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Sasha hides her crying in plain sight. Up and down the city streets she acts out arguments she doesn’t care to ever have. She yells or else sobs: her mouth open, lips twisted into a frown so deep it contorts the skin of her jaw and cheeks. It isn’t on purpose; it isn’t planned. Kissing Andriy on the cheek and running out for eggs only to find herself arguing with her mother on the long stretch of road before the highway. Or screaming at her husband as she eases up on the gas to keep the speedometer’s needle even at thirty.

Each person has a unique argument, always the same. “Do you know how you hurt me?” she whimpers, stopped at a crosswalk for a woman and her dog. “I hate you,” she spits, clicking on her turn signal before changing lanes on the highway. “Fuck you. You told me I could trust you. How could you?”

She thinks of home: nightlife, and concerts, and pushing Andriy up against the wall as soon as they’re inside — needing his scent and his touch and his taste and him. Then: of the remnants of the neighborhood, and of her friends living in the underground, and of her elderly father checking the fit of his worn fatigues.

A boy on a bicycle rides past. Her face is hot and wet and she can see the clumps of her eyelashes when she glances in the mirror. Pulling over to let a truck stream by with lights and sirens blazing, by the time she gets home her rage has burned to ash.

Sasha parks behind a black sedan whose owner has the back seat doors open. She sniffs, and wipes her tears with her thumbs, and steadies her face. In a few moments the redness will fade, and it will be as if it never happened. He eyes her pulling up. They look at one another and she watches as he goes from one door around to the other, not registering what he does between. She plays through the interaction she imagines they’ll have when she steps out. Are you all right? he’ll ask, and she’ll smile and wave it away.

But instead she exits so her back is to him. Putting her bag over her shoulder, fixing her gaze down at her white surplus sneakers, she clicks the button on the fob to lock the door. She doesn’t look back as she walks up the street and into her building, up the flights of stairs and through the door. When she closes it behind her and kicks her shoes into the corner, Andriy comes and greets her. Sasha kisses him, and smiles, and asks, “What did you do while I was out?”