Page 22 of Comfort Read

Everyone else at the party, all of whom have been in the tractor beam of Dinesh’s direct attention before, gives them a wide berth as they chat. But Kit finds himself enjoying the conversation. Sage seems relaxed, bemused but entertained, and Kit realizes that he’s glad, after all, to have impulsively invited him. It’s nice to see him loose and laughing, briefly playing with a duck who escapes the coop to come say hi. Not that it’s Kit’s lookout one way or another—the whole thing between them is fake, after all—but he’s starting to feel bad for Sage, riches and fame be damned. He seems lonely.

Not, of course, that Kit can talk. It’s horrifyingly nice to be at a party with someone, even if that someone is only faking being his boyfriend. Kit’s dated a little since he and Emerson split, but it hasn’t gone particularly well, and certainly nothing has progressed to the “be my date to a party with my friends” stage. And honestly, even when he and Emerson were together, Emerson rarely accompanied him. Often Kit attended alone, and when Emerson did come, there was always a frisson of tension—Kit’s strange, persistent fear that someone would say something embarrassing in front of his boyfriend. Why doesn’t he feel that way with Sage, who is, objectively, a more impressive person than Emerson? Maybe it’s just because the whole thing is a farce, but Kit’s pleased to discover himself oddly unworried about what his friends might say, or what it might make Sage think.

Naturally, this is when it happens: “Be honest,” Dinesh says. “He hired you.”

Sage’s whole body stiffens like a board; Kit chokes on his drink. As he does his level best to regain the ability to breathe, Sage carefully says, “What do you mean?”

Dinesh, several drinks deep, does not appear to notice that anything is amiss, and cackles to himself. “Kit! He hired you on the dark web. You’re like—God, like that thing, with Princess Diana—the revenge dress! That’s it. Kit hired you to be his revenge dress.”

“His revenge dress for… what?” Sage’s brow creases, though he doesn’t seem at all fazed to be cast as an article of clothing.

“You know what, I don’t think we need to talk about that,” Kit says, too loud. Heads turn to look at him, Allison’s and Maggie’s among them; he lowers his voice. “I obviously didn’t hire Sage on the dark web, Nesh, but ha ha, and thank you so much.”

“Oh my God, have you guys not talked about it?” Dinesh’s face abruptly looks serious, even grave. “Kit—you can’t just ignore it. Healthy relationships are built on communication! And it was such a huge part of your life, you guys were together for such a⁠—”

“You know I think we have to go,” Kit says, standing abruptly. Sage stares up at him, wide-eyed and blinking in surprise, and he softens the demand to, “If, um… if you don’t mind. I’m just tired, all of a sudden.”

“No worries,” Sage says, his eyebrows raised. “Dinesh, it was nice meeting you.”

“You too,” Dinesh says, and makes an apologetic face at Kit, who makes an irritated one in return and turns away.

They say their goodbyes, and in an act of true decency, without being asked, Sage tells everyone they talk to that he’s the reason they’re leaving early. “Brutal shooting day tomorrow,” he lies—or maybe it isn’t a lie, as Kit doesn’t know what his schedule looks like. It is certainly not the reason they’re leaving, though, and he’s so grateful for the cover that he feels a little pathetic about it.

Their ride back to the bookstore is mostly quiet. Kit asks to be taken there, with the excuse that it’s where he left his own car. Sage relays this to Eleanor and then, at her request, closes the partition so she can focus on her podcast. Sage says, “That was nice. Your friends are cool,” and Kit says, “Yeah, they’re great.” And, at least for the bulk of the remaining ride, that’s where they leave things. Awkwardness thickens the air between them. As Kit watches the trees flit past the window, he tries to think of a way around doing what he has to do, but there isn’t one. He’d known this would come up eventually, hadn’t he? Better he take the opportunity to tell Sage himself than to let him ask around.

