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“He said Alice is gonna be there, did she invite you?”
“I don’t know, I refuse to look at my phone until I’ve had my pop tart.”
He shakes his head. “What does your dad think about you eating pop tarts for breakfast?”
I shrug. “He doesn’t care what I eat for breakfast.”
“Oh really? Your dad - the chef - doesn’t care about you eating rectangles of processed sugar for breakfast?"
"They weren't really there a lot in the mornings. Well, my dad wasn’t anyway. He’d have stuff to do at the restaurant and markets to go to for produce, and my little brother was just ababy when I was in middle-school, so my sister, Maria, she’d get us ready for school, and it was kinda hectic, so nobody noticed if we just ate pop tarts for breakfast.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not like they weren’t there for us, they were-”
He holds his hand up to stop me. “I get it. My dad owns a convenience store, so I know how much work goes into running a business, and my mom wasn’t around, so I had to take care of my sister a lot.”
“Did your mom work a lot too?”
He flinches and looks like he isn’t going to answer the question before he puts his coffee down. “No, she left when I was eight.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
He shrugs. I guess his shoulder must be feeling a little better today. “Dasha was a newborn. She left us high and dry and went back to Russia to live with her parents. Never sent us a birthday card or a letter or a fuck you, nothing.”
“Shit.” I didn’t mean for that to come out. It is not the correct response to someone telling you their mother abandoned them as a child. I’m about to apologize when he snorts a laugh.
“Yeah, exactly, shit.”
“I’m sorry Alexei, that must have been awful.”
“Yeah, but what are you gonna do?”
I shrug. “At least you have your dad. And your grandmother right?”
“Yeah, she helped out. Forcing chicken soup down us, and cocoa when Papa worked late. And taking me to the library to get all my dorky books…” he trails off. He’s got this faraway look in his eyes and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him look so calm.
“Are you a secret nerd?”
“Ha! Maybe.” He eyes me as he leans back in his chair, like he’s challenging me to make fun of him. But how can I? Learninghe’s a nerd as well as a hot hockey player only makes him more annoyingly perfect.
“What books do you like to read?”
His face lights up. “All kinds, but mostly fantasy.”
“Fantasy! Wow, you really are a nerd.”
He laughs. “What about you? You don’t like to read?”
“I love to read. I just don’t get a lot of time to these days, with classes and rehearsals and everything. If it’s not a music theory book forget about it.”
“You sounded all old-school Brooklyn there.”
“Shut up, I’m Queens till I die.”
He shakes his head at me like I’m the most embarrassing person on the planet, but he’s still got a big smile on his face.
“I don’t get to read much these days either.”