Ivan Press

Ivan

It is August.

It is impossibly humid. It is impossibly hot.

The air is sluggish and heavy; lays on the chest like a wet blanket. Drags the limbs, slows the blood. Thunderstorms lurk on the horizon every afternoon, and sometimes -- if one is fortunate -- the storm breaks, the rain pours, the air cools in a matter of minutes. Most days, not so.

Today, not so.

Today, Ivan sprawls on the unrailed deck of the lakehouse, languid as a lion. He is in tiny square-cut swim trunks. He is lean and golden-brown and beautiful, and his bare feet trail in the water. Thumb and forefinger tent over the deep ridge of his brow; his eyelids are closed, and if not for the droplets of water he occasionally flicks across the surface, you'd think him asleep.

A tall glass of something-cold-and-sweet-and-alcoholic sweats beside him. There is a set of speakers by his head, plugged into his phone. The speakers are shockingly small; the sound quality is shockingly excellent.

The music choice is shocking as well. It's Tchaikovsky. Maybe he's feeling patriotic.

He will feel the vibrations of movement on the boards of the dock no matter how stable they are. And he will smell the purity of breeding coming closer to him even with the scent of water and trees and his own sweat in his nostrils. He will sense the nearness of that woman in his sleep, if he must. And he will see, when he turns his head to one side and opens his eyes, a pair of yellow peep-toe heels. The french pedicure. Long legs, and the sweep of a long dress, black with small white polka dots, thin enough to see the light through in places, wrapped around her midsection.

Hilary is wearing sunglasses as well. Hilary is wearing a broad-brimmed white summer hat to shade her face. Her lips are pink. Her hair is straight, glossy.

"I'm going out," she informs him, and this is very odd because

she has not been out, away from the lake house,

for a very long time.

The first thing Ivan does is not to turn his head, not to open his eyes, not any of these things. The first thing he does upon feeling vibrations in the wood, upon smelling purity, upon sensing the approach of that woman

is smile.

It is a slow, lazy smile. It melts across his mouth, sly and smirking and very fucking pleased, and only when her shadow falls across him does he open an eye. One. He looks at her and he lifts that hand from his brow, reaches out to her -- the passage of his hand graceful, effortless. His fingers brush aside the free-falling halves of her dress; his palm curves around her calf. He wants to pull her down. He wants her to climb atop him. He wants to roll her under and fuck her on the deck, her delicate hands gripping the smooth-sanded wood, her broad-brimmed hat floating away on the waves.

"Oh?" He thinks of biting her thigh. He thinks of kissing her cunt. "Shall I accompany you?"

Hilary shakes him off of her calf like she might shake off an annoying child grasping at her for attention, but there's no malice that he can read in her features. And he would know. Even with the shades on her eyes, he would know.

Just like he knows that she would be as likely to shake off Anton, her actual child, as lift him up and cradle him, kissing him, cooing over him, if he grabbed at her leg.

She looks him over. "You're not dressed for it. And you get bored when I'm shopping. You wander around and slow everything down and want to bring things for me to try on."

Perhaps not all of this is true. Perhaps none of it is true.

There are certain days, certain moods, when being shaken off like that would sting Ivan. Would irritated him, or upset him, or enrage him. Ivan is fickle, though, and his moods are capricious. Today, it just makes him smirk. It makes him eye the knot, the ties, the way that whole dress would come undone at a tug.

He doesn't tug. He drops his hand to his chest. She declares him underdressed, easily bored, a distraction, a bother. His smirk grows. He opens the other eye. Smooth as a reptile, he sits up, he leans in, he kisses the inside of her thigh through her dress

and is out of her reach again before she can begin to swat him aside.

"And sometimes," he says, as though confessing a grave sin, "I even attempt to fuck you in the fitting rooms. How unseemly of me. You just can't bring me anywhere, can you." Ivan sprawls back down on the deck. "Well, off with you, then. Enjoy your shopping. Buy something pretty. Will Carlisle be driving you?"

This she shakes off, too, stepping back away from him not because she does not love him, not because she is angry at him, not because she has any ill will toward him at all, but because she is cold, and it is not in her to temper her whims to avoid injuring his feelings. Even a little. Even the iota it would take for her to do anything but move away, as though the idea of being lounged upon, pawed at, kissed on her thigh disgusts her right now. She doesn't do it to hurt him. It's just that on most days, Hilary doesn't remember that other people can hurt. Or why she would care if they did.

