In the hall on Monday, Ksyusha was glad to see Chander coming. His sneakers and jeans and cheap waffle-weave shirt: they all made her soften. “I thought I’d see you here,” he called.
“Where else would I be?” She had her book out to hold while she waited, but started to put the text away as he got close.
“Practice is canceled,” he said, and she stopped. “Margarita Anatolyevna told us on Friday. Alisa didn’t let you know?”
Ksyusha’s fingers were on her bag’s zipper. “No. I haven’t seen her.” The only communication she’d had with Alisa all weekend was when her cousin texted to ask how the visit was going, then sent kissy faces, winking faces, yellow dots of glee.
Canceled. She wouldn’t tell Ruslan, because that would suggest that practices could be canceled on any day. That they weren’t to be depended on. That she, by extension, was undependable. She dragged the zipper shut and drew her hands back to her lap.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“With Anatolyevna? Sure. She has a doctor’s appointment.” Chander sat down beside her.
Ksyusha tilted her head at him. “Why are you here, then?”
“To find you. How was your weekend?” he asked.
She told him about the visit. The movies watched, the news from home. Not the sex. Not the happiness. Still, maybe both showed.
“You must get upset when he leaves,” Chander said.
“I do.” She thought. “Not as much as I used to, though.”
At a point not too long ago, saying that would have seemed like a betrayal. But she and Chander understood what she meant—she used to fear going out of reach of the microwave timer. Now Ruslan was growing more comfortable, and she, too, was improving.
“Bring him to practice next time,” said Chander.
Ksyusha laughed. “I don’t think so.”
He leaned back, showing the easy curve of his throat. They sat in silence. The heater hissed down the hall.
“We missed you,” he said. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” she said.
He looked right at her. “I need to ask you something.”
“All right,” she said. And dread rose in her. Dread and curiosity, the two mixed up like sand lifted in seawater.
“Why did you join this group?”
“Alisa wanted me to.”
“I know,” he said. “But Alisa wants you to do many things you don’t. She wants you to go to the café every day. You’ve never been. So why this?”
He was searching for some particular answer from her. His eyes moved in concentration from hers to her cheeks to her mouth. That sick mix swirled in her chest. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess…I don’t know.”
“You wanted something different.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Yes.”
“A change.” He reached over to her. “Me, too. Don’t be scared,” he said, as he took her hand from her lap.
He held her hand. That was all. Still, she felt her pulse thud through her back on the wall. Chander. Her friend. She didn’t want him to let go.
She had thought of him this weekend. Naked, fresh from the futon mattress, performing for Ruslan, she thought of Chander. She said she’d missed him. That wasn’t a lie.
He was her friend but something more. Wasn’t he? Coming to this hallway three times a week, she wished she could come five times instead. Their conversations, his seat beside her. She had wanted to find him here today.
They had already crossed some line together. He laced his fingers between hers. “Don’t be scared,” he said again, probably noticing the beat under her skin.
“I’m not,” she said. Not of him. He kissed her.
When she was little, staring at Ruslan across the coated tablecloth during a family meal, she alternated between pretending to be his girlfriend and reprimanding herself for playing pretend. Their neighbor—her brother’s friend—this sunburned boy. Something in that fantasy was mean, ludicrous. She felt it even then.
Then the summer after she graduated from high school, only a month or so before she moved away, Ruslan started talking to her like she was more than Chegga’s little sister. On any given night, he asked where she was going, showed up at the spot she named, told her classmates she’d hit curfew, and led her home. Chegga had moved away the year before for his mandatory army service, and Ksyusha’s parents had headed into the tundra for the season, towing along horses, sacks of flour, and handles of vodka to help them pass the time in the rangelands. That left Ruslan in charge. He took the responsibility seriously. They walked together over creaking bridges, past slatted wooden houses, and down dust-covered roads. The village black and abandoned. Ruslan finally kissed her under a streetlamp. He held her face as if she were beautiful.
That first month they were together, in the weeks before Lilia went away, Ksyusha kept wondering if this was pretend. It was too wonderful. Each time Ruslan came to the house, she opened the door to him in amazement. No matter where they met, she felt like she had on that perfect night, when they were alone on the streets they grew up on and their bodies were bathed in light.
And he wanted her even more after she left Esso. Checked in hourly, drove down regularly, and made sure she was avoiding risk in the city. Being his girlfriend still felt impossible. Ksyusha had tried for years to seem good enough to deserve his attention, but she really was not. She found little ways to slip out from scrutiny. She made excuses. She disobeyed.
After all this time, Ksyusha was showing her nature. It felt a base kind of good to know it: she was, in truth, the person she had promised Ruslan she wasn’t after Lilia left—the person he feared was there. She was treacherous.
“I missed you,” Chander said into her ear. His hair brushed soft against her cheek. His body, which she had been careful to move around for weeks, was close. “I kept picturing you with him on Friday.” He kissed her jaw, her collar, and she lifted her chin so he could go on. He pressed his face to her neck. She put one hand on the back of his head and held him there.
Nothing should seem to change. No one could know. Ksyusha and Chander kept their same arrangement, meeting in the hall for an hour and a half before each practice, except now they pushed against each other as they talked. They shared secrets. “I wish I’d met you then,” he said once, meaning when she was in high school. Before Ruslan, he really meant, but such a time had never existed.
Chander’s mouth was sweet. Ruslan’s was urgent, tasting of cigarettes. She knew Ruslan’s mouth in the mornings, or from drinking, or like a hot iron pressed on her after an argument—all those times, good and bad. She loved it. But Chander’s was sweet. Always. Soft. Lips full, teeth smooth, his tongue searching for and finding her, and then his breath coming in relief.
At times she doubted her affection for Chander, because it was so much slighter than her need for Ruslan. But she did love that puff of breath. One exhalation and she became powerful.
Was she happy? No and yes. Not in the same way she had been. She could hardly remember what had gone on inside the version of her that so diligently scrubbed the floor in November.
Instead she recalled other, older things. Coming home on the last day of school each year to find her father there. And being thrilled to see him, after his months out with their animals, but also knowing what his presence meant—that the next day he would take her and the rest of their family away from Esso to join the herd.