Svetlana in Olive Drab

She decided that she wanted his friendship and the way that it felt to her, it was already done. If Pete needed a friend at all in his largely self-sufficient life, then he had her.

Then she thought about beyond that and it came to her that he must like her a little. It didn't matter for now, she thought. To her, it looked a little as though they needed each other and that was good enough for her.

She cried a little more after that and then she fell asleep, unhappy to be in the bed she'd shared with Nikky and feeling the want of her sister's arms around her just one more time .

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Oh, Pete was dragging his ass today, he thought. Mostly, it was the maybe two hours of sleep that he'd gotten.

But he walked to his jeep at lunch time and he sent Natalia a text, feeling a little like a kid to do it.

He only made a suggestion about dinner that evening. He sipped a can of iced tea, and watched as the snow around him melted. If anything, he might have hoped to see a reply on his phone when he walked out that afternoon to head off and grocery shop.

But his phone chirped again and again about a minute later and he was a little amazed.

Natalia had been thinking about the same thing for dinner, so she was off to get the meat, wanting to marinate it for a while first. She did have a few things that he could pick up, she said, if he really wanted to.

And then she sent a freaking list.

Pete laughed his ass off.

He grabbed a pen and some paper and he transcribed the list for a hardcopy, not trusting his phone's ability to retain it all or more correctly maybe, his own ability to retrieve it. He felt better with paper anyway.

He sent her a text that he had to get back to work, but he thanked her for the list and said that he thought that he could get everything.

Natalia asked him to text her when he was on his way home after shopping so that she could meet him at the door of his home, since she knew where he lived now. He agreed and sent her one more text before he set his phone down.

He told her that the regular door to the garage with the window in it was unlocked and where to look in there to find the key to his home.

He walked back inside wondering what was the matter with him. He'd been a sorry bag of dirt as he'd dragged himself in that morning and he'd just driven himself pretty hard to make his quota of the parts that he'd been tasked with making.

Now he felt as fresh as a daisy.

He tried to remember that Natalia had seemed to be a little fragile the evening before and he could sure understand that. Even so, he was looking forward so much just to see her again.

That made him wonder if he ought to feel a little guilty.

It only lasted a minute or so before he remembered Maggie's words to him not to even think about elevating her to some stupid ideal which no other woman could ever hope to match.

"I've had you for more than thirty wonderful years," she'd smiled then, "A whole lot of people don't even get that much before something happens or it goes sour. If you find somebody, Petey, you just give it a try. I'm sure I'll be ok with whoever she might be. I just hope that she's smart enough to know her luck."

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Natalia felt at least a little like she was intruding as she pulled her car into the long drive and rolled slowly up to the house. To her, it looked neat and trim and very nice, the way that it sat in the shade of the many trees. Those trees were dropping tons of leaves, given the time of year, but it looked to her that a lot must have been cleared away before -- given the rate of fall and the number of trees, she thought. Without staying on top of it, one could find one's front door a little hard to get into at some point.

She sat looking around as her car idled and she felt a little nervous, but she finally shut it off and got out to look for the key that Pete had told her about. The door was open just as he'd said in his text and she found the key in it's hiding place with no trouble. She also saw the many snow shovels, some hung up and some others leaning near the roll-up doors. As she turned around to go to the house, she saw the motorcycle there.

She couldn't help herself, she had to walk closer to get a better look, since the only light came from the open door and she didn't want to find the switch for the overhead lighting. It was the first time that she'd ever gotten this close to a motorcycle like this one and she stared at it a little before she re-traced her steps and walked out, closing the door.

She wondered a little about him now. He didn't look like the badass type, but then the ones that she'd seen here didn't look much like the ones back home either. Most of the bikes there looked far older, and most of the ones here looked far newer. It was rare to even see a ratty one here, whereas back home, ...

