All the Lies We Tell (Quarry Road #1)(2)

“Fine. I’ll say something,” Alicia promised, if only to get Dina off the line so she could finish her coffee in peace. “I can’t make any promises about him changing his behavior.”

Dina huffed and puffed again. “He should be more considerate of the people around him! I mean, he should just think!”

“That’s Ilya for you. Not a big thinker.” Alicia hated the tone of apology that had managed to creep into her voice despite her earlier abruptness. No matter how she fought it, she was still taking the blame for him. “I’ll tell him to cool it.”

After hanging up the phone, she punched in a familiar set of numbers for the house across the street. She’d been calling that number since they were kids. Like her, Ilya had kept the same phone from the time he’d been growing up. She had his cell number, too, of course, but if he was out there on the front lawn doing half-naked yoga, he didn’t exactly have a pocket to keep a phone in. He’d hear the old-fashioned jangling, though, and maybe he’d at least go inside before Dina completely lost her mind.

The phone rang ten times without an answer, but a knock on her front door a few minutes later revealed an unapologetically grinning Ilya glistening with sweat. It had slicked his dark hair back from his forehead and sparkled on his upper lip, until he licked it away. January had been unseasonably warm, but even so, he must’ve been putting on quite the show after she stopped watching.

“She called you, huh?” Ilya said.

Alicia stepped aside to let him in. “Yeah. Do you have to be such a dick about everything? You know she gets all worked up about that stuff. We don’t live alone on this street anymore. It’s not like it used to be. You need to remember that.”

He moved past her and into the kitchen. He poured himself a mug of coffee, as at-home in her house as she’d be in his, even after being divorced for so many years. One of the hardest things about them splitting up had been enforcing boundaries. This was her house now, not her mom and dad’s, but apparently even almost a decade of not being married couldn’t cancel out a near lifetime of being somehow intertwined.

This was one of the many times Alicia thought it would have been a better choice if she’d sold her childhood home and moved away when she left him. Across town, or even farther. Canada. China. A house near a loch in Scotland. There were thousands of places she might have gone instead of staying in Quarrytown, but here was where she’d always been, and here was probably where she would always stay. Anyway, moving away would have required money. It always came down to money, and hers had been tied up in the business.

“She’s a busybody. You got any eggs?”

Alicia reached around him to shut the fridge door he was attempting to open. “Out.”

Ilya gave her puppy eyes, but she’d grown immune to those charms long ago. “C’mon, Allie, I haven’t made it to the grocery store yet this week.”

“Starve,” she said unsympathetically, and stood in front of the fridge with her arms crossed.

Frowning, Ilya took a few steps back and drank his coffee. “Wow. Harsh.”

She couldn’t let herself feel upset about hurting his feelings. If she let him, Ilya would simply continue to walk in and out of her kitchen the way he walked in and out of her life. “When are you going to grow up?”

“Harsher,” he said, brow furrowed. “Shit, Allie.”

She couldn’t let him guilt her into anything, either. He was a master of that, too. Charming, insistent, oblivious to anything beyond himself. It had stopped hurting when she’d come to accept that Ilya’s self-absorption had nothing to do with anything lacking inside her—it was all him. Still, there would always be that tiny sting when she looked at him and remembered that once upon a time she’d loved him enough to marry him and take his name. Once upon a long time ago.

When she didn’t answer, he shook his head, then muttered, “Sorry. I’m hungry, that’s all.”

“Your girlfriend didn’t make you breakfast in bed?” The words slipped out sounding angry, even though she wasn’t. Not really. Not about the blonde, anyway.

Ilya laughed. “R-i-i-i-ight, girlfriend, right. And she couldn’t cook me breakfast if I didn’t have anything to eat.”

“So go to the store,” Alicia said without moving. “Or get a girlfriend who will go shopping for you.”

“Jealous?”

She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes. So, so jealous.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, this time sounding more sincere.

She paused, eyes narrowed. “Uh-huh. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” He sipped his coffee and went to the window to peek out, as though checking on what she’d been able to see earlier. He glanced at her over his bare shoulder. “Think Dina would let me borrow some eggs?”

Alicia grinned. “Why don’t you go over there and ask her?”

They both burst into laughter. If it felt a little mean, it also felt a little nostalgic. It felt a little melancholy, and she wasn’t about to go there with him. Too much had passed between them for that.

“She doesn’t mean anything to me,” Ilya said suddenly to her back as she emptied her mug into the sink and moved to put it in the dishwasher.

Without even a glance, Alicia answered, “Who? Dina?”