Settling Slowly

Chapter 10 - Light bulb moments

When Grigory had first broken up with Katya, I'd been sad beyond belief. Though I hadn't had an active part in the break down in their relationship, they'd split up because of me. Grigory had fallen for me before Katya even arrived in England and she'd very quickly picked up on there being something between us. That something was the Halloween kiss. We'd had an argument and there had been so much tension and heat between us anyway. We'd kissed. It had been my first.

Grigory never told her, I certainly never told her and it had taken a couple of months for the truth to come out and the relationship to finally end. Grigory had been so, so sad. She'd left him a break up letter which, to this day, I did not know the words of even though he'd read it out to me. Even now when I thought back to that moment stood outside our houses in the bitter cold of December I could still hear his voice as he read it out to me. The words had never registered with me. I didn't speak enough Russian at the time to be able to figure it out, but the heartache and sorrow... Thinking about it still made me want to cry even now.

But before then when I found out he had a girlfriend, by seeing him kiss her no less, I'd defended him. I said that he hadn't led me on at all. And, honestly, he hadn't. There had been no flirting, no special treatment apart from making me tea when he asked me for directions to places. Even when I learned he got engaged I defended him. There were only a few who knew about the kiss apart from the two of us. Dan, Lexie and therefore Sergey and maybe Mum and Dad, but if they knew it was because they'd pestered it out of Dan.

After the break up I'd cried for ages because it hurt seeing Grigory so sad and knowing that in some way it was my fault. And I'd seen him day after day going through the motions - getting up in the morning, eating, going to work - but he'd never looked like he was interested in what he was doing. He was only doing it because he'd had to.

But around the last week of January he'd begun to pick himself up and put the pieces back together. Once he'd started it happened quickly and I guess that was when the so far missing anger began to build up inside me. I knew that he was going to be fine and that meant I could stop worrying about him. That meant there was room for other things.

Like anger apparently.

I had no right to be angry in some ways. He knew her first, he was already with her when we met, I was only supposed to be his student. I wasn't sure if I resented their relationship or not anymore. But one thing I was allowed to be angry at was Grigory not telling me and saving me a lot of what became shattered hope and heartache.

I forgot she existed. It happened a lot when I was talking to you. That's what he'd told me not long after it happened. But surely that admission alone should have told him that there was something wrong with his relationship with her. He may not have admitted it out loud before that moment, but he'd known that it was the truth long before that. There was no way he couldn't have.

I slammed the bedroom door shut and sat on my bed snapping my sketchbook open. I crossed my legs beneath myself and glared at the page. It was about some designer I really did not care about right now. Even so I set to it and copied some text from a printed sheet into the book.

I gave up when I spelt 'and' wrong three times in a row. Fortunately I was working in pencil. I grabbed my coke and chugged some of it down.

I heard footsteps on the stairs, Grigory's, and quickly picked up my sketch book again. Just before the door cracked open I leaned against my headboard and stretched my legs out crossing them at the ankle. Hoping against hope that I looked calm, collected, and fully able to ignore him. I put some headphones on and plugged them in but didn't have time to put any music on before I heard him outside my door.