This thing with Dimitri was complicated.
Instead, he smiled at me. Not the kind of calculated smile I had seen him sometimes offer others, or the half-smile he gave to Arlo when he was indulging him. No. This was an actual smile. His eyes wrinkled and his dimples showed, and I think my heart may have stopped beating momentarily. It was unfair for someone to be that good-looking.
How many people saw this side of him?
If I had to answer, I would say not many - Arlo perhaps, but apart from Arlo? I wasn't sure I wanted to know. Because the thought of going through life without smiling - or even having something to smile about, was just depressing. Zoey goaded joy out of me even when I was in my most melancholic state. Books became a form of escape where I often laughed, cheered, and wept alongside characters. Marie was a quiet calm to our chaos, and Max seemed to ground me - allowing me to live vicariously through her escapades.
To not have those small things that brought me peace and happiness made me wonder how it was possible to survive without it. Because within that quiet joy there was hope, and without hope we had nothing.
Coffee and beignets were served promptly and I noted how the man before me drank his coffee - all black, two sugars, no cream.
I decided to take the opportunity to grill Dimitri. I didn’t know when I would catch him so relaxed - so willing to engage, again.
"Favourite movie?" I asked between taking bites of the sugary deliciousness before me. Dimitri glared at me, but I refused to let up and held his gaze.
"Dawn of the Dead," he ground out as if talking about such trivialities annoyed him.
I did a terrible job of holding in my laughter, only causing Dimitri to glare at me harder.
"Fine," he threw down his napkin on the table and crossed his arms over his broad chest, “what's yours?"
"Practical Magic," I answered immediately, all laughter suddenly void from my expression.
He rolled his eyes, making him look younger, and I had the unbidden urge to run my fingers through his unkempt hair.
“Best friend?” I continued.
“That’s a little high school don’t you think?” He barked in return. His shoulders drooped a moment later as he answered, “Ravi. It’s always been Ravi - we went to school together.”
I hid my surprise, keeping my gaze fixed on the coffee before me, allowing myself a moment to absorb that information.
“You?”
“Zoey,” I answered automatically, “she’s part of the Club, but I met her at Summer Camp when I was fourteen.”
“So not from your fancy world then,” he spoke gently, but I still heard him.
“How do you know how fancy my world is?” I volleyed back, raising a brow across the table.
“The Rand surname isn’t exactly a well kept secret, now is it?” Dimitri allowed the question to hang between us. “Besides,” he went on, “a quick google search and everything about you shows up on wikipedia. Did you know that you had a wikipedia page?”
I cast my eyes down towards the table. I was a fucking idiot thinking that I could keep my two lives separate - that none of my clients would recognize me or search me afterwards.
“The thing is,” Dimitri’s voice was smooth, somehow smoothing away the gravelly bits of my panic, “you don’t match up with that page at all. You are so much more than this Society Princess facade you’ve got going for yourself.”
I shrugged, my laughter sounding hollow and brittle to my ears, but I needed the distraction - the distance. And so, I continued questioning him, leading us back to safer territory.
“Most embarrassing moment?” I hedged.
“When I stole my teacher’s vibrator out of her bag.”
“What?” I spluttered.
In hindsight, I knew what he was doing, and my heart ached for the man he could be. Dimitri wasn’t a bad man - not really. I think he was just put in impossible situations. He was giving us something bigger to focus on in the conversation - something other than the fact that I was a Rand.
“I’m not embarrassed that I took it - I mean what kind of teacher carries that into her classroom when teaching a class full of teenage boys? I’m only mad that I got caught - and then had to explain the whole debacle to Arlo.”
Dimitri shook his head, the ghost of a grin threatening to overwhelm him as he relived the moment.