Chapter 23: 20.

There were several things that could have explained Yuri Karamov's red cheeks. One was that he appeared to be winded from running up the stairs, which would indicate some physical exertion. But it could have just as easily been from the frigid November cold, and several other factors pertaining to his physiology.

Yet no valid reason came to mind when his whole body seemed to sigh in relief upon seeing me, to the point where his head slumped against the doorframe.

His breaths filled the room.

- You haven't left.

Hope, despicable hope, fluttered awake in my chest. I pushed it back down. Don't be stupid.

- I'm just leaving, I informed him, straightening my back. I still held his shirt in my hands. The longer I held the fabric, the heavier it felt. Did I put it on or leave it?

The screaming orange colour drew his gaze downwards.

- That's mine...I mean...you can use it. There's...some blood on your collar from last night.

I looked down at where his fingers had indicated, and sure enough, there, on the right-side corner, was a splatter of red dots. Sighing, I slipped out of my shirt.

- Why? Yuri asked me.

I didn't look over at him, for fear of my hands doing that weird fidgety thing they did when I became aware of his body in relation to mine. Especially, when I stood before him, half naked. I pulled the shirt over my head and dared a glance out of the corner of my eye. He wasn't even looking at me. His eyes were downcast. He closed the door behind him and walked over to his desk.

- Why what? I asked.

Yuri pulled out a chair and took a seat.

He looked up at me. - Why are you leaving? You don't plan on eating breakfast?

- Is it time for breakfast? I asked. I slipped my hands through the sleeves and tugged the shirt down over my torso.

- I don't really have a watch on me, I explained.

I couldn't find the sun in the sky, it was behind a perpetual shroud of clouds, yet something told me it was closer to noon than morning. I had never felt this upheaved from reality before. It was as if I resided in a vacuum chamber. I didn't like it. I didn't like the feeling of not knowing what time it was. Moreover, I didn't like how stupid it made me feel. What kind of man didn't have a watch on him?

- You really don't look like yourself, Yuri commented after taking a long look at me. In retrospect, he seemed happy. No, perhaps not happy, but certainly content.

I flinched. - You don't say? What gave it away, the bruising or this hideous shirt? I asked, tugging to examine the faded swirls of the motif. My face scrunched up at the sight.

Yuri laughed. - No, I don't mean it like that-, he quieted as if reconsidering his words, - Okay, the shirt, he agreed after a beat.

- It makes your bruises look worse.

- Thanks, I deadpanned.

-What's frugumnar? Your mother made that.

- Is that what she's making? Yuri's smile grew somber.

- What's wrong?

- I think she forgot that you don't eat meat. He scratched the back of his head, apologetically. I let out a soft chuckle in relief.

Neither of us dared to verbally acknowledge the fact that I hadn't been here; in his room, in his house, in over four years. The threat of our fragile co-existence capsizing was too great.

- Do you have any cereal perhaps? I asked, breaking eye contact.

- So...you are staying for breakfast?

Was that hope in his voice? My stomach did somersaults.

- I guess so. I murmured. - Besides, I don't think your mother would let me leave the house on an empty stomach.

Yuri nodded in agreement.

Once again the silence between us got prolonged. The soles of my feet started to itch. I couldn't hold his gaze for more than a few seconds at a time. There was this fiery intensity behind his eyes that hadn't been there the previous night. Questions I didn't have the answers to pooled in his blue irises, yet he left me in the dark, having to take wild guesses at their intention.

Why was Yuri Karamov, who hadn't spoken to me, or so much as attempted to speak to me, in four years, suddenly acting like I was the most fascinating thing in his room?

I caught his sudden movement from the corner of my eye. I jerked back in an uncoordinated reflex and stubbed my toe on the foot of his bed. He'd gotten up from his chair with such haste that the legs skittered backward with a screech. He flashed me a reassuring smile that contradicted the frenzy with which his hands were pulling and shuffling things around on his desk. He started rummaging in the top cupboard and pulled out wad after wad of what looked like envelopes.

- What are you doing? I asked.

