How Will That Help?
RECOMMENDED TRACK: No Doubt – The Climb
We had cause for optimism at the beginning.
Misha went to Elliott first. He was eager to help, but as Misha had said, he wasn’t very connected with his family’s business. Together, they hatched a scheme: Misha wrote a white paper disguised as a school assignment about the state of the government-sponsored oil industry in Russia, calling out some recent data about a Sokolov Kapital Grup-backed company that was managing particularly well. This I understood Elliott would seed with a cousin of his, who he swore would steal the info outright and everyone at the firm would know its contents within the week.
“How will that help?” I asked one night as Misha told me about it over a quick dinner. “I get that Parker-Smith is a big deal, but your name isn’t attached to this at all.”
Misha shook his head. “That won’t matter. Not if I can pull off other things, with Bellamy and Jacob.”
It made no sense to me. “Why? How will your father know you had anything to do with it?”
“My father, he has a very, very good information network,” he said. “But he values subtlety. There are times to attach a name, and times not to. Besides, one thing with my name? Not so impressive.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Two things, three things, unexpected, in his favor? All related to people he can connect to me? He will notice.”
“If you’re sure…” I’m sure I sounded skeptical because he leaned in and ruffled my hair affectionately.
“I’m sure,” he said, giving me one of his big grins. The white paper took him longer than the internship application did by far, but Elliott swore it would work.
After that, though, Misha almost disappeared from my day-to-day life. We snatched meals here and there, and he religiously took me out Friday nights and stayed over for breakfast Saturday morning—he loved ordering in. But beyond that, he was mostly texts on a screen.
It was painful to think that might be the only future we could have together, though, so I gave him the space he needed.
I know he was cooking things up with Jacob and that he had reached out to Marcus Bellamy, and they must have been interested because he began spending all his time at Sigma House working on those projects.
If he ever asked Adrian for help, he didn’t tell me about it. He didn’t tell me about a lot of things because whenever we were together he avoided talking about it. We both wanted to enjoy each other as much as we could while we could, which was tough to balance against so much dread. I did my best to stay upbeat, but as soon as he was out of sight, my anxieties came back.
One Friday, my Digital Storytelling class was canceled and when I texted Misha, he said he could free up his afternoon. We immediately made plans to spend the rest of the day together before our usual date night. I made my way to the fountain we agreed to meet at and settled in, reading on my phone. I saw a figure moving towards me after a mere minute or two, too soon to be Misha, and I froze. It was—who else?—Adrian.
He wants something, came one nasty thought.
You know what he wants.
My trepidation must have shown on my face because as he got closer he held up his hands as if to say “I come in peace.”
Maybe he’s going to apologize.
Fat chance.
But wouldn’t it be nice to talk to someone?
Traitorous little voice. I squashed it like a bug and stood as Adrian stepped into place and adjusted his glasses, an unusually nervous gesture for him.
“Emma, I—”
“Are you here to apologize?” I cut him off, both because I was still angry about what he’d said and because I didn’t want him to soften me up before he knew that.
“Yes,” he said firmly, dropping his hand to his side and clenching it. It looked like determination, not anger, I thought, but his face was opaque. Stone. “I apologize, Emma. Unreservedly. I shouldn’t have questioned your judgment and I shouldn’t have lashed out at Misha just because I was—disappointed.” He said all but the last word in a big rush, like he had planned it for ages and just wanted to get it over with.
I took that in, tried to peek through his outwardly confident appearance to see if he meant it. “No, you shouldn’t have,” I agreed. “You were way out of line.”
“I was,” he said, and his eyes softened. His eyebrows furrowed in an expression I hadn’t seen on him before. It wasn’t sorrow or guilt, exactly, it was a sort of frustration. Almost helplessness. It looked strange on him. “That’s not who I want to be,” he said quietly. “I told you before. I don’t want to be like my—” He shook his head. “I don’t want to be someone who moves through the world like it owes him something. And that day in the library, I did. And I’m sorry.”
His voice was somber, but laced with barely-there nerves that I’m sure he hated showing. He means it. I sighed inwardly. Part of me was pleased, maybe even a little proud, that Adrian felt he could be vulnerable with me in a way he didn’t seem to with anyone else. People need that.
But that feeling came attached to a desire I wouldn’t fulfill, and he couldn’t separate them.
“Thank you,” I said finally. “Have you apologized to Misha?” I asked, knowing he hadn’t. Misha would have told me.
But Adrian surprised me. “I’ve tried,” he said, bringing his hand back up to run through his hair, the frustration clear on his face. “I have genuinely tried, Emma, but he’s been avoiding me.”
I bit my lip and glanced in the direction Misha would be coming from. “He’s been busy,” I said.
My dismay must have been more obvious than I intended, because when I set my eyes back on Adrian, his brows had furrowed. “Busy? How busy?” He asked, frowning. “Not that it’s my business,” he added dryly.
Ask him, one voice said. He could help if he wants to, and you know it. And he feels guilty. He’d do it.
That voice, the little tempting one that wanted to turn whatever I knew about a person into a weapon, I had gotten so good at resisting it over the years.
But that day, the anxious loneliness I had been feeling without Misha and the fear it might become a permanent state drowned out the part of me that usually kept me on the right side of my principles, just long enough for me to put my whole foot in my mouth.
“He’s trying to prove himself to his dad,” I blurted out and regretted it almost immediately as Adrian’s eyebrows lifted. I could see his mind running calculations in his head the way he always did. And as always, I couldn’t tell what it was adding up to and what he might guess. Too late now, the tempting voice said. Ask him. “He’s working really hard at it, with Elliott and Jacob and some others, and—and I wish he’d ask you to work with him, too,” I said with a boldness I didn’t feel.
Adrian’s face shut back down entirely at that comment. It didn’t go dark, or unhappy, it just went…empty. Neutral. “Work with him on what, exactly?” “Yes,” another voice came and I flushed with guilt. “On what, Emma?” Misha asked, stepping into place beside me and putting his arm around my waist.
Bonus Content:
Sigma Socials #SpringLoading
Author’s Note
B-Side Track: American Idiot the Musical – Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Adrian’s trying, he really is. He’s spent his whole life in a family that’s trained him to believe everyone around him is going to use him. You need a lot of ego and a lot of suspicion to live that way, and it’s hard for him to step outside of that calculating space.
Meanwhile, Emma did the thing. Yikes, Emma.
FUN FACT:
When Adrian broke off after saying he doesn’t want to be like “my—” he was talking about his mother.
If you were in Emma’s shoes, would you have asked Adrian for help?