No Pressure, Right?
RECOMMENDED TRACK: Muse – Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You
I was surprised when Misha invited me to the reception—happy, because it was a sort of outing I’d never experienced, and I would do it at his side. But surprised. An evening hobnobbing with a bunch of donor-class dads and grandfathers wasn’t his usual style.
He insisted on paying for a dress. I fought him on it, but finally gave in, because I hadn’t budgeted for it and I secretly didn’t want to embarrass him by looking…I don’t know. Not “cheap” in the way people mean it when they attach the word to a woman. But inexpensive. Insufficient.
First, we argued about the store. He wanted Bergdorf Goodman. I had been thinking JCPenney. We compromised on Nordstrom, with a set dollar limit.
We went, and we learned quickly that if we actually needed to buy clothes, we couldn’t shop for them together. Misha was a surprisingly adept shopper—he piled on dresses for me to try, some far more expensive than I was going to allow. I imposed a few suits on him, too. The problem was that it only took a few wardrobe changes before we were both more interested in taking the outfits off than trying them on.
So, a second excursion was planned. That time I went alone, and I sent him selfies of dresses I tried on. It was less fun, but much more productive.
He offered to pay for a blowout and even professional makeup if I wanted, but I insisted on doing those myself, as well as supplying my own accessories. (Okay, I borrowed a purse. It was Chloe’s most prized possession: a Saint-Laurent tassel clutch. I swore to name my firstborn child after her, male or female, if anything happened to it.)
By the night of the event, I still wasn’t entirely sure what Misha was up to—why this party, why it mattered—but I could tell that it did matter to him, very much.
No pressure, right?
Misha drove us there, even though it was all the way in the city in the Flatiron district. When we arrived, there were valets who opened the door and even a plush carpet—not red but gold, one of the fraternity’s colors—rolled out for arrivals.
That was already enough for me to feel fancy, to say nothing of the long elevator ride up to the top floor of the massive building. I glanced at the mirrored wall of the elevator car and tugged at my dress pointlessly. Misha dropped his arm from my waist to my hip and pulled me closer, kissing me on the temple. “You are perfect,” he declared.
“I sure hope so,” I muttered as the elevator doors opened. I had to grip Misha’s arm tighter so I wouldn’t gape. The venue was a sort of outdoors that was indoors, a stunningly cultivated interior garden of real and fake plants that made it look like a speakeasy in a fairy kingdom. Misha grinned as I drank in every inch of it, guiding me gently to the coat check.
I shrugged off my coat and brushed down the dress we had finally agreed on. It was a black bustier dress with a long layer of sheer floral lace over it, making it both short-and-tight and modest at once. I hadn’t worn a dress this expensive since my senior prom. Maybe not even then. But Misha liked it, so I wasn’t worried about the look, despite my fidgeting.
I was more worried about the people. Billionaires and politicians were outside my comfort zone. They were outside my comfort galaxy.
We made our way through the crowd to the bar, where we saw Monty—Travis. He and I got along well; he was Misha’s closest friend in the fraternity. He took people as they came, never questioning the subtle change in Misha’s performance or my presence. It was easy to be drawn in by his carefree nature. Even if he kept calling me…
“Tinkerbell!” He waved his glass in my direction. “Welcome to the party.” He said it like the party wasn’t just this party, but a whole world of parties, which I guess it was, in a way.
“Thanks, Lost Boy,” I countered as Misha ordered our drinks—vodka, neat for him, and a Manhattan for me. “Who’d you bring?”
Travis rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Becka Phillips,” he said. I had no idea who that was, but he shot Misha a meaningful look. “She’s already run off to the bathroom with a gaggle of other girls.” He took a mournful sip of his bourbon and looked at me, a quick once-over head to toe, but without heat. “You gonna join them? They loooove sizing each other up at these things.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I know any of them,” I said, looking up at Misha, who shrugged.
“Probably not,” he agreed. “Deltas.” Delta Psi Mu was one of the larger sororities on campus, with equal reputations for philanthropy and frivolity. I actually did know a couple of them through Vi, whose sister had been a member. But it was a large chapter.
So I stuck with Misha and Travis, and we chatted long enough that Becka returned. She greeted me excitedly, even warmly, and although I had the sense that she was the sort of person who embraced everyone that way, it set me more at ease.
Until I saw Adrian from across the room.
He had entered wearing an impeccably tailored suit and a gorgeous woman on his arm, dressed in a cream gown elegantly encrusted in an ornate bead design, with dark, perfectly-styled hair. It didn’t bother me, exactly…but it made me reconsider the dress budget I’d enforced, if I’m being completely honest.
But the real problem was that Adrian was looking straight at me. And although I’d mostly avoided him, other than his occasional visits to the store, I knew he was not a person who showed that kind of surprise easily. I flushed and looked away from his gaze. Misha noticed and glanced in his direction, stiffening.
By the time I looked out of the corner of my eye, Adrian had collected himself and was escorting the woman to introduce her to some of the alumni who had arranged themselves across couches that lined the wall.
I still struggled with the idea that Adrian might be interested in me like that. When he’d appeared at Classic Vinyl a few days after Misha and I had made up, it hadn’t felt opportunistic. It had felt…genuine. Like he was checking on a friend.
