It’s my turn to look at him, his turn to avoid my eyes. With his good hand, he’s gathering up the scattered sections of the paper, piling them haphazardly into one corner of the table. I don’t think Dad’s just humoring me. I think it does matter to him that I’ve come, been here to take care of him, and that takes some of the sting out of this revelation about him and Sharon.“Me too,” I grumble, then suck down the last of my shitty, lukewarm coffee. But I suppose I’m still feeling a little bruised, a little resentful, because when Dad asks what exactly it is I have going on with Kit, I only tell him we’ve got to get a move on, and then we’re both going through the motions, another day ahead.
* * * *
While Dad’s in his PT session, I stay outside, doing as much damage control about work as I can from my phone. Jasper’s in flight to California, headed out for a titanium conference where he’ll scout some new tech for the jet engine division. This is for the best, that we steer clear of each other for a couple of days. Sunday had been tense—I’m pretty sure he’d saidyou’ve got to be fucking kiddingabout fifteen times. I’d kept clear of the details—so far as I was concerned, all Jasper needed to know was that I’d compromised things by getting too close to the recruit, that I could no longer do the job.
The thing is, it’d never happened to me before, but Jasper and I both knew this kind of shitdidhappen. Recruiters fell out with clients for all kinds of reasons, and it could have just as easily been something else that broke things down between Kit and me, not the fact that I wanted her more than my next breath. So I think we’d both tried to focus on how to go forward. I’d made promises to deal with Greg, to find another way around the non-compete, to talk to Hamish and Kristen too. Jasper and I will go to our separate corners for a couple of days, and when I talk to him next, I’m confident I’ll have news to placate him.
I call Kristen, who’s already heard it from Jasper and who doesn’t seem bothered at all. She’s not in a hurry about breaking out. Next is Hamish, who shouts at me through the line like we’re using a tin-can phone, but he doesn’t give two shits about a longer timeline, either, and tells me he’s on board for whenever Jasper and I start up. Greg is going to be a tougher case—I won’t go to him until I have other prospects, which will probably take me a couple of weeks to scout given my limited resources here. I know already no one will match Kit, but I also know that’s because now, I’m more biased than Greg is when it comes to her. All in all, though, it’s Jasper’s haste that’s putting the most strain on things, and by the time Dad’s wrapped up his session, I feel less worried about work overall, if a little more worried about what’s got into Jasper.
But it’s still a tedious day, because I count the hours—minutes, really—until I can see Kit again. River, now sporting a much more agreeable haircut and attitude in general, helps me with the chandelier, mostly with ordering some replacement pieces online. He’s good with tech—I think he’s even bringing Dad around to the idea of a new point of sale system, a miracle since Dad still used a carbon-copy credit card swipe until the second decade of the twenty-first century.
Right before close, after River’s gone, Sharon comes in, and Dad must’ve told her about our conversation, because the first thing she does is point a finger at me and say,“It’s nothing against you, Ben, us not telling you.” Then she adjusts the front of her jersey and says,“I’m taking your father out for dinner and then we’re going to a movie. And I’ll handle bedtime, so you can go out with your new girlfriend.”
There’s something I should say here, I think—something about how I’m okay with Dad and Sharon, but she’s so determinedly not looking at me that I don’t want to make the situation worse, so I settle for the unbelievably immature,“I don’t know if she’s my girlfriend,” which at least gets Sharon to look at my face, if only to roll her eyes at me.
So by the time I get to Kit’s, the weirdness of my day—and the fact that I only slept for three hours last night—has taken its toll. If I weren’t so hard up for her, I’d probably make the sensible decision to stay away, since I’m guessing I’m not good company. But I’m not sensible, not right now, probably not since I’ve met her, and when I knock on her door, all I can think about is getting my hands on her, sinking into her, letting myself get lost in her. It takes her a minute or so to answer, and as soon as she opens the door I know why. Her hair is flat on one side, a red mark on her cheek, her glasses a little crooked.“I fell asleep,” she says,“on thecouch,” like this is the most appalling thing she’s ever done.
I’m kissing her before I’m even all the way through the door, and the way her arms go around me, the little moan she makes at the back of her throat—I’m already hard as a rock, but I ought to slow down, take it easier, because as bad as I want her, I don’t want her to think I’m just here for that. So what if I haven’t even worked out for myself what I am actually here for, but I know with Kit, it’s not just sex. I pull back from her mouth but wrap her tighter against my chest, lifting her a little so I can bury my face against her warm, smooth neck. I take a deep breath. Whatever shampoo this woman uses, I want the smell of it on my sheets all the time.
