Nina: I miss making out with you in your kitchen already

Goldie: it would've been funny if I was on the subway again for this but I'm actually in bed having a lazy rest day today so

Goldie: can I call you?

Nina and Cory stared at the incoming texts with interest and alarm.

"You need to go home," Cory said.

"I think that would be for the best, yes," Nina said, her voice sounding high and distant.

Cory laughed.

"Isn't this all too —like, intense?" Nina asked. "Like, it's only been a few days. I mean surely—"

"Stop overthinking it and just do what you want. Treat yourself, dummy," Cory said. "Anyway, I'm parked that way—" they gestured towards the street behind the fountain " — so I'll see you next time."

"See you next time,", Nina said.

And texted back: in fifteen minutes

Exactly fifteen minutes later, Nina had returned home, dropped a paper bag of pastries from Lou's on the kitchen counter, gone up to her room and locked the door. She sat on the bed in her floral sundress and stared at her phone like it was a bomb waiting to go off. She even turned on the ringer.

Goldie's name appeared on the incoming call screen. She let it ring for two seconds before picking up.

"Hi," Goldie said, sounding breathless.

"Hi," Nina said, hoping she sounded more confident than she actually was. 

"I was in town," she continued, so I had to drive home and. Yeah."

"What were you doing in town?" Goldie asked.

"Getting brunch with one of my friends from high school, and then walking around. We were sitting in front of this fountain thing at the University when I saw your text." It was easier to talk to her on the phone, Nina noticed, like not being able to see Goldie's unreasonable beauty made her more approachable.

"And what do you wear..." Goldie's breath hitched slightly. "To brunch with your high school friends?"

"I was going for a Stepford wife kind of look today, so a floral sundress. Mid-calf. Wide straps." She looked down at her bare legs and decided no one would know if she lied. "Stockings with garters, you know, to complete the look. Very 1950s, the whole thing."

"Fun for a brunch, though. Have you read the book?"

"No, but I saw the movie. The old one, not the remake."

"The remake is terrible, but the first movie was..." Her breath hitched again. "good."

Nina could hear the effect she was having on Goldie, even without seeing her, and it reminded her of the noises Goldie made against her mouth back in New York. Desire pulsed low in her gut. She pushed her heavy skirt up. "And what themed, stylish outfit are you wearing today?"

Goldie laughed. "I actually stayed in bed almost all day today, so, right now? Just a t-shirt."

"I could be persuaded to remove it, though," she added after a moment, voice low. 

"Do I need to persuade you?" Nina asked, suddenly conscious of the sticky tightness between her legs. She crossed them, then uncrossed them. "Or are you just dying to take your shirt off already?" 

"It would feel better," Goldie sighed, "if you were taking it off for me."

Nina cleared her throat and tried to keep her voice steady as she spoke. "So pretend I'm at your place, in my sundress and garters, and I'm taking off your shirt. What are you doing to me?"

"Garters stay on," Goldie said immediately, which made Nina snort. "And... I'm pushing the straps off your shoulders one by one as I kiss you, so the dress falls to the ground in a big dramatic heap. I'd strip you slowly, methodically, like we have all the time in the world..."

"I'd like that," Nina whispered into the receiver. She'd kicked her dress to the floor. 

If she closed her eyes, she could imagine that the hands on her belonged to someone else, someone as desperate to make her feel good as she was. 

Someone like Goldie, who had given up on trying to talk and was just breathing hard into the receiver, repeating Nina's name like a chant.

Nina flopped back on her pillows. "I've actually never done this before," she admitted, hearing the satisfaction and relief in her voice as she did so.

"Haaaa... Me neither," Goldie said, sounding absolutely wrecked. "I've never had a hookup last longer than the one time. I went a little crazy in college at parties, but my mom didn’t let me date anyone she didn’t personally approve, and only boys, so none of those went anywhere even before I realized I was gay..."

"Yeah, same here. Well, similar. The hookup part, anyway." Nina hadn't really dated much, not seeing the point in college if she wasn't going to stay in Chicago past graduation and not seeing much of a point in trying to date in the underpopulated suburbs either.

"I'm gonna come down and see you," Goldie said, suddenly firm. "I just— I've never felt a connection like this with someone before, and— is it the same for you?"

Nina considered playing coy, pretending to be hard to get. But she wanted to see Goldie more than she wanted to seem cool, so she said, voice barely above a whisper, "Yes."

They talked for another hour, until Nina's throat went dry and she had to go downstairs and get a glass of water.

"I should probably eat something," Goldie said. "I wasn't kidding when I said I've basically been in bed all day. I had some crackers when I woke up and that's it. My family usually does a brunch thing on Sundays too, but my mom's in Italy for work this weekend, so I just took it easy instead."

"Eat something tasty and tell me about it," Nina said.

Goldie sighed, but Nina heard rustling and footsteps that seemed to imply her actually getting up and going to the kitchen. A clicking sound: the refrigerator opening. "Will you feed me, when I come down to visit you?" 

"Of course. In every sense," Nina said. If Goldie wasn't scared off by her still living with her parents, anyway. "I'll talk to you later."

Nina went downstairs. The voices of the political commentators on the living room seemed to get louder with each step, until Dima Bykov was lecturing directly into her eardrums.

"Dad, can you turn that down?" She asked, in Russian.

He lowered the volume a bit. "Dima's doing a public lecture at the university next week, if you're interested. About Goncharov. The guy who wrote Oblomov, you know."

"I've only read Oblomov in English, and only because you kept telling me to," Nina replied, pouring herself some water from the fridge. "I don't think I'm Dima Bykov's target audience."

She paused. "When is it again?"

"Next Saturday evening, after your store closes. And then an after-party at Ira Eisenstein's, the one who's Benny's mom." Her father got up from the couch and went over to the kitchen so he didn't have to shout. He pulled the ceramic teapot out of a cabinet and a box of loose leaf Ceylon. "Do you want any tea?"

Nina nodded, and then made a face. "I never—"

"You don't like Benny, we know." Her father poured a bit of hot water into the pot and swirled it around before emptying it into the sink and adding three spoonfuls of tea. "He's in San Francisco doing tech stuff now so you won't have to see him."

"What, with Sasha Smolnikova? She couldn't stand him when we were in high school." Nina didn't exactly get along with either of them, but she'd liked Benny less.

"Ha! Separately, as far as I know. You know Lena Smolnikova and Ira hate each other."

He filled the pot with hot water to the brim and closed the lid. Nina grabbed the tea cozy from the counter— a kitschy babushka-shaped cloth dome a grad student had gifted dad from a research trip to Ryazan' — and put it on the pot while the tea steeped. 

The thought of Benny Eisenstein, her least favorite classmate, working successfully in tech right out of undergrad while Nina languished in an art supply store filled her mouth with something sour, almost painful. 

She sipped her water, hoping to get rid of the taste. "I still don't really want to go, sorry."

"It's my choice to invite you, and your choice to refuse," her dad said. It was some kind of stock Russian phrase, Nina knew, but she had no idea if it was from a movie or book or just an ancient idiom. She only absorbed so much knowledge from her father's lectures.

"But if you're not going, we'll be out pretty late," he added. "Just so you know."

Nina felt the door of opportunity open, a crack letting sunlight in. "In that case, can I invite someone over? While you and mom are out?"

He shrugged. "You're an adult now, you can do whatever you want. Is it Cory?"

"No. It's um, a new... Girl friend." Russian didn't have a gender neutral word for friend, or a separate word for a romantic girlfriend versus a friend who is a girl. The default word for friend was masculine. So was the word for person.