Page 56 of Marked by the Demigod

Iakov shifts, blocking him from view, and she relaxes a bit. Or attempts to, anyways. "Thanks," she says, and she can hear how muted her voice is.

Gone is the exhaustion from Iakov's face, as if it was never there. "Did you date him long?"

"Yeah," she says, and Iakov's arm over her shoulder squeezes into a bit of a hug. "It wasn't exactly the nicest of breakups."

She can feel his sigh more than hear it. "Near as I could tell, none are in America."

"America has nothing to do with it," she snaps back, and he's smiling, a crook of his lips, as if that was the reaction he wanted. "Mostly it just..."

"Two salads to go for Aimes?" The waitress calls out, and Rocky's head snaps up and over to them.

Aimes shuts her eyes for a brief second, before standing and plastering a fake smile on her face, and doing nothing but watch as Iakov takes the salads from the waitress.

Without even looking at him, she can sense the furrowed brow across Rocky's broad face. "Aimes?" he blurts out, and even that's a bit accusatory.

It does no good to not look, so she gives him the fakest smile she can muster. "Hi," she says, only barely not jumping as Iakov once more drapes his arm around her shoulder. Even his arm feels smug.

Rocky glances between the two of them, his eyebrows rising. "Trixie didn't say you were dating anyone." As if this is some sort of infidelity, and as if the last time he chatted with her wasn't four months ago.

Iakov's arm tightens. "It's relatively new," he says, his American accent slipping for his much much more obvious Russian. "Jake." He doesn't extend a hand.

Rocky looks so confused she almost feels bad for him. "Rocky, but Aimes," he starts, but Aimes moves on her gut instinct and towards the door, leaving him behind as quickly as possible.

Amusement practically radiates off of Iakov as he catches up to her. "I have to say, you don't go for one type, do you?" They duck back down into the side streets, and his shoulders relax. "He seemed far more...brutish than I."

Looking at him, with his narrow shoulders and his hands stuffed in his pockets, Aimes is compelled to agree. "Physical type isn't everything," she says, quick, her face much more flushed than it has any right to be. "He was an asshole."

Those words, so long since coming, lay heavy in her mouth. Iakov watches her, as if letting her process the statement.

"He was an asshole, and cheated on me," Iakov's eyebrows fly up, but she presses on. "He cheated on me, then broke up with me cause he didn't believe I wasn't doing the same." She kicks a pebble, a knot within her somehow loosening as she watches it skitter across the suburban pavement. "Then we got back together, then broke up. Then together, then broke up."

Iakov remains quiet for a few moments, almost suspiciously so. So she looks pretty much everywhere else she can in the tiny suburban neighborhood without looking at him.

"Well," he starts, and it might be the most delicate he has ever spoke. "Were you...were you back together when we..."

She shakes her head. "Only just not, though," she says, misery crawling over her skin. "It sucked."

Iakov's shoulders loosen even more, as if that was a possibility he hadn't ever considered. The exhaustion is back in the lines of his face.

They don't say much more for the rest of the walk, and she can see the weariness in each of his steps. It's almost surprising that he doesn't teleport away or fall over asleep, but wordlessly follows her into her apartment.

Still, without prompting, he holds out her chair for her, and they eat in silence at her tiny little table. He blinks rapidly the entire time, as if it is the only thing keeping him awake. It's so blindingly domestic that it doesn't feel real.

"You can stay here," she says, around a bite of the beet and feta cheese salad. "Not sure if it's as good as your safe houses, but you could stay here."

He blinks at her, as if taking a moment to have to process her words. "Yeah," he says, slow. "I could."

After the tiny dinner she leads him to her bed, where he crashes the moment he rests his head, leaving her with a puzzling early evening with him in her bed and her not wanting to make noise.

So instead of flipping on the TV, she pulls over her Kindle and her phone, curling up on the couch.

TRIXIE (5:41 PM): Rocky said he saw you on a date? And that you were at Cahuenga General Store and you didn't pick me up a tuna melt?

Aimes smiles at it, just for a second.

AIMES (5:59 PM): Something new.

And it feels new, somehow. Like this was some sort of small test, and now that they’ve passed it, this small strange thing they have feels more like an actual functioning adult relationship.

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