Page 197 of Sexting the Pakhan

This is the point where either of us could say too much. The room feels full of it. All the things that nearly have shape.

I could tell him I hated him and wanted him and checked for news of him when the girls had fevers. I could tell him I hated that I was the only one there for them, when he wasn’t even aware of the girls’ existence.

He could tell me whatever is sitting in his face right now, rawer than I’ve ever seen it.

Instead he says, “Mila gets attached quickly.”

I laugh because otherwise I might cry. “Yes.”

“And Nadia trusts slowly.”

“Yes.”

“She doesn’t miss much.”

“No,” I say. “She never has.”

He nods. “They’re good girls.”

The sentence is so simple and so wrecking that I have to stand up. “I should check on them.”

He knows I’m running from the moment. He lets me.

The bedroom is warm and dim. Mila has thrown half her blanket on the floor. Nadia has one hand curled near her cheek and the other still clutching the edge of her book. I tuck Mila back in and lift the book from Nadia’s hand. Both of them stay asleep.

When I turn back, Ruslan is in the doorway, one hand braced on the frame.

I whisper, “I told you not to walk.”

“You took too long.”

“That sounds like a line.”

“It’s a fact.”

He looks at the girls, and whatever else he is, whatever else he has done, there is nothing false in his face then. He looks like a man trying to memorize something he never thought he would see.

I stand beside him. Close enough that our arms almost touch. We stay like that until it becomes too much and not enough all at once.

“Get some sleep,” I whisper.

He looks down at me.

There it is again, that almost-confession, that terrible soft edge.

“You too,” he says.

We don’t kiss. We don’t say anything at all.

He goes back to the sofa. I stand there for a second, watching him settle with that careful, stubborn control of his, like pain is something he can negotiate with if he refuses to look at it directly.

Then I look at the armchair in the girls’ room, imagine another night with my neck bent at the wrong angle and my mind running in circles, and I feel suddenly, irrationally tired of pretending distance is still protecting anything.

“The couch is too small,” I say.

He looks up at me.

I hate that one look still does things to me.