Page 41 of Comfort Read

“Oh sure, it’s Mom’s fault! Did she insist you bring him out to the rescue, too? Is she the one who told you to parade him around town every other day? To make sure everyone in Cedar Falls saw you two together?”

“Gee, Maggie,” Kit says, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “I wonder why I might want people in town to have something new to say about me. I wonder what possible motivation I could have to change that narrative!”

Maggie’s expression flickers for a second before hardening again. “That’s not an excuse. You know it’s not. I know it’s been—difficult, or whatever, these last few⁠—”

“No, you don’t!” Kit does yell this, loud enough that he slaps a hand over his own mouth. They both freeze for a moment, listening, the way they would have as teenagers on one of the many nights they snuck up here to sample pilfered booze from their parents’ bar cart, or to blow smoke from a terrible, badly rolled joint out the attic window.

When a minute has passed with no tell-tale creaks to indicate someone coming to investigate, Kit drops his hand and hisses, “You don’t know. You don’t have any idea what this is like, what it’s been like for me since everything went down. You don’t know how it feels to have people whisper everywhere you go, to know everyone who looks at you is thinking about how sad and pathetic and stupid you are! You and Justin both—you got married, and you had kids, and now you act like you know so much better than me, like I’m some idiot child who can’t make his own choices! But you don’t know what I’ve been through, and you don’t know how it felt, and you’ve never had to look your family in the eye and know they were ashamed of you, so just—just—shut up!”

He’s breathing hard when he stops talking, horrified to realize he’s on the edge of tears. Maggie must be, too—her eyes are overfull, and she looks stricken, horrified, as she blinks them. “Kit⁠—”

“Oh, stop,” Kit says bitterly, standing up. “Don’t, okay? I can’t do this right now. Will you just please tell me you’ll keep your mouth shut for a few goddamn weeks? So I don’t blow this up and ruin Sage’s career, not to mention the only chance I have of saving my stupid bookstore? Which, yes, by the way, who could forget that you were right to tell me not to buy it! But I did buy it, Maggie, and I can’t take failing at anything else. I can’t. So I’m begging you, please, just say you’ll keep quiet. I’ll tell them all after it’s over, Mom and Dad and even Justin if that’s what you want, I’ll grovel and throw myself at their mercy and whatever else you deem necessary. All I’m asking is that you let me see it through before you blow up my spot.”

Maggie holds his gaze for a long moment, hers fierce and unreadable, before she drops it. She won’t look at him as, tightly, she says, “Fine, Kit. If that’s what you want: Fine.”

“Thank you,” Kit bites out, and stalks out of the room before his cursed, treacherous tongue can do any further damage.

He’s shaking, he realizes, when he stops in front of what was once his bedroom door. It might be adrenaline, anger, or shame, or maybe the combination of all three, leaving his hand vibrating over the knob. Whatever it is, he can’t let Sage see him like this, and for a moment he panics about what he’ll do if he opens the door to find those piercing blue eyes staring back at him. They’re not really together—he doesn’t mean anything to Sage—and yet somehow Kit’s certain that Sage will be able to tell immediately that something’s wrong. Worse, Sage will ask him about it, poke at the bruise in that direct, almost arrogant way he has, and Kit will cave and tell him everything, he knows it. He can’t bear another brutal conversation tonight. He’s not at all sure he’s even capable of bearing the one he already had.

But when he forces himself to open the door, Sage is curled up in a tight ball against one of Kit’s pillows, taking up as little space as possible in the full-sized bed. He’s fast asleep.

Kit shuts the door, still trembling, and crosses the room to stand next to his own side of the bed. Feeling sappy and stupid about it—feeling, in fact, like every bit the idiot his sister obviously thinks he is—he stares down at Sage’s prone form, his dark hair spilled like ink across the pillowcase. In sleep his face is relaxed, making him look younger and happier than he does in his waking moments. He could almost be someone else: not a movie star or a tabloid darling, but instead a man Kit met at the grocery store or the veterinarian’s office. An unusually handsome man, perhaps, and one a good few miles out of Kit’s league, but not an impossible, unreachable goal asleep in Kit’s childhood bed.

