Chapter Text
Mila stretched, trying not to yawn too hard as she headed for the front door. She didn’t bother digging up pants – only one person ever came to her apartment at three in the morning. She did grab a couple bottles of beer. They’d need them.
It was no shock when she opened the door to find Georgi standing there. No alcohol, that was good, but he’d been crying. That wasn’t. “Hey. Come on in, take this, and come sit down.”
Georgi took the beer, following Mila to the couch. “Thank you. I am so sorry to do this to you. Again. God, how many times does this make?”
“I don’t know, I don’t keep count,” Mila lied. This was, depending on how you counted, either the fifth time, or the twenty-third. After a breakup, Georgi usually had several nights where he woke up and came to her. Usually, it was bad dreams related to the breakup, but a couple times it had been a dream that was so good that it broke Georgi’s heart all over again when he realized that’s all it was. She couldn’t be sure he came every time, but it was still too often. It wasn’t that she minded being woken up to be the comfort Georgi needed. She just hated that he got his heart broken so many times.
She waited while Georgi sat on the couch and got his beer settled on the end table, and then sat beside him, leaning her head on his shoulder. The two sat there in silence, Georgi just staring off into space. He wasn’t even drinking his beer. Tonight was gonna be a bad one.
She hadn’t even known about the breakup until Georgi showed up. Just that morning, he’d been talking about how much he loved Karina, and how he thought something big was going to happen that night. It was their anniversary. The previous two girls combined had been less than a year, so Mila thought it was a good sign that they’d made it this far.
And really, Mila was starting to get furious at Karina. Who broke up with someone on their anniversary? Clearly, Mila had misjudged her. She’d thought Karina was a good woman, someone Georgi could be happy with forever. This would teach Mila to ever let down her guard again – all time did was make it that much worse when things crashed and burned.
Georgi would talk when he was ready, Mila had learned. Trying to get him to talk before then was pointless at best. One time, it had even caused him to go back home. He still came back the next night, and that time, it didn’t take long before he was ready to talk – beginning with an apology for storming out like that.
At least Georgi was usually fair about telling Mila what had happened in the breakup. If anything, he would try to take too much of the blame himself. He was too much, he pushed too hard on something, he wasn’t enough, whatever excuses he could think of. Only one time had Mila ever heard Georgi directing venom toward his ex, and that was after Anya sabotaged his skating in China.
“She’s been cheating on me.” Georgi’s voice was rough, and he reached for the beer to take a long sip before continuing. “At least two months, probably longer. She wouldn’t tell me. She wouldn’t tell me why, either. She wasn’t planning to tell me she was cheating, either, but it was a little hard to deny.”
“Do they ever plan to tell their partner they’re cheating?” Mila asked before she could stop himself, and immediately regretted it. “Sorry, that was mean.”
“No, it was accurate – and kind of funny.” Georgi reached up and started stroking Mila’s hair. “We were at the carnival. I was holding her purse while she played one of the games, and she asked me to get a tampon out for a girl who was trying to find one. I found the tampon – and the pregnancy test that was right next to it. She’d forgotten it was in there.”
Mila wrinkled her nose. “Please do not tell me what I think you’re about to tell me.”
“Sorry. It was positive.”
“Well, yeah, you wouldn’t consider an unused one proof of cheating.” An unused test, she could be carrying for her sister, or a friend. A used test… Mila shuddered. “More grossed out by the fact that she was just carrying a used pregnancy test in her purse.”
“Oh.” Mila peeked up, and the corner of Georgi’s mouth was turned ever so slightly upward. “It was in a plastic baggie, Mila. Not just… loose.”
That was much better, and Mila relaxed back against Georgi’s shoulder. “Did she go straight to busted, or try to tell you surprise, you’re a papa?”
“She tried to tell me I was going to be a papa. I don’t know why. I told her I couldn’t when we started getting serious and I thought she needed to know.” Georgi was always good about that. “I called her on it, she tried to tell me I must be wrong, but… eventually, she gave up and admitted that it was someone else’s. That’s all she’d tell me, so I suppose it could be a one-time bad decision, but I got the feeling that it was more. Otherwise, she’d have tried to talk me out of breaking up with her, wouldn’t she?”
“Probably.” Because Karina knew Georgi well enough to know that a “sincere” apology and some tears would be all it would take for Georgi to forgive one bad decision. The only reason Mila could come up with for why she wouldn’t try is that she didn’t think she could fake the sincerity well enough. “Promise me you won’t take her back if she shows up in two weeks because it’s occurred to her to try that?”
“I’m not taking her back unless she tells me who the father is, because the kid doesn’t deserve to be cut off from their father. Even then, I’m not sure I could trust her that whatever was between them was over. If I can’t trust her, then we’re better off apart, and I know it.” Georgi sighed. “I can’t promise I won’t take her back if she can convince me to trust her, but I can promise this isn’t going to be another Anya situation.”
Mila considered, and then snuggled into Georgi. “Good enough.” She flipped on the TV, looking for something stupid they could ignore while Georgi processed his heartbreak and Mila comforted him.
Mila’s phone started going off repeatedly shortly after the sun came up. Georgi gave her a quick squeeze. “Are you late for practice? Should I go?”
“Even if I weren’t off today, Viktor would let me out if I tell him you’re here,” Mila said. She picked up her phone, scrolling through the texts, quickly coming to regret rolling her eyes at the first one as they grew progressively stupider. She didn’t bother listening to the voice mail before she set the phone down. “Anton went out for a run this morning and saw your car here. Now he’s pissed at me.”
Georgi’s eyes went wide, and he stood up. “I’m so sorry. I can talk to him, tell him…”
“Don’t bother, I’m breaking up with him this afternoon.” Mila headed back to the couch. “Don’t let him run you off.”
“You’re breaking up with him? Why? Because of this? Because you should…”
“Georgi.” He fell silent, letting Mila pull him back to sit on the couch beside her. “If it were just this, I wouldn’t let it go exactly, I’d need to make it clear that either he trusts me or he breaks up with me, but it’s not just this. This isn’t the first time he’s gotten paranoid about me spending time with you, and he doesn’t like how close I am with Yuri and he was starting to complain about Sara and Michele coming to visit next month. I know everyone likes to joke about my shitty taste in hockey players, but I do have standards, and when they start waving around giant ‘I’m going to be abusive’ flags like this, it’s over.” Mila scoffed. “Yuri’s been trying to get me to break up with him for a couple days now. Even offered to send Otabek or Seung Gil to do it for me. He was on his last chance, and apparently he decided that he had to go out with a grand finale.”
Georgi relaxed, letting himself get comfortable again. “What is it with you, anyway? I can’t think of a single person you’ve dated who’s lasted more than six months, or even one who I hoped would. You have to know you could do so much better.”
“Yeah, actually, I do. If I were picking guys I wanted to last more than six months, I wouldn’t have dated most of my exes. I’m not looking for long-term with them.” Which was one reason why she absolutely refused to put up with Anton’s controlling jealousy. Yuri and Georgi weren’t going anywhere any time soon, but Anton was going to be gone by New Year’s.
“Why not? Do you not want to fall in love?”
That was a very complicated question, which Mila had no intention of giving a straight answer to. “I want to, but I have very specific ideas about what I want that to look like for me. While I wait for that to come along, I have fun. If it doesn’t, well, I’ve got my awesome friends.”
“You’re not pulling a Viktor, are you? We’re not going to have to chase you down in Japan or somewhere when the act got too hard to keep up anymore?”
“I am not pulling a Viktor. I’m good. I promise.”