Chapter 25
25
Gabe
“So you haven’t been seeing much of Kayla lately, huh?” Adam asks on Super Bowl Sunday between fistfuls of potato chips.
“What makes you say that?” I ask, staring, in increasing misery, at Adam and Lucy’s 98-inch state-of-the-art TV as the 49ers continue to score against the Kansas City Chiefs.
“Your sad fucking face,” he says smugly.
“Your face would be sad, too, if you were actually watching this game,” I tell him, trying to change the subject.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, little bro. She got what she wanted, and now she’s gone. I just hope you didn’t spend too much money on her.”
I shoot him a furious glance. The house is full of extended family and friends. At least twenty little kids, including Adam’s, are running around flinging Nerf footballs at each other. It’s hardly the place to start a brawl.
But I want to. I want to punch Adam in the teeth, because I have been seeing less of Kayla since her mediation meeting. I know she’s working as hard as ever, looking for jobs, and planning the next phase of her life. I’ve been busy, too, between my job and helping my mom tie up Hungry Hearts-related loose ends. But I can’t shake the feeling that Kayla’s been avoiding me.
It’s not because she was using me. I feel certain of that. And I believed her, mostly, when she said she wasn’t seeing anybody else. But not being in touch is exhuming all of the anger and confusion I felt when she ignored me after graduation. I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it’s hard.
Meanwhile, Gretchen Meier is back in town. I felt her presence like a disturbance in the Force—and also I ran into her when our families were leaving church this morning. We’d exchanged pleasantries, and though she looked as pretty as ever, I realized that I’m no longer attracted to her. Before she arrived, I have to admit that part of me was thinking what if . What if I had been able to forget Kayla, what if Gretchen and I had gotten married, what if we had started a family? Wouldn’t that have been better, in some ways?
But now I know I’m doomed. Doomed to pine for Kayla forever, whether she wants to keep me around or throw me away. To be her friend-with-benefits instead of the father of her children. The way she’d held me after her mediation meeting, the feeling of her heart beating against mine—even if she hadn’t meant anything by it, she sealed my fate.
I’d given Gretchen’s engagement ring back to my dad that very evening. I’d been relieved when he’d merely asked me, in a serious voice, whether I was sure. I promised him I was.
And now I haven’t seen Kayla in three days. And yeah, okay, it’s making me a little pissy. I would prefer it if Adam didn’t rub it in.
“Just mind your own business,” I mutter.
“You’ve always been like this, you know,” Adam continues, pointing at me with his beer bottle. “You let women walk all over you. Take it from a married man. They’ll only respect you if you grow some balls, show ‘em who’s boss.”
I scoff at this, because there’s not a doubt in my mind that Lucy holds the reins in their relationship. I keep my mouth shut, though, and turn my attention back to the game.
“I won’t always be around to protect you,” he says. Is this his third beer, or his fourth? “I could talk to Kayla, sure, but next time?—”
“What do you mean?” I ask, snapping my head in his direction. “What do you mean, you could talk to Kayla? Did you talk to Kayla?”
“No, no, we just had a polite chat about how she should leave my little brother alone. Find someone who’s more on her level. Like that tweaker cook.” He chuckles unpleasantly.
I leap up from the couch, adrenaline pounding through my body like I’m about to tackle a 200-pound running back. Adam’s body tenses. He watches me closely, but doesn’t get up.
“Did you talk to her at work?” I ask, trying to keep my voice under control.
“What’s it to you?” He looks at the TV, feigning indifference. “Whoa, touchdown!”
For once I couldn’t care less about football. I hear my relatives cheer around me, but it feels like they’re miles away. All my senses are trained on Adam. In a calmer moment, I might have argued that my brother is not such a terrible guy—macho, yes, controlling, yes, but also big-hearted and loyal to a fault—but this is not that moment. Now, as I stare at the features that are so much like mine, I feel nothing but hatred. How could he have poured salt on this particular wound? How could he have tried to convince the girl whose loss devastated me all those years ago to stay away from me again ?
I choose my next words very carefully. I want to make absolutely sure that my intuition is correct. “Did the head chef tell you to leave her alone?”
