Chapter 5
“You’re not going to believe what happened tonight!” I yell at my phone.
Kaitlynn’s on the screen. She’s lying in bed with her face propped between her hands. Immediately I get the side-eye.
“What did you do?” she asks.
“What did I do?” I adjust my hold on my phone so she can see the string of photo cards hanging from my bedposts and the K-pop light sticks arranged along the wall.
It looks better than the nightstand. Especially with Nicholas from &TEAM’s soul-piercing gaze in the middle.
“What do you mean, what did I do? Why do you assume I did something?”
She raises an eyebrow and stares me down. Finally she breaks. “Please tell me you didn’t destroy the espresso machine. I can’t deal with that when I open tomorrow.”
“No, no!” I wave it off. I am clumsy, but come on. I roll my eyes and brace myself before revealing what actually happened. “I, well…I’m Hayden’s enbyfriend now?”
The video chat goes silent. Kaitlynn raises her chin from her hands and squints. She pooches her lips, then opens her mouth but stops short of speaking. Then again. And again.
Just say it! Whatever it is, just say it! Please!
“Was that supposed to be a question?” she asks.
“I mean, sort of.” I shrug.
She stares me down again, still squinting.
“I’m sorry,” Kaitlynn blurts into the quiet and puts her pointer finger to her lips like she’s in deep thought. “Okay, but…like… How?”
It’s rare to see Kaity at a loss for words, but here we are. I’m not sure if I should be hurt or amused.
“That’s a whole story,” I tell her, scratching the side of my head. On my phone, in the little space that shows me, I notice my curly hair is a little out of place, so I run a hand through it. Better.
She wiggles and settles back onto her hands. “It’s tea time then.”
I take a deep breath, trying to remember everything that went down tonight.
It feels like a lot. I’m still trying to make sense of it all.
Sitting through Thanksgiving dinner with Mom in near silence except for the occasional, and very awkwardly timed, question about school was excruciating.
She did ask where I’d been, and I told her.
I just left out some key details. Such as the boyfriend part.
I didn’t dare bring that up. She knows I’ve been crushing on Hayden, but she would have had too many questions I don’t have answers to.
“So…” I drag it out as you do at the beginning of any good story, and this one’s a doozy. “Hayden came to the shop—”
“Like he always does,” Kaitlynn interrupts.
I let her finish before continuing, “—before we closed. Yeah. But tonight was different. Like he talk talked to me.”
“To you?” Kaitlynn questions.
“Yes!” I defend my words, then backtrack. “I mean, to us. Me and Landon.”
“Right,” she sighs.
I roll my eyes. “That’s just the beginning. He was really sweet and— Oh, and he got something different tonight instead of his Sinnercake. He got one of the pumpkin breads that I made. Yeah, but like I said, he was sweet and even told me, well us, to have a good Thanksgiving—”
“Like any half-decent human being,” Kaitlynn cuts in again. “When does this get interesting?”
“Can I just tell my story?” I beg.
She looks away all sus and pops her eyes wide. It’s her way of saying, Damn, fine. I make a mental note to try to cut it down a little. I do have a tendency to ramble sometimes.
“As I was saying,” I start back up. “He wished us a good Thanksgiving and then was about to leave. But Landon had mopped the dining area. Hayden slipped and fell. Like hard.”
The way Kaitlynn’s eyes pop is probably about like mine when it happened. “Oh!”
“Yeah. He fell and hit his head on a table. I think he had a seizure. I held him so he wouldn’t hurt his head any worse, and then I ended up at the hospital with him.”
“Wait, you held him?” she asks.
I can’t help but smile. “Yeah. But not, like, romantic or anything.”
“Of course,” she laughs.
I left out the part about Landon freaking out, but it’s not important to the story and she’s already impatient enough.
“Where was I? You distracted me.” I grin, the thought of my hands wrapped around him for that brief moment running through my head, trying to ignore the fact that he was shaking uncontrollably.
“You went to the hospital with him…”
“Yes.” I nod. “Well, they took him back but wouldn’t let me go with them at first. But I snuck back and Regina—she’s one of the nurses I worked with over the summer, remember?” I ask but don’t wait for a reply. “Well, she thought I was his boyfriend, which is sort of my fault, but—”
“Nope, enbyfriend,” Kaitlynn says before I get a chance to tell her I did correct them.
“Yeah, exactly. So his family came and she told them!”
“Oh.” Kaitlynn’s eyes bloom even larger. “They think…you’re his enbyfriend.”
I nod. “And now he’s in a coma, and they want me to—”
“Whoa, wait, he’s in a what?” Kaity interrupts.
“—come to Thanksgiving.” Okay, slow down, Kenzie. “A coma, he’s asleep, like involuntarily.”