His smile was disarming. It wasn't one of his pass-the-awkward-time smiles, but a real one which showcased his prominent canines, and made his eyes wrinkle at the corners.

- You have to see this, he said and turned back to what I had mistaken for envelopes, but what I saw upon drawing closer, was a bunch of photographs rubber-banded together. He took the bundles and turned them on their backs. There, in black ink, he had scribbled numbers and letters. He was searching for something, I realised.

Gingerly, I turned a bundle onto its glossy side. The first photograph was of Millin on a horse. He was younger, somewhere between ten and twelve years old, and was grinning mischievously into the camera from atop a brown and white, spotted mare. The photograph was taken on a hot spring day, somewhere in the flatlands. The background showed two more horses grazing on verdant, spring grass, and the angle of the camera was just so that one caught the hills of Elhem on the horizon.

The sun, a glaring fixture on the left-side corner, bleached Millin's dark locks, curled behind his ears, and his striped Juventus jersey. The picture had a quality, a tint in its vibrancy, that was as recognisable to me as Yuri himself. And like always when I looked at his photographs, I marvelled at how they retained their essence. It was as if my eyes were the lens, and simultaneously its object of fixation. I envied the joy and carefree spirit Yuri had captured, and I couldn't help the jealousy that scraped at my thoughts. Had all his summers been this carefree, spent in the flatlands with Millin?

Beside me, I heard Yuri shut the drawer closed. His proximity drew my attention down to the wad of photographs he held in his hand. They were dated seven years back.

It couldn't be.

At my furrowed eyebrows, Yuri urged me to look through them.

I took the photographs from him and tore the rubber band off. There, on the very first photograph, was Yuri; nine years old, dressed in a green, fleece sweater and dark jeans. He posed squatting next to my old bicycle in a way that was both endearing and cringy.

- What were you thinking? I asked him.

Yuri's expression mirrored my bewildered amazement. He just shook his head, abashed. My smile was so wide, I had to press my lips together against the trickle of blood from my split lip.

I knew we would find it from amongst this bundle—I was sure we would, but the more pictures I flicked through that wasn't it, the larger my doubt grew. I didn't think I would want it this bad, but I did. And by the time I flicked to the next to last picture my stomach had all but turned into a vortex. My grip tightened around the photographs with unrestrained emotion. Staring back at me was the left side of Yuri's face, the same way I remembered seeing him through the lens of his camera so many years ago. The blue, grey, and green of his iris were captured with a poor resolution, but it hardly had an effect on the feelings that brimmed up in my chest.

- I had the film developed before graduation, Yuri explained. His voice cut through the fog in my brain like a radio tuning to the right frequency.

- I wanted to give it to you on our graduation, but you were in Rujga.

- I was? I asked even though I knew the truth better. It was easier than to correct him, than to say: No, I was at home that day because it was just one of those days when I couldn't bring myself to deal with your existence. It was better for him to believe that I had been in Rujga. The assumption wasn't far-fetched. I had been absent a lot due to modelling.

It took an extra few seconds for my mind to process that he had made me a graduation gift. The realisation rolled around on my palate, bitter-sweet and confusing. Why would he have bothered? Not because he held any sentiment towards me, so why? My heartbeat sped up. A small voice whispered the answer I was too afraid to admit to myself.

What if? No, that wasn't possible. He had treated me as if I hadn't existed up until that day we met in the tunnel.

- You don't have to give them to me. I pushed the photographs towards him, but his stance didn't budge.

- They're yours, I urged.

- No, he shook his head, - you took more than half of those photos. Besides-, his smiled turned sad at the corners, - I only did it impress you.

- Me?

- Of course.

He licked his lips, swallowed.

- Why did you want to impress me? My brows pinched together in confusion.

He wanted to say something. I saw it in the way his words retreated into him. His expression changed—hardened.

- What is it? I asked. What was it he wasn't saying? My grip around the photographs tightened. Moisture accumulated in the crevice of my palm. My heart palpitated arrhythmically in my chest. I was hyperaware of the earth's gravitational force weighing down the air in my lungs.

