"Dimitri," Rose said, with a puzzled and angry look on her face, holding my wallet up, cards fanned out on top of it, "why does your St. Vladimir's school ID card say it's for this year?"

My mouth hung open. I had no idea how to respond to this. It had caught me completely off guard. Why didn't I think of the fact that Rose would see my card before asking her to look through my wallet?

"Dimitri, are you a student? A high school student?!" The outrage on Rose's face was clear. Nothing could mar her beautiful face, but her nostrils flared and her face seemed to redden with anger. The fire in her eyes told me all that I needed to know about how she was feeling right now. I didn't know how to respond.

"I was going to tell yo-" I began.

Rose cut in, "Are you even of age? Are you a minor?" Her voice rose as her anger became greater.

"I -" I began again, but she continued to cut me off.

"Oh my god, you're a child - aren't you? And what does that make me? I'm a fucking child molester!" Rose closed her eyes in disgust, pinching the bridge of her nose.

I needed a way to salvage this. I needed a way to break through to her. I couldn't lose her. Not now. Rose was the love of my life and we'd only just found each other. "You're not -" I tried again.

She looked up at me. "Don't try to sugarcoat this, Dimitri! Why the hell did you need to lie to me if it wasn't true?"

"Because I -"

"Christian! Ugh! He knew, didn't he?" She fumed, "And Adrian, too! Or Jill! Oh. My. FUCKING. God! Jill! YOU - you're that 'really, really tall, muscular guy with a cool accent at school' she was going out with last year - the one she just couldn't stop talking about for a couple of weeks before she met her boyfriend! That's why you recognized her name!"

"They kept it a sec-" I began, not entirely sure what I was going to say or where I was going with that statement. I was floundering. But inevitably, it didn't matter where I was going, because she interrupted again.

"This is why you visit your dad every weekend! Not out of some duty-bound familial obligation, or because you need him to pay for college, but because it's court-mandated until you turn eighteen!"

"It was only -" I started again. I had to at least try to let her know that I'm eighteen. I just visit because I need him to pay for my tuition at St. Vladimir's and college. But she kept keeping me from explaining.

Rose's eyes filled with startled horror as she blurted out, "And I just took your virginity! Your - your - your ... innocence! From a child! And that's why you recovered so quickly - like a teenager - after you blew your load the first time, too! Because you are a teenager! Ugh, I feel so dirty! I need to go scrub away all the filth I feel right now!" Rose clenched her shoulders as if she had chills running up and down her spine, making a face as though she smelled a really bad smell or stepped in something dirty.

"Roza, wait, I can explain." I kept trying, but she tossed my sweatshirt at me and was already headed for the door. I followed her down the stairs as she took them two at a time, in a hurry to leave.

"Oh, you're good, high school boy! Don't you 'Roza' me! Was this all just a game to you? To try to see if you can get an experienced, adult woman to take your virginity? Did you make a bet with your pervert friend Ivan? Is that what the bet with your arms was all about? That you didn't get me to fuck you yet!? Is that what happened when you didn't have sex with me after Twister? Because you lost your nerve about losing your cherry to an adult woman you barely knew, that you didn't give a shit about?" She continued in a huff as she tried to put on her shoes while not taking her eyes off of me. I definitely got the feeling the reason she kept looking was because she didn't trust me and not because she wanted to see me.

This was going badly. I don't know if I could ask for worse. She was literally misconstruing everything that happened, in the worst possible way.

Rose gasped in shock as she added, "Oh my god, was that what the viagra was for? To try to get me to 'fulfill your needs'?" Rose scoffed and then said, "I thought you were different! But I was wrong; you're just like Jesse! I am almost willing to bet that the reason you and Jill broke up is because she wouldn't put out for you, too!"

I wanted to respond, but her statement had caught me off guard. I always thought I had more respect for women than that, but now she was lumping me in with the likes of Jesse Zeklos.

Rose opened the door to see Lissa standing there, fist extended as though she was just about to knock.

"Rose!" Lissa said, "I wasn't expecting you to be down here so fast."

"Liss, I was just leaving," Rose said, "I need to go home and get away from perverted children."

"Wha -" Lissa sputtered as Rose pushed past her and out onto the porch, trying to slam the door behind her, even though I was holding it.

"Rose, wait!" I said.

