Page 31 of Bad Teammate
“Housecleaning, hm?” Katerina asked. “Is that a regular thing for you?”
“I have a cleaning lady come once or twice a week. But this was a last-minute thing for the party.”
“I see. Do they have to clean Sasha’s room, too?”
“Yeah.”
“Those poor souls,” she joked.
I laughed.
Niko started speaking in Russian, and Katerina began translating. “My brother wants to know if he can invite a girl to the party tonight?”
“A girl?” I grinned. “Of course you can invite her, buddy. This party is for you guys. But who is she?”
Katerina interpreted Niko’s words. “Her name is Julia. She’s the hostess at the bar and grille where Katya and I ate lunch, and she recognized me when we came in. After our meal, we were leaving the restaurant when she called out, ‘do svidaniya!’ —Russian forgoodbye.I ran back and struck up a conversation with her. I couldn’t just leave her alone after that—I mean, a cute Russian girl in Dallas? Are you kidding me? How could I resist?”
Welcome to the club,I thought, my guilty eyes darting to Katerina—and I stole that glance at her tummy after all.
“Nice! So is she from Russia, too?” I asked.
Again, Katerina acted as Niko’s voice. “No, she’s American. She speaks Russian because she’s majoring in it at UT Dallas. Best of both worlds, man! She’s all excited to talk to me because she can finally practice her Russian. And yeah, I had to speak a little slower so she could understand me, but she mostly understood everything. After a twenty-minute conversation, she had to get back to work so I asked for her number.”
“Way to go, kid,” I said. “What are you waiting for? Invite her over. Go for the kill.”
Niko pulled out his phone and started tapping away at it.
“Go for the kill,” Katerina repeated. She finally looked at me, but I can’t say she looked happy. “Hm, I wonder—is that what you were doing with me last night?”
I lowered my voice. “Hey. C’mon. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know. You didn’t mean it atall.”
I gestured at Niko on the sly. “Can we not do this right in front of him?”
She shook her head. “Whatever.”
The three of us sat in silence while Niko played with his phone, blissfully ignorant.
“So,” I began, trying to make things less weird, “I ordered catering for the party.”
Katerina didn’t say a word.
“It’s from my favorite barbecue restaurant,” I added. “I thought you might like to have a taste of Texas.”
“Oh, I think I’ve tasted enough of Texas already.”
I grimaced. “Okay, I get it. You’re pissed at me. You wanna talk alone?”
“He can’t understand us. If we go some place to talk alone, we’ll look like we actuallyareup to something. We’re better off talking out in the open.”
“Okay. You’re right.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “About last night—”
She stopped me right there. “First of all, don’t whisper. You’ll only make Sasha more suspicious than he already is. Use a normal tone of voice.”
Panic flooded my heart. “Wait,what? He’s suspicious?”
“Of course he is.”
