There was something about Bane that made me want to reinvent myself. To try something fresh. I went for pistachio and Eskimo ice cream. And for the first time in a long time, the food I was eating actually had a taste.

It tasted new.

I liked it.

When we got out of the ice cream parlor, I turned around and told him, “About us holding hands in Dr. Wiese’s clinic…”

I was feeling brave, but then he stopped, turned around, and looked at me seriously. “Yeah. Wasn’t thinking. Won’t happen again.”

“No,” I said, stopping, too. We were now the only people standing in a busy promenade, disrupting the rest of the people, and not giving much of a damn. “I was wondering if we could do this again sometime. Not, like, in a weird capacity or anything. I just want to know that I, uhm.” I swallowed, glancing around. “Can.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about his inked hand on mine. About the moment my lips fluttered on his surprisingly smooth cheek. His nostrils flared, and something I couldn’t decipher zinged in his eyes. Whatever it was, he weighed his words carefully before he said them. “Yeah.” He looked around us, like someone was watching, tugging at his beard. “Sure. You want me to surprise you, or just do it now?”

I thought about it for a second, resuming our walk. We were in sync now.

“Surprise me.”

We reached the end of the promenade and waited for the light to turn green before we crossed it. His palm found mine, but he kept looking at the traffic light, like nothing was happening, all bored and indifferent.

“Okay?” he whispered under his breath.

“Okay.”

MY MOTHER’S DOORBELL WAS THE color of vomit.

Dirty, overused. Kind of like me. It gave me a strange sense of familiarity. People came. People went. Sonya Protsenko always stayed, her shoulder always ready for me to put my head on it. Her fridge always full with homemade potato dumplings and cabbage soup. There was comfort in that. In having a functioning mom. Not that shit between us was simple—I wasn’t the best son in the world.

I wasn’t the worst, either.

For instance, I always did as I was told, because I felt a sense of gratitude that she hadn’t scraped my ass out with a hanger, which I wouldn’t have blamed her for. Raped at eighteen by a Russian mafia vor, she’d fled the country with me when I was a few months short of three. Mom had attended college here. Graduated as a therapist. Found the time to come to my bullshit school stuff, and to buy me a surfboard, and to sit on the sand all by herself—because she didn’t know anyone and was much too shy to talk to people—and watch me compete.

So I’d always done the dishes. Taken out the trash. Helped the neighbors fix the roof. Kept my grades up and played the whole perfect-kid charade in front of her friends and colleagues.

But I had the bad gene in me. The one that craved power. I could feel it running through my veins, making my blood hotter. That’s where my being a not-so-good kid came into play. I didn’t rape or murder or do any of the nasty shit my piece of busted condom father had done, but I still stole.

And sold pot.

And fucked women who weren’t mine to fuck.

Loving my mom the way I did—unequivocally—reminded me that I was human. Intimacy scared the shit out of me, otherwise. That’s why I’d never gone bareback with anyone. Not even my ex-girlfriend. I didn’t mind missing out on some of the pleasure if it meant not giving them my all.

But let’s not talk about fucking and my mom in the same sentence. Point was, I had a good relationship with Mamul. I loved that we spoke Russian with each other. It put a wall between us and them. Gave us another layer of closeness other kids didn’t have with their parents. And I loved her take on English, because that was fun, too.

Like when she’d written endless letters to my teachers and principals when I’d gotten into trouble, she would always refer to me as “my sun”. “My sun didn’t do this.” “My sun didn’t say that.” She’d been right most of the time. I was scapegoated a lot for being the Russian, single-parent kid. Still, I would slap the letter onto the kitchen table with my palm and growl, “Mom, it’s s-o-n, not s-u-n,” and she would yell back, “I know exactly what I meant. You are my sun. Why do you think the words are so similar?”

I walked into her house, bringing the sand and saline scent of the ocean with me, wearing nothing but my surf shorts. Today, Jesse had started her job at Café Diem, and I had Gail guide her through it. I chose not to be there, because I knew I was already in too deep with the girl, especially considering I’d nearly jizzed my pants holding her hand. Yeah, spending more time with her than necessary was a hard pass for me. So, I’d gone surfing instead.

“Mamul,” I barked, heading into the kitchen. She was standing over the stove, boiling beets and talking on the phone in Russian. Loudly. Mom motioned for me to wait with her hand. She was talking to Aunt Luba about…oh, who the fuck knew? Probably gossip. My mom still went back to St. Petersburg whenever she could afford it. Everything was crazy expensive in Russia, and she would buy me the most useless shit, like coats that could protect you from an apocalypse, even though I lived in a place where people got hysterical when it started to drizzle.