Rose spun to face me "WHAT, Dimitri?" Rose asked, piercing me with her stare, "Do you have an explanation for this? A reason why you would have a current high school ID card, and you're not a high schooler?"

I frowned slightly. "Well, no, bu -"

Rose pulled the door from out of my grasp and said, "Then goodbye, Dimitri. I hope I never see you again."

She slammed the door in my face. I took a deep breath as I felt like the room was spinning. Still reeling, I found myself unable to stand any longer and I sat at the foot of the stairs. It wasn't like me to cry, but I felt tears welling in my eyes. The first tear trickled down my cheek. Then another. Then another.

My world was crashing down around me and I didn't know what to do. I had no one to blame but myself. I just lost the love of my life.

I don't even know how long I sat there. Seconds bled into minutes. I couldn't bring myself to do anything. Without Roza, my life had no meaning, and I would never have her again.

How did it all go so wrong? One moment, we were making love. I was confessing my love to her with my words and my body. Our souls were one.

The next moment, she was calling me a 'perverted child'. I clenched my fist at that thought. I was broken, but rage filled me. "FUCK!" I screamed out. In one breathtakingly fast movement, without time to reconsider, I punched the wall with all of my strength, leaving a fist-shaped hole. Randall would probably try to hit me for putting the hole in the wall, but right now, I didn't even care.

I looked down. My knuckles were bleeding. It was nothing I didn't deserve. I deserved so much more. How could I let myself lose her?

How could I be so stupid?

Why couldn't I tell her the truth?

How could I get so attached, to begin with, to someone so utterly unattainable? Why couldn't I just give her up before it got this serious? How could I let myself fall in love with her?

I knew that last question was easy to answer, though: Roza was perfect. There was nothing about her that there wasn't to love. There was no way I could know her without falling in love with her. As long as I lived, there would never be another woman like her.

But now she was gone. And she hoped she would never see me again.

-=o0/&\0o=-

I lost track of time as I sat on the stairs. I heard my stomach growl. I was hungry, but I didn't care. I should have gone home to Mama's house for the night, so that I could be in bed in time for an early morning at school tomorrow, but I didn't move from that spot.

A chime sounded. I dimly recognized that it was a text message on my cell phone. My phone; it was such an unimportant thing that I didn't even recall having put it in my pocket, but I must've done it out of habit when she handed it back to me before she put her own clothes back on. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and looked at it.

Please let this be Roza, I prayed, Please let it be her giving me a chance to explain...

I flipped the phone over and looked at the screen. It was a text message from Christian Ozera.

You really fucked up this one, Belikov. I told you that you needed to tell her.

Another text chimed in. I looked again.

Now she's not talking to either one of us.

I cringed and threw my phone across the room, shouting every good curse word I could think of. In the heat of the moment, I didn't care if my phone broke. If I needed to, I could probably buy another one for ten dollars off of Craigslist.

-=o0/&\0o=-

The next morning, I shut off my alarm. I didn't want to go through school today. If I was really honest, I didn't want to face another day at all.

My babushka always struck me as an odd cross between senile and clairvoyant, and I never knew which one I was going to get. She threw open my bedroom door without knocking or waiting, and unceremoniously walked in and slapped me in the face.

"Dimka," she told me, adding in heavily-accented English, "You need to go to school today."

"No, Babushka," I said, faking a cough, "I'm sick today."

"No, you're not," she replied, falling into Russian, "The only way to recover from what happened yesterday is to be there today."

I opened my eyes and stared at her in shock. Did she know?

Babushka yanked the blankets off of me. I was still wearing the same clothes I had come home in yesterday. The dried blood from my knuckles had crusted onto the blankets and flaked off when she pulled, making them bleed all over again.

"You need to live your own life, Dimka," she said, "All wounds heal in time."

"But I lost her," I said, "I don't want to."

"There's an old saying," Babushka said, still speaking in her more comfortable Russian, "If you love something, you should let it go. If it doesn't come back to you, it was never yours to begin with."

I think she butchered that one. I groaned and tried to pull the covers back over my head.

"Get dressed, Dimka. You don't want to be late." I groaned again and rolled out of bed, slowly forcing myself to keep moving forward, even if it was the last thing I wanted to do.

"Oh, and Dimka?" Babushka said, "She will return to you."