He teases about fucking her in fitting rooms; now she rolls her eyes. It takes her whole expression, turns her face from his, even though he can't see through her shades. "Ugh," comes the sound, rolling at the back of her throat. "I'm driving myself."

She's going to drive the Maserati. The one Ivan gave her for a present, because he just loves her so much and because she is so precious and because he has no restraint at all, no self-control, nothing to stop him from pouring sable and diamonds all over her. The keys are in her hand, gleaming and possibly never used before.

And with that Hilary is sweeping away, the moment to tell him she was going apparently just a mild courtesy -- or something. Who even knows, with her warped mind? She strides away, her dress roiling and wafting around her legs, giving him those same vibrations through the wood that he felt when she came near.

Exit Hilary, stage left.

What is Ivan to do? He watches her go, mild and amused, lounging still in the hot sun, the sultry summer air. Those water-sealed boards beneath him vibrate, vibrate, vibrate a little less with every step she takes away from him. Soon enough she is gone. Ivan closes his eyes again. He turns his face skyward. He lazes a moment.

Then he reaches for his phone and calls Dmitri.

"Send someone with her, will you?" He doesn't specify who she is, or where she's going, or how or why Dmitri was expected to wrangle this miracle. "Discreetly. Don't interrupt her, don't disrupt her, don't bother her at all. Just make sure she doesn't drive herself into the lake. I can't even remember the last time she got behind a steering wheel."

[aston martin! not maserati.]

[perception + alertness: do I notice my stupid boyfriend's stupid bodyguard types?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

He'll hear the engine start and he'll hear her drive away. She isn't even taking Darya.

Hilary goes alone. She drives in heels with her hat on the seat beside her. She does not go to malls. She goes to boutiques. There are low velvet chaises and robes in the fitting rooms. She is handed glasses of champagne while she browses little dresses, looks through autumn collections, considers outfits. At first, she doesn't notice the car that slides into parking spots near hers on the streets she visits, waiting there, watching her through windows. At first she does not notice when she is followed walking down a sidewalk. Hilary carries nothing but the little clutch that holds the shiny card that gives her access to money she can't fathom. Bags are taken to her car for her. Items are held to be delivered to the lake house later.

But pausing at a strange window -- not a boutique at all, but a gelato shop that is run-down and perhaps not the cleanest and run by someone who barely speaks english and isn't even Italian -- she catches something in the reflection on the glass where she sees herself, through which she sees mounds of rippling, creamy frozen treats in bright colors.

She recognizes him, and then she takes out her phone, the other shiny thing in her clutch.

Somewhere, perhaps still on the dock, Ivan's phone chimes. Vibrates. Lets him know, somehow, that the queen bitch from hell he is enamored of is calling him.

Ivan's first reaction is: she's lost. she got turned around. she's in the bad part of town. she drove into a lake. He isn't fearful. He's a little amused. He has people with her, after all.

So he picks up. "Yes, darling?" he says: he is smirking.

"Dión sometimes had me followed. For my own safety, of course. And because I belonged to him."

There's only the sparest pause there. She is cold, and cruel, but the softness he hears in her voice is rage, bottomless, too strong to be calculating, too powerful to permit her to leave those words hanging there, all the more piercing for the silence that follows them. Hilary is too angry, in short, to do more than take a small breath.

"Call him now," she says, the softness leaving, "send him away, and leave the lake house before I come back to it."

She presses the red handset. She knows that button means the call is over.

There is no reply; he does not have one for her before she ends the call.

A few moments later the man watching her puts his cellphone to his ear. A moment after that he puts the phone away, starts his car, and drives away down the street.

Hilary is left alone.

--

The lake house is lit when she returns to it. Ivan would never leave it in darkness; not when she would return to it alone. The door is locked and the deck is empty and there is a cart in front of the door: dinner, a bottle of wine. Ivan is not there. There is a card on the kitchen counter, though:

I'm sorry.

Call me.

Hilary waits in front of the gelato shop. She watches the man in the reflection, and the Pakistani man in the gelato shop who is reading his Twitter feed and not paying attention to anything else does not notice. Hilary waits for Ivan's servant-kin to leave, and

no one but Hilary and the ghost-people around her know what she does after that. Because no one is watching her.

