Page 10 of Vasily the Hammer

I did request a few EpiPens be stashed about, but I casually stroll over to that fruit bowl, making sure that there are no cherries, strawberries, or kiwis as I select an orange from it and begin to peel.

Ana is standing by the sideboard, watching me expectantly. She’s still dressed in the scrubs from Consummate, which are too big for her. She’s swallowed up by the stiff blue fabric, so it’s hard to see how she’s changed in the last six years. She’s cut her glossy black curls shorter; they’re pulled back in a ponytail, but it’s impossible they’re as long as they used to be. On the plane, I caught the shimmer of a couple silver strands that I swear she’s too young for at 25. And there are gentle creases in her previously flawless face, but not nearly so many as there are in mine.

Still beautiful. More so, even. My memories have warped her into a child, frozen in time at 20 as I’ve continued to age. Now she’s a woman.

Kostya argued with me about that, too. Tried to pull some shit about how she’s no more the same girl she was than I’m the same man, so I shouldn’t treat her how I treated her then and she’s not going to fall for me now.

Like I want her falling for me. Just for her to get her memories back and remember how it all ended last time? Not hardly. This is between me and her brother, and there’s no chance on God’s green hell I’m going to let her fall for me this time, knowing it’s just going to end the same way it did before.

But her brother fucked up again. And my brother— my brother by choice, Dima— fucked up, again, and here I am, fixing it. Again.

She stares at me expectantly with her big brown eyes, and I remember my manners. I toss the orange peel, split the fruit in half, and hand half to her.

There.

She takes it in both hands, cupping it like she’s not sure what to do with it. Does amnesia affect that? I assumed she would be fine with this, but maybe not. I rip off a segment of my own orange and pop it in my mouth. “See? You eat it.”

She looks back down at the orange and scowls. “Yes, I know what an orange is. I just...” She sighs, a frustration I well remember from her. We had a good couple of weeks together, but the good was mixed with a lot of bad. And a lot of the bad was little frustrations that finessed big reactions from each other.

We knew how to push each other’s buttons, and we weren’t afraid to.

“You don’t want an orange?” I ask.

She closes her hands around the orange and pulls it in to her bosom. I haven’t touched her much, and she’s swimming in those scrubs, but I swear there’s more to thatbosomthan there used to be.

Of course there is. She was flat as a twelve-year-old boy back then. I loved those hidden pads of soft flesh with their daintily puckered dark centers, but again, sheisa woman now. I’m sure there are curves just waiting to be undressed.

Not tonight.

Oh, I’m going to fuck Ana. When nothing else was going right between us, she came apart like a prized whore the second my cock filled her tight pussy. I’m not nearly so noble as to hold back from that just because she doesn’t know who I truly am. But not tonight.

But fuck, the way she yells, “I do want the orange!” at me? I’m half ready to bend her over the back of the sofa— a distinctly different sofa from what was here eighteen hours ago, so I guess someone decided the firm leather love seat wasn’t suitable for Ana’s ass— and spank her pussy with my palm and my cock.

But then that sweet bottom lip of hers quivers. “But, umm, I want my clothes. And my shower. And my bed.”

I have none of those things. Not in the sense she thinks they’ll be. After I sent Ana away the first time, I hated sleeping in my bed. It reeked of her, no matter how many times I washed the sheets. I ended up moving into my childhood home— then the home of my brother’s widow— by the end of the month. So no, I’d rather Ana sleep in that guest room.

I nod to her in dismissal, and her eyes widen as though attempting to communicate something obvious to me. I blame the chaos of the day on the delay before I say, “Right. You don’t know where anything is.”

She softens, her cheeks blooming pink. “I know. It’s weird. I was hoping that coming home would help. But the neurologist warned me that sometimes, the only thing that helps is time. And sometimes, not even that.”

She shrugs like it is what it is, she’s just rolling with it, but I can see the fear in her eyes. The best way to avoid it is to show her the guest room.

Which is irritatingly brighter than the rest of the apartment, as it’s not a room that’s ever used. It’s been aired out though, with even more flowers to perfume it and a new bedspread that looks more feminine as well as a vanity with an array of beauty products on it. She eyes the room skeptically, but when I pause at the door, she continues on bravely, looking around, opening doors, poking her head into the closet and bathroom.

“This is . . . our room?” she asks.

I clear my throat. “Your room. We keep different schedules, so it’s easier.” I’ve heard people say that before. Kseniya and Miguel, her husband, used to be like that, back when he was night auditor of the hotel he now has a corporate position for, a perk to having me as a brother-in-law. It helped their marriage that they weren’t ruining each other’s sleep cycles, and they’re still disgustingly happily married and even discussing when to start having another baby even though they waited nearly a decade on the first and just had her six months ago.

Seven months? Eight? Fuck, Janson was right, I really do need to get to Flagstaff at some point to meet her while she’s still little.

But not now. Definitely not with Ana here. Kseniya will shit a brick if she finds out I’ve sort-of imprisoned Ana again.

“Oh? What do I do? Where do I work? Do I like my job? Do they know what happened?”

“You, ahh, you work at a theater,” I finally sputter out, recalling that she majored in theatre arts. She thought she’d be a stage manager or work somewhere in community outreach. Funding is a big issue for community theaters, and since she assumed she’dend up being a Mafia wife, it was a job she could do, that her husband would allow, and she’d be fulfilled with.

I can give her that fulfillment. Not in practice, but in her mind.

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