Chapter 25 #2
“Yeah, their epic love is the reason for Kate’s beliefs about companionship and why she never wanted a manupartner.
They were a couple for almost two hundred years!
She still thinks she can have what they did.
She won’t stop searching for it and just be happy.
Imagine searching for something that is impossible for as long as she has.
I’d get tired.” Ice rattles in the background and Jett swallows.
“I can see why she got excited when you turned out to be real, but then, the articles, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” James says. The whole conversation sobers him. Knowing Kate’s reasons—unlike him, she’d had an example of a healthy relationship, so she wanted one. Simple enough, but hearing it from Jett and not her makes him uncomfortable. “I don’t think you should have told me that.”
“Why not?” Jett asks.
James groans. How can he explain that if she wants him to know, she would tell him?
Maybe had been about to tell him the night of Lessa’s BIG NEWS, but chose not to.
Now he feels like he knows something he shouldn’t about the woman who his affinity for is growing each time he sees her.
Even if he is only watching. The future is giving him a headache. “You just shouldn’t have.”
Jett huffs. “Well, if it would make you feel better, we can pretend this conversation never happened.”
James wants to laugh. It would make him feel better to close his eyes and wake up in a world where he didn’t feel like a fish out of water.
A world where he didn’t have to resort to illegal activities to build something.
Would that even count as making it? Well, it’s his impossible standard, so he supposes he gets to choose.
If he only had one thing he could grasp onto.
But Kate is eighty-six, which means she’s had so much longer than him to develop into a secure person.
To know who she is and what she wants. If he didn’t feel so inadequate by comparison—like he has no hopes of understanding the woman he’s been trying to see.
God, he sucks at this. She wants and deserves more than he can give her. This is the simple proof.
It’s humorous that he’s been trying to protect her from himself. She must have experiences he isn’t considering. She probably thinks he’s absurd. Amusing, even. As if she needs protection from him. She can protect herself. He’s such an idiot. No wonder she is elsewhere, probably with someone else.
This feeling of inadequacy has to be the worst in a long line of awful feelings he experienced since waking up.
This future world is out to get him. Another thing on the list of things James hates.
If only he’d had normal parents who didn’t coordinate each other’s extramarital affairs, he’d have some idea about how this works.
No wonder he keeps saying the wrong things.
At least his parents communicated honestly, which he’s been trying to do with Kate, even if they’ll only ever be friends.
He runs his hands through his hair. How did he ever think, even briefly, that he might measure up to anything she could want?
“I’d rather not keep this conversation a secret, but thanks,” he says. “And thanks for answering even though you were . . . busy.” He doesn’t want to think of the wet sounds on the other end of the line.
“Kate mentioned she might go to this club in X Quadrant she’s been to before,” Jett offers. “I can message you the address if you want?”
“Yeah, sure,” James says, but he isn’t sure he plans to go anymore. He hates the idea of her being with another man, but he feels even less justified in tearing her out of someone else’s arms than before the call.
Where has his normal confidence gone? That’s right—the future is slowly trying to snuff it out. He’ll find it again in the morning. Tonight isn’t the night.
He hangs up with Jett, then slumps onto the couch. From its prone position on the coffee table, the VR headset confronts him, saying, Use me to distract yourself while the girl you like, who’s eighty-six, is out getting fucked by some random stranger.
His device chimes in, If you weren’t such a fucking idiot, you’d be the one cock deep in her right now.
Her computer with its dormant screen bar things says, You think that shit I showed her about you was damning? Think again. I’ve got way more material on you, buddy. Want to take a look?
James realizes that he’s anthropomorphizing electronics and allowing them to antagonize him, but he can’t stop it.
While it seems to be another fucked-up result of his death, at least it’s entertaining, in a dark sort of way.
What will the refrigerator have to say? Maybe it will be kind enough to offer him a drink.
He makes his way to the kitchen only to find it silent. He opens it and grabs a bottle of Vine, not bothering to get a glass. Asshole, the refrigerator says as he walks out of the kitchen.
“You’ll find no rebuttal here,” he says aloud, agreeing with the appliance. “Maybe I’ll wake up a different man tomorrow.” Tonight, Vine. He lifts the bottle to his lips.
Under normal circumstances, he isn’t a heavy drinker. But his current circumstances are anything but normal. He’s finishing the second bottle when Kate walks in.