Varian Krylov (16 page)

"I've never really been attracted to any other man. But Khalid is . . . I can't stay away from him. He's irresistible to me. Sexually. He's also my very dear friend."

Galen closed his eyes for a while. When he looked at her again, he looked like he was in pain.

“I'm not being fair. To him. Or to you.” Galen's eyes held her fiercely. “Khalid and I love each other.”

Her stomach bottomed out. Pathetic. Thing with her and Galen had no future, anyway.

"But you're not a couple?" She'd managed it. She sounded indifferent.

"No."

"Why not?"

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"I'm not . . ." Galen laughed at himself and never finished that sentence. "We don't fit together that way, I guess."

"You've . . . been with him since you met me?"

Galen smiled wickedly and blushed at the same time.

"Yes."

"Many times?"

"A few." He was still grinning, but he looked at her seriously. "Does it bother you?"

"Please," she laughed, "the idea that you were fucking no one but me never crossed my mind."

"No?"

"No."

"And have you fucked anyone else? Besides Khalid, I mean."

"Yes."

He looked a little shocked.

"David?"

"No."

"I've turned you into a slut," he said in a way that somehow didn't sound like hypocritical derision. It sounded almost like praise. "But even so," he said, sounding serious again, almost worried, "are you sure it doesn't bother you? About me and Khalid, I mean?"

"Of course." What fucking difference did it make now?

"I'm glad."

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He pressed a kiss to her forehead. That kiss, his heat, the scent of his skin and his breath, all of it was smothering her in bitter loss. What had been. What she'd been.

Whole. Strong. Fuckable. Lovable.

Damn her fucking piece of shit body for rotting away on her like that. For making her choose between death and less of a life. Choking hate swelled up, clamped down on her. All those years she'd wasted, barely living, barely loving. Timid little imitations of passion with complacent men. And Galen. Fuck. She hated him for showing her what she'd been missing just in time for all of it to slip away from her.

“So. Why'd you have Khalid fuck me?' she asked, annoyed at how tight her voice sounded.

“Oh.” The corner of his mouth went up in a grin. A guilty grin, Vanka thought.

“Different reasons.”

“Like?”

“Like, I had a feeling you wanted, needed to have your limits pushed.”

Yes. He had a knack for that.

“And?”

“And I wanted to see if the links could be joined.”

She raised an eyebrow. The left one. She couldn't do it with the right.

“There's me and Khalid. And now there's me and you. I wanted to see if there could be you and Khalid. And if there could be the three of us.”

“A menage a trois?”

Galen laughed.

“Well, yes, but that's not what I mean.”

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She leaned hard into a turn to avoid what was straight ahead. “Did you like it?

Watching him fuck me?”

“Yes,” he answered after a pause and a shift in his expression. “Very much. And no.”

Again she raised one interrogative eyebrow.

“I know what you were thinking. That I'd hurt your feelings. Your fear, I didn't mind that. I understand that's erotic to you. But you hurting because that felt like a . . .

an insult. Or a rejection. I didn't like that.”

“But you never felt jealous?” She didn't know, really, if she meant jealous of Khalid, or jealous of her.

“No. Not jealous.” His dark eyes were bright, and his smile was small but somehow like it was taking him over. And now he changed the subject. "Hey, what's your day look like?"

"I've got some work to do."

"If your morning's free, I thought we could go work out."

She laughed. The idea of them working out together was funny, somehow.

"Where?"

"My gym."

"You go to a gym?"

She was laughing again.

"Why's that so astonishing?" he asked, looking down the front of his naked body.

"Don't you get mobbed?"

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"Oh," he laughed at his defensive vanity. "Well, I suppose it's a . . . rather exclusive gym. So, I only get hounded by the obscenely rich and the momentarily famous. Want to come?"

"Honestly, you couldn't pay me to go to a gym. Even if I'd get to see Brad Pitt doing pilates."

He scoffed.

"Right. You don't work out."

"Not in a gym, I don't."

"How'd you tone this fit bod, then?"

He playfully squeezed her bicep.

