ANGELIC KISS (ENG)

— Oh, my head hurts… — Mariam groaned early in the morning, pressed against the very edge between Elvin and the wall. 

— Mm… — Elvin sniffled. — I really don’t want to get up… Why did I wake up so early again… 

— I do want to, though, — Mariam teased, tugging at his hair. — Alright, I’ll lie down with Emi for a bit. I don’t like that she’s alone… 

Mariam moved over to the next bed, placed her hand on Emi’s cheek, and fell asleep with only one thought: 

“I actually like sleeping with her more… It’s so warm, so soft, even though Emi is so skinny.” 

Only around noon did all three of them finally wake up. 

— We’re going, Elvin, — Mariam said goodbye, pulling on yesterday’s shirt. — I kind of want to go home already. Bye. 

— So soon? — Elvin was surprised. — We were going to go somewhere for breakfast. 

— No, it’s fine… we can have breakfast at home. And don’t go to cafes, go to the shop, save money, otherwise you’ll run out of money and have to fly back. You know how frustrating that would be! 

Mariam and Emi left Elvin’s place and walked in silence toward home. The narrow streets were flooded with bright sunlight, and near the Clock Tower a crowd of tourists had gathered — some kind of guided tour. Some people stood with cameras, others were posing, and they had completely blocked the narrow road. 

— God, they’re so annoying! — Mariam broke the silence. — You can’t even walk through here! 

— Um… don’t you think I was kind of a third wheel? — Emi hesitated, not finding a better moment. — I feel really awkward about it… 

— Why would you think that? — Mariam replied in confusion. 

— It’s just that… mostly you two were talking, and I didn’t know where to even fit in… 

— We didn’t mean to hurt you… — Mariam said in a soft, caring voice. — I just like him. But that doesn’t mean I value you any less. You’re still my best friend, Emi! 

They stopped, and Mariam hugged Emi tightly. Emi, wanting to feel her warmth as long as possible, hugged her back just as tightly. They stood like that for about a minute near the intersection, occasionally bumping into passersby. 

Emi kept stumbling through her thoughts: 

“I love her! I’ve loved her almost from the very first moment I saw her! I always understood that Mariam would never return my feelings, no matter how warm and gentle she is, but it was enough just to be near her, just to be her best… And now?.. I knew it — sooner or later someone like Elvin would appear, wrapping around her like a snake. Does that mean it’s all over now? Does that mean I’m really only third? No, how awful I am, why am I even thinking like this? Is she my possession? Is she supposed to belong to me forever and suffer from a lack of love? I don’t want her to suffer! I just want her to be happy… and me, preferably with her. Damn, I think I’m starting to love her even more! Why am I so fixated on that image of them on the same bed, clinging to each other? Why do I keep replaying it so clearly in my head? And why does it hurt so much..? What if she leaves me and goes to live with him? Or what if we all live together? Could our sweet shared life, belonging only to the two of them, really end so quickly?..” 

As they passed a tall golden statue, Emi’s phone rang. “Mom?” 

— Hello, — Emi said, stopping for a moment. 

— Sweetheart, how are you? Come visit us today! We haven’t seen you since you went to stay with your friend. We’re having a celebration today, we’ll set the table. Your father will call you a taxi. Will you come? At least come see your brothers — you haven’t been here for three months and they’ve grown so much! The little one is already crawling! 

— Okay, I’ll come, — Emi replied without much hesitation. 

— Just don’t get confused, okay, make sure you remember where we live! Your father will send you the address! When you left, we immediately moved to a village, bought a small house, about eighty kilometers from here. Your father said: “Since I work freelance anyway, we’ve already spent our whole lives in cities, I want nature!” And I said: “Alright, fine,” but now I’ve started to regret it. It’s boring! Maybe if we had stayed there, you would visit us more often… 

Emi said goodbye and hung up. 

— Your mom called? — Mariam asked. — Are you going to your family? 

— Yeah… I’ll stay with them for a bit. I really haven’t been there even once all autumn. 

— Well then, good luck! You’re leaving from the square, right? 

They went their separate ways, and Emi got into a taxi. 

— Where are you headed, pretty girl? — the old bearded driver asked, smelling of alcohol. — That’s quite far away. 

— To my parents, — Emi replied nervously. 

— Ah, I see. Your parents must love you a lot! Daughters should always be loved. I spoiled my daughter so much, pampered her all the time! She still doesn’t even know what unhappiness or suffering is — she doesn’t even know those words, I swear to God. Your parents are foreigners, right? 

Emi nodded awkwardly. 

The driver stopped and parked the car in the dirt, and Emi saw a small house, modern in style. It was elongated, one-story, rectangular, built from dark brown plastic imitating wood. Next to it stood a small gazebo with a cheap, wobbly plastic table. The rest of the space, except for a narrow path from the road, was overgrown with tall dry weeds. 

Emi knocked and entered the house. Her mother hugged her tightly and kissed her on the cheek. Her father tried to lift her up as if she were still a child, repeating: “Wow, you’ve grown so much!” 

