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“Whoever thought up this map was a maniac,” Zoya hissed, turning the convention’s map the other way as if it would make it easier for them to find table H17, the little booth Alina had been assigned to.
Still in the car, currently occupied by themselves and a certainly illegal amount of boxes full of books, Alina left Zoza with the duty of finding her stall while she went over the convention’s rules one last time, just in case she had somehow missed a line forbidding you from eating spring rolls for your lunch break or barring you entry if you wore yellow combat boots (she was not paranoid, she was careful, it was different).
“Ah! Found you!”
“Where am I?” she looked up immediately, following Zoya’s perfectly manicured finger pointing at a tiny green square in the middle of the sea of coloured squares.
“More importantly, who are you next to? Imagine being stuck next to one of those guys who write self-help books about becoming a sigma male. ‘Uh, yes, Miss Starkov, actually, all men’s problems are because of women because they would not be born if a darn woman hadn’t carried— ’, who is Reyem Yul-Kaat?”
“Uh… Never heard. Let me check,”
Alina took out her phone, quickly typing the name of her booth neighbour, hoping perhaps they wrote for similar genres. She had no idea how the convention choose to sit them, if they would be with similar authors, or simply by popularity, or—
“ Locust is a harrowing sci-fi novel and a devastating gay love story touching on human experimentation and transhumanism,” she read out. “That sounds interesting, at least, I kind of want to check it out now. It sounds like it’s his first novel too, maybe they put all of us newbies together? And on the other side?”
“Eeh… A. Morozova. That rings a bell,”
Zoya turned to Alina who had turned several shades whiter.
“You are kidding ,”
“Dead serious, ma’am,”
“ Fuck ,”
“Does he write about sigma males?”
“No! He’s huge ! Of course it rings a bell, your boyfriend reads his books, everybody reads his books. He’s famous in two different genres, do you know how hard that is?”
Zoya pursed her lips, looking back at the name. Well, clearly not everybody read his books, she hadn’t. She silently pictured her bookshelves back home, trying to remember on which books she might have seen it, and then it came back to her. Right, the bell it rang was a dissonant one.
“It’s those horrendous all black cover absolutely massive historical novels?”
“Yes!”
“Then today I want you to tell him to get a grip and hire an artist to make him nice covers, he is ruining my bookshelves’ aesthetic and only my love for Nikolai is stopping me from banishing his books to the basement,”
“Sure, Zoya, on my very first author convention I’m going to tell some dude a bazillion more famous than me that his book covers suck,”
“Hell yes, you will,”
To not hear any further protestations, Zoya opened her door and left the car, stretching out with a groan. Alina followed, still reeling from just learning she would have to spend the entire convention next to a man that was basically a household name, suddenly feeling thoroughly inadequate and magnitudes more terrified than she had been at first.
They opened the trunk and got the portable trolley they had squeezed in before leaving, consciously piling boxes of books on it.
“I didn’t know you were into historical novels. Want Nikolai’s, so you can accidentally lose them?”
“Oh, no, that’s not really my thing. But Morozova also writes gothic horror. I mean, I’m sure his historical stuff is great too, but his horror? It’s beyond everything, Zoya, it’s the kind of books where sometimes you have to put it down and stare at nothing for a while just to take it all in! It makes you consider that perhaps there is something greater than us out there… And that you really don’t want to meet it. Shit, if I had known I would have brought a book or two to get signed… Is it cringe to bring books to get signed when you’re here to sign your own books?”
She went to push the trolley but Zoya batted her away, instructing her to take the map and find her table while she would do the pushing. Legend had it Mal was supposed to be the one helping her today, he had promised, swore up and down he wouldn’t fuck it up, and eventually called— no, texted her twenty minutes before departure time with a flimsy excuse. She had been insanely lucky Zoya had been able and willing to pull through and replace him, as she hardly saw herself struggling with it all and being able to finish setting up in time for the start of the convention.
The inside was a maze, an anthill crawling with authors and volunteers piling up books on their tables —that looked incredible unstable, she noted— and it took them an unnecessarily long time to find her stall, a little Alina Starkov — Summoning the Sun sign propped on top of it.
Of course, she immediately looked at the two tables around hers, she couldn’t help herself. Reyem Yul-Kaat was in the middle of unpacking his own boxes, helped by another man, and gave her a friendly wave when he noticed her starting. On the other side, the table was still empty, but confirmed what the map said already. A. Morozova — The Fold .
“I pre-ordered that book and there’s going to be piles of it right next to me, how stupid is that? It must be the premiere,”
“Bat your eyelids at him and he’ll give you a free one,”
“ No ,”
Though it was tempting to buy one here just so she could get it signed… which sent her back to her question: was it cringe to get a book signed by another author when you were here to sign your own books? Maybe she could give him her book in exchange. Or not. No, actually, she'd never survive the mortification and anxiety that would trigger, she would lay awake at night wondering if Morozova was currently reading her book and thinking about how subpar it was.