"Yoga. Rock climbing. Cycling. Gyms make me claustrophobic. Or something.

Those fluorescent lights. That institutional carpet and the smell of disinfectant. I don't do malls, either."

"But you don't mind gagging on incense and perfumed candles through ninety minutes of Ashtanga?"

"Yoga I do at home. Or outside. The beach. The park."

"OK, then. How about a little yoga? Out on my deck. I actually have mats."

She smiled, both touched and amused by his sudden enthusiasm for the joint workout.

"Another time. I really do have some work to do."

"All right."

He kissed her on the side of her neck, down, and across to the smooth round edge of her shoulder where the taut skin looked polished in the morning light, and when, 148

after giving him a soft, lingering kiss on his lips, Vanka started to rise, he pulled her back down to him. Touched her cheek and looked through her eyes, into her.

"We're more than lovers, Vanka. I'm your friend. I hope you'll let me help you, if I can. With anything. Whatever you need. Even if it's just company. Even if it's . . . I don't know. Something you can't ask any of your other friends."

* * * *

"What?" Vanka dipped her gaze into the cool murky depths of her lemondrop. All night she'd barely been able to look at Brods. Proof she'd fucked up.

"Why you left David."

A ripple of relief, swallowed up by a fresh wave of guilt. "The distilled answer is that I don't love him anymore. Not the way you love a partner."

“Where'd that come from? Up at Timberline last month I was hearing wedding bells.”

“Me too, maybe.” God, she'd really thought they'd get married. Her tummy twinged, like looking down a double black diamond slope. “Our happiness, I don't know, Brods. It was a complacent happiness. It was the easy fit. I thought that was what I wanted, what I needed. But it's not enough. I feel bad it took me so long to figure it out.

That David wasted two years with me. That I've wasted the last ten years pouring myself into diluted troughs of happiness and love.

“Diluted troughs?” Brods echoed, and they both burst into mocking laughter.

“Another metaphor like that and you're cut off, my darling.”

"I have a lover." There, that was clean. Unpurple.

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"You what? How can you have a boyfriend already?"

"Not a boyfriend. A lover."

"Does David know?"

"It's none of his business."

"You sure about that?"

"Quite."

"And just when did you meet Captain Orgasm?"

"Why?"

"David's convinced you left him for someone else."

"Why? Because that's easier than accepting the real reason?"

"So he's wrong?"

"I met him after David and I broke up. By at least six hours."

They laughed. They were drunk.

"Well. What's your magnificent stud's name?"

"Galen."

Again Vanka stared deeply into the luminous haze of her lemondrop. Why'd his name have to be so unique? Why couldn't it be Chris or Jason or Bob? She really didn't want to get into the whole thing of who he was.

"So, you're having fun? Getting up to lots of naughtiness?"

Oh, praise be to martinis. Broderick was too buzzed to make the association.

"I'm not sure fun's the word. But he definitely . . . fills a need."

"Sweetie, having fun is the whole point of having a lover. You don't dump the man you've lived with for two years to have a fling with someone who 'fills a need.'"

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Vanka leveled her eyes at her friend.

"I have something else, Brods."

"Oh yeah, what's that?"

Broderick's teasing gaiety stabbed Vanka with guilt.

"Shit. It's awful, the way I set that up," she laughed, drunk and amused at her ineptness.

"Come on. Give it up, doll."

Vanka kissed Broderick's cheek and stroked his hair, giving him comfort against the hurt she was about to inflict.

"What, Vanka?" he asked, suddenly grave.

"I have breast cancer."

He just stared.

"Cancer?" he finally breathed.

"Cancer."

"But you're so young."

He was already starting to cry. It had taken her two weeks.

"Yeah."

He put his arms around her and held her tight, but it was her comforting him.

"You'll be okay, Vanka. You'll be fine," he promised in a tear-choked voice, clinging to her like a drowning victim with a life preserver.

He didn't know that. She didn't call bullshit, though. Let him have some time, first.

But she couldn't pretend to know he was right.