--

And Ivan perhaps does know when she comes back to the lake house, perhaps he is in his nearby real house, watching for the car. Waiting for the sound of the engine. Perhaps he went all the way back to Chicago proper, to his penthouse. But she does come back, and Carlisle has been waiting, so he rises from the porch of the mansion and walks out to the Aston Martin to unload it. Heft this, carry that, set them all inside for her to go through later; she will have forgotten what she purchased.

Once inside, Hilary stands still for a while. She looks around, because she can see everything but the dance studio from this vantage point. Then she walks; closes the shades on the glass walls, hides herself from outside view. The lake house is a warm glow, diffuse and glimmering on the water. Inside, she removes her shoes, she walks around barefoot. She pours herself wine. She tastes the dinner left for her, then tosses it out. Summons Darya on the phone, gives her a list of things to bring from the main house.

And then Hilary cooks, drinking as she goes, drifting through the house in her bare feet and sweeping dress. Cooking gives her order and structure; cooking gives her freedom and wildness. She drinks the wine that Ivan had brought to her, but not the food, and this is meaningful to her in strange but important ways, however silent they are, however they cling to the recesses of her broken mind.

Ivan does not know how Hilary dines alone, but she dines well. She sets a place at the table. She lights candles. She puts on music, playing through the hidden speakers through the house. It's Chopin. She eats slowly, fork and knife held French style. She savors. She enjoys it very much, dining alone. No one talking or bothering her. No flirting, no romance, no questions. No one interrupts her at her meal. She eats like this more often, living in the lake house. It's nice.

For desert, a now quite drunk Hilary eats directly from the white-paper carton pint of gelato she brought home with her. She watches television, wide-eyed and confused by storylines she doesn't have context for, in both fiction and 'reality' and the news; she doesn't understand any of the stories, but she watches them intently.

Ivan's phone does not ring.

Not that night.

The lights are on the main house when Hilary returns to the cabin. She would see them if she looked, but then no one would be surprised if she didn't. No one disturbs her when she retreats into that bright, modern space. No one complains when she closes the shades. No one brings her food, or knocks on her door, or disturbs her phone.

She does not call Ivan that night. Ivan, wisely, leaves her be.

--

In the morning, there is a new cart at her door, with a new tray, heaped with new food. There is a carafe of orange juice, and one of coffee. There are pastries and there is a quiche and there is toast and butter.

There is another note, penned in Ivan's slashing modernist hand:

May I visit you?

Hilary sleeps a long time. She drank most of a bottle of white wine. She ate half a pint of gelato. She sleeps heavily, deeply, alone in that vast altar of a bed in the center of the cabin over the lake. She sleeps in her dress, her jewelry on the nightstand, her hand draped comfortingly over her own cunt beneath the thin sheet she uses as a blanket. It tangles around her as she moves in her sleep. She wakes late in the morning, groggy, hungover, moving slowly. And does not go outside at first.

There is a piss, and a long, hot shower. There is wandering around, thoughtless, naked, wishing the place were cleaner, forgetting where her phone is. Her phone is dead. She has to charge it. She has to find the plug-thingy. All of this takes her some time. She lets her hair dry in the air, long and wavy but not frizzy, because the air here is filtered of all that nasty Chicago August humidity. Finally she dresses herself, putting on a navy blue shift dress. It is simple as a sack on her, sleeveless and short and simple. With the right shoes, the right jewelry, she would look so chic. Instead -- barefoot, soft-haired, clean-faced -- she looks a bit fey.

Hilary makes an attempt at the bed. She drags her dress off the edge of it, but then is tired, bored, something, and drops it on the ground. She crawls over the bed, pulling at the sheets, and it isn't that she doesn't know -- there were times in her life Hilary took care of herself, try not to faint -- it's that she can't remember, halfway through, why she is doing it.

She kneels on the bed, silent and alone and fey and with a headache, and then goes to the button that lifts the shades, rolling them high, letting in the sunlight. She lets it wash everywhere, cleansing, and that is when she sees the cart outside. She goes to the door and opens it, listening to the pretty noises of summer by the lake, feeling the waft of hot, wet hair that comes in, and picks up the note. She looks at it, and then drops it, and begins eating a quiche where she stands in the doorway, in front of the cart, bare toes touching the plants of the path to the door, heels touching the floor of the lake house.

