A Night With No Stars

XXII. Hot Potato

Maks had been standing at the door for the last fifteen minutes, unable to force himself to ring the bell. It wasn't the first time his hand reached out and his fingers froze in the middle of movement. He had to do this. There was no other way.

It was surprising how scared he felt. Was it possible he was actually afraid of his fiancée? Afraid of what she was going to say? He was definitely afraid of what she was going to do. She wasn't exactly volatile, but the risk was too great to underestimate her occasional displays of hysteria. The truth was, he wasn't completely honest with her all that often; they rarely had frank conversations about their feelings, and that was probably the scariest part—that he wasn't sure if it was even something he could still do.

Think of Aleks, he told himself with resolve.

So far, it'd been Aleks who had stressed him out the most; he made his blood boil when they were fighting, made his heart palpitate wildly when they were making love, and sometimes he had trouble catching his breath only from looking at him, but unlike Ewelina, he never made him actually fearful. He could be livid, he could be burning from shame, he could be anxious, but it was just a part of the rush and not this clammy trepidation at the prospect of looking her straight in the eye. Ironically, of all these insane feelings Aleks' mere existence had awoken in him, true fear had never been one of them. The only thing to fear when it came to Aleks was his absence. He was... like a sanctuary. If Ewelina had ever been a sanctuary, she'd long since ceased being one. He wasn't sure when exactly he'd started to perceive her as an enemy, and he was quite regretful that it'd had to come to that.

He gathered himself one last time, reached out, and this time finally pushed the bell. For one pitiful second, he actually hoped that she wasn't home, but no, he could already hear footsteps from behind the door.

"Oh!" she exclaimed at the sight of him. "Hi, honey". Her smile was shy when she moved to let him in.

"Hey". He, on the other hand, sounded quite grave. He cleared his throat, hoping that next time he opened his mouth, he would manage to make his tone more genial. He doubted it would be very helpful, though.

​"I can't believe you got up at this hour," she remarked, turning around and heading to the kitchen. "Do you want some coffee?"

He did not. He was going to do this as quickly as possible, and nothing seemed more sad than an abandoned drop of cold coffee, left at the bottom of the cup after a horror of a conversation.

​"I just wanted to talk," he said, following her and ignoring the question, then added distractedly, "Are your roommates all gone?"

​"I told you they were going home for the weekend," she reminded him. It wasn't all that surprising that he'd never registered that.

Ewelina suddenly got more serious, like she sensed what sort of conversation it was going to be. "So what is this about?" she asked, clearly minding to sound casual.

Apparently she agreed that it wasn't the best time for coffee because she dropped the cups into the sink and came over to him instead. She stood close, probably to create an air of intimacy, which in turn made Maks uneasy. He managed not to step away, but when he opened his mouth, he suddenly found himself unable to utter a single word.

Her eyes narrowed, and she seemed to drop all pretense. "Aleks spoke to you, didn't he?" she figured.

Maks blinked slowly at the sound of his name on her lips, unnerved. "Yes," he admitted truthfully.

"I thought so. I asked him to." She sounded slightly ashamed of herself. "It's not like I try to get other people to fix our problems. I just thought—"