Page 59 of Emerald Vices

“Where were you? When you came in, you looked…” I let that sentence trail off because insulting him isn’t going to turn the evening around.

He hesitates, and no one is as surprised as I am when he actually answers. “I went to visit Maria’s grave.”

The truth. How strange.

“I haven’t been back there since the funeral.”

My heart thumps erratically against my chest. I’m torn between wanting to know everything and wanting to forget I asked at all. But he’s here, he’s talking to me—and I don’t want it to end.

“Are you—How did it feel to be back there?”

He’s heartbroken, you idiot. He loved her, and now, she’s dead, and you’re making him talk about it. Way to go.

He reaches out and curls a lock of my hair through his fingers, freezing my lungs. “But… necessary.”

Friends can touch each other. That’s normal. Just like the flutter in my stomach and the sizzle in the air between us: perfectly normal.

Considering how close we are, it’s very hard to avoid his eyes. I can see myself reflected back in them. Forcing my gaze lower doesn’t help, either. It puts me at eye level with his lips.

He just visited his dead first love. Give him space. He needs space.

Hell, I need space.

I put my hand on his chest and push him gently away. Or maybe it’s me pushing myself away—I can’t quite decide. “I’m sorry. You’ve had a long day, so I should?—”

“I was saying goodbye. It was time to let her go.”

I feel like a tinder box ready to explode. It’s hard to think when he’s this close. “Are you okay?”

“Should I not be?”

“I don’t know what you should or shouldn’t be, Andrey. I stopped knowing that a long time ago, if I ever knew it in the first place. I’m just asking as, you know… as your friend.”

He smirks. It’s sadder than his norm, but it still does what it’s always done: scramble my thoughts into incoherent white noise. I can’t think when he smirks like that. I can only be.

“Are we just friends, lastochka?”

My eyes flutter shut and in the space of that tiny, two-second window, his lips brush against mine, softer than a whisper.

I press my hands to his chest, trying to find the strength to push him away. “Of course we are. I?—”

But before I can define this newfound friendship of ours, his hand curls around my neck. I’m sucked into his ether, pulled into his embrace. His lips fall against mine and there’s nothing soft or whispering about this kiss. It’s loud and unyielding.

The kind of kiss that pulls you out of your body.

The kind that makes the thoughts into white noise, and the white noise into nothing at all. Blissful, easy silence.

When he finally releases me, I’m breathless and completely confused.

I selfishly wish the kiss had left Andrey looking as unkempt as I feel. But he just smiles down at me, not so much as a hair out of place.

“Did that feel like a kiss from someone who just wants to be your friend?”

“No,” I admit. “But I’ve been wrong before.”

He places his hand against my heart. “I think you can trust this feeling, little bird.”

I want to. So badly.

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