Page 16

STEFANOS

W hen I get up the next morning, Alexei’s at the counter waiting for the coffee machine to spit out his Americana. He’s wearing a black hoody with the hockey logo on and long sleep shorts. Thick black hairs run all the way from his toned calves to his powerful thighs.

He turns around and catches me looking at him and my face flushes.

“Morning.” He says.

“Morning.”

“The coffee machine’s being a dick.”

“Why what’s wrong with-” I try to go over and help, but he waves me away, like he doesn’t want me anywhere near him. I have to restrain myself from sniffing my pits. I know I just woke up, but I don’t stink that bad do I?

“What do you want?” He asks once he gets his coffee.

“I can get it.”

“I said, what do you want?” His tone is light, but his abruptness still hits me hard. Especially after seeing him soften to me last night.

“I’ll just have an espresso please.”

“Comin’ right up.”

He speaks with his back to me as I take a seat at the table. “Thanks for last night by the way. For helping me out, with the ice.”

“It was nothing. Anyone would do that. I was just being a decent human being.”

He spits out a laugh.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

When my espresso’s done, he turns and puts it down in front of me.

“You want breakfast?”

“I usually just have a pop tart.”

“A pop tart? Do we even have that shit here?”

“Yes, Mr. green smoothie. They’re in the top cupboard by the fridge.”

His phone buzzes and he looks down to read a text.

“Pawlowski, he’s asking me to go ice skating in the park.”

“I didn’t know you two were dating.”

He laughs while still looking at his phone, popping a dimple in the process. Of course he has dimples. He couldn’t get any more perfect. Except the attitude thing. That needs a little work.

“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 a baby 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? Learning he’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.”

“No? What’s your favorite book?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to think about it. Probably something by Brandon Sanderson or Tolkien."

At the mention of Sanderson, my heart thuds more loudly in my ears.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I just… I’ve read those Mistborn books.”

“Oh yeah? What did you think?”

“I liked them, they were a bit… there was a lot of pushing and pulling.”

He laughs. Only someone who’d read those books would understand what I’m talking about. I guess he’s not messing with me when he says he’s a fantasy nerd.

“Anyway, I’d better get ready if I’m going on this date thing.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve probably got a text from Alice too.”

I let him use the shower first and hide out in my room, looking for my copy of Mistborn. Brandon Sanderson’s a popular author right? So it’s not weird that I know two people now who are kinda obsessed with this book.

When I find it, I sit on my bed, looking at it for a minute.

I brought this book with me when I went to meet Kelsier38.

I sat at a table in that stupid rom-com diner and waited for him to show for over an hour before the waitress apologetically kicked me out.

I’ll never forget the look on her face, or the way she was chewing gum and sounded like my mom when she said, “sorry hon, but it doesn’t look like she’s gonna show. ”

I didn’t even think about correcting her. I was already too embarrassed to handle whatever reaction she might have to finding out I was stood up by a man. I just picked my book up and left.

My phone buzzes with a text from Alice, inviting me to go skating, just as Alexei turns the shower off in the bathroom and I put the book away.

“I can’t skate you know.”

“Like not well, or not at all?”

Stones crunch under the SUV’s wheels as Alexei handles the big monster into submission.

“Not at all.”

He grins, his hands tight on the steering wheel. We borrowed this expensive-looking SUV from one of his giant teammates and I’ve been trying to connect Alexei’s phone to the speakers since we got in.

“Don’t worry Lilai, I won’t let you break anything.”

My cheeks flush at his use of my second name.

“How do you know-”

“You’re name? Dude, we live together. You know my name right?”

“Yeah, but you literally wear it on your back.”

He laughs. He looks so much calmer today. I like this new Alexei. Maybe hockey is just too stressful? Maybe he’ll be better off working in a bank after graduation?

Music comes through the speakers and his face spreads into an even more relaxed smile.

“That’s it.”

The song playing right now has a kind of RnB beat. A female singer. I can’t really catch everything she’s singing about, except something about looking better under someone.

“Who is this?”

“This is SZA, you’ve never heard this before? It’s all over the radio.”

I bop to it a little, liking the relaxed sound. It’s nothing like some of the rap songs Ari listens to.

“What do you listen to?” He asks.

“Classical.”

“Just classical?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, so what do your parents listen to?”

“All kinds. Baba loves Sinatra. And they play Greek music at the restaurant, but I think that’s just for the ambience. I used to play traditional Greek stuff when I was a kid on my violin, and the bouzouki, for the customers.”

His eyebrows come up. “You played music at the restaurant?”

“Yeah. Haven’t you ever been to a traditional Greek restaurant?”

He shakes his head.

“You’ll have to come to Astoria. It’s not a meal unless you have some sort of entertainment.”

A shy smile spreads over his face. It’s seriously criminal how handsome he is. “Is it culturally inappropriate to ask if you guys smash plates?”

A full-throated laugh bubbles up from the pit of my stomach. “No, we do. Not all the time though. On special nights, my dad gets really cheap ones and lets the customers have at it.”

“I’ll definitely come then.”

“Deal.” It’s a date. Nope. Still not a date.

Alice and Mischa are already out on the ice when we get there. I spot them skating in a big circle, holding hands. Big smiles on their faces.

“They make a cute couple,” Alexei says, leaning in close enough for me to smell his aftershave and a unique scent coming off his jacket. Like artificial snow.

“Yeah, they do.”

He hands me a pair of skates with this look on his face like he distains of them.

“I’m guessing you don’t like to wear rented skates.”

“Rented crappy skates.”

“These wouldn’t make it in the NHL?”

He just grins and shakes his head as he takes a seat on one of the benches surrounding the rink.

There’s a crispness to the air, a chilly wind biting through the thin faux-wool of my gloves. Alexei sees me blowing on my hands so I can get the feeling back enough to lace my skates and takes his big padded gloves off, handing them to me. “Here.”

“What?”

“Take ‘em.”

“No, I couldn’t-”

He shoves them against my chest, leaving me little choice but to grab them or else let them fall on the floor.

“You’ve got more chance of chopping a finger off on the ice than me.”

I feel the color drain from my face and he laughs, leaning in with a sly smile. “Don’t worry Lilai, I won’t let you get anything severed out there, not on my watch.”

I think the color returns a little too enthusiastically and my cheeks heat up while I put the gloves on. They’re still warm from Alexei’s hands.