They put up a nice table cover, long enough that it would hide the mess of boxes shoved under the table, and started piling books on it in a way that was hopefully both aesthetically pleasing yet still gave her enough space to sign things without risking knocking everything over with her elbows. She hid her personal bag by the chair and sunk in it to make sure everything was set up correctly.
"How does it look?" she asked Zoya with a shaky smile.
"Like you are about to spend the day signing Britain's next best-seller, so on par for the course,"
Her cheeks flushed, and her previous thoughts were immediately squashed. Zoya had read her book, of course, she had even been one of her beta-readers (the perks of having a friend who gave no shit about false niceties and pretending to like what you made just out of love) and she had loved it (even though it didn't have dragons, she had amended, because Zoya Nazyalensky's literary tastes usually started and ended with books featuring dragons). All her friends had loved it, most critics wrote amazing reviews about it (except that one who described it as the miracle-cure for insomnia, and the one blogger who felt they simply could not identify with the main character and perhaps she should write about the majority rather than niche experiences nobody could relate to) and it was, in fact, on its way to become this month's best-seller after being out for three weeks.
She was not a fraud, she had the right to be here today.
"I got a text from Genya— she asks if you've got water, food, a thermos with some hot drink, a change of clothes in case you spill something on yourself, if I'm going to stay around in case you need to go pee, if you've got tissues, a pen, another pen, some more extra pens— you ever thought to tell her you're actually twenty-five and a big girl? Hang on, I'm texting her back to sod off—"
"Zoya! Tell her I got all that, uh, maybe not the change of clothes, but the rest yes, I'll be fine, I promise! And you don't have to stay, if—"
"Was Mal supposed to stay?"
"Well… yes, he promised he'd spend the day with me. For nerves' sake… and also for the pee breaks, but—"
"Then I'm staying, don't want you to get kidney failure trying to hold it in. I'll just walk around and look at the books, I think there's an author I like here too, maybe I'll tell Nikolai to bring me some books to get signed . Oh, I guess I can tell him about Morozova being here too, so he can tell him himself about the ugly covers. Hasn't arrived yet, uh," she commented, looking over the still empty stall.
He probably was used to those conventions and knew how much time it would take him to set up, Alina thought. At some point, it probably wasn't even stressful anymore, unlike her whose nerves were completely strayed, and from the bits of conversation she could hear on the other side of her, her other neighbour was also all over the place.
Ten more minutes of arranging books, having a little chat with Reyem —and his boyfriend Bergin, who was helping him- and getting started on some of the snacks she had brought, until Zoya paused in the middle of the conversation, eyeing something in the distance. Alina knew that twinkle in her eye, and nudged her even as she leaned forward to try and spot what, or rather who, she was looking at.
"You are a respectable woman in a relationship, Zoya," she chided her playfully.
"What, you think Nikolai doesn't look at people? We look together,"
Alina laughed, and finally found the man she assumed had gotten Zoya's attention. An author, certainly, as he was carrying two boxes she imagined were full of books —that must have been heavy as all hell, and his rolled up sleeves gave everyone a good view of his sculpted forearms. His face was turned away from them, as he was chatting with another man also carrying boxes (maybe the other one was the author, then?) but she could still see a strong jaw covered in a neatly trimmed dark beard, slicked back hair of the same shade, and the blackest eyes she had ever seen on anyone.
She immediately stopped staring when it became clear he was heading here and did her best to hide her surprise when she heard him let go of the boxes on A. Morozova's table with a groan of relief.
Somehow she had always imagined the master of gothic horror to be a much older man, this one seemed to be in his mid-thirties, and so did the other one, someone austere with a long grey beard and little spectacles on his nose, probably typing away at a typewriter. There went all her cliches, Morozova —if he was indeed the first man—, whose job was writing about horrific monsters and centuries old battles, looked like a supermodel.
"That is smart," she suddenly heard a masculine voice said, and she looked up to see maybe-Morozova eyeing her troller before turning back to his companion. "We should be smart like that too next time, Ivan,"
So it was him.
"We say that everytime but we never learn," Ivan sighed, patting the boxes already on the table. "Let's get the rest, we are not early,"
They were not, indeed, and before they left, Alina mustered the courage to speak up somehow.
"Uhm, you can borrow my trolley, if you want," they both stopped to turn toward her. "I'm done setting up so…" she added in a mumble.
Morozova smiled at her and came over to her table to take her up on the offer.
"Thank you, miss Starkov. You are saving this old man's back," he joked.