She shivers against me, and I try not to notice the way I can feel her nipples through her thin shirt, pressing against my chest.“Are you okay?” she asks.
“Weird day,” I say, the sound muffled against her skin, and holy shit, it just—hitsme, I guess, this feeling that I’m so glad to see her, be with her, at the end of this kind of day. It’s so striking that I take a step back, put a bit of distance between us. I run my fingers across the creases on her cheek, straighten her glasses.
“Was it—are things bad for you, at work? Because of this? Or is it your dad?”
I think of unloading it—everything I found out today about Dad and Sharon, my plans with Jasper, and the fact that he’s suddenly gone attack-dog at them—but,fuck. It feels so complicated. I don’t know if I’m there with her yet, and anyway I haven’t even figured out how I feel about most of it myself.“Everything’s good,” I say, running my hands up and down her hips, her waist.“Just, you know. Recovering. Some insanely hot woman kept me up half the night.”
“I didn’t! You’re the one…”
I cut her off, kissing her again.“You want to go get something to eat?” I ask.“Because I figure, we’re probably not going to get much sleep tonight, either, so we’d better at least keep our strength up.”
And if her smile looks a little disappointed at the edges, I pretend not to notice.
* * * *
We go to Kit’s favorite place, a sandwich shop called The Meltdown that must’ve opened in the last couple of years. She orders for me—trust me, she says, in this bossy way she has, and for the first time in my life I think about asking a woman to tie me up, but I get my mind out of the gutter long enough to lead us to a booth in the back, where we drink beers straight from the bottle and talk about Kit’s house, the plaster worker who’s coming tomorrow, the timeline she has for her kitchen renovation.
When our food comes, she takes both of our plates and swaps one-half sandwich for the other, so we each have half each other’s.“You’re going tolovethese,” she says, and I’m pretty sure I’d eat a sardine sandwich if she was the one giving it to me.
“Anyways,” she continues,“I wanted to ask Alex what he thought of the exposed brick idea, but…you know. That didn’t work out.” She furrows her brow when she talks about him, a shadow of that sadness I’d seen over the weekend when she’d told me about his brief visit.
“Have you talked to him again?” I ask, but then I’m taking a bite of my food, and—fuck, this sandwich. It’s really good. I think I just made a sex-adjacent noise about it.
Kit smiles at my reaction, but then her face falls again, remembering my question.“No. But that’s not really that weird, I guess. He travels a lot for his job. He’s a photographer.” She pauses, takes a bite of her sandwich, but I think talking about her brother has taken some of the pleasure out of this for her, and I’m sorry to have brought it up. After a minute, though, she continues.“When he was here, I tried to give him money.” She shakes her head, breathing out this soft, sad laugh.“I suggested that hemovehere. I’m an idiot.”
“Why does that make you an idiot?”
She shrugs, takes another bite, and I wait her out.“He’s a complicated guy.We’recomplicated, together, I guess. He raised me, from the time I was a baby, basically. I mean, I mentioned the thing with my mother—that’s not Alex’s mother; she died when Alex was four. And my dad—he’s not very reliable, so Alex kind of had to take over.”
“He sounds like a good guy,” I say, but this is grudging. I don’t know two shits about Alex other than I hold him responsible for Kit crying, and I hate the thought of her crying, hated the sight of it more.
“You know when I was twelve, he took me to buy my first training bra, which you’d think would be completely mortifying, but it wasn’t. Or if it was, for him, he knew it was worse for me. So he—I don’t know. He justdidit. Marched us right into that department store’s lingerie section, asked the woman at the counter to point us in the right direction, and fifteen minutes later, we’re out of there. When it was time for me to apply to colleges, he worked doubles so he could pay for my application fees. He drove me to scholarship competitions all over the state. He’s always been that way, a problem-solver.” She picks up a chip, sets it down, picks it up again.“Or at least he always solved my problems. So it sucks that he won’t let me solve his.”
“What do you think his problem is?”
That seems to land in a place that hurts her. She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, her eyes falling back to her plate, and goddamn, this is hard. Maybe I should have kept her at home, taken her to bed again. But Kit waits, thinks, then speaks again.“I guess I don’t know. I thought it was money, or maybe I wanted to believe that it was. I think maybe I’m his problem, or at least the fact that I was his problem for so long. He needs a break from me, maybe.”
This sends a shock of anger so acute through me that I clench my hand around my bottle of beer. I’m white knuckling this sucker like it’s done me wrong.“Then he’s an asshole,” I say, and I don’t even care if I don’t have a right to that sentiment, about someone who’s known her way longer than me.
