KAI
A year ago, I didn’t understand how a soul-altering event could happen to a person and their life stay exactly the same.
Now I do, because it’s happened to me twice.
After the accident, I went back to work the next day for the office shift that I took every Wednesday, even on holidays. Nothing altered. Nothing shifted. It was months before it caught up with me.
Delayed impact.
As I watch Joss slice apples for the slaw he’s going to serve with hisamazingburgers, I wonder if the cycle is repeating. If I won’t understand the magnitude of kissing him and loving it until long after he’s gone.
It’s been two weeks. Almost. I kissed him thirteen days ago, and it’s now Sunday evening. Six days before V&V launches the menu Joss has designed and tested at record pace. If such records exist. Confession time: I know nothing about restaurant launches. About as much as I know about relationship progression after you kiss your roommate in the name of adventure.
You’re friends. Nothing has changed.
It’s true. Living together is easy. He’s up and gone before I open my eyes and most evenings. He doesn’t come back until late, but he brings food. Delicious food. Then he showers and passes out with his bedroom door open, and I waste hours listening to him mutter and breathe instead of pacing myself into a panic attack.
Every day is the same.Nothinghas changed from the very first, except I now spend every afternoon watching him work, because apparently, I can’t stay away from him.
I sigh.
Joss glances up from his work, his sapphire eyes like a tropical lagoon. “Those carrots giving you trouble?”
Only if trouble means I’m so caught up remembering his lips stained berry red by his roadside snack that I neglect to peel them. “Nah, I got it.”
“Sure? You don’t have to help me. Play DJ instead.”
He jerks his head at the portable speaker hanging from a pan hook in the ceiling. His phone is next to it, running off V&V’s wifi, because he still hasn’t updated his phone plan.
“Write it on my head. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“What if you don’t look in a mirror?”
“My hand then. Can’t avoid them.”
“Earth to Kai?”
Used to me, Joss is grinning.
He’s the one who can’t concentrate.
I’m the one that concentrates on the wrong things and can’t stop.
He’s not the wrong thing.
I knew it before I put my lips on him. I don’t need to fixateonhis lips.
I fuckin’know.
Abandoning the cutting board, I cross the kitchen to the speaker and pick up his phone. The screen is cracked as hell, the music app barely visible, but I can see the playlist that finished before I got here, and he forgot to put something else on. “What are you in the mood for?”
“Something old.”
“How old?”
“Old enough that you can’t remember if you’re here or there.”
It shouldn’t make sense, but like most things with Joss, it does. “Pick a year.”
