While the apartment wasn’t much, Cal was happy with it, so it seemed I was coming out ahead even if the competition was all in my mind. I spent a lot of time there and Cal had been attempting to persuade me to move in for weeks, but I couldn’t do it, too flummoxed by what lie I would have to tell my family. It wasn’t as though they didn’t realize I had someone I spent time with—I was gone enough to make that obvious—it was more that I’d been able to keep them under the illusion it wasn’t serious. Luckily, they were all too busy with their own companions to question much. I had a feeling my father would be solidifying things with waitress Sally soon enough, and when he did, I would be out. It wouldn’t raise a single eyebrow if I looked for another place to live when he moved the floozy in. She was a motherly type and I had spent twenty-eight years without a doting mom. The manner in which she tried to endear herself to Igor and me was disingenuous in the worst possible way. Ig wasn’t as impacted as I was, mostly because Millie told him not to be. She liked Sally and that was enough for my spineless sibling. “Mikhailovs didn’t need women” until they needed their fucking lives micromanaged by females. It was a sad state of events to witness my brethren being emasculated. They would judge me for being with a man, but at least I went toe to toe with Cal as equals rather than becoming a whipping boy for a woman. Shit, I couldn’t understand how anyone would want to be with a dame. There was nothing appealing about their displaced fat pads and feminine curves. If it would not have drawn suspicion, I would have asked Igor and Maks what it was they saw in the fairer sex, what it was about broads that impelled them to hand over their balls in a basket.

“Where are you headed?” Igor asked as I poured a mug of coffee. He was in his usual spot at the kitchen table, studying his boring books as he listened to the depressing news. Maks was sitting beside him, eating a bowl of my Rice Krispies, which immediately pissed me off.

“Do you live here now?” I asked my cousin as I poured myself some cereal.

“The better question is, do you?” Ig inquired with a smirk as Maks continued to indulge. “You’re here less and less.”

“You’re not here enough to notice how often I am,” I retorted, leaning against the counter as I ate.

“Bullshit,” he laughed.

Maks chuckled along and I stared at both of them, unamused.

“So,” Igor said, still awaiting a response. “Are you pounding the pavement to find a job?”