Playing Adult | ✔ | 18+

Chapter 30 - Return to You

Author's Notes:

There is a big chunk of Russian in the last section of this chapter. I put the translation immediately following the text.

-=o0/&\0o=-

As I sat back down with my 'diploma' - because, of course, they hadn't given us real ones on the day of the commencement ceremony - I moved in wide-eyed stunned silence, not able to do anything other than watch where I was going.

Whatever had happened, Rose had been there at my graduation and had cheered for me.

Up was down and down was up.

She still hadn't met my eyes when I looked at her before my name was called, but she had cheered for me. After she had, I was too afraid to look her in the eyes. As the last long, boring speech from the principal began, Ivan leaned in and whispered in my ear, "Vika and I were late because we were bringing Rose here. She came for you."

I looked at Ivan. "What does this mean? Does this mean she forgives me?" I asked.

Ivan looked back. "Not completely, but she is willing to hear you out."

I couldn't hold back the words as I said, "I need to get her back. I love her, man."

A few seconds later, as the principal droned on some meaningless drivel about 'life in the real world' (wasn't that already where we were?), I asked Ivan simply, "How?"

Ivan was too engrossed in the speech to pay attention to me, so I elbowed him in the ribs after finally taking another look at Rose, whose inquisitive gaze was now practically boring into me. "What?" Ivan asked, shooting me an irritated look.

"How is she willing to listen? And how did you get her to come here?"

"It wasn't easy," Ivan admitted, "She really didn't trust me - or even like me, for that matter. I think it at least partially had to do with Jesse. I had to tell her about what happened to me at camp in fourth grade."

I racked my brain. Camp in fourth grade ... camp in fourth grade ... "You can't mean ...?" I asked. Ivan had wet the bed and afterwards, a small group of us had then woken to find him still asleep, clutching a hand-sewn rag doll in a dress and sucking his thumb. He had sworn me to secrecy afterwards.

"Right down to the thumb-sucking," he admitted, scowling at me.

"Why would you tell her that?" I asked.

"Rose gave us thirty minutes to convince her. With your mom's blessing, we gave her your mom's black bread recipe and then both pleaded your case, explaining how you felt about her and how you were afraid that you'd lose her because of the age difference, but how you hadn't meant to keep it a secret from her. After we had talked to her and the time was up, Vika and I both had to share our most embarrassing secret to prove that she could trust us. She told us that she would use the secrets against us if we were lying to her."

"You did that for me?" I asked him, "What did Viktoria say?"

"We both did, but what Viktoria said isn't my story to tell, Dimka," he said, "And Rose also made us each tell her your most embarrassing secret that we knew."

I shuddered. "The baby wipe?" I asked. Ivan gave a curt nod. For a brief period of time while my niece was little, my sister had tried to be environmentally friendly by using washable diapers and wipes. One day my junior year, one of the wipes had lingered in the dryer and stuck with static to the back of my sweater from my school uniform. I walked around school all day with a baby wipe stuck to my back and people laughing everywhere I went.