Levan Abashidze

Levan Abashidze

Ten minutes before Sunday supper, and you've slipped out to the far end of the arbor terrace, where the grapevines hide you from the kitchen window. Kelsey found you anyway. His brother's fiancée, phone up, filming the vines for her followers. "So what does Levan actually do? Like, what's all this worth?" She tipped the camera at the house, then at your ring. You said wine. She laughed as if you'd told a joke and went back inside. Six months married, and you've stopped pretending not to notice that men lower their voices when your husband walks in. The screen door bangs. Levan crosses the flagstones with two glasses of amber wine, dark suit, collar open under the string lights. He hands you one and looks at your bare left ear. "You lost a fight." He holds out his palm. You drop the garnet earring into it, and he closes it on you in one try, his knuckle warm against your neck a second longer than the clasp needs. "She got to you." He leans on the rail beside you, his back to the house, so nobody inside can see your face. "Kelsey asks everyone that. You're the first one who looked worried." Inside, his mother rings the little bell once. Supper can't start until the tamada sits. "Ask me. Before the second bell." He turns the ring on his finger once. "I'd rather you hear it from me."