MAX POV
But the picture in front of my eyes turned out to be terribly unclear. The magnets on Egor's trendy two-door refrigerator merged into one bright cacophony with a black glossy background.
"Hey, where are you going?" my brother grabbed the sleeve of my jacket, which I hadn't been able to get my hands on for what seemed like four times.
"Sleep it off, and then you'll drag yourself off to atone for your sins. It's not easy for Sonya, and I'll have to clean up after you later, you idiot."
He dragged me out of the hallway and laid me down on the sofa in the living room. In the morning, there was a glass of water and a headache pill on the nightstand. Egor didn't comment on my condition, but the pity was too obvious in his eyes.
I needed to pull myself and my life together, so I did what I probably should have done yesterday, or maybe a few weeks earlier.
Three hours later, with a plastic bag filled with Love is gum, a net of ripe tangerines, a bouquet of daisies in one hand and a bunch of keys in the other, I stood at the door of the apartment, not knowing what to do. Open it myself? Ring the doorbell?
Sonya wasn't expecting me, and I hadn't warned her about my visit, so I chose the second option. I raised my hand, holding the cold metal in my palm, and pressed the doorbell.
Nothing happened.
I repeated it a second and third time until I realized that maybe she had turned it off. So I started knocking. Loudly and insistently. Finally I heard some movement in the hallway, then there was silence, a pause, and the click of the lock.
***
The door opened outward, but the woman behind it was in no hurry to let me in. Okay. You deserve it. Sonya was always impulsive, but easy-going, so even now I understood that we would still talk. And even if she sent me to hell, it would already be a big step for us.
"Max? What are you doing here?" Her voice was hoarse, and her eyes were sunken from fatigue. Under them were dark circles, which my wife had successfully masked with makeup before.
Now, in the light of day, caught off guard, she looked completely different than a few days ago, when I ran into her last time in the conference room.
I peered into every feature, every curve, from the top of her head to her bare feet, to convince myself that this was my Sonya. But no, something had subtly changed in her.
"Let me in, please."
"Why, Max?" Sonya didn't move, frowned and tightened her grip on the door handle.
"Talk."
"Why?"
"Sonya, I feel very guilty before you, but let me explain everything. Even the most hardened criminals have the right to a lawyer."
Sonya rolled her eyes to the ceiling.
"I'll find out Max Titov's strategy. If you can't play on my pity, will you try to intimidate me?"
I shook my head. Lord, we haven't even started talking yet, but we've already managed to quarrel. How did this happen, my little one?
"Here, I brought you some," I handed her a net with tangerines and a pack of gum.
Sonya gasped. She pressed her hands to her chest and looked at the package for a long time.
"Max, is this LOVE IS? The same ones you slipped into my bag at the university?" I nodded. "My God, how did you get them? And the main thing is you kept quiet the whole time! But that changes everything, any betrayal is leveled out if you bring a pack of gum for five hundred rubles!"
"What?"
"It's a well-known fact that Bill Clinton, when he fucked Monica Lewinsky, avoided impeachment only thanks to LOVE IS gum!" She suddenly laughed, leaned her forehead against the door frame and began to shake slightly in a fit of forced mirth.
"Max, you shouldn't have bought anything. And you shouldn't have come either."
"I just wanted to make you happy a little."
"Seriously? You decided to buy me gum? You really don't understand that between me now and that twenty-year-old fool you were bringing gum to is an abyss!" Her voice went from hoarse to high notes.
Her shoulders were shaking, as if Sonya was crying, but her eyes were dry, and a blush appeared on her cheeks. From anger. "Go away. I can't and don't want to see you! I have the right to do so!"
"I have the right to this conversation too!"
"And if I don't want to! I don't want to hear you, haven't you thought about that?"
"Why?" I exploded. My heart was pounding like crazy. It was pounding loudly against my ribs, trying to jump out of my chest with every blow. I think that's what a heart attack looks like.
Sonya looked at me and breathed heavily, like after a long-distance race.
"Max, it's very simple. I don't want to hear you because I don't want to believe you. I know that you will find words that can convince me that everything is not so scary. I know that you will touch me, hug me, start kissing me.
You will do it in such a way that I will crumble in your arms again. Max, I know that if you cross this threshold, I will forgive you. But I also know that even if I forgive, I will never forget. Not in a year, not in ten years. I will always remember and slowly die from this. Please, have pity on me now, and just go away!"
From the anger and helplessness boiling in the blood, pulsating under the skull, I raised my hand. Everything that was in it flew onto the tile, and the palm crashed into the wall. Once, twice, three times.
It hurt! Physically, it should have been sobering, but it didn't. Everything, absolutely everything my wife said, didn't make sense! Not like that, not for me, not after everything that happened!