Grinning, she looked back at him when Dina went back inside the house without returning the greeting. “I’m not afraid to name and shame her. She’s nosy as hell. Come in?”
They slogged through the snowfall and managed to get inside the front door, where they kicked off their shoes and watched the small piles of snow already beginning to melt. Nikolai bent to put his shoes and hers on the small mat next to the door, an action that warmed her for all kinds of nonlusty reasons. Because he knew it mattered to her that shoes came off inside the house, a habit left over from her childhood that had never been matched at the Sterns’. Because he made sure to respect the rules of her house without having to be told. Because standing there in her front entryway, Nikolai looked like he belonged there and always had.
“You know what would be really great right now?” he asked.
Alicia breathed in. “What?”
“You. Me. The couch. A couple glasses of wine. Something stupid on the television. Maybe one of those old creature features we used to like.” Nikolai tilted his head to study her. “Just hanging out, you and me, the way we used to.”
“I have a couple bottles in my kitchen. C’mon.” She paused to peek around him at the door’s sidelight, saying over her shoulder, “It’s snowing even harder now.”
Nikolai had already started toward the kitchen, finding glasses exactly where they’d been for so many years. She grabbed a bottle of Pinot Grigio from under the cabinet and a corkscrew, and handed them to him. She watched him open the bottle, admiring the shift and bulge of his muscles beneath the formfitting plaid shirt. He poured them each a glass.
They clinked them.
“Cheers,” Nikolai said.
She sipped hers, wanting to move into his arms so he could kiss her. She watched him take a drink. The slide of his tongue over his lower lip. When he smiled at her, it felt right.
“What is this, Nikolai?”
His smile faded. His gaze shuttered. He took another deliberate sip of wine before answering. “It is whatever it is. Whatever it’s going to be. Do we have to put a name on it?”
“A woman stopped me in the bathroom to ask me if you were single,” Alicia said wryly. “I think we need to at least talk about it. At least as long as you’re back home. I mean, obviously when you leave again, it won’t matter.”
Together they moved toward the den, where she turned on the television without bothering to set the channel. She took a seat on the couch, Nikolai beside her. It was chillier in this room, which had been built onto the back of the house, and she reached behind them to grab a crocheted blanket.
“Babulya made this,” Nikolai said. “I remember it.”
“She gave it to me when she went into the home. I’ve always loved it.” Alicia ran a hand over the blocks of orange, brown, and green.
He inched closer to get the blanket over his lap, lifting her legs so she could settle her feet on him. “I’m here with you. Now. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but if you want me to tell you that I won’t see anyone else while I’m living here, I can do that.”
“Hmmm.” Alicia wiggled her toes and sipped wine, eyeing him over the rim of her glass. “You sure?”
Nikolai laughed. “Umm, yes, Alicia. I’m sure. I’ve been home a month now. If I wanted to go out sowing my oats all over, don’t you think I might’ve done it sooner?”
“You came home to be with your grandmother. I’m not sure you’d have had time to go out and sow anything. But now . . .”
He shook his head with a grin. “Girl, you know I’m not going to do that.”
“I don’t know, actually, which is why I think we should talk about it,” Alicia said, hating to be that girl, the one who insisted on having “the talk.”
“Look, I don’t think it’s a great idea to just out ourselves, okay? That’s going to cause a lot of issues that neither you nor I want to deal with, especially you, since—”
“Since I’m the one who’ll stay behind and have to face everyone,” she said, finishing the sentence for him when he didn’t. The guilty look on Nikolai’s face told her she’d hammered that nail all the way home on the first try. Alicia sighed.
Nikolai leaned to kiss her. “We don’t know what might happen. That’s all I’m saying. Why should we rush into making some kind of announcement?”
If this wasn’t going to become something permanent, he meant. Something worth facing the surprise, the comments, the backhanded talk. Worth facing his brother over. She understood it, but it still didn’t settle that great inside her, not even when his kiss turned more fervent, and her body responded.
“I’m not seeing anyone but you, Alicia,” he said against her mouth. “Can that be enough for now?”
She withdrew just enough to catch her breath, aware that she’d almost spilled her wine. She sipped some and put it on the side table before leaning to take his glass from him to do the same. She kissed him again. “Yes, sure. Of course.”
Nikolai paused the kiss long enough to cup her face in his hands for a few seconds before letting go. “What about you?”
She laughed, hard and loud. “Me?”
“Yeah. Have you been seeing anyone?”
She pressed her lips together to hold back another round of chuckles. “God. No. I mean, I have gone on some dates and stuff, but not for a long time.”
“How come?”
He twined a long strand of her hair around a fingertip, a gesture that would’ve driven her out of her skull with annoyance had anyone else tried it. Much like the way he’d cupped her face moments before. At the gentle tug, she let her head tip toward him before he released her.
“Quarrytown,” she told him, as though that were enough of an answer.
Nikolai laughed. “The pool’s very shallow, huh?”
“If you’re not related to someone, you went to school with them,” she pointed out, and scooted closer so he could put an arm around her. “Or you’ve known them since you were, like, three.”
“Gross,” he said with a laugh, since of course they’d known each other that long. He squeezed her closer.
She propped her feet up next to his on the coffee table, and they sat that way for a few minutes. She tapped his foot with hers. He returned the motion. She snuggled closer, at last paying attention to what was on the television but not willing to give up this closeness to grab the remote.
“This is nice,” Alicia said.
Nikolai made a murmured, sleepy reply. She twisted to peek at him and saw his eyes were closed. A faint smile played on his mouth. She didn’t want to wake him. She wanted to watch him, just this way.
Time had brought him back to her in a way that she guessed neither of them could’ve imagined. Whatever that meant, she thought, as she traced the curves and lines of his face with her gaze. Fate? Destiny?