Natalia unlocked the side door and walked inside. She found herself on a landing -- halfway between the main floor and the finished basement. She turned around and leaving the door open but closing the storm door, she went back out to her car to retrieve the things that she'd brought; the meat, the ingredients for the marinade as well as a few vegetables. Coming back inside, she closed the door and removed her shoes to bring her things into the kitchen.

With hardly a look around, she placed everything on the kitchen table and selected what needed to be refrigerated. Those things went into the fridge and then she looked around, telling herself that it was not polite to snoop.

With the obligatory declaration to herself out of the way, she heard the quiet ticking and looked up at the clock on the wall. She had time, so she slowly walked through the house.

What she saw was a neatly kept home which bore the slowly fading touch of a woman. To her it seemed that Pete was living in a place where there had been a lot of love for a very long time between two people and with one of them now gone, he didn't know what to do with it.

It looked as though it had been kept up and cleaned on a regular basis, but somehow, it seemed to be a rather reluctant shrine to the missing individual. She wondered about that and decided that it would have been the way that something such as this might go -- as though he was living inside of a snapshot which was only just beginning to show a little age.

It was a nice home, she decided. She had no idea who this Maggie might have been, but from the feelings that she got as she walked through, it seemed to her that under much different circumstances, she might have found a friend in the woman, though that was difficult to be able to surmise, obviously.

Natalia suddenly had a desire to find a picture of Maggie. It didn't take long.

She found several here and there, framed and hanging, or just sitting out on a shelf in frames. They mostly revealed a pair of people in love over many years and the backgrounds gave Natalia the notion that they'd been taken on vacations.

Maggie had been a lovely girl with long brown hair who'd grown into a lovely woman, and it was so plain to see that there was a bit of a fairy-tale component to it when one looked at it from outside of the relationship. They'd met very young, fell head over heels for each other and then went on as a couple.

Fast-forwarding to the present, or the recent past almost brought a tear to Natalia.

Fairy-tale romances don't happen to very many people, the way that she saw it, and looking at this one, she saw that the magic enchantment of it could only hold it together for so long. Humans are mortal creatures. All things pass.

That thought really did bring Natalia a tear, both for Pete and the woman that he'd loved and for herself. Her fairy-tale had been pretty brief. Reality had set in fairly early and after that, it had all been about Nikky.

She had just stuck her head in through the doorway into the master bedroom, wanting to check just one thing, and what she saw caused her to smile a little.

He'd made the bed.

So that meant that to Natalia, she could now place him into the 'non-bear' category in her head. It wasn't a big deal anyway; it was just a detail to the layers of his onion, so to speak.

But then, she realized that there was an en-suite bathroom adjoining the bedroom and, ... well, she was a woman, so, ...

She saw that he'd had a shower that morning. The only way that she knew was because the tile spray bottle sat on the edge of the tub. She picked it up and cautiously opened the cupboard doors beneath the sink.

Nothing jumped out at her and nothing tumbled out either. There was no mess of things casually thrown in there at some point. She even saw the place where the bottle normally resided, so she put it there and closed the cupboard door.

Other than that, all that she saw was his razor on the edge of the backsplash. She left it there.

Natalia turned out the light and walked out with a little smile. She walked back downstairs and prepared to get to work.

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When he got into his jeep at the end of the day, Pete picked up his phone. He was a little hopeful, but he didn't really expect to find anything.

There was a text there, sent only minutes before. He pressed the button which would allow him to read it.

"There are 7 more snow shovels in your garage! I thought that you were joking. Do you have to get them neutered here or something?"

He was still chuckling over it when he walked into the supermarket.

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He found her car there in his driveway. He wondered as he parked his jeep just how he felt about that.

Fine, he decided

He noticed the inside of his home smelling absolutely wonderful, the air carrying the aroma of some sort of food. He realized that it hadn't smelled this good to him since, ...

Then he found Natalia in his kitchen, laughing and looking so happy as she handed him a cup of instant coffee.