To her mortification, she was only able to reply with some jumbled mumble.
"He knew your name," Zoya pointed out as soon as the two men were out of sight.
"It's written on the table,"
"And my ass is right in front of the sign,"
"He just checked the map like we did, don't be daft, though I know it's hard for you," she sighed.
"Bitch, think about your incoming kidney failure if I leave,"
Alina laughed, her embarrassment from earlier washing away.
"Anyway, why does a guy so hot write about boring stuff like 17th century Russian court plots and border wars? Or creepy things? He could write those cheesy dark romances and put himself on the cover,”
“It would be mortifying to be known as the guy who put his own thirst traps on his novels, though,”
“It would still be an improvement on the ugly black covers,” Zoya sniffed.
Morozova and his friend barely had the time to come back, thank her again for the trolley (and her reply was marginally more intelligible than the first time), and start piling up his books on the table, that the convention’s doors were opened to the public, a crowd soon swarming inside. There were patterns to the chaos, some visitors beelining for a specific stall, books clutched into their hands to be signed, or wallet at the ready for those going to a premiere —like those soon surrounding Morozova’s table—, some happy to buzz back and forth between stalls, glancing at everything, picking a book up here and there to read the back cover under the anxious gaze of its author, and some, to whom Alina related greatly as it usually was her in any event, went straight to find the toilets or somewhere to get food.
She soon did not have any more space to merely observe, her table getting flooded with readers as she fumbled for a pen —why hadn’t she taken it out already? Right, because she had been too busy ogling Morozova. Zoya abandoned her with a vague telephone gesture, reminding her to text her if she needed anything, and she couldn’t even thank her for her support before she disappeared into the crowd.
Her morning was spent in some kind of haze, signing books until her hand hurt, stumbling through thanks and bewildered answers to compliments and declarations of fanhood, discussions of specific plots points, and a mounting anxiety at the sheer number of people who asked her if her book would have more following —no, it was a stand-alone— and if she would write more —yes, something was in the works. All her plans of reasonably hydrating and sustaining herself throughout the day were forgotten, and when noon rolled in and the tide of people receded, everyone retreating to get themselves some food, she found herself disheveled and dehydrated, a cramp in her wrist.
She checked her texts first to ease back into reality —nothing from Mal, encouragements and good wishes from several friends, questions about whether they could bring her anything from Genya and Nikolai who would be coming in the afternoon. Considering she had not even touched her snacks yet, she told them no, pocketed her phone, and took out her thermos of tea. A similar noise on her right told her Morozova was doing the same thing, although the color of his drink was a lot darker. She raised her eyebrows as he then proceeded to spoon a worrying amount of sugar into his coffee, and he turned his head, catching her staring. He took in her appearance and gave her an indulgent smile.
“First time, right?”
“Yes,” she breathed out, now taking the time to notice that he was a lot more put-together than she was. “You must do this often,”
“Mostly for premieres, I do tend to avoid it. I prefer smaller settings if anything,”
Bet , she thought, the man hadn’t gotten a single second to breathe, so many people around his table they spilled over to hers as well, and she was pretty sure a couple bought her book because they had time to read the back of it while waiting for their turn to get Morozova’s.
“You are a lot more ready than I was my first time, though,” he added with amusement as she started piling snacks up on her table.
They both took the opportunity to refill their tables with books, Alina trying to make pretty little piles that would not hide her completely (and God knew it wouldn’t take too many books to hide her), while Morozova mostly tried to fit as many as he could without breaking the table, a smart choice considering his stocks had been absolutely destroyed just this morning. Besides, it wasn’t like he could easily be hidden by piles of books, his head easily poking above them all.
Tall people , she mentally grumbled.
“Miss Starkov?” he called, drawing her attention back to him as he was rummaging through his leather messenger bag. “I know you are on your break, and I don’t intend to keep you from your food for too long, but I was wondering if perhaps you could sign this for me?”
He handed her a book and she stared at it.
Distantly, she remarked that the cover really was pretty, although it wasn’t the first time she noticed it. A shimmering sun rising above a stylised skyline mixing Chinese, Russian and British architecture, and the tiny silhouette of a girl with her hands raised toward it cut out from the buildings. Summoning the Sun embossed at the top. ALINA STARKOV in white at the bottom.
“That’s my book,” she smartly remarked,
“I rarely ask people to sign books they did not write,” Morozova replied with dry humor.
Because it was rude to leave him hanging, she took the book from his hands, quietly noting the broken spine and clear signs that it had been read.
“Uhm,” she tried to clear her throat, opening the book to the first page and grabbing her pen. “For whom is it?” certainly a cousin, a sibling perhaps, his mother—
“Myself. Oh, my name is Aleksander,”
Her eyes snapped back to him, her surprise temporarily stumping her bewilderment.