As they pull into the heart of town, Kit takes a deep breath. “Remember how I told you I was the saddest man in Cedar Falls?”

Sage’s brown furrows. “I do.”

“That’s because eighteen months ago I bought the bookstore as part of a plan to propose to this guy Emerson, who I’d been with since high school. And I also invited a bunch of people to the proposal for a surprise engagement party. And he… well. He didn’t say yes. What he said was not just ‘no,’ but also that he wanted to break up, and that he was leaving town entirely, so. It was what you might call a bad hat trick.”

“Jesus,” Sage says, blowing out a breath. “No wonder—” He clamps his mouth shut, but Kit can see the rest of the sentence in his eyes.

“It’s okay,” he says, on a sigh. “You’ve just figured out why people around here are the way they are when you mention me. Everyone at the building department said, ‘Poor guy,’ or, ‘Yeah, heard it’s been tough luck for him,’ or something. It’s fine. I’m used to it. It’s been like that since my jaw surgery—the Kit Forrest Pity Party is practically a Cedar Falls tradition at this point.”

Sage opens his mouth, pauses, seems to reconsider whatever he was on the verge of saying, and shuts it again. After another beat, he says, “I know how that is. Sort of, anyway. I’m really sorry, Kit. It sounds like it’s been hard.”

The car pulls up in front of the bookshop. Under the streetlights cutting in through the window, Sage looks like a still from a movie, light falling in sharply delineated bars across his otherwise shadowed face. It somehow both highlights his unsettling physical beauty and cuts through it, revealing the emotion underneath. He looks genuinely pained for Kit, and like someone who understands his position too well.

“Back at ya,” Kit says quietly, and shrugs, barely smiling, when Sage’s eyes widen in surprise. “Different scale, naturally, but I know it when I see it. Thanks for coming tonight.”

“Thanks for having me,” Sage says, his voice a low rasp in the plush leather backseat of the car.

For a second, Kit thinks something crazy is going to happen, something so impossible that even the thought is absurd. He thinks maybe, just maybe, Sage is going to lean across the backseat and press his hand to Kit’s cheek, his lips to Kit’s mouth. The air between them is charged now, not with awkwardness but with something heavier and harder to ignore. Sage’s eyes flicker down along the line of Kit’s neck, his body, before sliding back up to his face again. Kit bites his lip, and Sage’s eyes dart down to follow the motion and stay there a beat too long.

But then Sage jerks, an actual, physical shudder, as though he’s pulling himself out of a trance. The charged atmosphere vanishes as though sucked out via vacuum, replaced with cold, sterile air and nothing more. He says, “Right. I should get back. Have a good night then, Kit.”

“Yeah,” Kit says, hoping it doesn’t sound hollow. “You… you too.”

Then, before he can reveal any other personal agonies or think any fresh treacherous thoughts, Kit climbs out of the car and goes inside.

NINE

As a teacher, Kit’s Achilles’ heel was making graphs. Even when he’d been a student himself it had been a weak spot, forever cropping up to annoy him. It’s not that he doesn’t understand the information he’s trying to communicate, and it’s not that he can’t read a graph, up to a point. But translating data into images seems to require use of a circuit in Kit’s brain to which no one ever attached a wire.

Still, even Kit could plot out the path of his mood over the next week: It’s a straightforward downward slope.

Basically, the only thing that doesn’t go wrong is that Saturday’s Corner of Knowledge. Kit, still on a high from the previous night, takes the kids through a lesson on energy that includes a fair amount of well-contained running around. Once he’s sure they’ve all gotten enough of their own energy out to sit still, he does a practical, controlled demonstration of a few different chemical reactions, sneakily teaching them about the periodic table in the process. The classic baking soda and vinegar volcano has its merits, but Kit prefers his baking soda and vinegar replica of the waterfall outside. He made it with papier-mâché for his second-graders years ago, and it’s still satisfying to watch bubbles burst out the top and run like rapids down the sides.