He thought that the sight of her there like that was worth a million bucks and then he was a little surprised at himself over the thought. Well, he'd only just met her not even twenty-four hours earlier.

She looked awesome to him in her jeans and she was wearing what he first took to be a tie-dyed T-shirt, but then he got his head screwed on a little straighter and he noticed that it was silk. She kept looking better to him every time that he saw her and he said that, though he could tell that he'd almost made her blush.

He wasn't checking her out too visibly, but he did see that she had rather small breasts and he really liked that about her, not that he was a hound or anything. There was a bit of method to his madness.

She was taller than Maggie had been, and she was a lot more lithe in her build. Maggie had always worn her hair long and straight where Natalia's was shorter. And Natalia's hair wasn't chestnut brown, and Natalia's eyes were gray and not hazel. Maggie had always had those tits of hers as well.

All told, Pete loved the way that Natalia looked. As much as he'd loved Maggie and loved her memory still, the last thing that he wanted -- in even a female friend -- was someone who would remind him of a memory which was still surprisingly raw to him.

They sat at his table and drank their coffee and he saw that there was still something slightly fragile in her look, but her expression said to him that she was doing her best to enjoy this time, as though she had something to do at the moment that she wanted to hang onto in order to not have to consider the other things which she couldn't get away from. He did his best to help her in that.

The meal was just a goulash, as he'd requested. The only thing that he'd mentioned about it was that he couldn't take the really fiery kind, and she'd answered that she couldn't either.

What they made and ate a little later was incredible and he liked it her way best of all.

As they washed the dishes, Pete was trying to figure out a way to get her to open up about the financial effects of what had happened without the risk of it peeling away the newly-formed scabs which must be there on her poor heart. It wasn't any of his business, but he cared enough to be concerned.

He couldn't think of a way at first. Natalia looked as though she was actually having a bit of fun and enjoying herself at the same time. He didn't dare to broach the topic.

But as they joked and got to know each other better in the kitchen, it was Natalia who brought it up in the most astounding way to him. One minute, they were laughing and then she suddenly grew still and quietly said, "I do not know what to do. Nikky and I split the cost of the bills. She paid for the mortgage and I paid for the food. I do not earn enough money to even keep everything together."

"Did you buy the property together?" he asked.

When she nodded, he said, "Then you were probably there at some point with her when you both got the mortgage. Is that how it happened?"

Natalia nodded, "Yes. I have never signed my name so many times in my life. Why?"

He held up his hand, "Just wait a second. I need to find something out. Was this at a bank, and was it one of the ones around here?"

"Yes," she said, mentioning the name, "but --"

"There must have been mortgage insurance. Most banks don't want to give anyone a mortgage without that insurance."

She nodded, "I think so, because Nikky and the woman at the bank had to explain what it was to me, but I didn't understand, really. I meant to ask Nikky later but I forgot."

He said, "Sometime very soon, I'd like you to find that mountain of papers that you took home when you both bought the house. I just want to see the ones relating to the mortgage insurance. It's a hell of a thing to get through to buy a house -- which is why most people use realty lawyers to get through the swamp of it for them."

He wasn't sure right then, but he knew what he felt like doing, so he put his arm around her shoulder, "If you and your sister bought mortgage insurance, then at least one of your worries is over. The mortgage was paid off the second that this all happened. That might not get you out of the woods, but you won't have to worry about the mortgage payments. You just have to notify the bank. I'll help you, Natalia. Next week, I work during the afternoon and evening. I'll have lots of time if you want a little help."

She thought about it for a moment and then she turned toward him, reached up to hold him and she kissed him very softly for just a moment. "This is the worst time of my life for me, and then it snows early on a dark day and I meet you. Thank you."

She hung onto him as she lowered her head and as he watched her eyes close, he saw the tears begin their slide over her cheeks. His arms went to hold her and she laid her cheek against him.

"I don't think that there's any way that a person could prepare for what happened," he said quietly, "You've only been here less than a year and the worst thing has happened to you. I knew what was coming after a while, at least. I had a chance to prepare myself."