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"I'm fine," she said instead, to soothe him. One had to say something positive.

And she was fine.

"What did they say?" he asked long moments later, letting her out of his desperate embrace.

"What?"

"The doctors. What are the doctors telling you?"

She touched her breast absentmindedly as she said, "They did a lumpectomy. I went back and had a PET scan, and they'll know in a few days if any lymph nodes are involved, or if it's spread. But it looks like I'll be starting chemo next week either way."

She'd meant to tell him the other thing, but her throat closed tight around it.

"They did a surgery? And tests? Already? God, Vanka. How long have you known about this?"

"I didn't find out for sure until last week."

"Oh."

He was pissed, but he was pretending not to be. She had cancer.

"Brods. I didn't want to get you upset for nothing. I wanted to know more before I dumped this on you."

"It's OK, V. This isn't about me. It's about you. What you need."

The hurt look on his face cleared up, and he gave her a rather forced smile.

"The important thing is you're going to be okay."

* * * *

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She pressed the tip of her index finger down on the blue ridge of vein at the crook of her elbow. It was firm. It resisted. But with enough pressure it yielded, went flat under her fingertip. And then it bulged and surged again when she took her finger away.

A good vein. Everyone always got it on their first try.

She watched her skin go shiny and seemingly a little darker when the nurse rubbed the cold wet ball of cotton over the bulging blue ridge, traversing the crease inside her elbow. Watched brown fingers sheathed in a second, translucent white skin pluck off the plastic tip of the syringe to reveal the sharp gleam of the big needle. Like a sword coming out of its scabbard. Needles for taking blood are big. Bigger than needles for giving injections. Is that because of the volume of liquid that has to go through? Or because blood is thicker than penicillin? Than Novocaine?

She always watched. Every time she donated blood. And now. She watched the needle poke at her skin, which didn't yield right away, but resisted, only getting pushed down, a hollow little divot, a tiny, shadowed crater, but the barrier between inside and outside not broken. But then the diagonal, hollow tip punctured alcohol-wet skin and bulging blue vein and then the red tide flooded the clear plastic cylinder. It looked violent, the onslaught of her turgid blood, hot and thick and dark and fast—upon the innocent sterility of that cool and lifeless cylinder of mostly transparent plastic.

Usually, before, she'd always noticed—intentionally focused on—how little it hurt, that sharp little piece of metal puncturing her skin, burrowing up into her vein. Nothing compared to even trivial daily accidents—a bumped elbow or knee, a nick while shaving, a fingernail snagged and bent back—all crueler injuries than this efficient little stab of the needle.

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But today she wasn't donating blood. Today she was sick. Today she let herself feel it, this tiniest of invasions, of penetrations. This smallest taking of her body. This easiest little pain. Focused on it. The hurt. The cold bite of the needle as it tore a barely visible hole in her tender skin—so delicate and thin, there. The burn that followed the metal into her flesh, and the ache that followed after, dull, throbbing with each swelling pulse driving a fresh wave of viscous red into the colorless transparency of the vial.

* * * *

“Shall we call Vanka? See if she'd like to come over?” Khalid suggested, and Galen's belly clenched.

“You remember our agreement?”

“Of course I remember.”

“All right.” Galen tried to manage his voice. Khalid was playing with him. And soon, maybe, Vanka would be there with them. The idea scared him. And he was getting hard. He grabbed his cell from the counter, pulled up her name, and beeped the call through.

“Vanka? Khalid's here. We were wondering if you'd like to come and join us.

Good. We'll see you then.”

“She's on the 110, heading in from a job downtown. So, probably forty minutes, maybe an hour.”

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“Good. That gives me plenty of time, then, to enjoy you, without breaking our agreement.” Khalid stepped close, and Galen got ready. “But understand, Galen. It won't be my fault if you make it difficult, and we're not done when she gets here.”

They were done before the doorbell sounded. Galen made sure.

“I'd better wash up,” Khalid said, still panting a little.

* * * *

When Galen opened the door, he seemed strange to her. Slightly off balance.