Her mother was moving back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, carrying different dishes: salads, meat, lemonades, trying to fit everything in her arms at once. At the doorway stood her five-year-old brother, asking Emi, “Why did you leave?”, and nearby the second one was crawling around — he was only six months old. On the carpet lay a white, slightly yellowed small poodle. “We got a puppy!” her mother said and began stroking it, while it didn’t even open its eyes. 

The family sat down at the table in the living room. Her mother kept firing questions one after another: “How is Mariam? How are the landlords? What do you eat? Where do you go? Do you have enough money?” Her father, chuckling, asked: “So when are you going to find a man? Then you can come back to us, we’ll clear a plot of land and build a new house.” He turned on the TV: “Again some news, boring,” and immediately turned it off. “Let’s have champagne!” he suggested. “Emi, I don’t want to hear news from some reporter in a pressed shirt. I want news from you. Tell me something about your studies, maybe you’ve got some new interesting projects. When we lived in that apartment, you used to love all that, and now?” 

— Yes, I like everything. I recently looked for a part-time job as a bureau assistant, I hope I’ll manage to get hired next year, I just don’t have enough knowledge yet this year. But it’s okay, the main thing is I’m studying. 

— Well yes, knowledge is always good! — her father praised her. — Listen, do you happen to have any suitors in your college, or whatever you call it, university? Do you like someone at all? Are you already planning a family? Or maybe, if not yet, you can at least imagine: “Here I am walking in a wedding dress, a luxurious limousine nearby, everyone giving me flowers, la-la-la, all that,” right? At what age? You know what a celebration that would be for me, first and foremost. 

— No, I don’t have any suitors and I don’t like anyone. 

— Ah! I think I get it! You’re living with that friend of yours. Maybe you like girls? Maybe she likes you? There’s nothing wrong with that, you know, in my youth I actually liked boys. I had so many, oh… And then when I met my wife I thought: “That’s it, I don’t need that anymore. I’ve played around and that’s enough.” I just wanted a normal family, basically. 

— Vanya, stop it! — her mother interrupted. 

— I don’t know, — Emi replied. — Maybe. 

At that time only Emi’s father was drunk. He kept telling some kind of story like “a Russian, a German, and a Pole,” pulled old photos of Emi out of a drawer, and started laying them out on the table. 

— Here you are so small. Here we were walking you to kindergarten. Here you are standing with a squirrel in the zoo, so funny. It all feels like it was just recently, and then I sit and think: nineteen years! Nineteen years, unbelievable how it’s passed! And I’m already, you see, almost gray, — her father leaned down and shook his hair. — But I’m so happy that my daughter grew up well, became a specialist! 

— Mom, dad, okay, I probably have to go… — Emi cut through the moment of happiness. 

— And where to, it’s only seven in the evening! — her father suddenly frowned and, disappointed, ordered a car for her. 

— You still come visit us! — her mother said goodbye and escorted her to the door. 

Mariam was sitting at home alone. “It’s kind of boring without Mariam,” she thought. “Maybe go to Elvin again? No, I’m tired of that. Or—ah! Even though it’s not my shift, maybe I should go to work? I could help Sophie.” 

Mariam quickly threw on a dress and headed to Marjanishvili, where her shop was located. The market was small, but spacious. The interior was quite unusual: light-gray unfinished walls, rounded ceiling vaults supported by thin columns, clothes racks placed along the perimeter, and a cashier counter in the center. Around the edges stood tall decorative palm trees. By the window near the very top, which you had to stretch to reach, there was a record player and a couple of vinyl records. 

— Mariam? — Sophie was surprised. — Hey! Did you just come to visit me? 

— Yeah, maybe I can help with something. 

Sophie heard someone persistently knocking from upstairs. 

— What do they even want? It’s open, isn’t it? Mariam, can you go check? I’ll count the expenses. 

— OK, — Mariam replied and went up the steps from the basement area. — Damn, boxes again! I really don’t want to carry and unload all this! 

— Don’t complain, — Sophie shouted from below. — You’re strong! Come on, because if I do it, I’ll just collapse completely. Alright, I’m coming to help in a minute! 

— Oh my God, did we even order this crap? — Mariam laughed, pulling out of one of the boxes a plain black hoodie with a print of eyes with long lashes and a big cigarette sticking out of small lips. — We’re supposed to be a designer store, not a junk outlet! Who even… either you or me, what were we thinking?! Anyway, as they say, to each their own… 

— Don’t even start, designers came up with this stuff… — Sophie laughed back. — Oh, look at this sweater, it’s so cool, this beige one with stripes! 

Mariam shifted her gaze. 

— The silhouette is really interesting, — Sophie continued. — And there’s something written on it in Japanese? Is that anime? I like the texture, I’d wear it myself. 

— I like it too… but it’s not really my thing, even though it’s stylish. 

— By the way, we need new models for all this stuff. Who should we call, do you think? 

— Elvin. 

— Yeah, that’s exactly what I expected. Who’s the best designer? Elvin. Who’s the best model? Elvin. Of course, it’s all that simple, — Sophie smirked. 

— And who would you pick: a guy or a girl? Among guys, he’s the most handsome one I know. 

— Doesn’t matter at all. 