But the reaction I’d just seen said something else.
Misha hugged me closer with a sigh. “I thought Jacob would tell him,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “I should not have assumed.”
There was no helping it, though. We kept our distance, which wasn’t difficult because he was doing the same.
I couldn’t think about Adrian for long, though. As we made the rounds for the cocktail hour, a few of the alumni took the time to introduce themselves to Misha. The first of them was a man I actually recognized as having run for senate a couple of years before, and I was a little tongue-tied—enough that Misha started rubbing a gentle circle on my lower back.
They were talking about the state of Russia’s economy, and Misha spoke to it with ease. It occurred to me that I had never asked him much about his studies, probably because he never talked about them. But as he stood there chatting about economic sanctions and Russia’s pivot to Asian markets, I resolved to do just that. He obviously was picking up a lot more than he let anyone at school think, and I wanted to explore every version of Misha I could get my hands on. So to speak.
He must have sensed my distraction because with a squeeze of my waist, he began to steer the conversation towards books and movies. He traded titles with the aide and me until we found common ground. As soon as I was on familiar territory, I thawed. By the time the politician left to chat up some other members of the Sigma illuminati, I felt steady on my feet.
“Hey,” I said, tugging his face down to mine so I could kiss him on the cheek.
“I am not complaining, but…what was that for?” he asked.
“For letting me see how smart you are,” I replied, and he blinked in surprise. “And for giving me the chance to talk about Wicked with a gay Republican.”
I watched him hold court with two more old men who approached us with their wives and felt both a warm pride and a cool anxiety. He was still every bit himself with these people, charming and a little self-effacing in an impish way, making them laugh effortlessly like he would with anyone. But it was laced with a new undercurrent of intent, a little more restraint. It wasn’t a new Misha, just a new dimension, and it was interesting to see.
The anxious part came from the realization that these people wanted to talk to him not because of his obvious charm, but because of his last name. They invariably asked about his father and if he hadn’t still had his hand on my back, I wouldn’t have felt his thumb press my skin just slightly every time they did.
He didn’t talk about his father much with me, but I knew enough to know he was a big deal in the business world. That night was my first sense of how important, and how long a shadow the man cast over Misha’s life.
Dinner was called, and we were seated with Travis and Becka, which was a relief. The president of the greater Sigma Theta Rho organization gave a speech that was mostly tedious, with a few jokes that had clearly been inserted after the fact, like some gen-Z intern was brought in to punch it up. But it was well-meant and brief.
After dinner, the space transformed from cocktail networking into two different parties. The dinner tables were moved into one half of the room for anyone who wanted to keep chatting, as nearly all of the alumni and their partners did. The other half of the room became a dance floor, and a DJ began a strange assortment of tracks, flipping back and forth between the most Boomer-friendly modern hits and the least-cringey classics. Misha, Travis, Becka, and I laughed at the whiplash and took to the floor.
Misha is a much better dancer than me, but he didn’t seem to care that my moves hadn’t matured much past the sort of bopping and wiggling that I’d gotten away with in high school. He guided me along with swiveling, almost liquid hip movements, turning me in the occasional spin. Most of the other partiers looked closer to my skill level, thankfully, and I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would.
After a few loud, pumping tracks had us out of breath and sweaty, Becka declared it time to take a selfie. I groaned and tried to pat my hair down quickly while Misha pulled me tight into the frame. I smiled for the camera, then felt his lips brush my cheek as Becka took a half-dozen rapid-fire shots. She tapped a few buttons, ending with a flourish that told me the image was now enshrined on her Instagram. She winked at us as the music slowed to a more intimate thump, then shoved Travis further onto the floor and draped herself over him.
Misha took my hand in his and put the other on my waist and we began to sway together as I came to a minor epiphany. “That photo was your whole goal tonight, wasn’t it?” I said, twining my arms around his neck as he leaned down to hear me.
He gave a sharp laugh. “You are too smart, korolevochka,” he complained, then softened. “I can’t get anything past you for long.”
“I hope you never need to,” I quipped, pressing my lips to his. But I was thinking again about the important men who had been so eager to court him, the smooth way he’d handled them that spoke of experience but felt a bit insincere. The eager, fawning questions about his father that he rarely spoke of.
I lay my head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat, imagining the nerves as a soccer ball and mentally kicking it away. I’d learned my lesson about waiting too long to ask uncomfortable things, but it could wait one night. For that moment on the dance floor, he was all mine no matter how many other people wanted something from him, and I wanted to savor it.
Bonus Content:
Reception Scrapbook
Author’s Note
B-side Track: Panic! At the Disco – Emperor’s New Clothes
See what Misha did there? He’s a smart boy when he wants to be. 😏
FUN FACT:
The dress I picture Emma wearing is actually something like this, but with the midriff covered under the lace and a pink underskirt that goes with Misha’s suit seen in Emma’s scrapbooked invitation. I’ve never found an exact match for his suit in the scrapbook, which came from stock photography, but to be totally honest? I think he’d pick something with a little zazz, like one of Tom Ford’s more interesting pieces. Maybe this? (Y’all, you would not believe how much time I spend on my CBU kids’ clothes.)
But…now Emma senses something amiss when it comes to Misha’s dad. Uh-oh! What do you think it is?