Her mixer was still on the counter from where she’d washed it out after using it to whip the cake batter earlier.
“Is it rude to ask where you’re from?” she asked, pulling down powdered sugar from the cabinet and then unwrapping the sticks of butter she’d pulled out of the refrigerator earlier to soften. “You don’t have a heavy accent or anything. Just every now and then I hear the tiniest bit.”
Nicholas didn’t look offended. “I was born in Russia,” he said as she put the butter and powdered sugar into the mixing bowl and added a few splashes of heavy whipping cream. She arched an eyebrow at him as she started the mixer on a low setting, using a spatula to scrape sugar that flew up onto the sides of the bowl.
“Wow. What was it like growing up there?”
He waved a hand. “It’s not that interesting.”
“I promise, it’ll be interesting to me.” She looked back at her frosting mix. “I don’t exactly get to travel much.” Ha. Understatement.
“Well…” he started slowly. “I was born right after Communism fell.”
“You were lucky, then.”
He shrugged. “That’s what people over here think, but it was pretty terrible the decade after. When I was really young we lived out in the country, but after the huge state-run factories shut down, it was bad. The government scrambled to restructure, but that was a joke. It was all former KGB and corrupt gangsters fighting for power. A lot of people went hungry. Including us.”
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” Sloane froze. She spent so much of her time feeling disadvantaged because of her problems but she’d never known anything like what he was talking about. “What did you do?”
He shrugged again. “We moved to the city. We lived in an apartment with another family and my dad found work.”
Sloane blinked. Wow.
He laughed. “It’s not a sob story, keep doing what you’re doing. I didn’t mention it so you’d feel sorry for me. Don’t even know why I’m telling you. Usually I don’t.” He did look uncomfortable and she hated making him feel that way. She just wanted to know everything about him.
“No, no! Please. I want to know.” She added a splash of cream and turned up the mixer. For a minute it was too loud to do much talking. She waited until the frosting was whipped to the right consistency before slowing the mixer down and then switching it off. Then she waved for him to continue. “So what was it like when you got to the city? Did you go to school?”
He nodded. “Oh yeah, I always went to school. In the city the schools were better. Everybody was poor but my Dad got a job that brought in more money and we were able to move to the states when I was twelve.”
Sloane nodded. “That’s why your English is so good?”
“Well it was shit at first,” he laughed. “I mean, I thought it was good. I use to love American TV and music. But then I came here and everyone made fun of my accent. Just till I hit my growth spurt and grew a foot taller than all of them, though. Then no one dared.”
Sloane giggled, glancing at his huge shoulders. “I bet. And now you barely even have an accent. What was it like, coming here after growing up in another country?”
“Weird,” he said after a pause. “And not like they showed it on TV.”
Sloane’s face scrunched up, imagining what it would be like if you’d only seen the versions of America shown on TV dramas or in action movies. “I bet.”
“And there were so many bananas.” He shook his head, his voice sounding awed. “Oranges, too.”
“Bananas?” Sloane laughed.
He nodded straight-faced. “You could only get bananas and oranges maybe once, twice a year growing up. First time we walked into a super-market in America, I thought we were in paradise.”
Sloane laughed more, trying to imagine what that would be like, and admitting to herself she couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine thinking of bananas as a delicacy.
“But I loved the city,” he said as she looked up from where she’d paused scraping the frosting off the beaters.
“Which city?”
“New York. That’s where we moved. I loved being able to take the train anywhere I wanted to go. It was really dangerous back in Moscow. There were tons of gangs. Our apartment got broken into a couple times, and you’d always get hassled on the streets. In New York during the day you could go all over the city, and if you were in school you could get passes to all the museums and libraries. I went to every single one.”
“Oh, wow.” She turned away so he couldn’t see her face while she pulled her cake turntable out from a bottom cabinet. She couldn’t imagine. The way he talked about traveling the city, taking the train everywhere. He obviously loved exploring. He’d traveled the freaking globe. And he spoke multiple languages.