“I thought it was supposed to be some big secret,”
That was what the rumours said, anyway, that the man wanted to protect his identity, or keep a part of mystery, and that was why his first name was always abbreviated on his books and everywhere else. Many fans tried to ask him, only to be given a conspiratory smile and no proper answer.
“Not really. My first publisher had a quirk, he didn’t like when the author’s name was on two lines on the cover. Unfortunately, Aleksander Morozova does not fit on your standard book cover, unless you write it in a ridiculously tiny font. So he had me abbreviate it, and everyone thought it was on purpose, so I leaned a bit into it. The speculations amuse me,” and she could see that, too, in the impish curve of his smile. It was contagious, as she let out a little laugh as well before giving her attention back to the book in her hands.
Mo— No, Aleksander Morozova had read her book. And had liked it enough to want his copy signed.
“Aleksander with ks , right?” she asked before tentatively switching back to her native language, Russian. “You are Russian, aren’t you?” his name could have come from ancestors long since naturalised, but there was a lingering accent on his tongue that sounded like home. He nodded with a smile and she focused on her signature, sticking her tongue out in focus. What should she write? It came more naturally with other people, ‘ To [their name] ’ and then a message wishing them well, telling them to never stop looking for the sun in their lives, something like that. But Morozo— Aleksander wasn’t just anyone, was he? What if he thought it was silly? How did he sign his books? (hopefully not wishing people to never stop looking for the horrifying things in their lives). She started with a neat ‘ To Aleksander, ’ in Russian cursive and paused. “Did you, uhm, did you enjoy it?”
The absolute bastard could definitely tell he was making her feel all sorts of ways and was enjoying every second of it. She was going to throw the book at his face and the imprint of his stupid smile could be her signature.
“I rarely ask for signed copies of books I did not enjoy,”
“Rarely is not never,” she grumbled. Perhaps ‘ To Aleksander, be nicer to people who freak out at the idea that their measly little book was read by a household name ’?
“Most definitely my favourite book in a while. It’s not exactly the genre I usually read, but the cover had me curious, then the back had me hooked and I took it home. They say to not judge books by their cover but your publisher’s artist did a fabulous job on it,”
“She is freelance, I could give you her number if you’d like, for your, erh—” there, she had said it, she owed Zoya nothing else.
“It’d be a shame to break my patterns now,”
Well, screw you and your bookshelves’ aesthetic, Zoya. ‘ To Aleksander, try to bring some colour in your life’ ? ‘ To Aleksander —’
“It was very relatable,” he went on, making her look up. “Too much, perhaps,”
“Is there such a thing as too relatable?” she tried to ignore the way her cheeks flushed at the compliment. His eyes shimmered with malice when they could have been bottomless pools of black.
“I was on the phone with my mother. Having The Talk, you know,”
Ah, yes. The Talk. The plague of all immigrant children. One of the many plagues, anyway.
“Doctor?” she asked with sympathy.
“Lawyer. Even did two years of law school before I got published. My mother does not like doctors very much, I think she’d have been even angrier if I had become one. Anyway, it was just going as usual, I am wasting all the opportunities she gave me, I am an ungrateful little whelp—” Alina winced at that. “—she is ashamed of telling other Russian parents what her son is doing with his life… You know the drill?”
“I know the drill,” she confirmed with a long-suffering sigh.
“And so after that call I decide to relax with the nice book I had just bought, yours, and I reach chapter twelve—”
Alina burst out in laughter. Perhaps there was indeed such a thing as too relatable, then, the main character of Summoning the Sun going home in chapter twelve to announce to her parents her desire to drop out of med school and pursue a career in baking, thus triggering The Talk.
“We really all have the same parents,” she hiccuped, easily recalling all the similar conversations she had had with her friends from the Russian school she attended after her family moved to Britain. David had gotten lucky, his own interests lining up perfectly with his parents’ expectations —she would know, how many times had she heard about how David had done as his parents had said? Maybe she should learn from David? Like the boy hadn’t been completely oblivious to his parents’ desires and had just been born with a built-in interest in engineering.
“We really do,” Aleksander shook his head with a sigh. “So I’m not mistaken if I say your book heavily draws on your own experience?”
She hummed, looking back down at it. ‘ To Aleksander, good luck with your mother ’? ‘ To Aleksander, I know a really good therapist specialised in immigrants and their children, here’s her number ’?
“I’ve been displaced quite a lot, I suppose. I was born in China, actually, but abandoned because, you know, girl. I was adopted by a Russian couple and grew up there, but when I was nine we moved to Britain for my father’s job. I went to a Russian school in London, so at least I wasn’t thrown to the wolves with almost no English, but still,”
“That’s a lot of miles covered, yes. Do you speak any Chinese at all? Built in trilingual is a nice advantage,”
She laughed at that and waved him off.