He reached up and touched the back of her head, caressing her soft hair for a moment. His own darkness seemed like nothing much to him with her in his arms. It was only a background constant to him now; something that he was already long used to.

After a minute or two, he said, "If you want to go home, I can take you, Natalia I never wanted to make you feel badly."

She shook her head a little and then she looked up, "Please, no. It is not you. I think that I only need a minute. And I like it when you hold me. It makes me feel like I am not alone. At home, I am alone, I have worries and I do not know how to solve them."

He nodded and then he kissed her, "I think that I'm beginning to need to hold you too. I don't feel alone then either. If I had any choice, you know that I'd want to make time go backward so that you could have made Nikky stay home that one day."

He sighed sadly," But I can't."

She nodded, and it shook another pair of her tears loose. "Then please do this for me," she said as she laid her head against his shoulder again, "And it is enough because it must be."

They stood like that for a long time; the only sounds in the room were her slow and diminishing sobs and the ticking of the battery-powered clock on the kitchen wall.

When she felt a bit better, Natalia lifted her head and looked up into his eyes. Neither of them spoke because they didn't need to. Pete slowly leaned down and he kissed Natalia in a gentle and very slow way.

She groaned softly after a moment and he thought that he'd probably done the wrong thing, but before he could withdraw, he felt her kissing him back, just as slowly and carefully. It went on for many minutes before he felt her tongue pressing so gently against his lips and he opened his mouth a little to allow it in.

There wasn't much of any passion to it, though it spoke to both of them of their needs, the more subtle one more than the probably obvious one. They both knew what was there, but they wanted to signal their acceptance as well.

When they pulled back to look at each other, Natalia found that she could smile at least a little again and Pete felt really lucky to be holding somebody like her.

"I have been wondering how to say something to you," she said, "and I still do not know the way to do it, but I wish to say that you are so, ... you look so good to me."

Her smile widened then, "And there is a part of it which I cannot understand at all. I think that it must be because I am older. When I was young, I used to think that I liked long hair on a man best of all, as long as it was clean and looked good."

Pete smirked a little, "I'm sorry, but you missed the best years of me then. I haven't had hair like that for a long time. I got fed up with the way that it used to stick out of my helmet at the back and get hopelessly tangled by the wind."

She shook her head a little, "I do not think that I missed the best part. You had someone for your wife and I wanted no one. But I like this with you so much now. And most of all I do not feel like I am so lost. I feel like I am a little found, but it doesn't make sense to think like that. And I like the way that you look now."

She reached up and ran her hand over the close-cropped hair on the top of his head for a moment, finding that she loved the way that it felt to her palm.

"In the first place, you still HAVE your hair, and I like that very much, but this, ... this cut that you have, it reminds me of the men that I used to see sometimes. The city where I was had a military base near to it. All of the soldiers had short hair, but on most, it looked a little silly to me because they were so young too -- they looked like they had been sheared something like the way that it goes for sheep.

But there was one kind, and none of us trusted them, not even to answer much if they spoke to us over something, and it was worse if they smiled. It happened sometimes that there would be exercises or something and then we would see them -- those men, either the Russian Spetznaz or the Romanian commandos. They all looked like this.

The only thing is that their eyes were always cold when they looked at you.

But you do not have those eyes. And now, so many years later, you look so good to me."

Pete laughed a little, "You don't even know how good you look to me, Natalia. When I was in high school, before I met Maggie, there was this one girl that I used to have a crush on, and it was just a hopeless crush too. You remind me of her sometimes for a moment, but I think that now, it ought to be the other way around because she'd have been -- at most and on her very best day -- only a shadow to you.

I was never more than a really quiet kid, just trying to get through and struggling a little to keep my grades up. I got good grades in school, but I had to work at it. Nobody ever paid me very much attention back then, and that was probably a good thing.