Knocked Up By the Russian Boss by Bella King
Chapter 32
IVORY
My eyelids feel so heavy as I come out of sleep. Usually, waking up early comes easily to me, but the intensity of last night must have knocked me off my circadian rhythm. Not that I’m complaining. Being reckless has felt so freeing. I feel more alive now than I ever have, more present in my own life than I can remember ever being before Maxim.
I’ve spent too much time being careful. So worried about being agreeable, pristine, and worst of all, a good representative for my father’s campaign. I grew up smiling for journalists, flying through high school with perfect grades, and volunteering for causes that I didn’t know enough about or care to invest myself in if it didn’t come with the added benefit of being the county’s American Sweetheart.
There’s something so romantic and dark about recklessness, how irreverent it is in the face of death. No more carefully chosen, color-coordinated outfits to impress my classmates with. No more kneecapping my sentences to save face. No more bending over backward to be accommodating and available to everybody who needs something.
Now, I’m just going to be as I am, whoever that person is. I guess it’ll take time to learn since I spent my entire life performing.
Despite the newfound liberation that I feel with Maxim, he still strikes me as being off. I’m not sure how to describe him to other people, even if anyone cared. Our run-in with the bad side of town, which Maxim lovingly refers to as Skid Row, cemented in my brain that he’s definitely not a straight-laced, upstanding citizen.
Maybe that’s what I like about him. Maybe that’s going to get me killed.
Against my better judgment, I decide I’m going to look around Maxim’s apartment to get a better idea of who he really is, not just the version of himself that he sells to me.
First, I look through the bedside tables, each featuring only one drawer.
When I open them, all I find are a phone charger and a granola bar.
Weird.
I figure that maybe he’s just not a messy person, maybe that he doesn’t hold on to a lot that he considers unimportant. I could learn a thing or two from that philosophy.
I crawl out of bed, still in my t-shirt and shorts, and wander the perimeter of the bedroom for more hints at Maxim’s true inner self. From what I can gather just by looking at his bedroom with an uncritical eye, he’s clearly a neat freak. There are no patterns on any of the blankets, pillows, or drapes, and there’s no artwork to be seen on any of the walls.
Maybe he isn’t an art guy. I can’t fault him for that.
His closet is nearly bare, save for a few incredibly expensive suits that have been steamed and pressed to the point of obsessive levels of preservation. He’s always so well-dressed, but I can’t say I recognize any of these suits in particular. The shelves above his clothes are bare, save for an empty shoebox.
Under the bed is the same story: nothing but an empty clear storage container.
If I were to wake up in this room with no recollection of how I got here, I’d believe that I was in a hotel room rather than the living space of an actual person. Everything is just too well-maintained. Nothing feels lived in or cozy.
There’s almost no food in the fridge, and the dishwasher looks like it hasn’t been touched since it was installed. The microwave is spotless as well. While Maxim doesn’t seem like the type of guy to be slovenly and messy, he’s maintained a level of cleanliness that even my most type-A female friends couldn’t dream of obtaining.
When I take a step back and look around the apartment as a whole, I realize that there is absolutely no depth or personality to any of the fixtures or furniture at all. It gives me the feeling of watching a barebones stage production at a college where the arts program has been stripped to nothing.
What kind of person needs so little when they clearly have enough money to purchase whatever they want in droves?
I can’t let myself overthink. My whole life already feels like an increasingly darkening fever dream. If I start to obsess over the details of Maxim’s extremely boring apartment, I might drive myself crazy with conspiracy theories. He’s never hurt me, not even close. Maybe he’s just not very in touch with his creative side. Plenty of people are like that.
I check the time, and I realize that I have an exam in forty minutes.
Fuck!
I sprint back into the bedroom and retrieve my bag, not even concerned about changing into more appropriate clothes before I take off down the hallway like an insane person.
When I arrive back at my own apartment, I take a minute to appreciate how much of myself has colored the interior as opposed to Maxim’s. Ten minutes later, I’m out the door, sweating as I struggle to remember what the exam is even about.
The halls of the main building are hushed, which casts an eerie, liminal atmosphere between the white walls, ceiling, and floors. I’m so used to there being a ton of people out here. I must be running extremely late.
When I arrive at class, I’m horrified to be walking in as the class has already begun the exam. All eyes are on me as I slump into the last remaining seat, stifling my breathing as to not attract any more attention to myself.
My professor motions for me to come to her desk, and she hands me a piece of paper with the code to access the online test portal.
I log in, and I feel like I’m trying to read a textbook in a language that I’m only just becoming familiar with. The questions are poorly worded, the answers are muddy and undefined, and the formatting is lazily pieced together.
After I’ve been staring at the first three questions for five minutes, I realize that this exam is a word-for-word copy of a cheat sheet that my professor had given us a week ago. I’ve seen all these questions before.
Sweat pricks the surface of my skin, and my clothes suddenly feel restrictive and clingy on my body. My brain isn’t absorbing anything that I’m reading. None of the words on the screen mean anything to me. All I can think about is Maxim, the texts from ghost-Chad, and especially the photo I received of myself, naked in the water.
At the end of the hour, I turn in my half-assed exam answers and nearly trample my classmates as I try to escape from the lecture hall. I dart into the bathroom and splash cold water on my face, ruining what’s left of yesterday’s makeup.
I look like a fucking disaster.
The day doesn’t improve. Every time my phone vibrates, I jump out of my skin in sheer terror that it could be the unknown number harassing me again. Courtney pulls me around campus obnoxiously as she does, forcing me to sit with her and her nursing program friends at lunch as I listen to them speak performatively in medical terminology as if it’s pig Latin.
I gaze out the window on the far side of the cafeteria, and I’m almost shocked to not see Chad standing perfectly centered, staring straight at me, ready to rip me to pieces in order to avenge himself and his beloved ego.
As I step out onto the pavement, ready to shave my hair off and reclaim my insanity, I see Maxim’s SUV parked near a cluster of trees, and I can’t stop myself from running over to him. He feels like my compass in an increasingly delirious and unhinged world.