“Yes, but no, I don’t speak it natively, I learned on my own out of curiosity, wanting to explore my roots, the whole thing. Frustrated at Britain and mad at my Russian parents, I figured why not? Besides whenever I eat in an Asian restaurant, they address me in Chinese automatically and it embarrassed me so much before! Now it’s worse because I can answer in botched Chinese and they look at me like I’m the stupidest person they have ever met,”
‘ To Aleksander, sorry about all the oversharing ’? But he didn’t seem to mind, leaning ever so closer, and making her realise at last that they had both scooted their chairs closer until they were no longer at their respective tables, but in the little space where they met.
“How old were you when you moved here?”
“Seven. My mother was not happy about it, but she never really told me why we had to move. She is like that. We found a place in the middle of nowhere so I had to go to an English school. As it turns out, learn or be an outcast forever is a very good strategy to acquire a language. That and also learn or be evicted because my mother actually never learned English aside from the basics so I had to do all the administrative stuff myself,”
“Oh, that’s— yeah, a lot of my friends had to do that too. I got lucky, my dad’s English was already very good when we moved. Did you ever go back? To Russia?”
“I do, sometimes. I bring things from there to my mother, it makes her happy, and I like visiting. But—” he paused pensively. “It doesn’t exactly feel like home. It’s not like visiting a foreign country either, it’s something in between. Things have changed since I left, and I don’t actually remember that much since I was seven. I don’t see myself returning there to live most of my life, you see what I mean? How about you?”
He gets it, Alina thought, her heart swelling with the familiar feeling of finding her kin in a sea of strangers.
“I went once. I’m not sure what I expected, but I found the same thing as you. Not a foreign country, not a home… I also don’t really want to go back and make my life there but…”
She stopped herself but it was too late, Aleksander’s curiosity clear in his eyes as she worried her bottom lip, trying to re-focus on the book in her hands. ‘To Aleksander, I hope you find your home soon ’?
“But?”
“Uhm. Well, my boyfriend really wants us to go back. It’s not the same for him, his parents always traveled back and forth between the two, so he has, like, lots of friends, family and stuff over there. I don’t really, all my friends are here, my parents are not going to move from here, I don’t really have extended family back in Russia, so I’d be starting over,” she shrugged, trying to not look as affected by it as she truly was. “Again,” she added wryly. But surely starting over as an adult would be easier. It wouldn’t be like being a baby shipped to another country and left to understand on her own why she didn’t look like everyone else around her, or like being a little girl clutching at her mother’s hand surrounded by people blabbering in a language they didn’t understand yet while her father could mingle at ease. She spoke Russian already, and she’d have Mal, she would be fine.
Aleksander stared at her with the look of someone looking for the right words, but she had already heard it all from her friends and from strangers, and she did not want to hear any of it, not the advice not to go and that it was unfair to her, nor the nods and approval at her being a good woman and following her husband around.
“Oversharing again, sorry,” she apologised with a laugh and mindlessly wrote the first thing that came to her in Aleksander’s book before handing it back to him. “It means a lot to me, you know? That you read my book and liked it… I really love yours,” she beamed. “I actually pre-ordered that one,” she pointed at the piles on his table. “But I’m pretty sure I’m going to give in by the end of today and buy you one just so I can have it signed.”
Easily, Aleksander reached for the top one of his piles and opened a book at the first page. “Why wait? And no need to pay, I’m happy to give it to you,” he simply said, and was deaf to her protests and insistence that she was going to pay. He signed it in a fluid movement, writing something along with it before closing it and giving it to her, ignoring her sputtering thanks. He then stood up after checking his watch, as their break was nearing its end and it was high time for a strategic trip to the toilets.
Alina still needed a moment to get her cheeks back to a normal colour, so she stayed at her table for now. She started opening The Fold in her hands, to see what Aleksander had written in it, but was interrupted by footsteps approaching her table. Looking up, she was met with the sight of Zoya, Nikolai and Genya, all with way too much eagerness and malice in their eyes.
“Soooo?” Genya teased her and she shut the book in her hands firmly, putting it in her bag to hide her face.
“So what?” she grumbled.
“Networking with the concurrence?” Nikolai taunted.
“He is not concurrence, we don’t even write the same genres,”
“See? I was right, he knew your name,”
Alina pretended to not understand what they were getting at, even though it was very clear what they were getting at, sipping on her tea like her cheeks weren’t burning red.
“He read my book, this conversation was merely about that,”
“Yeah, I always cosy up with my favourite authors like that, a few inches away from each other…”
“I have a relationship,”
“A situationship,” Genya corrected.