— Then we’ve figured out who to call! 

At around nine o’clock, Emi returned home. She slipped past the hallway and quickly headed for the stairs, trying not to run into Vakhtang. She unlocked the door to the upper floor and entered the room, instinctively saying “Hi,” but there was no answer. 

“Strange, Sophie was supposed to be working today,” Emi worried. “Did she already leave me?” 

Emi began wandering aimlessly around the room, as if searching with her eyes for where Mariam might be hiding. She was about to call her when she noticed a small piece of paper on the floor near the window, almost slipped into a narrow gap between the wall and the outside world. On it, in broad, hurried handwriting, it said: 

“I’m at work. I’ll be back at 9:40. Don’t get bored! 

Mariam” 

Emi exhaled and sat down on the mattress. Thoughts rushed through her mind: 

“I have to confess my love to her. Today. But why? She doesn’t love me anyway and she won’t, because she’s not into girls. I’ll just ruin everything! But why am I lying to her and to myself, pretending we’re just friends, just living together—nothing serious? She won’t despise me, right? And if she does? What will I do if we break apart? No, I don’t want to lose her, not even to death! I wonder… does she value me the same way, even though she doesn’t want me?” 

“If Mariam and I ever separate, I’ll go back to my parents,” she concluded coldly. “But… back to my parents? I just left them! And now going back, saying I was disappointed—what a disgrace. Although… they would still accept me. And university? How will I attend classes? What about architecture, the thing I’ve been striving toward since childhood? And what will I even do in a village?” 

Emi sat down at the table, took a sheet of paper, and began writing: 

“Dear Mariam, 

I want you to know…” 

She decided to put her confession on paper, hide it, and secretly slip it somewhere when she left the house. “I can’t express it face to face—I’ll get overwhelmed, I’ll fall apart,” she thought, and began searching for the right words. She sat, turning restlessly, but nothing came to her mind; crumpled sheets one after another were thrown into the trash. 

Suddenly, from the kitchen came Vakhtang’s voice—he was speaking with appetite, smacking his lips. Tamara usually served dinner around half past nine or a little later. 

“And that means…” Emi remembered that note, and suddenly the key turned sharply in the lock. 

Mariam ran up to Emi, grabbed her from behind, and started hugging her. 

— Hi! How are you? 

— Hi… I’m fine… I was at my parents’, you know, — Emi replied, slightly flustered, without going into too much detail. 

— Maybe I should also go see my grandfather and make peace with him, — Mariam said jokingly, as if it were just a passing thought. 

Mariam began to remember: 

“I was five. I never had a father and I didn’t even know him, and my mother found some German rich guy and ran off with him to Berlin. She wrote that she no longer wanted to be my mother and was giving up her parental rights. My grandfather took me in, and I spent my entire childhood with him—until I was twenty—just the two of us. We got along fairly well. He was quiet, reserved, forgiving; he almost never scolded me. Three and a half years ago, I ran away from him and moved to Tbilisi to live with my ex. Of course, my grandfather didn’t allow it. I just took my guitar, a little spare change for transport, and left while he was working at the beehives. He kept calling me for a long time—first begging me to come back, and then he declared me a traitor to his family and lineage and said I was no longer his granddaughter. And I didn’t care about his words at all; my life in the village had become completely unbearable. And now I feel deep shame and regret. Since then, we haven’t spoken even once.” 

Emi knew this story and replied: 

— Well, it’s up to you. He’s a good man, and I think he’ll forgive you. 

— Why are you so sad? — Mariam asked, noticing that Emi was sitting with no expression on her face. — Did something happen? 

She didn’t even have time to answer when a shout came from downstairs— the owner yelling: 

— Mariam! Ami! Dinner! Vakhshami (Georg. — dinner)! Welcome! 

The girls went down to the kitchen: an old one, with cracked wallpaper, but thoroughly cleaned. 

Vakhtang was stuffing himself with baked chicken, biting off huge chunks of ripe persimmon, licking his lips so loudly it could be heard even from the street, and groaning with pleasure as he kept repeating: 

— Ah, persimmon! 

Tamara was sipping tea. A child stood in front of the television, gently dancing in place. 

Mariam and Emi started eating their portions, planning to go upstairs soon, when Vakhtang suddenly began again: 

— Ah, girls! How are you? University? Work? Sad aaris (Georg. — where have you been)? 

Mariam replied to him something quick and brief in Georgian, something like: “Everything’s fine, I was working, Emi was at her parents’.” After that, the conversation ended, and they all went their separate ways. 

A quiet night fell over the mountain, washing the dark street in a pale lunar light. Silence filled the room. It was cold, barely broken by the weak heater that hummed monotonously. 

Emi lay on the mattress in a strange position, her head turned toward the window. She kept tossing and turning, then finally turned over and said: 

— I love you, Mariam… more than a friend. 

Mariam looked at her silently with her deep black eyes, then took her hand and said: 

— I love you too. But I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you everything you want, my dear. I’m telling you honestly. You are my best friend, and I’m very happy that we’re lying here in this room together. I will never leave you. We will always be together, if that comforts you. You can sleep with me tonight—I’ll keep you warm.