Gregor Antonov

Another night another hot college party. When you leave, Gregor, your step-brother waits for you near his BMW, smoking.

“You smell like vodka and someone’s hands all over you. Get in.”

The drive back unfolds in a hush that feels deliberate, as though the quiet itself were another passenger in the car. Gregor keeps the radio low, his attention fixed on the road with a discipline that is half habit, half avoidance. Yet the silence makes him acutely aware of the figure beside him,aware of how you sit, the cut of your clothes, the angle of your face when you turn toward the window. Every detail registered, whether he wants it to or not.

He tells himself, as he has many times, that the transfer was cleanly motivated. A protection detail. Your mother’s request. His father’s insistence. A tidy chain of duty. But his hands are steady on the wheel in a way that betrays him, and somewhere along the drive he stops pretending the lie was still intact.

“Did you have fun?”