Chapter THIRTEEN

MARAT

Now, I’d been kissing girls since I was twelve years old.

It started with a neighbor in this fucked up little building we’d lived in down in Sheepshead Bay when we first came to America. Adrik and I already knew English, among other languages.

He went to work for the New York Bratva, with Josef, and I attended school, making fast friends with the sixteen year old girl next door. Elena something. That kiss was memorable, even if her name wasn’t, simply because it was my first.

I’d been sitting on the stoop after school smoking a cigarette, which I quit soon after, and giving the old man from the corner store the stink eye when Elena came home from band practice.

I was a skinny little shit. But I was already turning all the girls’ heads. Elena came home, sat down next to me, and bam, pressed her cherry Chapstick wearing mouth to mine.

I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do. So, I acted bored. And Elena ate it up. Like so many women had since.