Halfway through eating, Hilary turns, grabbing the cart behind her with one fist, dragging it over the bump and into the house with her. She doesn't bother with setting the table this time. She sits on the bed with the cart nearby and eats, and drinks, and picks up the remote to turn on the television until she finds cartoons.

For a while, Hilary watches cartoons and eats quiche, then toast, then fruit. She finds a metal-covered plate with sausages and eats those too, craving the fat and animal protein to help her through her hangover. She pushes the cart away after, licking grease from her fingers, switching the channel to a baking competition. One of the pastry chefs is going to attempt an edible railroad around the tiered cake they're making. Even Hilary knows that is going to blow up in their face.

When the knife in the back of her head and the churning in her gut has eased, she looks for her phone. It's fully charged. She sends Ivan a text right away:

No

And a few moments later, a heartbeat or two:

Okay.

It is tempting to spy on Hilary. To keep tabs, at least, on the cart in front of her door so he has some idea of whether or not she is awake. Whether or not she has eaten. Whether or not she has seen his note. It is tempting, but Ivan is thoroughly burnt and shy now: he doesn't spy. He doesn't stare out the window. He doesn't watch for shades rising, lights going off, carts moving in or out, notes disappearing.

He spends the morning however he spends the morning. Perhaps he sleeps through it. Perhaps he hides in his great house, facing away from the cabin, determinedly not keeping tabs on Hilary. Perhaps he goes sailing. Hilary doesn't know; she doesn't see him, and more importantly, she doesn't care.

At some point, long after early morning has become late morning or possibly even noon, a text dings onto Ivan's razor-thin, gorilla-glass-and-carbon-fiber blade of a phone. It is heartbreaking.

A little later, another text.

A little later still, there is a cat-soft knock on her door.

Perhaps now he understands the temptation that Dion succumbed to, that Grey spoke of in poetry: to hold her, to keep her, to watch her every move, every flash of her throat as she breathed. In some measure it is simply not his fault; he is a werewolf, and she is his kin. He has fucked her, abused her, loved her, made love to her, harmed her, healed her, and his one and only child came from her. Every time he comes within ten feet of her, even more, her purity is a drenching, intoxicating thing to him. It calls him bodily, spiritually, psychologically; it insinuates itself into his dreams. Every fiber and sinew tells him to watch her, to guard her, to protect her, to not even let her out of his sight if he can avoid it.

Of course he is tempted. But the burn of her voice telling him to get out still stings; still seethes in his ears. The sharpness and abruptness of her first text must feel like a knife dragging over the unhealed wound, on some level.

That is not to say he was wounded. Perhaps punished is a better word. The effect is ultimately the same: he stays back. Does not watch; does not sniff. Leaves her alone.

--

When he knocks, Hilary stares balefully at the door. She doesn't leap up to answer it, or even say anything. She thinks he will just come in on his own after a while, and so she sits on the bed in the center, phone in her hands in her lap, the little cookie game playing. You tap cookies to make more cookies and there are so many cookies. That is the game. That is all it fucking is.

And since he likely does not come in on his own for a while and she does not want to talk, Hilary pushes the cart across the floor. It runs into the door, banging, bouncing back slightly, rolling the other direction.

Naturally, Ivan does not open the door when it does not open for him. No answer is most certainly not a yes when it comes to Hilary. It could be that she's changed her mind. It could be that she's forgotten she'd given him permission in the first place. It could be that she just doesn't feel like opening the door to him; that it gives her some sort of strange delight to leave him waiting outside. Who knows. It's Hilary.

Who, in lieu of any logical human response, eventually bangs a cart into the door.

Outside, Ivan startles. Those svelte muscles tense; that lean frame jerks ever so slightly. After a while, he puts his palm against the door. He presses gently to see if it will open. It won't. He tries the doorhandle, next.

She doesn't want to get up from the bed.

She doesn't want to speak.

The cart was perfectly logical.

...if you are fractured in her particular way. If you do not exert your will over yourself for the sake of anyone else. If it doesn't occur to you to do so.

--

The door is unlocked. She never locked it, after bringing in the food. It's possible she didn't lock it last night, either.

