Chapter 17: The Movie Night and the Morning
The silence after felt heavier than the act itself. Leonid stood by the island, the acrid smell of burnt beef beginning to overwhelm the other scents in the room. Jennie simply watched him, her dark eyes tracking his every micro-expression—the slight twitch in his jaw, the way his fingers flexed at his sides.
“Well,” she said finally, her voice oddly calm. “That was educational.”
He let out a short, sharp breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You’re insane.”
“You’re predictable.” She pushed off the counter and walked, with a slight, telling stiffness, to a cabinet. She pulled out two glasses, then retrieved a bottle of whisky from another. She poured two fingers into each, not asking. She slid one across the marble towards him. “You always get mean right after. It’s your tell.”
He took the glass, threw the amber liquid back. It burned a clean path through the mess in his chest. “I’m not mean.”
“You are. You’re cruel. Then you feel bad about being cruel. Then you get angry that you feel bad.” She took a small, deliberate sip, her eyes never leaving his over the rim. “It’s your cycle. I have it charted.”
He wanted to argue, to summon the old, easy disdain. It wouldn’t come. The evidence of his loss of control was standing three feet away, half-naked and dissecting him like a specimen. He nodded towards the blackened pan. “I’ll buy you new ingredients.”
“Don’t bother.” She set her glass down. “I wasn’t really that hungry.”
She walked out of the kitchen, leaving him there. He heard the soft click of a door, the rush of a shower. He should leave. That was the script. Use her, wreck something, walk away. He finished his whisky, washed the glass, and put it in the drying rack. He stared at her glass, still bearing the faint print of her lips.
The shower was still running.
He found himself on the large, black leather sofa. It was cold and smooth under his forearms as he leaned forward, head in his hands. He could still feel her around him, the ghost of that terrifying tightness. He could still hear her chanting his name, a sound that was going to haunt him.
The water stopped. Time stretched. He didn’t move.
She emerged eventually, wrapped in a black silk robe, her hair damp and hanging in heavy strands. She smelled of her cherry blossom soap, clean and mild. She looked like a different person from the creature on the kitchen floor. Younger. Softer. It was a lie, he knew, but a compelling one.
She padded to the media console and scrolled through options. “Movie?” she asked, as if the last hour hadn’t happened.
“Whatever.”
She chose something in black and white, a French film with subtitles. She dimmed the lights until the only illumination came from the massive screen and the neon signs of the city bleeding through the windows. Then she came to the sofa.
She didn’t seduce him. She simply curled herself into the space beside him, tucking her feet under her, and leaned her head against his chest. Her damp hair seeped cold through his thin t-shirt. He stiffened.
“Relax,” she murmured, her voice muffled against him. “It’s just a movie.”
His body slowly unlocked. His arm, unsure of its purpose, eventually came to rest along the back of the sofa. His fingers, acting on some autonomous impulse, found the strands of her hair. He began to stroke it, the silky length of it cool and smooth between his fingers. She let out a small, contented sigh that vibrated through his ribs.
He didn’t watch the movie. He watched the light play across her profile, the way her long eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks. He felt the exact moment her breathing deepened and evened out into sleep. Her weight grew heavier against him, a complete surrender.
The film ended, the screen going to a silent menu that looped a snippet of orchestral music. The apartment was dark and quiet. He was pinned, not by force, but by the profound fragility of her sleep.
Carefully, so carefully, he shifted. He slid one arm under her knees, the other around her back, and lifted her. She was shockingly light. She stirred, nuzzling against his neck with a sleepy sound, but didn’t wake. He carried her through the dark apartment to her bedroom, a space as minimalist and severe as the rest of the place—a low platform bed with black linens.
He laid her down. Her robe had fallen open, revealing a flash of pale stomach, the dark thatch of hair between her legs she kept for him. He pulled the covers over her, tucking them around her shoulders with a meticulousness that felt alien to his own hands.
He turned to go. A small, distressed noise stopped him cold.
In her sleep, her hand had clawed at the empty space beside her. Her brows were drawn together. A line of tension marred her forehead.
“Don’t,” she whispered, the word slurred with dreams.
He stood in the doorway, a war waging in his nervous system. Every instinct for self-preservation screamed at him to walk out, to retreat to the familiar, detached cruelty of his dorm. It was safer. It was what he knew.
He kicked off his shoes. He lowered himself onto the bed beside her, still in his jeans and t-shirt. The mattress dipped. Immediately, her seeking hand found his arm. She curled into his side, her head settling on his shoulder, her leg hooking over his. The tension melted from her face.
He lay rigid, staring at the ceiling. Her breath was warm against his collarbone. Her scent was everywhere. This was a different kind of defeat, far more total than the one in the kitchen.
Sometime in the deep night, his body capitulated. His arm curled around her, holding her close. Sleep took him, dark and dreamless.
He woke to the faint grey light of dawn seeping around the edges of the blackout curtains. And to the sensation of being watched.
He opened his eyes. She was propped on one elbow, facing him. Her black hair was a tangled mess around her shoulders. Her dark brown eyes were clear, awake, and utterly focused on his face. She was studying him with the intensity of a cartographer mapping unknown territory.
A soft, unmistakably possessive smile touched her lips. It wasn’t triumphant. It was… settled.
“You stayed,” she said. Her voice was morning-rough, intimate.
He cleared his own throat, which felt tight. “You stole my arm. Circulation was cut off. Had to wait for medical rescue.”
The old deflection. It felt thin, transparent.
Her smile widened a fraction. She leaned down and pressed her lips to the prominent vein on his inner wrist. The kiss was feather-light, deliberate. “Liar.”
He didn’t pull away. He watched her, this strange, beautiful, terrifying girl he’d known since they were five, who’d shared her crayons with him once and then, a decade later, had broken a boy’s nose for throwing his volleyball into traffic. Who took his cruelty and gave it back to him as devotion.
“Jennie,” he started, but he had no idea what to say next. What are we doing? was too clichéd. This is a mistake was a lie.
She laid her head back down on his shoulder, her hand splayed over his heart. “The midterm for Strategic Finance is on Thursday,” she said, as if commenting on the weather. “Professor Liang will focus on the Porter’s Five Forces case studies from weeks three and five. You should re-read them. You always confuse the threat of substitution with competitive rivalry.”
He blinked, the academic shift jarring. “I don’t confuse them.”
“You did on the last quiz. I saw your paper when he handed them back.” She drew a slow circle on his chest. “I’ll make you notes.”
He should have felt emasculated. He felt something else entirely—a warmth that had nothing to do with sex. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.” She tilted her head up to look at him again. Her gaze was unnervingly direct. “Do you want coffee? I can make it. The kitchen’s… functional. The pan is trash, though.”
The ruined pan. The burnt offering of their previous night. It seemed like a relic from another lifetime.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice strange to his own ears. “Coffee sounds good.”
She untangled herself from him and slipped out of bed. The silk robe was gone. She walked, naked and unconcerned, out of the bedroom towards the kitchen. He heard the familiar sounds of grinding beans, the gurgle of the machine.
Leonid lay still in the nest of her sheets, which smelled like both of them now. He listened to the quiet, domestic sounds from the other room. He looked at the ceiling and knew, with a chilling and absolute clarity, that there was no walking this back.