Namesake

He shook his head. "I don't like the name Marina."

"Really?" I pouted, "I thought you would."

"No, I knew an awful girl named Marina once."

"Ok," I said defeatedly, "what about Tatiana?"

He shrugged, "Eh, I don't hate it."

I sighed, "Anja?"

"I like Anja, you can write that one down," he said indifferently.

I scribbled it down 'A-N-J-A' adding it to the short list we had already.

"Ok," I tapped the pencil, "ooh! What about Oksana?"

"That's my mother's name."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know that..."

"It's alright. How about Polina?"

I blinked, "Polina?"

"Yeah, why not?"

I shook my head, "No. How about Aleksandra?"

"Sure," he shrugged.

I wrote it down.

"What about boy names?" He asked.

"What ABOUT boy names."

"We have to pick some of those out too," he insisted.

"Fine..."

"I like Maxim."

I raised my eyebrow, "What? No."

"Ok, ok... Let me think. How about Vasily?"

"Hm.... I like Vasily..."

I wrote it down under the 'boys' column.

"Or Konstantin," he offered.

"I don't like Konstantin."

"Aleksander?"

"We can't have Aleksander as a boy name and Aleksandra as a girl name."

"Why not?"

I shrugged, "I don't know..."

"Write that one down."

So, I wrote down Aleksander.

"I like the name Peter," I said hopefully.

He shook his head.

"Ok... Leo?"

"That's not too bad," he said.

"You don't like it."

"No, it's fine."

I wrote down Leo, but I knew he didn't favor that name.

"Can we go back to girl names?"

"Wait," he pleaded, "just a few more boy names."

"We have enough for now."

"No, we already have more girl names than boy names," he insisted.

"So? Girl names are prettier."

"But what if it's not a girl."

"What if it is?"

"But what if it's not?"

Their was a long pause and neither of us were making eye contact.

"This was always a bad idea," I sighed.

"What was?"

"This.... just this whole thing."

There was another long pause of dead air.

He sighed, "So, what about the name Krystina, for a girl?"