“I just...”I started, then trailed off.It was the classic ‘bad topic you know you shouldn’t bring up’ that I couldn’t help but, well, bring up.
Silence again.
When he spoke, his voice was low.Hollow.None of the sparkle, the energy I’d come to associate with him.
“I get that this had to be a temporary thing, but I kinda resent the idea that I’m just going to ricochet from one warm body to the next.”
I had to play it over in my head a few times before I could understand it.Even then, I was struggling.
“I’m sorry if I made it feel like I wanted more,” I said, eventually.Could hear, even as I said it, how mediocre it sounded.Not so much an apology as the wheedling excuse even a child would’ve been embarrassed to give.
He turned to me, his expression incredulous.“Tate.Literally nothing you’ve said, or done, has made it sound like you’ve wanted this to be anything more serious than us fucking, sometimes.”
I could feel my uncertainty, my frustration, shifting to simmering anger.I’d tried to give him the out he wanted; I’d tried to make it as easy, as low-hassle as I could.And even with all that, I was still getting blamed?
“What more could I have done?”I demanded, the heat catching in my voice, rough and ragged around the edges.“I’ve tried to make this as fucking easy as I could.”
Kai opened his mouth, staring at me.Closed it.The look he was giving me was one you’d give some sort of alien species spread out in front of you.Bizarre and unfathomable.
“Tate, what is it that you actually think I want, here?”he asked, eventually.
I grit my teeth; fought the urge just to shrug like a sullen kid.I felt out of my depth, floundering in seas I didn’t understand.
I drained my mug, then rolled its lingering heat between my palms.“I was trying to make it easy for you to go back to your life,” I said finally.
I didn’t expect the snort from him in response.
“Jesus.What is all this, if it isn’t my life?”
Gesturing around us, as though that would explain it all, I tried to find the words to explain.That bubble of unreality I remembered from my own summer breaks; the way things seemed to operate in blissful isolation, away from the mundane reality of the real world.How the things that happened in that strange, liminal space never crossed back over, when life resumed again.
All I couldmuster, though, was the bluntest phrasing.“You were on your break.You hooked up with a guy.Now you have to go back.”Three short sentences that summed up a summer.
“Was this just a hook-up for you?”
I couldn’t hide the bitterness that had crept into my voice.“Does what I thought it was really matter?”
Kai sighed; sank his head between his knees, forehead almost touching his coffee mug.“I thought you were being obtuse.Like, I really thought this was all what you’d wanted,” he said, flatly.Sat up, then, still staring down at the valley splayed ahead of us.“But I just realized, this is what life actually looks like, isn’t it, through that fucked-up Tate prism.Where you push everything and everyone away, because you can’t imagine them wanting to be there with you in the first place.”
There was a pressure building behind my eyes.The almighty headache of all headaches.“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I told him.“I’m trying my best.”
He laughed.Loud, and sharp, and sudden; enough to shake me.
“Your ‘best’?Jesus, Tate, your ‘best’ is holding me at arm’s length from day one, and trying to push me even further away than that today.Do you even have the faintest idea of what I want?”
I grit my teeth until my jaw ached.Slapped down the empty mug on the deck not caring if it shattered, then turned to him, feeling furious and bereft.
“So what do you want?What is it you could possibly want, Kai?”
“I want you to want to be with me, like I want to be with you!”he shouted.Ran his hand across his face, shoulders almost shaking with choked-down emotion.“I want you to stop ignoring the fact that we had something starting - something real - over the past couple of months, and not to just tear that up and send me ‘back to school’ like I’m some kid, and you know what’s fucking best for me.”
He spread his arms out wide, daring me to look at him.
“You’re so busy rejecting yourself, you can’t even begin to recognize when someone might want to be a part of your life.Why can’t you see me, Tate?Why can’t you see me?”
I shook my head, tears biting at my eyes.Words, much less anything more than them, failing me.
When he spoke again, Kai’s voice was calmer.More grounded than before.
