Page 35 of Comfort Read

This leaves Kit, the week before Thanksgiving, to do something over text that he knows he should have done in person, and also ages ago. He just couldn’t ever seem to find the right moment with things so strange and strained between them, the weight of the kiss and the obvious heat behind it hanging heavy over every conversation.

Still, Kit’s mom will kill him if he doesn’t try, so finally, late on a Tuesday night, he sends the text he’s been drafting and deleting for two weeks:

KIT:

Hey! Sorry for the late ask and no worries if you already have other plans, which I’m sure you do. But: My mom wants me to invite you to Thanksgiving. And I think she’ll maybe run me over if I don’t? I learned to drive in that car, so it’d be a real bummer to have it murder me

KIT:

But no pressure obvs! Like I said, I’m sure you have plans. Just need to be able to tell her I’ve asked.

He puts his phone away for the next hour and focuses on customers, sure he’ll drive himself crazy staring at it waiting for a reply. But when he finally lets himself look, he sees that Sage has replied, and that he did so almost immediately after receiving Kit’s message:

SAGE:

thats v kind of her

SAGE:

would love to but—can my mom come? don’t like to leave her by herself on the big holidays, she ends up getting drunk and calls into radio shows

KIT:

Oh! Yeah, I’m sure that will be fine—let me just call my folks and confirm, but I’d be shocked if was an issue

“Seline Rathbone wants to come to my Thanksgiving?!” Cheryl nearly shrieks this in response to Kit’s question; he has to hold the phone away from his ear.

“Pretty sure she’s still going by Seline Ballard⁠—”

“Psh,” his mother interrupts. Even over the phone, he can tell she’s flapping an irritable hand at him. “I never liked that John Ballard for her, everyone could see that was a train without enough track—Tom! Tom, come inside! You’ll never believe it: Seline wants to come to Thanksgiving. Seline Rathbone! To my Thanksgiving! Here!”

Kit winces, appalled, as he hears his father say in a distant, amused voice, “Well, that is exciting. But don’t forget, Cheryl: We both agreed all our hall passes would expire when we turned sixty.”

“Oh, please. As if she’d even be interested in me,” Cheryl retorts, sounding forlorn about it.

“Wow, I am learning a lot about both of you that I didn’t need to know at all,” Kit says, wishing he’d done this over text instead. “Can you just confirm: That’s a yes? It’s cool if Sage brings her? Once I know for sure, I can get off the phone and, I don’t know, pour boiling oil into my ears or something.”

“All that would do is give you third-degree burns in your ear canal,” Cheryl says, tutting. “Not erase anything you’ve already heard. But yes, obviously, Seline Rathbone is welcome in my home any time she likes. Her performance in Washed Away was a real moment of sexual awakening for me, do you know that? If I hadn’t met your father⁠—”

“Oh my God, Mom. I don’t want to know this, I hate you, goodbye.” Kit hears her laughing softly as he hangs up the phone, and decides that while she raised him well and he’ll always love her, she is, in point of fact, evil.

KIT:

My mom said yes, but based on that convo I’m pretty sure she’s had a crush on your mom since the 80s. The words “hall pass” were bandied about. Proceed with caution, prob

KIT:

To be clear, she’d never like harass her or anything, obvs. She’s a good person and also my dad would probably object, haha. But might be a bit awkward/starstruck, just as a heads-up.

SAGE:

that’s great actually

SAGE:

big ego boost for my mom. think she could use it rn, tbh

SAGE: