someone without being in love with them, right? Like I love you, like you love me.”
I blink at her, flopping over onto my side so I’m facing her properly, thinking about it all, pulling the trigger on admitting it all.
“I’m scared.” I squeeze my eyes shut, those same words that Elena uttered all those weeks and weeks ago coming out of my mouth. “It hurts this much now, what’s it going to be like when it’s over?”
“What’s the point of starting any tattoo then, if it isn’t going to come out exactly how you envisioned it? Come on, you know better than that, you do. Russia loves you, is in love with you.”
“How are you so sure, huh? When did you become the resident expert on relationships?”
Elena shrugs, bashful now. “I don’t know. I’m not, not really. But with Beckett, it’s easy—not hard at all. I feel safe when I’m with him, and he’s so gentle and careful with me, being exactly what I need when I tell him I need it. I don’t know, I just...I want to see you happy, and I think being with Russia will make you even happier. Maybe...maybe you’re the one that decided for him, though, the one that made sure he chose Sera instead of you, and you made it clear that you’re not willing to take his heart when he has the memory of her in it.”
“What the fuck? What the fuck, when did you get so deep?”
Elena snorts, flopping onto her back. “I’m not sure, it just makes sense. You told him to make the decision, but you decided for him. You made him choose by not letting him pick you. You didn’t even give him a chance.”
“Because he was going to pick Sera.”
“No, he wasn’t. He loves you, you stupid idiot. He loves you. You, you, you!” Elena jabs her finger into my shoulder with every syllable, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to bruise.
“Ah, quit attacking me, I get it, I get it.”
“No, no, you don’t. Katie told me that she and Dean had to go and pick him up from a bar last night—he nearly got thrown out or something—and he whined about you the whole time. Whined. The whole time. All of the time.”
I turn onto my back, wiggling my toes, staring up at the ceiling.
“I don’t know what to do.”
Elena sighs. “Nope, not yet, you don’t. But you will. You will.”
“Scarily ominous.”
“Didn’t mean it to be. You’re his first choice, Sophie, you just have to choose if you want him to be yours. Like, is Russia your first choice, too?”
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
