Chapter 2
Sometimes in life, relationships broke like jam jars, and while Kai had cut himself on the shards of those more than he liked to admit, it was fine. You bandaged those cuts and let them heal. You got over it and moved on.
It was the way Nick had chosen to actively break what they had that irked Kai, making his skin and eyes itch in ways other breakups never had before, and he had no idea why, this time, everything felt different. A part of him wanted to just run, run and run, and never stop, never look back.
Another part wanted to kill something. Kai longed to close the store and run upstairs, exchange his clothes for pajamas, and spend the rest of the evening and a good chunk of the night in front of his console to shoot and slice and hack away at zombies and assassins and ugly nightmare creatures.
Gaming was his comfort, a safe space, and it totally beat ice cream and moping over the degree of assholery Nick had committed.
“Fuck you,” Kai muttered. Incidentally, since he was stacking rosehip jam, he was muttering at the jam, which was probably too tart to care much. Kai put the jar down and stopped his task to look around the store.
It was a small place, though bigger than his first apartment in the city had been. He’d built the shelves that lined the walls, dark, grainy wood, and he was glad about that, because if Nick had done it, Kai would have needed to take an ax to them.
For reasons he could no longer quite recall, he had also made the jams and even some of the teas.
He’d researched how to do all of that, had spent hours upon hours on YouTube and on blogs that talked about water temperature appropriate for each tea blend.
As if all of that weren’t enough, Kai had enthusiastically penned the cute-ish cursive labels and tied them to the jars with the cute-ish bows he’d ordered off the Internet.
In that first apartment of his, nothing but some of the art prints from his favorite games would have qualified as cute-ish.
And then there was Kai’s first job and borderline passion, the game coding he had given up entirely since moving here. I gave it all up…I gave it all up after meeting Nick and after…wasn’t there something…
Kai shook his head, a sudden, stabbing pain in his temple muddying his thoughts.
Yes, he’d made small business ownership his thing.
No more long hours in an office, no more crunch time.
Nick certainly had liked that. And it’s good to do things for the man you love.
You want the man you love to be happy, don’t you? DON’T YOU?!
The headache turned into loud ringing in his ears and a dizzy spell. Kai sagged to his knees on the floor, right next to the jam, the cute-ish labels he’d written himself only the night before blurring in his suddenly watery vision.
“Nick’s such an asshole,” Kai mumbled through the pain.
He approved when I put my consoles and games in a box I never got to unpack after moving here.
Fuck, I was too busy making jams and dinner and trying out my newest blend of tea…
and that was what I wanted, right? Because you want the man you love to be happy, and…
Kai rested on the floor for several minutes, just breathing through the pain.
I hate these migraines. Nick is probably right about the ocean air helping with them—I mean, fuck Nick.
The pain got worse, and to calm himself, Kai went through the ingredients of his jams, starting with the Cherries Like Summer one.
“Heart cherries, raspberry juice, lemon zest, sprigs of mint…”
He made it all the way to the rosehip jam next to him before his vision cleared and his head stopped spinning. Gingerly, he stood.
The anger about Nick was still there, so Kai began angry stacking the remaining jam. “Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck you, fuck you.” One by one, the jars went from their box onto the shelf in a rain of fucks.
The chimes above the door jingled. Kai hefted the jar he was holding in case it was Nick.
“Greetings,” said a man Kai hadn’t seen in town before, even though the town was tiny. Painfully tiny. What was I thinking moving here? They don’t even have same-day shipping.
A stabbing pain in his forehead made him blink the man back into focus, the mystery of why Kai had agreed to move to this tiny armpit of civilization temporarily forgotten.
The very first thing Kai noticed about the newcomer was that he was pretty.
No, not pretty, Kai corrected himself. Pretty was for boys, and this was a man.
He looked beautiful, dark curls reaching almost to his eyes, which were a piercing, grayish blue.
He had strong cheeks and broad shoulders that reminded Kai of the swimmer he’d dated during freshman year in college.
The newcomer’s sweater was gray like his eyes and almost as unremarkable as the dark jean jacket, though both fit well in that certain way that made Kai’s mouth water.
The man’s pants were just the right amount of snug too, but Kai tried to look him in the face like a normal person, not like someone stuck in a too small town without any access to dating apps—slicing pain again. Kai blinked.
“Hi,” he managed.
“Are you going to throw that at me?” the newcomer asked, pointing at the rosehip jam Kai was still holding.
“Huh? Oh! Sorry, no. I thought you were someone else.” He put the jar on the shelf, lining it up neatly with the others.