The silence was unbearable.

- Sometimes I wonder if you really have no idea, or if you're just fucking with my head.

A burst of nervous laughter escaped my lips. I didn't know what was going on, but I felt it in my chest long before I could explain it. I found myself immobile—a slave to the way my organs rearranged themselves to the uncoordinated beats of my heart. Be still, I pleaded. Be still, please, be still. My heart wouldn't listen.

- Yes, I did want to impress you, Yuri admitted. He stepped closer. Our hands were two—no, less than two centimeters away from touching on the desk.

- You were Ru Konstantin, you lived in a freaking castle, and everybody...everybody wanted to be your friend...and...and there you stood in my tiny kitchen. I–, he stopped mid-sentence, swallowed.

- I did a lot of stupid things to impress you.

- Go ahead, his voice twisted with cynicism. - Say it. Say it makes me no better than a Brommian bumpkin.

He stared me down. There were so much going on in those few seconds. They stumbled over each other in their hurry to get noticed, to be experienced over the roar in my ears. I don't think I was breathing. The rush of blood to my head drowned out my every thought. I should have been angry at him, at least, at his low opinion of me. But what was anger when Yuri Karamov's lips were centimeters away from mine? What was the meaning of life if it wasn't to do as every fiber of my being was commanding me to do right then; to kiss him. To kiss a boy. To kiss a Brommian boy.

I wetted my lips, and opened my mouth to say...What? I don't remember. It came as a relief when Yuri beat me to it.

- Why did you push me off the tree? He asked.

- Because...because...-

- I kissed you?

- No!

Yuri's face, ready for rebuttal and war, fell. - No? His brow furrowed.

Our fingertips touched on top of the wooden desk. I yanked my hand back to my side.

- No.

I shook my head.

- I didn't mean to push you. I was...I was surprised I didn't know what to do, and you were angry...or were you joking? I didn't...I don't...I don't understand why you did that.

Yuri stared at me intently. The longer the silence between us grew, the calmer he seemed to get. His invisible armour, strapped on for war, fell from his tense shoulders. The storm behind his eyes settled.

- You don't find me repulsive then? His voice was barely above a whisper. I doubt I would have caught it if I hadn't been staring so intensely at his lips.

- Repulsive? I asked. My confusion gave way to understanding as it finally dawned on me. Yuri thought the reason I had pushed him off the Tree was that I was repulsed by what he had done. A sudden bout of cold relief, which simultaneously both froze me in place and lifted the corners of my mouth washed over me. The threat of a hysterical laughter tickled my throat before I swallowed it down.

- Yuri.

I lurched forward and grabbed the part of him I had the easiest access to—his upper arms. I wanted to shake him. I wanted to laugh right in his face. My heart felt suspended by a thread, thinner than a spider's web, in my chest.

This? This was it? It couldn't be.

- I don't find you repulsive. Not once have I found you repulsive. Why? Because you kissed me? I asked. This time I couldn't fight back my laughter as I succumbed to hysteria.

- No. I shook my head at his confusion. - You forget that you used to kiss me all time.

- You don't remember? I asked when his disbelief grew.

- Yes, you did, I was nodding my head. - On my hands and on my forehead. How are the lips any different?

I understood that what I was saying was bordering on lying even as I said it. You could never strip the intimacy and the romantic association from a kiss on the lips. I wasn't in a state of mind to really ponder what was coming out of my mouth. I wanted Yuri to understand. Now older, I can look back at this moment and analyse it for what it really was; a persuasion.

Yuri broke eye contact by glancing over at the desk. He stepped away from my loose grip. A ghost of a smile penetrated his confusion.

- You don't understand. He shook his head to himself. He refused to meet my eyes. I felt him draw into himself, away from me and from our conversation.

- You're right, I said after a moment of regarding him. - I don't. I don't understand. I don't understand why, after all these years of ignoring me, you're suddenly so friendly, out of nowhere. Why? Why did you do that to me...in the hospital?

His gaze was tormented when he looked up. He bit his lower lip. His words staggered on their way out, not quite making it out on their first try.

