“Hi Cate. This is Channing, Ronan’s friend.”
And my first thought was that something was wrong. “What happened? Is Ronan ok?” I typed frantically, and in a very annoying way, he didn’t answer for a moment.
“Yeah, I asked him for your number because I didn’t want him to be the intermediary,” he finally responded.
What Channing wanted was for me to be the intermediary instead, to set up a Cado-Kiya lifeline. “I want to apologize but she blocked me everywhere,” he explained. “I don’t want to show up at her condo and scare her. I’m not crazy.”
“Why do you want to apologize?” I wrote. Again, he didn’t immediately answer, so I offered a few possibilities. “Do you believe that you were in the wrong? Do you want her to stop thinking that you’re an AH? Do you want to get back together?”
He called me, maybe to stop leaving written evidence but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed that his answers were too much to argue via text. “Hi,” he said.
“Yes, hi.”
“I was wrong that I didn’t talk to her about stuff, ok? That was a huge mistake.”
He sounded angry and that made me angry back. “Channing, I don’t care,” I told him. “Neither does Kiya.” Ok, it was true thatIdidn’t care, but I wasn’t actually sure about her feelings. “She’s seeing someone else.”
“I know. Ronan told me that this wouldn’t work and to leave her alone. He said that when a woman is telling you how she feels, you have to believe it.” Now he sounded totally glum and despite myself, I felt a little sorry for him. “I miss her a lot. Sometimes you don’t know how great someone is until she’s gone.”
I had known that someone was great, but I did feel it even more now that I’d lost him. “I get that.”
“She wanted me to drive downstate, stay with her parents, and meet her entire family. I knew what that meant and so did she. I should have told her that I was…”
“Scared and not ready,” I supplied. “Maybe you’ll never be ready. But you had a pouty fit like a baby instead of using words, when words are better.”
I could hear him breathe in and out, and it sounded very rage-filled. “Yeah, words are better.”
“Do you want me to believe that now you’re excited to meet her family because you’ve changed somehow?” I asked. “That’s not possible.”
“Like fuck it’s not!” Channing exploded. “Why the fuck can’t I change? Why can’t I be a guy who uses fucking words?”
“You do use the word ‘fuck’ a lot.”
“Fuck!” he swore. Was that the tenth time? But when he spoke again, he did it without obscenities. “I already have changed. I saved a thousand dollars last month from cutting back drinking and going out.”
“Judas Priest! You were wasting that much money?”
He breathed loudly and then he was calmer when he spoke. “I just want a chance to talk to her. Will you please tell her that? You don’t have to plead my case.”
“No, I won’t plead your case. I’ll explain that you called me and what you said but…” I hesitated. “Channing, why do you have to change, anyway? It’s fine if you don’t want to meet her whole family. It’s fine to be different people who want different things in general. You just have to figure out a way to move on.”
“Just tell her. Please,” he said, and then he told me that he had to go. We hung up and I sat on my pillow-less couch and thought about things for much too long, not only the Cado-Kiya situation, but also about Victoria and Mr. Gowan. I even considered Taylor and her friend, the guy that she was secretly in love with (according to Kiya). But mostly, I thought about Ronan.
“Could we see each other in person?” I wrote to him. It was late by this point and I figured that he would have been asleep—he really should have been, because rest was important for his training and recovery. It was important for me, too, but I didn’t get too much of it that night. I had dreams about hearing my phone notify me of a text message, which didn’t actually happen until the next morning.
I grabbed it when it dinged. “You want to get dinner?” he had written.
I did. I really did. I thought about it the whole day, in between doing some work, talking to Kiya, and trying not to act weirdly worried around Victoria.
“I’m fine!” she finally told all of us at lunch. “Can we have a normal conversation?”
We really couldn’t, but we made a very stilted effort in that direction. “Did I tell you that, um…” Taylor thought for a moment. “My mom just cut off all her hair and she hates it. It’s awful. She thinks she looks like an alpaca and she’s not wrong.”
We were happy to discuss this new topic but Kiya grabbed my hand as I went downstairs, just to get a little more information about my call with her former Cado. “You told me what he said but how did hesound? Did hesoundsorry?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?” I still didn’t think that Channing should have been forced to apologize for having different relationship goals, but I also didn’t want to argue about it. I had bigger things on my mind today.
“What’s with you?”