The cabin is a mess: dishes in the sink, wax on the table, the clothes and shoes on the floor, the gelato container in a puddle on the counter because she didn't put it back in the freezer. The little vase with its little flower on top of the car that was knocked over by its careening, spilling a scant amount of water onto a doily beneath a plate of croissants.

Hilary herself is sitting in the center of the bed. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is playing quietly on the television. She has her phone in her lap. She is staring at him. For a beat. Then, blinking slowly: "What do you have to say for yourself?"

There's something cautious about how Ivan opens the door. Something about it brings to mind a wild animal straying into unfamiliar territory. The way his fingers touch the knob so lightly. The way his hand follows the swing of the door, which is silent and smooth. Nothing would surprise him right now. Not if Hilary flew at him with nails and teeth. Not if she ran sobbing into his arms. Not if she threw a goddamn machete at his head.

Nothing happens. And so, lightly, and with that same animal caution that in him translates to a sort of grace, he steps in. Takes note of the mess, the unwashed dishes and the spilled things. The television is on and the program is absurd. Ivan's shoulders relax. He sighs, somewhere between exasperation and relief and inappropriate amusement and frustration. Thoughtlessly, he picks that little vase up; he sets it, and its resident flower, on the kitchen counter.

That's where he is when she speaks to him. That's where she sees him, straight-backed and lean and effortlessly, languidly elegant; sees how he tenses again, coils on himself in reflexive and bewildered outrage. No one -- no one but Hilary -- would speak to Ivan like that, the way a severe schoolmistress might a misbehaving boy. It's almost beyond his comprehension.

A moment later he turns to face her. He stares back at her for a second.

Then: "I've said I'm sorry."

Let's be realistic, Ivan. It wouldn't be a machete. It would be a frying pan, and it would never get to him because her arms are essentially limp noodles. It's a wonder she could ever lift Anton, even at his smallest.

"I didn't ask if you were sorry," she says, unrelenting.

[but if she DID throw a frying pan at his head: dex + ath, specs do not apply]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 6 )

[damage. strength + 1 (frying pan base damage) + suxx -1]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

[fuck's sake, can he even soak that?]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 3) ( botch x 1 )

[*FUCKING DIES*]

[5 fucking bashing LMFAO. he'd be MAULED BY A FRYING PAN.]

As though ice had suddenly thawed in his joints, Ivan moves. He comes away from the kitchen island; he comes toward Hilary on that bed.

"What is it you want, then? A reason? A rationale for doing as I did? It wasn't because I thought I owned you. I did it because I couldn't remember the last time you drove yourself anywhere. I did it because I thought you might get lost. I did it because I thought you might wrap yourself around a light post.

"I did it because the last time I remember you being out on your own, you were assaulted by an insane werewolf."

"Blah blah blah," Hilary says. She even does a hand motion like a quacking.

She looks at him warningly, as he's coming near the bed. She sits on it as though it is not an altar now; she sits in its center and somehow makes it a throne. A wild, messy throne, but hers.

"You had me followed. Watched. And you have no justification for that trespass, and you know it."

"And I've apologized for it. I've explained it the best I can. What. Do you want?"

"Admit that it was bad and stupid and you will never do something so fucking rude again," she snaps back. "I want you to show shame. Remorse. I want you to feel guilty."

"I felt shame. I felt remorse. I felt guilt. I felt like a goddamn monster when you compared me to Dion, because you were right and I knew it. I've felt all that, Hilary, and I was feeling it right up until I came to see you and you spoke to me like I was five years old and you caught me with my hand in the cookie jar.

"What have I to say for myself," he parrots; gives his head a quick, sharp shake. "I can bear your anger and your hatred, Hilary, but not your disdain."

"Then you can go," she says, dismissive, with a nod of her head toward the door, a faint wave of her hand in that direction as well. "If you are going to stomp your feet because you don't like my tone, then disdain is all I have for you."

"I'd rather stay." The words are bitten off. He can't help it; he's angry.

"Then don't be a little shitmonster," Hilary says. Snaps back. Bites back. "You're the one in the wrong here. Your reasons are no better than anyone else's. Your apology is as offhand as ever. If you want to stay, then you will recall that you were the one who made this mess. You asked if you could visit. You did not stipulate that I had to forgive you first."

