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Svetlanta let her books slam down onto the cafe table.
Her obvious ploy to get Ilya’s attention was only moderately successful. The rest of the quiet cafe might have jumped, but Ilya had exceptional awareness. He could stare at Shane Hollander and prepare for Sveta’s descent onto his table.
“You would make a terrible spy. You lack all subtlety.”
“Who is trying to be subtle? Not me.”
Svetlana snorted and sat across from Ilya. He glanced at her briefly, watched her begin to unwrap her sandwich, then went back to studying Hollander.
Shane Hollander, captain of the BU lacrosse team, was sitting on a blanket in the quad, presumably enjoying the rare early fall sunshine. Hollander likely seemed comfortable, at ease even, to most people.
Ilya knew better. He’d been watching Hollander since they were forced to become lab partners their sophomore year. Shane was not a good liar, but he could pretend. Right now, Shane was pretending to be comfortable on that blanket, sitting next to his friend Rose and a bunch of her theater program friends.
From Shane’s slight shifting, Ilya had deduced that Shane was not unhappy about the people he’d been forced to interact with, but instead had sat directly on a lump, or maybe a wet patch of grass. Perhaps even an ant hill.
The beautiful idiot would try to play off getting eaten by bugs.
Ilya did not sigh at the thought.
“Ilya.”
From Sveta’s tone, he believed this was not the first time she’d called his name.
“What, what?”
Her mouth was pulled in a tight line.
“Eat your sandwich.”
Ilya rolled his eyes and picked up his own sandwich. He and Sveta ate at the on-campus cafe once a week, a little treat for them both, a set time with each other and an excuse to avoid one of the dining halls. They’d started the tradition their freshman year, but it was even more important now that Svetlana had moved off campus and Ilya was the captain of the BU hockey team.
He chanced another glance at Shane before digging into his sandwich.
He loved hockey, or he thought he’d loved hockey, until stupid sophomore Ilya goaded Shane Hollander into telling him why lacrosse was such an amazing sport, wasn’t he supposed to play hockey like all Canadians?
Stupid sophomore Ilya stood no chance against gorgeous, boring Shane Hollander’s shining eyes, and slight smile and beautiful, moving hands, ugh.
Ilya loved hockey as his salvation. Shane loved lacrosse like it was oxygen, water, some such essential component of life.
It was hot.
“I have information for you.”
Ilya refocused most of his attention on Svetlana.
She, of course, took a large bite of her sandwich. Ilya narrowed his eyes.
“Speak. I have ways of making you talk, woman.”
She smirked and kept eating.
Svetlana always had more information than Ilya. About Ilya’s future opponents, about what professors to avoid, general campus gossip, news from back in Russia, possible coming social problems with his own team even. Ilya trusted that information, always.
She was a good counter-balance to his own plans as well. Ilya was clever and willing to take chances (sometimes too willing), while Svetlana was more classically intelligent, and patient.
(It was by chance that she caught him with his coach’s son during a party in Moscow, and she was the one who pushed Sasha into a wardrobe, then climbed on top of Ilya right before Ilya’s brother had walked into the side bedroom where Sasha had been giving Ilya a blowjob seconds earlier.
Alexei, who hated Ilya but also felt guilty for this, supported Sveta when she suggested Ilya should come and live with her family in America for the last two years of his secondary education, and train there instead of in Moscow. Sometimes Ilya can still feel her nails digging into the flesh of his palm, willing Ilya to keep his mouth shut, to not open his clever, stupid mouth, to let her handle her father, his father, the entire Russian hockey system.
They’d been partners in crime ever since. He was grateful for the opportunity to be part of any of her schemes, like a coach employing a top ten forward for a devastating power play, Ilya was Sveta’s to do with as she wished.)
Svetlana cleared her throat, all dramatics.
Ilya motioned for her to hurry up while he hunched over his poorly constructed, though delicious, sandwich.
“I know Shane Hollander’s weakness.”
Ilya sat up straight.
He had been trying to get closer to Hollander for two years. In that time, Shane had finally, finally let go of a silly belief that Ilya was making fun of Shane when he flirted with the lacrosse player. Shane still seemed to be unaware that Ilya was actually flirting with him, not just flirting because it was amusing or because Ilya ‘is just like that’.
He’d exhausted almost every option to get Shane to realize he was flirting in earnest, and Ilya was beginning to consider some of the riskier options.
“What-”
“Ah,ah, you will swallow the food in your mouth before you speak!”
He swallowed, too early, and was forced to cough.
“What weakness?”
“Shane Hollander cannot turn down a dare.”
Ilya sat back. That wasn’t helpful. But Svetlana was a skilled strategist.
“How does this help me?”
She cleared her own throat, shifted in her seat and looked away from Ilya, licked and bit her lip. Oh, she was a bit embarrassed by her plan, like the time she’d stolen the clothes of her high school boyfriend and her best friend, leaving them to walk around a house party naked, so everyone would see that they’d been sleeping with each other behind her back.
Personally, Ilya thought Sveta’s best plans were her most dramatic. She did not agree.
Ilya grinned and leaned forward.
“What is the plan?”
The corner’s of Sveta’s mouth curved upward.
“I will play the villain.”
Ilya frowned. Svetlana rolled her eyes.
“Or I will find someone else to play the villain, perhaps both, many people working together, you know?”
“Oh? And how will you be villainous?"
“The lacrosse team always hosts a party on the first weekend after the Greek idiots end rush.”
Ilya nodded to show he was listening. He glanced back over at Hollander. Some of their friends had left, and he’d moved to a different section of the large blanket. Shane’s face was tipped back, eyes closed, enjoying the sun on his perfect face. Oh, his freckles would be much more present tomorrow.
Ilya’s stupid heart fluttered.
“At this party, we will both attend. You will stand at one side of the room, doing that ‘I am so handsome and big and oh, look at me smile’ thing.”
“Oh, am I big, Sveta?”
She leaned across the table and flicked Ilya’s forehead.
“And I will stand in the kitchen in that spot where Hollander always stands during his little team’s parties, (Ilya loved how much Svetlana hated lacrosse. And volleyball, for some reason) and I will turn the conversation.”
“To what?”
“To you! Or to Hollander’s dating life.”
“What, and then you will dare him to ask me out? Like this is a movie with a girl with glasses? He will not go for this, Shane is too honorable. He will not do something like this behind someone’s back.”
Svetlana’s smile did turn very villainous.
“How can he feel this way, when you will have just walked into the kitchen as I have dared him, and so you will have heard this dare?”
Oh, oh! Ilya could picture it now, Shane’s wide eyes looking at him, that beautiful mix of panic and fire on his face Ilya so loved to cause and to sooth.
Ilya could feel his own evil smile grow across his face. He nodded at Sveta. She leaned back in her chair, basking in her own brilliance.
He treated himself by looking back over at Shane. He was laying down now, more of Rose’s friends gone, likely to their next classes, allowing Shane to stretch his strong, fit body across the blanket, completely unaware of what Ilya had planned for him.