“A situationship- ish ,” Nikolai nodded.
“Nothing that can’t be ended with a text and a well-chosen emoji,” Zoya finished.
“But I don’t want to end it,”
Nikolai and Genya politely nodded, Zoya did not even try to hide her sigh of exhaustion and disapproval.
“What did you write in Morozova’s book?” Genya asked, not wanting the conversation to turn into the umpteenth argument on why Alina should leave Mal once and for all.
Alina’s gaze went blank. What did she write in Morozova’s book? She ended up scribbling something so quickly after overthinking it forever, eager to escape her embarrassment at oversharing her relationship problems. She glanced at the book still laying on his table, the cover lifting slightly from use. Perhaps she could take a look—
She paled as it suddenly came back to her, the words tauntingly stark and clear in her mind. She let out a gasp of horror and covered her mouth with her hands.
“Oh my god,”
“What?”
“I wrote ‘ Let’s see each other again ’!”
Genya let out a little noise of glee and Zoya a loud ‘Ah, now we are talking!’, Nikolai a comment about making sure she gave him her number too, but it all went above Alina’s head, too busy being horrified at herself. Aleksander had just read her book and liked it, who said he even wanted to be her friend? That sounded pushy, she was sure it sounded pushy, like an overeager young writer trying to make connections in the literary world for her own benefit. Was there a way to undo it? He was still gone, she had time to grab the book and change it, but he’d see she had scribbled over her first signature and wrote something else instead, that would be even weirder. Her eyes went from his copy to the new ones on her table. What if she took one, cracked the spine, mistreated it a little so it would look read, signed it with something normal and not weird, and replaced his discreetly? But if he was the kind to annotate his books and decided to re-read it one day, he would find out… But why would he re-read it, really?
‘ Most definitely my favourite book in a while.’ Yes, she was screwed, he would re-read it.
“Alina,” Genya called, poking her in the face to get her attention. “Stop making that face, it’s ok, you know? You two seemed to have fun, I’m sure he’d like to see you again. He’s Russian too, isn’t he? Just invite him to our gatherings, he can complain about British insulation with us. You can be friends,”
Alina pretended to not notice Zoya opening her mouth and only closing it when Genya kicked her shin, earning a glowering glare.
“I suppose, yes…” she mumbled before repeating, more determined. “Yes, I’ll do that. It doesn’t have to be weird,”
“Attagirl,”
The afternoon was quieter than the morning, the most rabid readers having come as soon as the doors opened, and the rest of the day was made mainly of more casual people, strolling from table to table, allowing Alina and Aleksander to keep chatting throughout the day. Her friends came and went, Nikolai got a book signed by Aleksander, bickered with him about a historical detail (they settled on accepting that there were contrary sources), Genya took her place a couple of times so she could go to the toilets at some point, and Zoya somehow managed to befriend Ivan, Aleksander’s friend who came around a few times too, though Alina wasn’t close enough to hear what they talked about.
The crowd started to thin and that was when Alina received a text from Mal, informing her he would be able to free himself from his last-minute commitment to help her pack up her remaining books and then get the boxes up the four flights of stairs of her building. She informed her friends who took their leaves shortly after, now assured that she wouldn’t need their help anymore and done walking around the convention.
Unbeknownst to her, however, they gathered in the parking lot, by Genya’s car.
“Anyone wants to bet he’ll either not come or arrive so unfathomably late she will have been forced to pack up on her own anyway?” Zoya started somberly.
“Not betting on that, you win already,” Genya sighed. “I’ll probably just stay around. I know sometimes we should just…Let him let her down, but I don’t want this to ruin her day, she’s been looking forward to this for so long!”
Zoya grumbled in agreement. Her thinking too just this morning. Certainly, Mal’s failures would sting a lot more and maybe actually get Alina to admit it was time to cut her losses if they didn’t make up for it, but that also meant letting her suffer. Not today.
“Actually,” Nikolai interrupted pensively, his head cocked to the side as he thought. “Perhaps you shouldn’t. They all pack up around the same time, right? If Mal doesn’t show up —and we know he won’t, not on time anyway—, wouldn’t Morozova give Alina a hand?”
“Oooh. You know I’m dating you for your brains, right?”
“Could have me fooled it was for my pretty face,” he beamed.
“Wait, wait, we don’t even know anything about him. I mean, it was fun teasing her about it, but for all we know he is married or something,”
“I looked when he signed my book, no wedding ring,”
“He is single and ready to mingle,” Zoya nodded.
They both turned surprised eyes on her and she shrugged.
