“Well, itwouldmake things complicated at work,” I pointed out.
Subtle raise of his brows, his head tilting to the side. “Is that the only reason?”
Of course he didn’t think this was a good enough reason.We can be discreet, he was probably thinking.We can be professional. It’s not that big of a deal anyway.
Only that it was to me. Just standing here next to him, I felt stupidly willing, my limbs warm and pliable, like I was made of clay. If he asked me to go back to his apartment now, I knew I would say yes. I found him so ridiculously attractive I could picture myself taking off all of my clothes and telling him that he could do whatever he wanted with me. And if tomorrow morning he acted as though nothing had happened between us, I knew I would be too mortified to say something about it. I didn’t think Kai was that kind of person, but what if he was? I couldn’t put myself in this position. We saw each other every day. Our desks were literally joined. It would be unbearable.
“Kai,” was all I said.
“Right, right,” he agreed peaceably, knowing and understanding everything I wasn’t able to articulate. “Friends, then.”
“Friendly friends,” I promised.
“No, I beg of you,” he groaned. “Be cruel. Be a terrible friend. Make this easy for me.”
“Okay,” I laughed, throwing back my head in genuine delight. “I’ll make it easy for you.”
Eyes glittering, because yes, even defeat looked gorgeous on him, he said in a low, intimate voice, “Oh, but you see, you’re already making it so difficult.”
There were so many things I could have done or said in that moment. Or rather, I’d like to believe that I could have made a different choice, that as a matter of fact there was such a thing as free will, and that we were not mere prisoners to some subconscious part of our brains where everything was arranged into something that a more romantic person, someone like Kai, would call destiny.
But in the end, whether it was fate or free will or some other unseen device that I didn’t have the expansiveness of mind to even imagine, I said the one thing that changed everything.
“Can I ask you something strange?”
His cheeks dimpled. “You can ask me anything. Especially if it’s strange.”
“What does it mean to you? Nostalgia.”
He frowned at the question, flicking the ashes of his cigarette. “I suppose I feel the most nostalgic whenever I think about my childhood. Remembering things like summer camp and…”
On and on he went, recounting memories in perfect, colorful detail. He spoke of Saturday morning cartoons and mystery popsicle flavors, of playground games and curfews and rebellions. He spoke of quirky but affectionate relatives and eventful summer vacations. Band posters and mixtapes and going everywhere with his brand new walkman. Schoolyard confessions and holding hands with his crush for the very first time.
Lovely, sun-drenched recapitulations that grew more and more disturbing to me for each sentence brought me closer to the unrealized horror of my existence: I had experienced none of that.
I had experienced none of that because I had no childhood.
In fact, I had no memories at all.
Instantly, a wall shut down in my mind, and I was cut loose from myself, abandoned in a dark liminal space where I could have spent years, decades, my whole life searching for a way out, a way that didn’t exist, had never existed. And in that abysmal, exit-less space there was only one voice, frail and girlish as if it were coming from the child I could not remember ever being, asking me hysterically,Who am I? Who are my parents? How could I have not realized this sooner? How could I be living the middle of a life without having lived the beginning of one?
A muted, choking sound sprang from the back of my throat, my heart pounding, my ears ringing, the night a stage tilting into darkness, and I tried to resist, to grasp onto the railing and steady myself, but I could no longer see it, my vision growing blurry, blurrier, then black.
My body slipped from my hold, as if it no longer belonged to me, as if it weren’t really my body. As if I weren’t really here.
But I was here.
Thiswasreal.
Iwas real.
Wasn’t I?
Chapter Five
Consciousness returned to me in small, easily digestible increments. The feeling of lying upon something hard and leathery. The monotonous drone of a radiator. A sliding door leading to a balcony. Outside, it was day and blue, and on the drying rack, crisp white sheets were swelling with wind. Then a face.Hisface. The overwhelming radiance of his beauty and the liquid warmth of his eyes.
“Kai?” My voice sounded hoarse, sandpaper-dry. I could taste blood in the back of my throat.