“Yes, okay?” He glances at me briefly. “What is the big fucking deal? Did you just see Valdes-Scantling score?”
My control snaps. “You son of a bitch !” I shout. I lunge at him just as he jumps up, dodging my outstretched arms and upsetting the coffee table in the process. Neither of us lands many blows before assorted male relatives pull us apart. Voices all around me try to soothe or scold us, but I barely hear them because I can finally see the whole truth, clear as day, in my mind.
Adam must have followed Kayla down the corridor to the kitchen the same way I did. He told her to stay away from me, and she—well, she must have refused, right? I can’t imagine that she meekly submitted to him. And she had, in fact, continued to see me. And their interaction must have been heated enough that Jeff came out to investigate, just like he did the day I came to see her. And she hid this from me for weeks because…
Because she didn’t want to come between me and my family.
Because she wanted to protect me.
Because she loves me.
“Gabriel!” My father’s voice finally breaks through. “Can you please tell me what this is about ?”
I open my mouth to reply, but Adam speaks first.
“She won’t even go to Hungry Hearts with you, will she? Will she ?” he shouts, shrugging off the hands that are holding him. He has a bruise forming on one cheekbone where my fist grazed his face.
“No,” I admit, taking deep shaky breaths. “But now I know why.”
It’s true that I’ve asked her to go to this stupid fucking dance with me maybe a hundred times. At first I’d tease her by having Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart” playing when she’d climb into the Navigator for one of our late-night rendezvous. Then I’d upped the ante by serenading her with a modified form of “Hungry Eyes”.
“ I’ve got a hungry heart ,” I crooned into her ear during lunch at the café, “ I feel the magic between you and I-yah-yah-yaiiii .” She laughed and pushed me away.
“First of all, that doesn’t rhyme. Second, it should be ‘between you and me .’ Me is the object of the preposition between . That kind of thing drives me crazy.”
“So the whole falling-in-love montage in Dirty Dancing was ruined for you because of bad grammar?”
“Totally.”
“You know this could be an opportunity to do a little dirty dancing of our own,” I’d said seductively, kissing her fingers.
“I don’t think your family wants to see that,” she protested. “Besides, Jason might play that song, and I’d have to wrest the microphone out of his hands to explain the difference between the subjective and objective case. I might even use the word solecism .”
“My God. No one deserves that. Not even Adam.”
Though now I think he definitely does. Because even though my mom and dad and extended family might not be exactly welcoming, they are at least adults. They would treat my date with courtesy, whatever their private opinions might be. Adam, on the other hand, would likely treat her like a 49ers fan who blundered into a phalanx of Chiefs supporters. Kayla must have been trying to spare us all exactly this kind of scene.
My parents are still firing questions at both of us, but I don’t answer. The only person I can think about now is Kayla. Kayla, who felt the need to clear the air with me about a decade-old misunderstanding but then was compelled to lie to me to avoid poisoning my relationship with my shitty brother. And rather than respect her privacy, I had pushed her and pushed her and pushed her to tell me the truth. And protested when she wanted to keep our relationship discreet. And all but accused her of cheating on me.
“I have to go,” I mutter, trying to extricate myself from the relatives still clustered around Adam and me.
“This is about that woman, isn’t it?” I hear my father say sternly as I push past him in search of my car keys.
“Adam, can’t you leave him alone for once?” my mother says. “Gabe, where are you going?”
Good question. My first thought is to just get out , but as I steer the Navigator over my parents’ lawn, around the pick-ups and luxury SUVs parked helter-skelter in and around the driveway, I know that I have to see Kayla. I have no idea what I’m going to say to her, but just like the day I almost hit her, the day she came back into my life, I’ve put myself in the wrong, and I have to find a way to make it right.
The café is dead, predictably, and the few people who are there are more or less glued to their phones, likely monitoring Super Bowl updates. I spot Kayla towards the back, chatting with another waitress, her arms crossed in front of her, a water pitcher dangling from her hand. She looks, as always, impossibly pretty, from her sensible ponytail to her beat-up sneakers.
