30. Kai #2
The moment I slow for a light, Julia comes back into my head.
She never left, only allows me to rest my brain when I’m out like tonight.
Every other waking moment, — she’s there.
Sometimes it is something sexual, and this appears to be one of those times, because I’m still a man and apparently my body has no moral interest in making any of this easier.
I remember black lace reflected in a fitting-room mirror or her legs around me in the dark, or her fucking crawling to me and have to sit at a red light with both hands on the bars while my brain helpfully reminds me of exactly how she sounded when she forgot to be quiet.
Often, though, it’s the every other moment with her and that is somehow worse.
It’s her laughing because I told her tacos counted as therapy.
Her calling me an asshole and then asking whether she needed to apologize.
The way she looked at me when I told her about Sunday dinners at Mara’s, interested in something as boring as my actual life.
It’s her sleeping against me or the little crease between her brows when she was trying to decide whether I had just insulted her.
I miss the parts of her I had no right to know and the parts she gave me freely.
There is no clean way to separate them anymore. Apparently there never was.
The light changes and I ride.
Home is silent when I get there little after eleven.
I leave the helmet on the console, peel off my jacket and stand in the kitchen long enough to drink half a bottle of water before heading towards the bedroom.
The shower is long enough that the mirror disappears behind steam.
It doesn’t help. Nothing really does. The water beats against the back of my neck while I brace one hand against the tile and let my head hang forward, sore muscles gradually loosening beneath the heat.
My life has become very fucking simple — gym, therapy, rides and an occasional Board correspondence if it’s required of me.
There are also dinners at Mara’s house often enough that she has stopped pretending the invitations are optional.
Calls with Renee and whatever administrative work I can still do for the foundation without stepping anywhere near clinical care. Sleep at this point feels occasional.
Everything else has been completely erased from my everyday existence.
I haven’t been with another woman. Before Julia I never attached any particular meaning to sex.
I liked women. Women liked me. Relationships were complicated, casual arrangements weren’t, and for years that distinction suited me perfectly.
But that was before Julia. Now, Mara could hand me the office phone with every number she has blocked over the last six years restored to it and I wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with any of them.
I don’t want anybody else. Not because this is penance. It would almost be easier if it were. I simply have zero interest. My body still knows exactly who it wants, which would be impressive if it weren’t so fucking inconvenient.
I turn off the water and stand there for another moment while droplets run from my hair over my face.
Over the last month, I’ve stopped thinking about what I want from Julia and started thinking about what I want for her.
At first, some selfish part of me hoped she would read the final letter and understand enough to contact me.
I hated myself for that almost immediately.
Now I hope she never needs to. I hope she gets angry enough, talks enough, heals enough that eventually my name stops changing the temperature of whatever room she is standing in.
I hope she finds a doctor she can trust and that what I did doesn’t turn every future therapeutic relationship into another place where she has to wonder what is being hidden from her.
Maybe eventually she forgives me but so she comes back or gives me another chance.
Enough so that carrying what I did forever would mean I am still taking something from her long after she told me to stop.
I want her free of that. Whether she is ever free of me is up to her.
I already know I won’t be free of her. That is mine to live with.
And somewhere beneath all the regret, beneath the Board investigation and the empty office and the fact that I would give almost anything to go back to the moment I first followed her and turn the fucking bike around, there remains another truth I am not particularly proud of.
I wouldn’t trade where I am now for every moment I had with her.
I wish I had reached them differently. I wish I had met her somewhere else, or done the responsible thing and transferred her care the second I realized I could no longer see her only as my patient.
I wish months later I had been able to walk up to her without a mask, introduce myself as Kai and let her decide whether she wanted anything to do with the man underneath the suit.
But I can’t honestly say I wish I never knew how she felt sleeping against my chest. I can’t wish away her laugh in the dark or the way she touched the tattoos on my back.
Those moments matter to me. The way I took the road to them is the thing I will regret for the rest of my life. There is a difference. It just came too late to make it matter.
Six weeks after Julia walked out of my office, I flew into Rapid City on a Sunday morning and spent the drive out toward Henry’s old property watching the landscape open around me.
South Dakota always changes something in my breathing.
Maybe it is the sky. There is too much of it compared with Minneapolis, broad enough that everything beneath it seems smaller and farther apart.
I stop in Pine Ridge first because I have been away longer than usual and because there are people there who have nothing to do with the choices I made.
I spend most of the morning checking in with the outreach coordinator, reviewing the transport fund and signing off on two scholarship disbursements before heading north again.
Early afternoon, Henry’s house comes into view beyond the long drive. I still think of it that way sometimes. The new security lights are visible even in daylight. The railing doesn’t move when I test it on my way inside. Good.
I find Marisol in the main house at the dining table with a laptop open in front of her, three textbooks spread around it and an expression suggesting every one of them reminds her that she is “too old” for this much studying.
She looks up when I enter. “Hey.”
“How’s school?” I ask, stopping near the table.
Her eyes narrow at the screen. “Ask me after midterms.”
I pull out the chair opposite her but remain standing behind it. “That bad?”
“No. Just hard.” She closes the laptop halfway and gives me a reluctant smile. “I actually like it, which is annoying because now I have to keep going.”
“That’s usually how they get you.”
She laughs softly.
“You still think they made a mistake accepting you?”
Her smile fades into something smaller but steadier than the last time Renee mentioned it. “Not every day.”
“Good enough.”
Marisol looks at me for another second before reopening the laptop. “I’ll take it.”
I straighten, give her a small smile and a nod and leave her to it.
Renee finds me ten minutes later near the upstairs bathroom, where the section of wall that had been opened for the plumbing repair has been closed and repainted so cleanly I can barely tell which part was replaced.
She gives me the condensed version of the last month while walking me through the house.
The moisture was contained exactly where the contractor expected, the framing has been replaced, mold testing came back clear, security lighting is complete and the porch railing is no longer trying to kill anyone.
Occupancy remains steady, two women have moved into transitional housing since we last spoke, another arrived with a four-year-old son three nights ago, and staffing is still the permanent headache it has been since opening.
Nothing dramatic, which is exactly what I want.
We end up in Henry’s old study, although there is little of him left inside it beyond the built-in shelves and the heavy window trim.
Renee has converted most of the room into administrative space, and there are folders stacked across half the desk along with a tray containing three coffees she apparently forgot existed.
“Oh,” she says while flipping through something near the bottom of the pile. “The new law firm agreed to move forward with the anniversary event.”
“What anniversary event?”
She looks at me over the papers. “The one I’ve mentioned to you twice.”
“I’ve been distracted.”
“No shit.” There’s no malice in it but I still frown because that’s just one of my charming personality traits.
Renee knows enough about the Board investigation to understand why I haven’t exactly been operating at full capacity, but she has never asked for details and I have never volunteered them.
“The Minneapolis firm that took over handling our legal work,” she continues.
“They want to help by sponsoring it. Donors, a few local partners, some of their attorneys, maybe press if we approve it. More celebration than a fundraiser, although if rich people accidentally bring checkbooks I’m not throwing them out. ”
I lean one shoulder against the bookshelf. “What are we celebrating?”
“Five years since the foundation took over the property, obviously.” She looks at me as if she’s trying to figure out if I have early signs of Alzheimer’s. “We’ve also crossed the two-hundred mark.”
That gets my attention. “Women and children?”
“Women placed safely through the residential program. If we count kids, we passed three hundred months ago.”