Chapter 21 - Nadia

I slept deeply and wonderfully, and dreamed of all the dirty things I wanted to do with Ryan the next time we got together. But I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t waking up with his gorgeous body wrapped around mine. I sighed, stretched in my comfortable bed, and then got ready for the day.
After my shower I put on the same clothes for the third day in a row. I was glad I’d stashed fresh panties in my purse, but I was beginning to stretch the limits of how long my black slacks could be worn before I started feeling dirty. Fortunately, Braden was helping me move my stuff over today.
I still felt giddy after last night. The only thing better than good sex was great sex, and it was great with Ryan. Sure, it was a sample size of one, but I had a feeling it would be top-notch every time. Ryan had an intensity and hunger that I’d never seen before.
That was the really great thing about having a no-strings-attached fuck-buddy: you could try new things and be blunt about what you wanted in bed, without any of the uncomfortableness or judgement. It was freeing. Just two people using each other’s bodies in a simple, primal way.
And I had some dirty things I wanted to try with him that I wouldn’t have risked on any other random date. I couldn’t wait to see if he was into the same sort of stuff.
Between Ryan and Dorian, two out of four aspects of their proposition were great so far.
Ryan’s door was closed. Some morning sex sounded fantastic right about now, but I wasn’t sure if he was a morning person. Something to ask him later. Most guys didn’t mind getting woken with a morning blowjob, though. Maybe I would give that a try another time.
I went downstairs to make coffee, confident that I was the first person awake after all the drinking they had done last night. But Braden was already waiting for me.
“Morning, beautiful,” he said with a big smile. He reached behind him to the coffee maker, which gurgled and hissed as it finished a new cup. He handed it to me and sipped his own cup.
“Morning, handsome,” I said right back to him as I accepted the coffee. He was wearing nice slacks and a tapered polo shirt that hugged his frame and accentuated his biceps, straining against the sleeves. “I thought I’d beat the rest of you drunkards to the coffee this morning.”
“I didn’t drink nearly as much as Andy or Dorian,” he said. “Besides, it takes a lot to give me a hangover. It’s my shitty superpower.”
“Nothing shitty about that.”
He leaned against the counter. “You look well-rested.”
I blinked. Did his comment mean anything? Ryan said the walls were thick, but I had come harder than I’d expected. A girl couldn’t be blamed for making a lot of noise.
“The mattress is a lot more comfortable than the one I’m used to,” I said. “And it doesn’t smell like Ukrainian sweat.”
Braden tilted his head. “Ukrainian sweat?”
“Long story.”
“For that matter,” he added, “what does Ukrainian sweat even smell like?”
I sipped the delicious coffee. “Like beets.”
We took our time drinking coffee, and then headed out on the train to Queens. It was still early, and the train was mostly deserted. Few people were commuting in this direction this early in the morning.
“How late did you and Ryan stay up after us?” Braden asked after a while.
I tried to keep my voice level as I replied. “Oh, maybe half an hour. We played some never have I ever to get to know one another.”
“Always a good way to learn someone’s deepest, darkest secrets,” Braden said with a small smile. He didn’t ask anything else, and fell into a thoughtful silence as the train rumbled on.
Was he uncomfortable? I didn’t know him well enough to tell. Maybe it was all in my head. For that matter, was I uncomfortable? The four of them had made the proposition to me. They all knew their roles in the entire thing. If I slept with Ryan, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of them.
Then why do I feel weird about telling Braden?
Maybe it was because I still didn’t know where I stood with him. We had a great sorta-date before the other three showed up that night at the bar. He kissed me on the train after—and it was definitely a real kiss, not just acting. I could feel his desire. During the kiss he’d wanted me every bit as much as I’d wanted him.
And yet I was only going to be his fake-girlfriend for the purposes of getting his family off his back.
“So why does your family think you’re gay?” I asked to fill the silence.
He chuckled softly. “All the stereotypes. I have two older sisters, so when I was born my dad was ecstatic to have a boy in the family. He tried to get me to like sports, signing me up for baseball and taking me to Mets games. I didn’t like it. No, that’s an understatement—I hated it. It bored the hell out of me. So he tried Jets games, and the Knicks, but football and basketball weren’t much better. I didn’t have any desire to play sports.
“And I was effeminate growing up. I had two sisters! We played house and had tea parties, and instead of action figures for Christmas I asked for a kitchen playset and an Easy Bake Oven. Then I started getting into musicals. I sang along with all the Disney movies, and long after I should have grown out of it. We got kicked out of the theater when Aladdin first came out because I wouldn’t stop singing A Whole New World at the top of my lungs.” He chuckled and ran a hand through his dark hair. “Then theater. I rented every Broadway musical they had on DVD at Blockbuster. The selection wasn’t great, so mom ordered more online. The Will Rogers Follies, Sunset Boulevard, Beauty and the Beast. I loved Rent when it came out, which probably cemented my dad’s belief.”
“Wow, you really did sound gay,” I said.
He sighed. “Only thing missing was: I liked girls. Hell, joining the theater club in middle school helped me get closer to girls. Where else can you practice kissing half the girls in your class without it being weird?”
“And I’m guessing you tried telling your parents this?”
“Not when I was young,” he admitted. “Nobody likes talking to their parents about who they have a crush on, so I kept it to myself. I had school girlfriends—we held hands and ate lunch together and kissed under the bleachers, but never went on dates outside of school. In retrospect, I probably should have shared more with them. It would have made my life a lot easier down the road.”
I winced. “Were they hard on you?”
His eyes widened with frustration. “No! That’s the thing—they were as supportive as could be! To the point that whenever I told them I was straight, they would just smile condescendingly and tell me that I was their son, and that they accepted me no matter what. Thousands of gay kids get ostracized by their family and disowned, and me—a straight kid!—gets the parents that are loving and supportive of my gay lifestyle.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it. “That’s, like, the definition of ironic.”
“Somebody tell Alanis Morrissette.” He began to sing in a soft, melodic voice. “It’s like raaaaaaain, on your wedding day. It’s having supportive parents, when you’re not even gay.”
I cleared my throat and added another verse. “It’s a free parade, even though you’re straight.”
I fell apart into a fit of giggles, which made him laugh too and lean into me. He smelled like spice and lavender.
“So having me pretend to be your girlfriend will… what?” I asked. “If they’re supportive, what’s the problem?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just want them to know who I really am. Or at least get used to the idea. Because someday I’m going to bring home the love of my life, and they won’t believe it’s real because she’s a woman.”
I nodded along, but still felt a little pang of sadness at that thought. Someday he’s going to meet the love of his life, and it won’t be me.
It was a stupid, jealous thing to feel. We’d barely known each other a few days. And here I was thinking about the one.
Braden made me forget all about it with another line. “It’s like telling your parents, but the truth just won’t stick.”
I leaped at the opening. “It’s loving titties, but your parents think you like dick.”
We spent the rest of the ride laughing and thinking up more verses to our silly song.

