Chapter 11: The Apology Under the Cherry Tree
The grass was damp, cold seeping through her jeans. Jennie didn’t mind. The chill was a solid, grounding thing. She picked at the edge of her sandwich, watching a single cherry blossom petal land soundlessly on the plastic wrapper. It was pink and perfect and already dying. She left it there.
After last night, after sitting on those cold stairs until her body had locked up, she’d gone home. She’d showered. She’d put on this pink cashmere sweater her mother had given her. She’d come to class.She’d taken notes. The routine was a cage, but right now, the bars were holding her upright. If she stopped moving, the image would come back: him in the doorway, fogged out and smiling while a woman lounged on his floor.
The crunch of footsteps on the gravel path was soft. She ignored it, focusing on the petal.The footsteps stopped.
She felt a shadow fall over her.
Slowly, she looked up.
Leonid stood there, blocking the diffuse spring sun. He looked different.Smaller. His black curls were a windblown mess, as if he’d been running his hands through them for hours. He wore a faded black jacket over a plain grey t-shirt, hands jammed deep in the pockets. His shoulders were hunched, his posture slack with a fatigue that wasn’t physical. The usual vibrant, coiled energy was gone, replaced by a brittle stillness.
His eyes were clear now, the pupils back to normal size, but the whites were threaded with fine red veins. There were smudges like bruises beneath them. He looked younger.Stripped.
“Jennie.”
Her name sounded raw in his mouth, scraped over gravel. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, a nervous, boyish gesture she hadn’t seen since they were kids.
She didn’t say anything. She just waited, her sandwich forgotten in her lap.
He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. He pulled his hands from his pockets. They were trembling, just slightly. He saw her notice and shoved them back in. “Mind if I…”
He didn’t finish. He just sank down onto the grass beside her, his long legs folding. He didn’t leave the usual careful space. His knee brushed against hers. She could feel the heat of him through two layers of denim.The air shifted. She caught the scent—not just his soap, but underneath it, the faint, clinging ghost of weed, woven into the fibers of his jacket.A souvenir. It mixed with the sweet perfume of the blossoms, creating something sickly and sad.
He stared straight ahead at the gnarled trunk of the old tree, his profile sharp against the pink-dappled light. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“I was so fucked up last night,” he said. The words were quiet, flat. Not an excuse. A statement of fact, delivered with a kind of dull horror.
He ran a still-unsteady hand through his hair, exhaling a shaky breath that clouded in the cool air. “I don’t remember half of it. Maya showed up with some new shit. Strong. I was already gone.” He paused, his throat working. “But I remember you leaving. I remember the look on your face.”
He finally turned his head to look at her. The directness of his gaze was a shock. It was clear, present, and swimming with a remorse so deep it seemed to ache.
“It was like watching a door close,” he said, his voice dropping. “And I was just standing there. Letting it.”
Her chest tightened. The cold, numb feeling from the stairs began to thaw, replaced by a sharp, vulnerable ache.
He looked down at his hands, now resting on his knees. They were beautiful hands, long-fingered, with prominent veins she’d traced in her mind a thousand times. They looked useless.
“I’m sorry.” The words were simple, stripped bare. “That’s not… that’ heater… how I wanted you to see me.” He stumbled over the phrase, the mask of cool detachment utterly incinerated. “Not you.”
Jennie’s breath caught. Her own rehearsed anger, the planned recriminations, dissolved.This was worse. This was him, cracked open. This was the boy from before her parents drew their line, the one who shared his cookie in preschool, who’d cried when he scraped his knee and let her put the bandage on.
“Who is Maya?” she asked, her own voice a whisper.
Leonid’s shoulders slumped. “Just a girl from the bar.A friend. She’s… she’s nobody.”
The way he said it wasn’t cruel. It was weary. A truth that offered no comfort. Maya was a fixture of his other life, a life Jennie wasn't part of, a life that swallowed him whole and spat him back out hollow-eyed and trembling on a Tuesday afternoon.
He turned his body toward her, his knee pressing more firmly against hers. He looked at her hand, lying limp on the grass beside her lunch. He hesitated, then reached for it.
His fingers were cold. They wrapped around hers, tentative at first, then with a firm, desperate pressure. The shock of the contact, skin on skin after so much distance, was electric. It traveled up her arm, straight to the center of her chest.
“You’re the only good thing,” he said, the words barely audible. He wasn’t looking at their joined hands, but at her face, his gaze intense, searching. “You always have been. Even when you weren't talking to me. Even when I was just… this.”
This.A mess. A burnout. A charity case living in a haze in a shitty dorm.
Tears finally welled in her eyes, hot and insistent. She didn't let them fall.
He saw them anyway. His expression shattered further. He brought her hand to his lips, a gesture so sudden and instinctive it stole the air from her lungs. He didn’t kiss it. He just pressed her knuckles against his mouth, his eyes closing for a second. She could feel the softness of his lips, the faint stubble on his upper lip, the warmth of his breath.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered again, his lips moving against her skin.
The world narrowed to that point of contact. The cherry blossoms, the distant laughter, the chill of the grass—all of it faded into a muted hum. There was only his cold hand, his warm mouth, and the devastating honesty in his tired eyes.
He lowered their joined hands, resting them on the grass between them, but he didn't let go. He held on like she was the only thing keeping him from floating away.
“Talk to me,” he said, his voice rough.“Say something. Yell at me. Please.”
Jennie looked at their hands, hers small and pale in his larger, tanned one. She curled her fingers, lacing them through his. A full, deliberate clasp.
She didn’t yell. When she spoke, her voice was calm, clear.It surprised her.
“You scared me,” she said.
He nodded, a sharp jerk of his chin. “I know.”
“Don’t do that again,” she said. And she didn’t mean just the weed, or Maya. She meant the distance.The cold doorway. The not-seeing-her.He understood. His grip tightened. “I won’t.”
They sat in silence for a long moment, beneath the ancient tree, pink snow drifting around them. The hollow ache in her chest was still there, but it was filling slowly, not with the old, quiet obsession, but with something new and terrifyingly fragile. Something that required his hand in hers, his clear eyes on her face, his promise hanging in the fragrant air.
She leaned her head, just slightly, until her temple rested against his shoulder. He went very still, then let out a long, slow breath. He turned his face, burying his nose in her hair.
“Your sweater smells nice,” he murmured, the words muffled.
It was such an ordinary, stupid thing to say. It was everything.