But, of course, he’s not. He’s Sage Ballard, and he’ll always be Sage Ballard, and Kit’s been kidding himself to imagine there was any heat between them. It’s Kit who’s burning and Kit alone, aching with want of something that’s all the more tantalizing for having been allowed close enough to touch it. But that’s all it will ever be: a touch. He’ll look back on this someday and remember how it felt to brush his fingers against the very edges of Sage’s huge, storied life. Sage’s intensity and passion and wit. Sage’s sinfully hot mouth, which had felt like a benediction, like oblivion itself, that single time it was pressed against Kit’s own.

Kit climbs into bed next to him. Knowing it will be the only time they ever sleep together, he closes his burning eyes.

SIXTEEN

Even for Kit—even by the standards Kit has, over the last several weeks, come to accept as normal—the next seven days of his life are strange ones.

As he’d expected and feared, Sage is immediately able to tell something is wrong with Kit when they wake up together the following morning. Kit does his best to play it off as awkwardness about their sleeping arrangements, but only an idiot could miss the tension between himself and Maggie. It’s so obvious it all but ripples in the air, causing both their parents and Justin to cut nervous glances at them until, with the snow stopped and the roads mostly plowed, everyone is able to head back to their own homes.

This is especially true for Sage, whose Ithaca-based production wrapped the day before Thanksgiving. Between the appearances they’ve already made, the photos they’ve had taken, and a series of selfies they took around town one afternoon to serve as future social media content, there’s no need for them to see one another for about a week. Kit’s been trying not to think about it, and succeeded a little too well: It’s a gut-punch to walk Sage out to the car and realize they’re at the end of the line, setting their upcoming dinner with Wayne aside.

At least Kit isn’t the only one to feel strange about it; Sage can’t quite stand still as Kit and Seline say their goodbyes, or after he’s shut the car door behind her. In the end, he offers Kit a slightly awkward hug before he climbs into the Porsche and, as they’re pressed together, murmurs, “God, it feels weird that I won’t be seeing you for six whole days. I guess I got used to you.”

“Yeah,” Kit says hollowly, only half-listening as Maggie glares at him from the passenger seat of Mitch’s retreating minivan. “Guess I got used to you, too.”

“But we’re still good for next Friday? The dinner? Wayne did confirm the date worked, but I can definitely push it if you need more time.” Sage pulls back but doesn’t release Kit, looking down at him with nervousness written all over his face. “I’m flying back to LA this afternoon, but I can come out again this week if you want to go over anything, or do a practice run, or⁠—”

“Oh, what, you think you can’t trust me not to mess it up?” Sage flinches and Kit kicks himself; that wasn’t fair. He’s too deep in ruminating on what happened with Maggie to converse like a normal person, and clearly, it shows. “Sorry, sorry. That didn’t come out right. Just—do whatever you need to do, okay? I’ll be fine.”

“Riiiight,” Sage says, not sounding at all sure he believes it. After a long beat, and for the second time that morning, he adds, “Is everything okay, Kit? You seem… I don’t know… off.”

“I’m fine,” Kit grinds out. “Totally fine.”

“Right,” Sage says again. His eyes flick up to the windows of the house, where Kit’s sure his parents are standing and watching them; to him, that’s more than a little annoying, but Sage smiles slightly, like he thinks it’s nice. “Well. I’ll be in touch, okay? So if there is something, we can talk about it then.”

Before Kit can reply, Sage leans forward and presses a kiss to his cheek. His lips are warm against Kit’s chilled skin, and when he pulls away Kit can still feel the place where they sat so clearly that he half expects to see a glowing imprint of them in the mirror when he goes inside.

“Take care of yourself,” Sage says softly.

“Um.” Kit feels near tears all of a sudden; he isn’t sure why. “Thanks. You too.”

He climbs into his own car the minute Sage drives off, unable to bear going back inside.

Kit tries to return to his normal life at the bookstore. However, circumstances conspire against him on that point: He finds, to his chagrin, that most of his normalcy has eroded away under the pressure of the last few abnormal weeks, and may not be recoverable.