“Why do you think I chatted up that Ivan guy? For his winning smile? Aleksander Morozova is a single lonely fuck who recently moved to London with his mother, whom he financially takes care of but doesn’t live with. He’s made few friends here so far, mainly Ivan and his husband, and spends most of his time writing his books. Ivan and Fedyor are themselves new around London and have been thinking about getting involved more with the local Russian community but haven’t gotten around to doing it, though they have tried bullying Aleksander into going to some events to meet new people. So far with little success. Direct quotation: he could use someone a bit more persuasive to get him out of his den, ”
“Nikolai, never cheat on this woman,”
“Didn’t intend to. Looks like I’m also dating you for your brains and not just your pretty face, mh?”
“Then you are a blind dunce,” she sniffed, which only made him laugh and wrap an arm around her waist.
And so they agreed to leave things in the hands of Aleksander Morozova, hoping he wasn’t a complete idiot and could take a golden opportunity when he saw one.
“I feel like I went through a cycle of tumble-dryer,” Alina happily sighed as she crumpled her last empty cookie box wrapper, her snacks having been decimated during the afternoon, mostly thanks to her, partly thanks to Aleksander’s help, as she had started offering him some and it turned out the man who wrote the chilliest horror she had ever read indeed had a raging sweet tooth.
“It does feel like that,” Aleksander nodded in sympathy, checking his watch and stifling a yawn.
Alina also checked the time on her phone. Mal should arrive soon. With his help it would be quick. She took a first trip to the bin to get rid of all her empty wrappers, Aleksander watching her stall even though most people had left by now and everyone started packing. She stopped by the toilets one more time before returning to her table, checking her phone again. Still nothing. Ivan was back, helping Aleksander carefully put unsold books back in their boxes, chatting about some of the authors he had gotten to meet (Alina recognized a few names, her eyebrows raising as she imagined the stern man sitting on his couch reading romantic stories).
“Are your friends coming to help you or will you need a hand?” Aleksander asked.
“No, but my boyfriend will, so I’ll be ok, thanks!”
Did she imagine disappointment flashing in his eyes?
“You can use my trolley again, by the way, don’t hurt yourselves carrying all that back to the parking lot,”
“Oh, thanks. That’s going to make it all a lot quicker,”
She started putting her unsold books in order, every now and then checking her phone. Punctuality had never been Mal’s forte. Or just not when it came to her, actually, he was punctual to medical and administrative appointments. Punctual for the important stuff, she told herself. Still, she told him they wouldn’t be given that much time to pack up, the venue eager to close and let the cleaning staff do their job.
She smiled when she finally got a text, figuring he was in the parking lot, but it dropped when she read it. ‘Sry, will be here in 30min’ .
“Are you alright?” Aleksander questioned, just back from his last trip to the parking lot to give her her trolley back, without Ivan.
“Mh, yeah, don’t worry!” she promised, beaming up at him. “Just— Well, it’s alright, don’t worry,”
She must have been easy to read, for he just took two seconds to look at her with those unsettlingly dark eyes before asking, softly:
“Is he not coming, after all?”
She swallowed the tears that threatened to rise. Mal’s failings were always a lot harder to endure when they were pointed out by other people, especially someone she literally just met, whom she looked up to, whom she wanted to admire her even just a little.
“Just going to be a bit late, there must be traffic,”
“It’s London, there’s always traffic,” Aleksander’s tone was one of the disgruntled man from the countryside who just recently moved to this hellscape city and realised a car was a bother more often than not, and it made Alina laugh just a little. “Let me help you, then, and if when he gets here we are all done, then good for him,” he suggested before smiling more sharply than he did all the times before. “Or leave when we are done, don’t tell him, and perhaps next time he’ll be on time,”
That got her to laugh again, giving a meek nod of agreement even though he hadn’t actually waited for it to start making neat, even piles of books.
“You have a mean side, Aleksander, who could have thought?”
“I prefer to call it a righteous side,”
With his help, they were able to cart everything back to her car just as the event’s volunteers started urging everyone to finish packing and leave so the cleaning crew could come in, a few of them even starting to hoover menacingly here and there. With her trunk closed, her car noticeably lighter than during the morning ride, and Aleksander lingering by, Alina hesitated, remembering what she wrote in his copy of her book.
“Would you—” she started
“We should—” Aleksander did at the same time and they both stopped, stayed quiet for an embarrassing moment, then laughed. “Sorry, you first,”
“Would you, uhm, like to meet up again? My friends and I have regular gatherings at this place, it serves Slavic food all day. We are like a mini Russian diaspora gathering? Ivan and his husband could come too, of course!”
“That sounds lovely, I would like that, when and where is it?”
“It’s just called the Stolovaya, it’s in Soho, and we usually book a table every thursday at seven p.m. What did you want to say earlier?”