The man blinked. “Ah. Okay. Well, listen, this will sound weird, but have you been feeling a bit out of sorts as of late? Other than wanting to throw jars at people’s heads?” His grayish-blue eyes went wide. “Which I would have caught! I’m agile and good with my ten—hands. I’m good with my hands.”
The man had a nice voice even if something about the way he spoke was maybe just a little off. Kai couldn’t quite put his finger on it, perhaps a strange accent that had almost faded?
“Is this your pickup line or something?” Kai asked.
The newcomer tilted his head, and his black curls shifted, reflected the light from the store lights in iridescent hues. “Not intentionally so, but if you were amenable to being picked up, that would actually be killing two fish with one arm. Are you?”
Kai looked at him. “Am I what?”
“Amenable to being picked up? I would be grateful. I’ve read about things to do on a first date, so we could go to the movies or take a long walk on the beach, or Netflix and chill?”
Kai grimaced. “There isn’t a movie theater here. I mean, what the fuck? Why would anyone live in a place where they can’t just go grab a movie and—”
Bright pain almost took out Kai’s vision. His neck muscles locked up, and his jaw clenched shut.
“Oh? Are you quite all right there? Could you look at me?”
The man was there all of a sudden, right in front of Kai, one hand on Kai’s forearm, not grabbing with the harshness Nick often had, just holding steady. This is so nice, Kai thought, and at the thought, another wave of pain washed over him.
The man simply kept steadying Kai, and once he could do so again, Kai looked up and said, “I get migraines. Sorry. Didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Migraines? That’s what you think?”
“It’s—yeah. They suck, you know.”
The man looked at Kai with eyes deep and wide as the midnight ocean.
“Your skin has a taste to it. I mean, no. I didn’t mean to say that.
What an odd thing to say, as if I could taste your skin with my suck—hands!
As if I could, which I can’t, obviously.
Perhaps rest would help. With these…migraines. Sleep is good.”
Kai nodded. The man let go of him. “I was thinking of closing early today actually. It’s been a shitty day, if you know what I mean.”
The man grinned. “Like when you look for a fish, and there is no fish to be found anywhere even if they were plentiful when you didn’t want one?”
“Uh, maybe. I don’t fish.”
“That’s fine. I don’t either. My name is Fian. Can I ask yours?”
Kai relaxed. This felt familiar, meeting someone, exchanging names, no other expectations beyond being pleasant.
“I’m Kai. I make jam and tea. I don’t even like tea.” Kai’s head throbbed, but he ignored it, grabbed the jar of jam he’d just put away. “Here. My latest rosehip batch. On the house.”
Fian’s eyes went wide, and his mouth dropped open. “You are giving me a gift? Just like that? A freely given gift?”
Kai shrugged. “Yeah. It’s nothing special, just a jar of jam. On the downside, I’m kicking you out and closing up shop today.”
Fian nodded, face set like an athlete’s ready for competition.
“I understand. And I accept this gift, Kai. I’ll let you toss me back to the waves like a merkin who lets themself be caught in a net of silk.
I suppose you don’t know what that is, the dance of nets and seafoam.
Really, it’s a bit old-fashioned if you think about it, but with the gift you gave me and the magic—”
“Huh?”
Fian shook his head, cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I blabber. I’ll go. I have one last question though.”
“Okay?”
Fian, the rosehip jam held in both hands reverently, stepped closer to Kai again, moving right into Kai’s personal space. Kai didn’t really mind.
“Kai. Do you like mushrooms? And okra?”
Kai put his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and considered this. “I guess. The mushrooms more so than the okra. They’re good on pizza.”
“I thought so. I thought so!” He held up the jam. “I am grateful. It’s a pearl from an oyster’s mouth. I’ll keep up my end and…thank you.”
“Right. You’re welcome.”
Fian pointed at the door. “I’ll go. You’re getting some sleep, yes?”
“I just might. I’m definitely taking the rest of the day off. It’s not like I get a ton of customers out here anyway.”
“No, you should close for yourself. To rest, Kai, for yourself. Make sleep the salt of your days. Bye, and I will find you!”
Fian, who really looked handsome in that superior, almost arrogant way that was more attractive than it should have been, left Kai’s shop with hyper-puppy energy about him, cradling the jam and beaming as he waved at Kai through the store window.
Kai waved back and walked to the door. Fian kept up the waving, so Kai did too. In the end, Fian turned a corner, and Kai let his arm drop, then flipped the lock and the “open” sign.
“What an odd dude. But fun. More fun than things usually are around here.”
Kai’s headache came back for another punch. He was so done with the day.