“Roman!” Her eyes lit up, and she muttered a quick goodbye before turning off the stove and pulling a chair for me to sit down. My childhood house was very…Russian, from the flowery pale wallpaper, heavy curtains, and quilted everything to the kind of heavy carpets you could roll bodies in. In her defense, Sonya Protsenko gave everything a modern twist, so our house looked like a funky IKEA display room. “How are you doing, my darling sun?”

I took the glass of vodka she had offered me, planting a soft kiss on her head. She was dwarfed by my six-two frame, the top of her head barely reaching my shoulders. “I’m drinking vodka in the middle of the day with no shirt on and hanging with my favorite girl. Nuff said. You?”

“Couldn’t be better.” She took a seat across from me, leaning forward and cradling her drink between her fine fingers. “What’s new?”

“I met a girl.”

“You met a girl?”

“I met a girl.” I couldn’t really talk about Jesse with anyone. Beck was an idiot, Hale was a frenemy, and Gail and Edie were chicks, and it just felt like a whole new level of pussy to consult them. Mom was a safe bet because she’d never say shit to anyone else. Other than Aunt Luba, and I guess I could live with a few relatives on the other end of the planet knowing about Snowflake.

Mom asked more questions, and I ended up telling her everything. About the gang rape and the sex tape and all the other shit that made Jesse’s life sound like a Netflix show.

Thirteen Reasons Why I’m Going to Kill Emery and Co.

I was telling Mom how I was helping Jesse get out of the house more when she put her hand on my bearded cheek and looked deep into my eyes.

“I love you,” she said, and I went uh-oh in my head, because that sounded like the beginning of a speech that I’d hate.

I rubbed my index finger over my front teeth. “You’re not too bad, either.”

“But,” her voice rose, cutting through my shitty joke, “for the sake of being honest, and as a rape victim—please don’t take this the wrong way. I’d never replace you, never not have you. You’re my fate, my blood, the sunshine upon my skin.” She took a shaky breath, closing her eyes. “If you get into this girl’s life, you cannot leave without a trace. You know that. Right, Roman?”

I blinked at her with a mixture of annoyance and rage. “I’m not an idiot.”

But did I really know that? I had a six-month contract with Darren. A month of it was already gone. I’d never stopped to think about the consequences of my deal with Darren, because I figured I would just continue my relationship with Jesse as if nothing had happened. But it wasn’t so simple, was it? I was deceiving her, lying to her, and, in a sense, really fucking her over, making her put her hard-earned trust in someone who didn’t deserve it. It was the first time it dawned on me that I would have probably done this favor to Darren even if there weren’t a huge chunk of money involved. It was sobering, but hell, it was also very fucking depressing. I didn’t do emotions. There is little to no room for them when you fuck for a living.

“Make me proud, Roman. Do the right thing by her.”

I promised her that I would, and when I came out of her house, my heart cracked open. I felt the blood of a savage, rapist mafia rat pumping in my veins. They were like snakes beneath my skin. I wanted to tear them out of my body and dump them on the ground. To fall on my knees and bleed to death.

Because most of the time, I didn’t feel like a good person.

But today, I felt like a bad person.

The kind of bad Jesse didn’t need in her life.

The kind of sun that didn’t caress and nourish life, but burned shit to the ground, turning everything to ash.

The next thing I did was pretty goddamn stupid, even by my standards, and trust me when I say I’d done some stupid shit in my lifetime.

I went to see her after her shift.

If you’re trying to find the logic in that—don’t.

Everything in the situation screamed for me to take a step back. I needed to gather my wits and try not to be pussy-whipped by a girl whose pussy was more forbidden than incest. But, of course, what do you expect from a dude who sold his cock to the highest bidder? Exactly.

I contemplated texting Jesse beforehand, but she never checked her cell phone. So I went to her house after taking a shower and a piss, bypassing my weekly hookup with a forty-two-year-old realtor who’d helped me with my hotel refurbishment. I punched her doorbell a dozen times, walking back and forth, waiting for her to answer. I wanted to make sure she had a good first day. Gail said she was quiet and attentive—wasn’t that the definition of Jesse?—but the overwhelming, out-of-nowhere notion that I should have been there for her consumed me.