Same Game: Different Devils - Katya Zamolodchikova x Reader

Chapter Thirteen

It's funny how life works sometimes, isn't it? One minute you're in love and skipping through a field like Jodie Foster in Nell — soft lighting, earnest flute soundtrack, the whole thing — and the next you're cheating on your boyfriend at a bar that smells vaguely of fried pickles and someone's failed comedy career.

You had mulled over thoughts like that for years. No — not how versatile Jodie Foster is, though God bless her. You'd thought about how a person's life can flip on its head, how in one breath you could be someone's salvation and in the next you're their ruin. How a person could choose to do that to themselves. How a person could, bafflingly, do that to someone like Brian.

Well. You could.

You were that person.

And yet — somehow, scandalously — you found yourself enjoying non-alcoholic beverages with his friends, in their favourite bar, pretending that his life was yours. Or rather, hoping that it could be, if you squinted hard enough and ignored the truth pulsing under your skin.

You rifled through the chain of events that had led you to this point aimlessly, like fingering through old jewelry in a drawer, tarnished and mismatched. The manager with a razor-wit and a no-nonsense approach to her career. The drag queen who had taught you how to be silly again and showed you love that might have been unconditional if you'd let it. A best friend with bad intentions. A pink friend with worse wigs. A bartender who smiled too easily. And of course — worst of all — a blonde with dessert-flavour vapes, blowing clouds that smelled like regret wrapped in cotton candy.

Making a promise to Brian — hugging him, even — hadn't been the wisest decision. But you found yourself in such a place that denying him that had seemed like throwing salt into wounds that were still trying to knit themselves closed. Your sobriety was, of course, at the forefront of all your future decisions, but whatever allowances you could make to keep the red-lipped queen in your life would be made. They had to be.

The night passed in a blur. The jokes you threw out into the bar left your mouth but never quite earned honest laughter back, as if the room itself sensed the falseness underneath. It wasn't that you didn't want that life — a life with Trixie and David, with Fena, Amy and her fucking dumpster cat, with Katya. But it didn't feel like it was yours to ruin. You could watch it, admire it, even play at being part of it, but it never truly belonged to you.

You tried, with everything you had, to believe in what you'd shared in the alley, but words weren't as convincing as the doubt that seeped steadily into your chest like water through old plaster.

Holding onto the memory of your face pressed into his neck coddled you all the way home. Every step you took, you wondered if it was your own or if you were crushing the cement someone else called home, trespassing on a world that never asked for you. It was a laboring existence.

Thank God you were rich.

Coming home to a high rise instead of a shoebox really made up for it. The lobby with its marble floors and indifferent concierge felt like a shield — money insulating you from your own wreckage.

Even the jokes in your inner monologue seemed to be falling flat.

You made a point to take care of yourself. Washing your face with practiced precision, as if ritual could redeem. You owned your body, your house, your agency. Even the pack of cigarettes lying dormant on the bedside table belonged only to you. But that was just it. With Brian only a phone call away, it would always only be you.

After him, there was nothing else — not really.

Nothing can be given entirely if it already belongs to someone else. That might have been why, when Brian's contact lit up your phone, you weren't overly surprised. Of course he knew. Of course he would.