He hesitated before smiling.
“I was just going to suggest something similar. So let’s meet again at the Stolovaya, Alina. See you next week,”
Alina finished lugging up her last boxes up her stairs (she would have never dared to ask Aleksander to come with her and help, she didn’t want to call upon her friends again, she had already bothered Zoya at the last minute this morning, and she didn’t want to give them one more reason to dislike Mal) and tried to commit her backpain to memory for the next time she would be foolish enough to think Malyen Oretsev would ever be on time for something that concerned her. It was only when her phone started ringing furiously that she realised she had accidentally followed Aleksander’s suggestion to not inform Mal that she was leaving already, letting him drive all the way to the convention only to find it closed and her car gone.
‘Perhaps next time he’ll be on time,’
Wishful thinking, but she hardly found it in herself to feel guilty about it all. Still, she picked up, slumping onto her couch and letting the exhaustion of the day wash over them.
“Where are you?”
“Home,”
“And you couldn’t have warned me you were leaving?!”
“I did, actually,” she retorted, surprised at her own answer, straightening up as righteousness filled her. “When I told you the venue only gave us about half an hour to pack up before closing, that was as good as a warning,”
“You didn’t—”
“Want me to screenshot the text, Mal?”
“It was at least this morning!”
“What, are you a goldfish?!” she stood up, pacing in her small living room. “Why is it that you can be on time for everything except things related to me?! You know this was important to me— I said nothing when you canceled this morning, I still don’t even know why by the way, I had to ask Zoya to help me at the last minute, and then you tell me you’ll be there for the end, only to not show up! You— You expect me to do huge things for you, like give up my entire life here and move to Russia, but you can’t even do little things for me!”
“What has the move to do with anything?”
Indeed, what did it have to do with anything? But the words were out of her mouth already and there was no taking them back now, not that she wanted to anyway.
“And I was late, it happens, sorry I’m not perfect,”
“You are always late for me. Are you not even going to apologise?”
“Excuse me? After you had me drive out of my way for nothing?”
She hung up and threw her phone at the couch, tugging her jumper up to scream in it in frustration. How could he not get it so badly? She didn’t even have the chance to tell him she didn’t purposefully let him drive to the venue when she was gone already, she had merely forgotten. Not that it mattered, anyway, he could be late, he could make mistakes, he could be not perfect, but if she did the same, then she had to make amends, always.
Hot tears of anger and sadness started rolling down her cheeks and she nudged her bag out of the way, still full of her things from the convention, so she could go to sleep right away. Maybe he’d think about it, maybe tomorrow he’d apologise. Or maybe he’d pretend it didn’t happen, and she’d swallow her resentment and do the same, like they always did.
No. Not this time, she swore.
Alina stayed in bed the entire morning after, feeling like she had earned it after the hectic day before. Her back was killing her anyway. She probably could have left those books in her car and only taken them up later, once she’d be less tired, but she had been stubborn. She refused to dwell on her fight with Mal, rolling on her belly to check the convention’s social media instead, looking at the pictures. The crowd seemed even more impressive in the ones taken from above, and she had fun trying to spot her friends among them. She texted the groupchat when she found one with Zoya in the foreground, pointing at something while Nikolai stood next to her, carrying (likely for her, based on the titles) a precariously high pile of books.
Fast as lightning, Zoya replied with another picture that had Alina’s cheeks redden. Herself, handing his copy of her book back to Aleksander, whose eyes were clearly on her face, a smile on his lips.
“‘ Let’s see each other again ’,” she had captioned the picture, followed by a gif of a dog wiggling his eyebrows.
She replied with a reasonable amount of middle-finger emojis and Genya put an end to the argument by sending a few more pictures, taken by herself, of Alina signing books, chatting with her readers, clearly enjoying herself even if she looked frazzled.
She let herself bask in the feeling of giddiness from the day before until Tamar sent a couple of those pictures again, with Aleksander in the periphery circled in red. It was obvious why: on both of them, he was looking not at his own readers or the books he was signing, but right at her.
“Who is the creep??”
“He is very nice, dw, not a creep,” she rushed to his defense. “Big author,”
And she still had his book in her bag. What better way to spend today than resting in her home reading some chilling horror? Finally motivated to get out of under her blanket, she rolled out of bed and padded over to her living room, putting the kettle on while she rummaged through her bag. Her pre-ordered copy of the Fold wouldn’t arrive until later today or tomorrow anyway, might as well read that one. She’d give the other one to someone else.
She still hadn’t gotten to read what he wrote in it. Certainly something more professional than she did, she cringed again just thinking about it.
She leaned against her kitchen counter, carefully opened the book to the first page… and nearly dropped it.
“To Alina: I’d like to meet you again. Aleksander”