Two Months and Three Days (Sinister Romance #1)

Chapter 5 (part I)

"You look like Snow White!"

Arina flinched, thinking of the timbre of his voice. She would never hear from him again.

"Why did he run after you? Well, that's easy given what you just told me," Nellie said confidently, adjusting her white bra because its strap had slid out from under her shirt. "Anyone can offend an artist. You offended him and he wanted to explain what was what. He didn't know you were such an animal lover."

"You're an animal lover," Arina snickered.

"Me? Are you crazy? Do I look like I care about giraffes? Although . . . can you make a fur coat out of them?"

"Get lost," Arina was offended but not for long. At this point, she didn't really care about the giraffe either and besides, she knew Nellie was joking.

"I'd love to. Especially if I had good company," Nellie winked at her.

"Why did he invite me to the coffee shop?" Arina asked, barely audibly. Nellie thoughtfully examined Arina from head to toe as if wondering what exactly could make a person, no, a man in his right mind go to a coffee shop with this little prickly "hedgehog" in sneakers, with a ponytail.

"Perhaps he was hungry?" she suggested finally. Arina blushed and began scrubbing the dishes even harder.

"He was probably just being polite because he saw the piece of bread I was eating." Arina's voice gave away her frustration against her will. It was typical. She could never hide anything no matter how hard she tried.

"Bread? What bread?" Her girlfriend was taken aback. Arina sighed woefully and nodded towards the leftovers lying on the table. Nellie gawked at Arina, unable to believe the picture that had just formed in her head. Then she put her hands on her hips.

"This is just impossible! He took you to the coffee shop to FEED you!!! What a disaster! How shameful! How do you think that makes me feel? You're eating plain bread in the middle of the city! Am I starving you to death?"

"I just haven't had breakfast," Arina mumbled.

"And why not? Did somebody tell you not to have breakfast? Or maybe we don't have any food in the house?" Nellie was outraged. Arina was silent, looking at the floor. She didn't want to explain that she hadn't had breakfast because Nellie's Sergei was walking around their apartment wearing nothing but his briefs.

"Okay," Nellie exhaled. "It's not like you want to have a family with him, right? Who cares what he thinks about you?"

"He said that I looked like Snow White," Arina blurted out.

"I said forget it, and you're still whining. Who cares what this stupid photographer said?! Snow White?" Nellie looked at Arina thoughtfully. In her pyjamas, eyes swollen from crying, chapped lips and the birthmarks on her left cheek, she looked more like a little witch, although Nellie couldn't help but admit that there was some something wildly graceful about Arina. Maybe if she were better dressed. . . But that was not Nellie's problem.

"Do you think I look like Snow White?"

"Did you know that she lived with seven dwarfs?" Nellie gave her a crooked smile. "But if you really want to know what I think . . . I think that you, my friend, have reached the age when you'll be seeing your potential "future husband" in every jerk you see on the street. And the faster you forget this particular jerk the sooner someone else will appear, maybe even someone who's better for you."

"I don't need anyone," Arina said, shaking her head. Nellie didn't believe her and explained that right now she might think that the photographer was The One but tomorrow she would think that the professor reading the course on the anatomy of domestic animals would be The One. The day after tomorrow it would be a fifth-year student. Then, it would be . . .