The bell over the door signals my arrival. She seems surprised to see me, but recognizes immediately that something is wrong.
“Can I talk to you a minute? Alone?” I ask her. She nods, hands the pitcher to her colleague, and leads me through the kitchen to what must be Meg’s office.
“What’s up?” she asks softly. “What happened to you?” She gently touches my forehead and I wince slightly. Adam must’ve landed a punch there, but it hadn’t hurt until now.
Instead of answering, I ask, “Jeff thought I was Adam that day, didn’t he? It was Adam he was protecting you from.”
Her eyes grow huge. “Gabe, I swear, I never had any kind of relationship with?—”
“No, no, I don’t think that.” I run my hands down her arms and lace her fingers through mine. “But he confronted you, didn’t he? Told you to stay away from me?”
She squeezes my fingers, but looks down to avoid my eyes.
“Johnson, it’s okay. He already told me.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says, looking at me again. “I hated not telling you, but telling you would’ve felt even crappier. I didn’t want to?—”
“I know,” I say, pulling her into a hug. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t let it go. I should’ve trusted you.” I love you so much , I think, rubbing her back as she wraps her arms around me. We stand like that for minutes, or maybe hours. I hold her, and she holds me.
I’ve spent so little time with her, really: stray moments here and there in high school, a few intense weeks now. The thought that she might soon leave again breaks my heart.
“Do you think there’s any way,” I begin, “that you would stick around a little longer? Just a few more months, until I pass the bar?”
She squeezes me tighter and nestles her head against my chest. “Don’t you think that would make it even harder?” She doesn’t have to say what it is. It means parting. Saying goodbye. Or goodbye for now.
It’s the first time she’s admitted, out loud, that our relationship is not just casual. I feel intensely relieved that at least I won’t be pining for someone who’s completely indifferent. I want to tell her that even though I like my work at the courthouse, I don’t actually care what fucking job I do. Or where I live. I just want to live with her .
But I know she’s not ready to make some big declaration. I stroke her hair, choosing my next words carefully.
She beats me to it. “I’ll probably be here for a few more months anyway. The publishing house I worked for after college doesn’t have a position for me anymore. I’m going to have to start from scratch, and the job market is super competitive. So far all I’ve done is obsess over my resumé.”
“Oh, that’s great!” I say, weirdly brightly, and she laughs.
“I’m glad my unemployment makes you so happy.” She smiles up at me irresistibly. I kiss her, and she kisses me back, twirling my hair around her fingers.
When we finally pull apart, I ask, “Is Adam the reason you don’t want to go to Hungry Hearts with me?”
“Does anybody want to go to Hungry Hearts?” she asks with a mischievous smile.
“Touché.” I smile back. “But seriously. I would love to have you there. I’m sure Lucy can make sure Adam is on his best behavior.”
She sighs. “I already promised Meg I would waitress for her. You know that,” she says, not unkindly, her arms still around me. This had been the standard excuse she’d given to my increasingly desperate, pop-song-assisted solicitations. I know Meg probably appreciates having a seasoned server on hand. I know it’s good money, and I know that means a lot to Kayla. But I can’t help it. I want her by my side. I want her to be my girl, and I want the world to know it.
But she’s already given me a lot tonight, and I don’t want to push it. I tell her I understand, and she looks relieved. Then she sets me up in a booth, brings me a beer, and encourages me to watch the rest of the Super Bowl on my phone while she finishes her shift.
When the Chiefs win—because of course they win, they’ve won three Super Bowls in five years, they are officially the best team in the world —Kayla and I are alone in the café. I jump up with a shout, lift her up, twirl her around, then sit her on the table in front of me. She smiles, parts her legs for me, and pulls me close.
“Congratulations, Wilson,” she says. I kiss her slowly, deeply, feeling every stroke of her tongue against mine, the hitch in her breath as I press myself between her legs. I’ve kissed her dozens of times, maybe hundreds, depending on how you count. But this kiss is different. There’s the whisper of a promise in it that wasn’t there before.
“Take me home,” I growl at her, wrapping her ponytail around my fist. “And take me to bed.”
So she does.