On that note Ivan wheels away. He storms to the door, which still hangs open. He grabs it, he heaves it, he slams it shut so very hard.

It's an outburst. A temper tantrum. He's being a little shitmonster.

Seconds go by. He turns, eventually. He crosses the cabin; he comes toward the bed. Stops at the edge of it, not touching it, not touching her. His hands are restless. One closes and opens, pumps like a heart. Abruptly he exhales. He lowers his eyes.

"You're right," he says again, low. "You were right, and you are right. I was worried about you. But it doesn't give me the right to have you watched and followed as though I owned you. It ... appalled me, to think that I could have behaved just as Dion did. Just as Grey would have.

"I am sorry, Hilary. You are the woman I love, the mother of my child, and I treated you like a thing. It was abominable of me." A beat. He looks at her. "Please forgive me."

Hilary scowls at him when he comes near again. Of course she is not bothered by the way he storms around. She doesn't consider the harm he could do her, if he loses his temper. She was bent over a railing with a furious Galliard wanting to rape her or rip her throat out or both and all she could do was rage and snap at him, threaten him, as thought it made any difference. It does not occur to Hilary to be afraid of Ivan's anger,

though it should.

She just scowls at him, unabating, even when he debases his pride. Even when he lays it out: he was wrong and wrong and wrong, it appalled him, it shamed him, and he is sorry, and he loves her, and he was abominable. Even when he asks for her forgiveness.

And the truth is, she wasn't withholding it just to see him suffer. She isn't withholding it now, when she scowls at him. She is telling the truth, which is a cold and relentless and unmerciful thing, especially from someone like her, who never thinks to soften it.

"No. I'm still mad at you."

Ivan takes a breath. She can see it, though perhaps she doesn't understand the why and the wherefore. He lets it out:

"Very well. I'll leave you be. When you want my company again, I'll be waiting."

She frowns, affronted. "You asked if you could visit."

"And now I've visited," Ivan answers, "and you're angry and I'm frustrated and I've a suspicion you don't really want me in your house right now, anyway. Am I wrong?"

"I can be angry at you and still have you around," she says, frowning, like this is obvious. "Just not if you're going to behave monstrously in the meantime."

Perhaps she means that she does not want to speak to him at all. Perhaps she means that he is not to speak to her. Perhaps she means that she simply does not forgive him yet, but that this shouldn't affect their day to day existence any more than it strictly has to.

God knows what she means. She's a madwoman.

"Goddamn it," Ivan swears, which could mean any number of things at all. He doesn't bother explaining. He pulls his phone out; he dials a number, and somewhere in the house a maid picks up.

He barks at her. He demands Yuliya. He demands cleaning, now, the cabin is a wreck, get on it. Make it spotless. Do something, do anything, fix it. Yuliya, who has known him nearly as long as Dmitri, knows this has nothing to do with her, nothing to do with the cabin, nothing to do with the mess. Everything to do with him, and that madwoman in the cabin with him, and the way all their lives seem to revolve around his whim and the madwoman's.

She is stoic, and she is polite, and she doesn't waste her breath. Da, she says, and then the phone call ends.

Ivan stands there a moment, phone in hand, head bent. Then, without another word, he puts his cell away and goes down to the couches in their sunken corner; drops down, puts his feet up, and

continues his day to day existence with Hilary. Never mind her anger, or his.

Hilary, sitting on the bed, wrinkles her nose as he says that the cabin is a wreck, get Yuliya over here. She is watching him, when he gets off the phone. He storms over to the couches and sinks down, feet up, and this -- like his swearing -- could mean anything at all.

She does not question. She lifts the remote and turns up the volume on her cartoon. She likes Princess Luna. A creature of nightmares no longer, but instead, a pony who desires your love and admiration. Hilary does not think that Ivan likes My Little Pony, but she doesn't ask. She ignores Yuliya when the maid arrives and begins cleaning up the kitchen. Really, it's not so bad in here; some tidying, some wiping, but little else; Hilary does not get off the bed, so Yuliya does not make it.

When Yuliya leaves, the cartoons are over, and Hilary has turned the television off. It isn't even afternoon yet, but she lays down on her bed, sighing, closing her eyes. Her head hurts again, has been hurting. She does not invite Ivan to come to her, rest with her, be nearer to her again.

But then again, if he makes his way toward her,

she does not reject him, either.