“I know what a coma is, bitch, I’ve just never known anyone in one,” she comes back.
“Yeah, it’s crazy. I feel so bad because it happened at the shop,” I tell her. “But then his whole family arrived.”
“Oh wow.” A smile creeps across her face with this knowing pleasure that I must have been horrified.
“Yeah, yeah, shut up. It was horrifying!” I tell her. “They didn’t have a clue who I was, and one of them…gods, I can’t remember who, I think it was one of the grand…no! It was some girl who’s younger than us. She asked who I was, and then everyone was looking at me.”
“Dayum,” Kaitlynn laughs. “All eyes on you, babe!”
I ignore her. “They were confused at first, but then it was like boom, hey, Hayden’s enbyfriend, you’re now part of the family.”
Hold on a second. I didn’t see Hayden’s brother there. Wonder where he was? It’s no matter. Whatever.
“Are you serious?” Kaitlynn sounds totally befuddled.
“I know, right?” I lean back on my pillow. “I still can’t believe it.”
“But wait.” Kaitlynn stops me and smacks her lips. “You two aren’t dating though, right? Like I didn’t miss something, did I? Did he ask you out before he hit his head?”
“That’s where things go off the tracks,” I tell her, looking away and letting a mouthful of air explode from between my lips. “We aren’t dating. I mean not officially. He never asked—”
“And you never asked.” She just has to bring it up too.
“Yeah, but we are now…sort of.”
It’s a technicality, really. Everyone thinks we are. He just doesn’t know it yet. Oh gods. Am I a horrible person? I give my necklace a squeeze.
“Sort of? So you’re not.” She’s right. She’s one hundred percent right, but his family still thinks I am, and even worse, I’m supposed to have dinner with them tomorrow.
“Yeah, true,” I say as my shoulders deflate. “I know. But, like, they all think I am. And I actually got to talk-talk to him tonight. They say he can hear.”
“So he’s probably screaming for everyone not to listen to you,” Kaitlynn laughs. “Bad witch.”
I ignore it and instead try to think how I’d even go about telling his family the truth without sounding like a total and complete asshole. Nothing comes to mind.
“But, like, how do I break it to them? Now they think their son was a closeted gay, or bi, or something, pan maybe, I guess. I don’t know.” I start to ramble, and I know it, but oh well. “They think he was afraid to tell them. And they think I was his secret lover because I saved—”
“Whoa! Saved him might be a bit much.” Kaity knocks me down a notch. “You just called an ambu—”
“And stayed with him at the hospital,” I stress.
“—lance.” She laughs again.
“Bitch,” I giggle. “Still. Now I’m supposed to have a late Thanksgiving dinner with them tomorrow.”
Before I got home, Hayden’s mom, Mary-Anne as I now know her, sent me a text inviting me to their Thanksgiving tomorrow night.
I was not expecting that, and instead of thinking it over, I immediately texted back that I’d be there.
“Oh! And you know the pretty New Orleans woman who works at The Good Hex, right?”
“Uh, not like personally, but yeah. What’s she got to do with this?” she asks.
“She’s Hayden’s aunt!” I squeal.
“Excuse me?” Kaitlynn yelps. “Did she recognize you? And Thanksgiving dinner? With them? Tomorrow night? Bitch, you were supposed to do that at my house tomorrow.”
“Yeah, she did, and uh, about that…” I start to whisper. I’m going to have to do a protection spell for myself tonight after this bit. “They didn’t get to have their Thanksgiving because they got called to the hospital. And when his mom texted me about it, I freaked out. How could I say no?”
“Uh… No. Or maybe no in Spanish, nada, or nein, or non. See? There’s a bunch of ways.” She eyes me down through my phone screen.
“Kaity,” I whine. Yeah, I should have said no, but I couldn’t.
“Ugh!” she growls. “Fine. Ditch me for your new fake boyfriend’s family. He’d be your boyfriend, right? Only you’re his enbyfriend? Like, if it were real.”
“Yes.” I huff and roll my eyes. I’m doing that a lot tonight.
“Honestly.” Kaitlynn rolls her eyes back. “You’d be stupid if you didn’t try to make this work somehow, right?”
“Really?” I beam.
“Probably not, but maybe. Who gets to date their crush without being asked out? This is crazy. But this doesn’t mean you get to keep ditching me.”
I smile and put my free hand into view with only my pinky finger up.
“Pinky promise,” I tell her, and she does the same.
“Pinky promise.”
Once the screen goes blank, I fall back against my pillow and laugh for no reason at all. This is really happening. It’s not just a dream. At least, I don’t think it is. And so far, it’s a good dream with just a little dash of anxiety.