Page 17 of Comfort Read

In the interest of thinking about anything else, Kit asks after Sage’s promised conversation with the city regarding the firehouse. Sage explains briefly—it went well, he says, and they agreed to give Kit until the end of December to handle the structural problems before they move to condemning the building and shutting Sawyer’s down. When Kit asks how exactly he managed that, Sage demurs in a way that makes Kit sure he pulled the “I’m a celebrity, please treat me differently” card in one way or another, but he doesn’t call Sage on it. The whole topic seems to make him uncomfortable, so Kit just thanks him profusely and lets the conversation subside into slightly loaded silence.

“Does that kind of thing happen a lot?” Kit asks eventually. “What happened with Kevin, I mean—people getting all weird like that?” Remembering his own first words to Sage, he grimaces. “Guess that’s a stupid question.”

Sage shrugs. “Honestly, sometimes it’s nice to just—I don’t know, acknowledge it? Everyone in LA acts like it’s only to be expected, and I should find it flattering.” His eyes widen slightly, and he hastily adds, “Not that I don’t find it flattering. Obviously, it’s wild that anyone knows who I am at all. I’m grateful, just, you know. It can be a little…”

“Invasive?” Kit suggests, slightly incredulous. “Unsettling? Awkward?”

Sage’s next breath is sucked in, almost a hiss. “Uh. Yeah, actually. Yes.”

“I don’t think you have to be grateful for that, personally,” Kit says as they reach the waterfall. He leans against the railing, ignoring the pistachio dripping down the side of one hand. “Even the best stuff can have a downside. More than one thing can be true at once.” He gestures with his head at the waterfall behind him—an old, familiar friend. “I mean, take these falls. They’re beautiful from down here. But you probably wouldn’t describe them that way if you were in a raft at the top.”

Sage cranes his neck to look up, and whistles. The Cedar Creek Falls aren’t the tallest in the area, but they’re still impressive. “Yeah, I guess not. It’d be a long way to fall.”

He’s silent for a moment, directing a grim expression out at the water. Kit takes a huge, brain-freezing bite of his ice cream to contain his nervous energy.

Then Sage, still scowling, takes a delicate lick of his ice cream, and Kit has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. It’s like watching a tiger pause mid-stalk to carefully put on a tie.

Deciding that proximity to celebrity has driven him insane, Kit also looks out at the falls. In spite of everything, the familiar rush of water against stone is still the most comforting sound he can imagine.

“I used to come sit out here for hours, back when I was a shitty little teenager who hated the world.” Kit’s surprised at the ease with which he offers the memory. It isn’t the sort of thing he’d usually talk about. “There wasn’t a lot else to do, and vandalism seemed so stupid. It was hard, after everything with the accident. It made me the weird kid who everyone talked about, and because of the whole thing with my jaw being wired shut, there was a while where everyone knew who I was and what I’d been through just by looking at me. So sometimes I’d come out here and try to throw rocks into that gap,” he points, “in the waterline. I’m not sure why it made me feel better—I was never very good at it—but it always did.”

“Hmm.” Sage bends down, scoops a rock up off the ground, and bounces it evaluatively in the hand that’s not holding the ice cream. “When I was a shitty little teenager who hated the world, I mostly went to the gym.” He whips the rock at the waterfall; naturally, it sails right through the gap Kit pointed at, a perfect bull’s-eye. His ice cream doesn’t so much as drip. Sage grins.

“Okay, that,” Kit says, with a sigh, “was a compelling advertisement for going to the gym. Not compelling enough that I’ll actually do it, but still. Very impressive. Some might go so far as to call it showing off. Not me, of course, but some.”

Sage laughs, but then his expression drops into something more earnest. “Hey: Thanks for this. I don’t think I realized how nice it would be to just do something normal.”

“If this is your idea of normal, I regret to inform you that your perception is badly skewed. Do not be alarmed when men in lab coats appear; they’re just taking you to be studied by science. I mean, I took you to see the psychic tree!” Kit’s worried he’s gone too far, but Sage laughs again, shaking his head.

“Man, compared to my last few years, this is a Norman Rockwell painting. Places like this make me wish I had really grown up here. Properly, I mean. Sounds like it might have been better than what I did instead.”

“You can’t know, though, can you?” Kit says. The topic settles over his shoulders like a favorite sweater; he’s thought about it a lot, especially since Emerson left. “You couldn’t change one thing without changing everything else. And what’s past is past. There’s no point in dwelling on how it might have gone.”

There’s a beat as Sage considers this. Then, very gravely, he says, “So you’re saying I shouldn’t go chasing waterfalls?”

Kit stares at him. Then, against his own will, he laughs, even as he accuses, “Oh my God, that’s a terrible joke⁠—”

“Who’s joking?” Sage’s eyes are dancing. “I just want to make sure I understand. Do you mean I should stick to the rivers and lakes that I’m used to?”

“Yes.” Kit rolls his eyes, but laughter is still threaded through his voice. “Obviously that’s what I meant. I’m deeply passionate about remaining on familiar waterways.”

“Who isn’t?” Sage’s eyes are crinkled at the corners now, though his voice is placid. That definitely shouldn’t be so attractive; it’s just creased skin, for God’s sake! On one of the most famously handsome faces in human history, fine—but still! It shouldn’t have the power to overwhelm Kit’s logic and sanity and make him say, before he can stop himself:

“Hey, what are you doing tomorrow night?”

EIGHT

“Sorry,” Maggie says slowly, “but let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You’ve been secretly dating someone?”

“Mmmyup,” Kit says, telling himself that a vaguely affirmative non-word doesn’t quite count as a lie.

“And you invited him to come tonight?”

Kit doubts this is really the sticking point, as his sister’s Friday night gatherings aren’t exactly the sort of events for which people RVSP. He, himself, skips about half of them. Still: “I did.”

“And it’s Sage Ballard?”

Ah, there’s that sticking point. “Indeed it is.”