Page 91 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
His hand was on my ankle by the time I zipped the bag. Not gripping. Just resting. As if knowing where I was in the room had loosened something in him.
I leaned down and kissed the line of his jaw.
"Tomorrow morning," I said.
"Tomorrow morning," he agreed.
The drive into the city went fast in the cold blue light. Ivan had the wheel and the bratva car was quiet on the bridge, the river dark and metallic below us, the skyline cutting hardshapes against a sky that had no warmth left in it. I watched the buildings change as we came off the highway and threaded into Queens. The signs went from English to bilingual to mostly Korean. The bakeries showed up. The grocery with persimmons in the window showed up. My shoulders dropped an inch I had not known they were holding.
Ivan parked at the curb in front of my grandma's building and got out before me to open my door. I told him I would call when I needed him. He told me, in a voice that was clearly Daniil's routed through his mouth, that he would be on the block until I did.
The stairwell smelled the way every stairwell in this building had smelled my whole life. Garlic from one apartment. Laundry soap from down the hall. The radiator clanked twice as I climbed, complaining about the cold. By the third floor I was smiling without deciding to.
I rang the bell.
A shuffle. A small careful step. The chain. The lock.
The door opened, and there she was. Smaller than I remembered, the way she always was. Her hair pinned back. Her cardigan buttoned wrong by one button. Her face did the thing her face did when she saw me, which was light up entirely and then immediately pretend it had not.
"Aigoo, you are too thin," she said, instead of hello, and pulled me inside by the wrist. "Skinny like a chopstick. I am feeding you tonight."
"Halmoni." I dropped the duffel by the door and got my arms around her, careful of her hip, and she patted my back twice fast the way she always did, like she was burping me.
"My Chloe-ya. Come, come. Take your shoes off. The doctor called you?"
"He did."
"Aigoo, that man. I told him not to." She waved her hand at the air like the doctor was floating there. "Only my hip is mad at me. The rest of me is fine."
"Your hip is enough."
"My hip is dramatic. Like a soap opera."
The TV was on. Low. A woman in a long coat was crying into a phone in a snowy park. The plants on the windowsill were exactly as I remembered, the spider plant trailing down the side of the pot, the small jade thicker than it used to be, a new little succulent in a chipped teacup I didn't recognize. The whole apartment smelled of doenjang, that soft fermented warmth, the pot quietly working away on the stove. The framed photo of me on the side table was the same one, the one from the school trip where I had braces and was squinting into the sun.
I got her settled on the couch with the blanket over her lap and a pillow under her hip. In the kitchen I put the kettle on, pulled down the small clay teapot and the box of barley tea from the second shelf where it had always lived. The tap had the same stiff handle. The drawer under the cutlery still squeaked when you opened it. I stirred the doenjang once, gently, and the steam went up warm into my face.
I brought the tea out in two small cups and set hers on the low table within reach.
"Sit, sit," she said, patting the blanket. "Tell me everything."
"There is not that much to tell."
"There is the man." She gave me a look over the rim of her cup that was approximately a hundred percent grandmother. "Is he the rich one or the poor one? You did not say."
I laughed. Couldn't help it. I sat down on the couch and tucked one leg under me.
"The rich one."
"Aigoo." She nodded once, solemn. "Then he should be buying you bigger sweaters."
"He buys me plenty of sweaters."
"Not enough. You are still cold." She reached out and put her small warm hand flat against my cheek, then patted twice, brisk. "Tomorrow I make you seollangtang. The good kind. Bone broth. You will look less like a ghost."
"I don't look like a ghost."
"A pretty ghost. Still a ghost."
