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10: In Which He Gets Advice from Half His Shoe Size [FILLER]

But Aunt Sofia, my mother’s younger and only sibling, was stubborn. As was her carpenter husband, Josef. They were cutting off their noses to spite their faces and it was my cousin Asya who was suffering because of it. Pride was the reason they wouldn’t take money from the king’s bastard brother. Pride was the reason they felt slighted by my repeated offers and weren’t talking to me.

“Where’s your princess?” Asya questioned, finally opening the box of Romany Creams I’d brought her.

“I scared her off,” I replied, voicing the words aloud. “You know, when you grow up, little one, you'll be a heartbreaker. I pity the boys that will throw themselves at your feet and get breadcrumbs of a response.” I fixed my eyes on my cousin. “Promise me you won’t be too hard on them, Asya. They just want to understand you.”

She fixed me with a puzzled stare but I pressed on.

“And what do women want? A man to treat them like dirt, kick them around and swear that he’ll never do it again?” I rambled, accepting Asya’s offer of one chocolate-covered coconut cookie. I wolfed the thing down in two bites. “Don’t ever let a man do that to you, little one. A man should worship the ground his woman walks on. Promise me you'll come to me the minute a man so much as swats a fly in your face, angel.”

“Kolya,” Asya began uncertainly, “why did you scare her? I liked her. Sometimes the boys hide behind trees and jump out to scare us but it’s only a joke. I never get scared. Papa says I’m braver than all the boys.”

“I didn’t mean to scare her. I just wasn’t thinking straight,” I mumbled, rubbing at my temple with two fingers. If I rubbed hard enough, maybe the throbbing would ease. “I never think straight when it comes to her, Asya. I never think straight, period. Help me.”

She was licking cream of her tiny fingers, regarding me cautiously. “How?”

“Tell me how great I am.”

The little creature actually rolled her eyes at me. “I thought you would get a princess and have little princes and princesses for me to play with.” She shot me a glare. “Why did you have to jump out and scare her?”

Good question. Could’ve been worded differently but it was ultimately the same thing: Why did you have to come on too strong?

That was exactly like jumping out from behind a tree and yelling, “Surprise! I’m into you more than you're into me,” and expecting her to be completely fine with it. Women like Ophelia didn’t give up their lives, their dreams for a casual holiday fling. That was exactly what I amounted to – a few days of sexual tension building up to incredible, mind-blowing sex. Being inside Ophelia was like…was like being inside a fucking womb.

Yeah, I’m not telling that to a six-year-old, I thought for the second time, amazed that I was still in charge of what came out of my mouth. My thoughts, on the other hand, were warped.

Before I could change the subject, Asya’s favourite song in the world, Ylvis’ The Fox, blared from the back pocket of my Levi’s. I scrabbled to get my phone out, answering it without even glancing at the screen.

“You put your number in my phone,” a husky voice said in my ear.

She sounded strange, her voice thicker, lower. But I still knew who she was.

“Ophelia,” I said. “What a pleasant surprise. You sound –”

“Drunk? Sloshed? Wasted?” she cut in, giggling. “I had a couple shots of Jose Cuervo. I think therefore I am pretty fan-fucking-tastic! God, what a trip.”