*

We got off the train at my stop and began walking to my apartment. There weren’t as many shady characters around in the morning as there were late at night, but Braden still looked around with a worried expression on his face. But he didn’t say anything.
When we walked into my apartment, I swept my hand across the cluttered, filthy space. “Home, sweet home.”
Braden’s eyes were wide. “It’s, uh…”
“A shithole?”
“I was going to say charming,” he said. “But that would’ve been a lie.”
“Thanks for the effort.”
I led him into my bedroom, expecting Carla to be up and gone by now. But she was still a lump in her bed. I winced. It meant I would have to explain why I was moving out early. I was hoping to pack and leave without any questions.
But even worse was the fact that there was a lump in my bed, too.
I clenched my jaw. Thank God I wasn’t living here anymore.
I opened the closet and pulled down my two duffel bags that served as luggage, then began pulling clothes off of hangers and tossing them in my bag. Braden stood awkwardly in the doorway, then decided he was most helpful holding my bag open so I had a larger opening to toss clothes in.
Carla rolled over in her bed. “Vitaliy! It is too early! You make too much noise!”
Vitaliy groaned from my bed. “What…”
“It’s me, Carla,” I said with barely restrained annoyance.
“Oh. Oh!” She sat upright in bed, a fake apologetic look on her face. “I am sorry. For Vitaliy. He is…” She trailed off as she realized what I was doing. “You going somewhere?”
“Yep.”
She waited for me to say more. When I didn’t, she asked, “You move out?”
I ignored her as I moved from the closet to the dresser we shared. I opened one of my three drawers and quickly tossed clothes into the next duffel bag, which Braden dutifully held open next to me.
“You cannot move out,” Carla said quietly. “You pay rent first. For rest of time on lease.”
I had intended to ghost her. To move out and never speak to her again. But I couldn’t do that now.
I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was because Braden was there, either bolstering my courage or making me want to appear stronger than I was. But I rounded on Carla, the shitty roommate slash landlord I’d had since moving to New York.
“I’ll pay you what I owe for this month, but not the rest of my lease. And I’m only paying half of what I owe, since my bed is occupied half the time I come home!”
Carla’s jaw dropped. She swept her hand toward my bed and said, “Vitaliy only sleeps when you are not here!”
“What?” Vitaliy said, sitting up in bed and rubbing his bloodshot eyes. He still looked drunk from the night before.
“Go back to sleep,” I told him.
A rush of Ukrainian words poured from Carla’s mouth. Vitaliy rose from the bed, now alarmed as he looked at Braden and me. A dark expression filled his face, and he took a step forward.
Braden dropped the duffel bag and blocked his path in one smooth motion. Suddenly he looked a lot larger and more intimidating than before, like his muscles were puffed up in his polo shirt. His right hand curled into a fist, all the cords of his arm pulling taut as he readied himself. It was like watching a human transformer, changing from one thing to another.
“There’s no problem here,” Braden said calmly. “My friend is moving out. Unless you want there to be a problem.” His tone suggested that would be a bad idea.
Vitaliy did the math on the situation, then shrugged. He curled back up in bed under the covers, letting out a long sigh as he got comfortable. Carla began shouting at him, but he waved an annoyed hand at her.
I was glad Braden was blocking Carla’s view of me, because I couldn’t stop smiling as I finished packing.
It didn’t take long to gather the rest of my belongings. The bed sheets were mine too, but I was happy to leave them behind. Then it was just a matter of gathering my few things from the kitchen: two plates, some coffee mugs I’d collected over the years, and a frying pan. I started to leave, then remembered one other thing. I threw open the fridge and grabbed my cheese, eggs, and english muffins.
“We can buy more,” Braden said. “The eggs might break…”
“It’s the principle of the matter,” I replied. “These are mine, damnit.”
Braden patted me on the arm. “No arguments here. I’m just the bag boy.”
“And the muscle,” I said.
I crammed my few items of food into my duffel bag and then removed the apartment key from my key ring. Carla watched from the bedroom doorway as I placed it on the kitchen counter, on one of the few areas that weren’t covered with dishes. I smiled sweetly at her as we exited into the hallway.
The tightness in my chest began to loosen the farther we got from the apartment. It was over. I was free from that shitty place.
“You’re right,” Braden said when we were downstairs. “Ukrainian sweat does smell like beets.”