- Are you really that dense? He asked.

- I kissed you. His gaze burned into mine. - There was no girl, you do understand that, right? There's no pretty Brommian girl, not in the flatlands, not in the woodlands, not downtown. It's you. It's always been you, Ru. I don't hate you, or dislike you...I've tried.

His voice grew quiet, - At the hospital, I tried. But I only end up hating myself, and then hating you for hating myself. That's the hell I've been living in for years.

His breaths came out audible and shallow. They filled the small space between us.

- Tell me you hate me. Yuri's expression was toeing on cruel.

- Tell me I disgust you.

I took a step closer to him. I was calm despite my heart threatening to escape its confinement.

- Okay, I agreed. - But tell me what happens afterwards. I tell you I find you disgusting, and then what? I took a step closer to him.

I saw him falter as he digested my question.

- Will it make you feel better about yourself? All these years have you really been pitying yourself? Day in and day out?

In an instant Yuri went from calm to defensive; his face, his shoulders, his stance. I step closer, laid a moist palm on top of his cold hand on the desk. He flinched, but didn't pull away.

- You threw away our friendship because of a kiss? I heard how ridiculous it sounded. He did too.

My other hand came around the nape of his neck. I felt him stiffen under my probing gaze. I touched his soft hair. My eyes flickered down to his lips; pale and soft, and then back up to his crystalline eyes. I drew into his immobile body. I felt the breath of hot air from his nostrils fan the tip of my nose, across my upper lip.

I pecked him softly. There was something in the simple friction of our two lips meeting, awkward and warm, which unfurled my body. I unraveled; cracked open, completely vulnerable to the emotions I had repressed and shut out for years. I was weak to the rush of euphoria to my brain. I pulled him in by his neck and pressed my lips harder against his.

I lost myself in the sensation of Yuri Karamov's face; of the feel of his philtrum, and the contrast of the outline of his lips, and the tip of his nose, his chin, his cheek. All of him; hot, and alive. I was kissing him in the flesh. I was actually doing it.

My heart inflated and soared, like a balloon, up to my head.

I felt him startle into motion. It took me a while to notice that his force wasn't bringing me any closer, but rather, distancing the warmth of his lips from underneath mine. I staggered back. I couldn't tell if he had pushed me, or if I had let go of his neck. Either way, we came apart.

- Do you find me disgusting now? I asked, catching my breath.

His eyes were the size of saucers.

- Is...is this a joke to you? He sputtered. He looked offended, really offended, and hurt. His expression wiped the growing smile off my face.

His walls came up. They were closing in on him, shutting me out.

- No! No!

I felt that familiar, dizzying rush of blood to my face.

- It never once occurred to you that I would have kissed you back? That I wanted to be kissed?

Yuri was shocked into stone. His mouth fell agape. His expression cleared of all it's lingering frustration and anger.

I clenched my hands and felt the beat of my heartbeat against my fingertips. I waited and waited for him to say something; for him to confirm the fears I had always known.

Yuri's cheeks redden, so visible on his pale skin. - You're joking with me, he breathed at last. I shook my head.

He stepped closer, - This isn't where you laugh and tell me I can fuck off, is it? His face was so sincere, so open, so lost, so hopeful.

I cracked open.

I wanted to touch him so badly; I ached all over.

He reached out to me. His hands trailed up my forearm. He pulled me into him. So close, his breath wafted hot on my face.

I had asked for my heart to be still and finally it yielded. It dipped low into the hollow of my chest and disappeared somewhere deep within me.

- Ru-, he smiled, -...you do? His smile was so bright. Lost in the oceans that were his eyes, I caught my fingertips inching to touch his cheek.

How was it possible that he was still doubtful? I couldn't recall a time I hadn't wanted to kiss him. Not when he was this close. Not when he was looking at me; seeing me, seeing through all my fears and desires.

- Please. Yuri's lips grazed mine. I held his breath in my lungs. My eyelids fluttered shut.

- Please, don't puncture my lung this time, he worded over my lips before he closed the space between us.